Gender, Race, and Ethnicity in the Workplace Three Volumes 3 volumes : Issues and Challenges for Today's Organizations (Praeger Perspectives)

Gender, Race, and Ethnicity in the Workplace: Issues and Challenges for Today's Organizations, Volumes 1–3

Edited by Margaret Foegen Karsten

PRAEGER

Gender, Race, and Ethnicity in the Workplace

Gender, Race, and Ethnicity in the Workplace Issues and Challenges for Today’s Organizations

VOLUME 1

Management, Gender, and Ethnicity in the United States

EDITED BY

Margaret Foegen Karsten

PRAEGER PERSPECTIVES

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Gender, race, and ethnicity in the workplace: issues and challenges for today’s organizations / edited by Margaret Foegen Karsten. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-275-98802-3 (set: alk. paper)—ISBN 0-275-98803-1 (v. 1: alk. paper)— ISBN 0-275-98804-X (v. 2: alk. paper)—ISBN 0-275-98805-8 (v. 3: alk. paper) 1. Diversity in the workplace—United States. I. Karsten, Margaret Foegen HF5549.5.M5G46 2006 658.3008—dc22 2006010950 British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data is available. Copyright # 2006 by Margaret Foegen Karsten All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced, by any process or technique, without the express written consent of the publisher. This book is included in the African American Experience database from Greenwood Electronic Media. For more information, visit www.africanamericanexperience.com. Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 2006010950 ISBN: 0-275-98802-3 (set) 0-275-98803-1 (vol. 1) 0-275-98804-X (vol. 2) 0-275-98805-8 (vol. 3) First published in 2006 Praeger Publishers, 88 Post Road West, Westport, CT 06881 An imprint of Greenwood Publishing Group, Inc. www.praeger.com Printed in the United States of America

The paper used in this book complies with the Permanent Paper Standard issued by the National Information Standards Organization (Z39.48-1984). 10 9 8

7 6 5 4 3 2

1

Ideas and opinions expressed in the chapters of volumes 1, 2, and 3 of Gender, Race, and Ethnicity in the Workplace are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect views of the set editor or the publisher.

In gratitude to all the women of strength—colleagues, relatives, and friends both living and deceased—who have influenced my life.

Contents

Acknowledgments

ix

Introduction

xi

Margaret Foegen Karsten

1. Women Leaders in Corporate America: A Study of Leadership Values and Methods

1

Patricia H. Werhane, Margaret Posig, Lisa Gundry, Elizabeth Powell, Jane Carlson, and Laurel Ofstein

2. Toward an Inclusive Framework for Envisioning Race, Gender, and Leadership

31

Patricia S. Parker

3. Leadership Journeys: The Courage to Enrich the World

65

Nancy J. Adler

4. Corporate Culture and Leadership: Traditional, Legal, and Charismatic Authority

79

Deborah A. Woo and Gillian P. S. Khoo

5. American Indian Women: Ways of Knowing, Ways of Leading

113

Linda Sue Warner

6. This Is How We Do It: Black Women Entrepreneurs’ Management Strategies and Styles Cheryl A. Smith

131

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7.

Contents

Blue-Collar Women in Traditionally Male Jobs: Reconsidering the Glass Ceiling

159

Jeanie Ahearn Greene

8.

The Ties that Bind and Separate Black and White Women

179

Stacy Blake-Beard, Maureen A. Scully, Suzzette Turnbull, Laurie Hunt, Karen L. Proudford, Jessica L. Porter, Gina LaRoche, and Kelly Fanning

9.

Black Women in Management

205

Ancella Livers

10.

Latinas at Work: Issues of Gender, Ethnicity, and Class

223

Irene Browne and Rachel Askew

11.

Unearned Privilege: Issues of Race, Gender, and Social Inequality in U.S. Organizations

253

Ashleigh Shelby Rosette

12.

Gender Inequality in the U.S. Labor Market: Evidence from the 2000 Census

269

Jongsung Kim

Index

291

About the Editor and Contributors

301

Acknowledgments

I gratefully acknowledge the University of Wisconsin-Platteville for granting a sabbatical leave that ultimately led to this project and Nicholas Philipson, senior editor, Business and Economics at Praeger, for all his assistance. Furthermore, I thank the contributors for the ideas and insights they shared in their chapters. Dealing with them to complete this set has been a pleasure. Finally, I want to express appreciation to Mary Christoph Foegen for her counsel; J. H. Foegen for instilling in me the desire to write; and my immediate family: children in their birth order, John, Kathryn, and Amy, and my husband, Randy, for their support as I completed two major writing projects in eighteen months. Margaret Foegen Karsten March 2006

Introduction

Two generations have grown to adulthood since sweeping federal laws were passed to end employment discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex, and national origin and to ensure that women and men were paid equally for doing the same or substantially similar jobs. Why, then, is it still necessary—even compelling—to have a diverse group of practitioners, academics, and theorists in business, psychology, and related disciplines address issues related to gender, race, and ethnicity in the workplace? Three reasons, not in order of importance, are money, power, and ethics. Women in management and the professions supposedly experience a $2 million lifetime income disparity vis-a`-vis their male counterparts.1 Economists indicate that white women experience a 7 percent wage penalty for each child they have.2 Though no wage penalty is attached to motherhood for black women, they unfortunately tend to be paid significantly less than whites. Though the sexes have reached numerical parity in management overall, scarcely more than a handful of women lead the powerful Fortune 500 firms in the United States. As of this writing, only one is a woman of color. And 95 percent of top executives in U.S. corporations are white males, though no appreciable difference exists in the percent of women and men who aspire to become chief executives.3 If those facts are not persuasive enough, consider that from 2000 through the first half of 2001, twenty-five cases filed with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission involved egregious racial harassment—the use of nooses reminiscent of lynching.4 Not in out-of-the way rural areas, the sites of such despicable incidents were cities such as San Francisco and Detroit. Those are only the overt acts; columnist Leonard Pitts commenting on the death of civil rights advocate Rosa Parks in 2005 said, ‘‘Racism that was once brazen enough to demand a black woman’s bus seat is covert now, a throw-the-rock-and-hide-your-hand charade, its effects as visible as ever, its workings mostly hidden.’’5

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How long will it take before repugnant incidents and effects—blatant and subtle—are abolished? When will future U.S. citizens wonder why publications in the early twenty-first century found it necessary to create lists of the top fifty women or blacks in major firms? Those from cultures characterized by extreme time consciousness, a strong streak of individualism, and a desire to pursue promotions into the pinnacles of power have become impatient with the slow pace of change. Incrementalists might urge them to learn from those of other cultural traditions that social change occurs slowly and that forty to fifty years, though a large portion of any person’s life, is very little time in the context of social institutions that have existed for centuries. Others are not convinced that change must be slow. They argue that any additional time is too long to wait for those who have been deprived of full participation in and equal benefits of their work in this society. Corporate downsizing notwithstanding, the United States may again face a shortage of highly skilled professionals. Baby Boomers, born between 1946 and 1964, are starting to retire in record numbers and will be replaced by the much smaller Baby Bust and Generations X and Y. Record numbers of women are in the labor force already, so they will not be a ready supply of additional labor, but women and people of color who are currently marginalized and underutilized may be.6 Twenty-five percent of U.S. firms do not have diversity programs.7 Of those that do, only about one-third succeed; 20 percent fail.8 This abysmal track record does not promote positive relations among people of various races and ethnicities. The road to a multicultural workplace is uneven and full of potholes; temporary spikes in dysfunctional conflict are to be expected. Miscommunication and misunderstanding even among people of similar backgrounds can result in serious organizational problems. Without honest, open face-to-face dialogue, which presupposes self knowledge such that people can explain who they are, their worldviews, and the factors, including ethnicity and race, that have shaped them, U.S. firms face trying times. Progressing from different starting points on the continuum ranging from monolithic to pluralistic to multicultural organizations will be challenging. Stereotypes and the debate over the extent to which gender differences in behavior exist and their causes affect the enthusiasm with which workplace diversity is embraced. A 2005 Catalyst study showed that although few managerially relevant behavioral differences exist between the sexes, men are still viewed as more likely to ‘‘take charge’’ and women to ‘‘take care’’ of situations and people.9 The consequences of such deeply embedded false mindsets are horrendous for women pursuing upward mobility, yet they are as likely to believe the stereotypes as men. A steady stream of contrary information must be presented to root out stereotypes if gender parity is to be a reality by 2019, as the optimistic Committee of 200, an elite group of powerful U.S. women, forecasts.10 Otherwise, predictions of those who say gender equity will not occur for another 475 years may prove more accurate.11

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Equity may not be achieved quickly if behavioral variations are primarily attributed to innate sex-based differences. Despite profuse apologies, former Harvard president Lawrence Summers, who resigned from that position on June 30, 2006, unleashed a controversy the previous spring by suggesting that the shortage of female science professors may be due to such distinctions. This rationale alarmed people who believe that nurture or socialization has far more to do with occupational choice than any internal differences, which they maintain are insignificant. Baron-Cohen, who studies differences in empathizing and systematizing human brains that he believes are hard-wired but that appear in both women and men thinks the situation of those studying biological differences has improved since the 1960s and 1970s. In those days, serious researchers who recognized the role of socialization but wanted to study the impact of biology on sex differences in behaviors were ‘‘accused of oppression and of defending an essentialism that perpetuated inequalities between the sexes.’’ Baron-Cohen argues that now the ‘‘pendulum has settled sensibly in the middle of the nature-nurture debate.’’12 His assessment is disputed by other researchers, notably Janet Hyde. Her meta-analysis revealed that gender-related behavioral differences long assumed to exist may not or may be highly exaggerated. She found few differences between the sexes and still fewer that were relevant to leadership or management in her studies of gender similarities.13 False assumptions nonetheless persist and harm both sexes. Women who are not perceived as nice may be penalized in important selection and evaluation decisions; men may be perceived incorrectly and may see themselves as incapable of nurturing.14 Implications of many other factors based on which humans experience different workplace opportunity and treatment could have been explored; these volumes address only gender, race, and ethnicity for reasons of relative brevity. The socially constructed term race is used reluctantly, recognizing that it is not synonymous with skin color, differs from ethnicity, and may be unrelated to objective reality. The human race truly is the only one that exists. Over the past two generations, much progress has been made. Things have changed, yet some issues in vogue today—such as ‘‘on-’’ and ‘‘off-ramps’’ for those who wish to step out of the fast track to provide care or get more education15—are essentially concerns from a quarter century ago that have been repackaged significantly. A shortage of ideas for creating harmonious diverse workplaces in which all employees flourish is not the problem. We know what to do; now we must figure out how to do it. Ways to implement greater organizational equity must be considered carefully after they have been interiorized and are given high priority. Evaluation, accountability, and follow-up also are crucial to long-term success of equal opportunity efforts. Consequences of failing in this endeavor could be dire. Some believe corporations are immune from the short-lived social disintegration and racial tension following Hurricane Katrina in 2005, but they may be deluded. Growing gaps between haves and have-nots in the United States, if not remedied, could

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result in chaos affecting all institutions, including businesses. Though many blacks have increased their incomes, their wealth trails that of the majority group.16 Native Americans are virtually off the radar in terms of management of major firms, but the underlying leadership principles of some tribal nations are consistent with contemporary management theories, such as stewardship and servant leadership. Continuing to marginalize these and other racial and ethnic minorities is costly and must end. This comprehensive set examines the status of women and racial/ethnic minorities and discusses challenges they face and the psychological, sociological, and legal contexts in which change must occur. It then suggests actions that organizations and individuals can take to deal with such challenges.

VOLUME 1 Volume 1 sets the stage for in-depth treatment of causes and consequences of workplace and leadership inequity. Perspectives of those who feel disconnected from or outside of the Eurocentric corporate mainstream in the United States, such as Asian Americans, Native American women, and black and white women are explored. Employment statistics pertaining to a spectrum of racial and ethnic minorities and to women are analyzed, as are those focused more narrowly on subgroups of Latinas. Disaffection is expressed poignantly in the stories of those whose backgrounds would uniquely qualify them to make culturally rich, if thus far unrecognized and unrewarded, contributions to workplace management but for artificial barriers. This illustrates the amount of progress that must be made before those with different but equally valid and valuable perspectives become full partners in societal and business leadership. Chapters in Volume 1 range from theoretical reflections on leadership to pragmatic analyses of employment statistics. The volume begins with conceptual discussions of leadership that draw on but go beyond experiences of diverse groups, including African American executives and entrepreneurs, skilled tradeswomen who perform managerial functions daily, Asian Americans, and Native American women. Advocated are flexible, holistic, situational leadership approaches that ‘‘give voice’’ to the marginalized, ‘‘give back’’ to the community, add value to society, and distance themselves from either/or dichotomies. As a group, contributors largely reject hierarchical leadership but reach no consensus about what must replace it. Such agreement may be impossible if leadership depends on the circumstances. Leader effectiveness may demand both meticulous preparation through the study of related disciplines and a simultaneous willingness to ‘‘let go’’ and creatively combine a kaleidoscope of possibilities in new, different ways. The most fitting leadership analogy may be that of the artist whose painting-in-process evolves on an ever-changing canvas, suggested by Adler.

Introduction

xv

Though technically not managers, skilled craftswomen who eschew the title fulfill leadership roles and engage in traditional management functions of planning, organizing, directing, and controlling. The lack of attractiveness of management as an occupation is not an obstacle that the Glass Ceiling Commission of the 1990s envisioned but is nonetheless problematic. For most skilled tradeswomen, promotions to management would entail less flexible schedules, relative job insecurity associated with nonunionized supervisory positions, and short-term pay cuts due to necessary but unpaid overtime. Thus the short-run lack of incentives for tradeswomen to cross over to management may perpetuate occupational segregation at higher levels. Such occupational segregation is the topic of later chapters in Volume 1. Contributors differ markedly in their views of this problem and related concepts. For example, Kim decries occupational segregation for its inefficiency in the use of human resources in a meritocracy where rewards are to be based on performance rather than on uncontrollable factors. Rosette, on the other hand, questions the existence of meritocracy due to unearned privilege, which gives advantages to some based on race, ethnicity, or gender.

VOLUME 2 Many legal, judicial, psychological, and sociological forces affect the treatment and advancement prospects of employees and executives based on their gender, race, and ethnicity. This volume discusses selected laws related to equal employment opportunity, affirmative action programs, and the relationship of the relatively neglected topics of racial and ethnic harassment to the more widely researched issue of sexual harassment and of the latter to workplace incivility (rudeness) and violence. The impact of stereotypes, socialization, and power-related concerns on the disenfranchised also are presented. Twenty-five percent of human resource managers surveyed attribute sexual harassment lawsuits to failed romantic relationships in the workplace.17 This worries some employers enough to ask the parties to sign so-called love contracts to release their firms from liability for harassment when or if the relationship ends. Unlike harassment, incivility, or violence, however, workplace romances may have a positive side, improving morale and satisfaction of the participants, possible charges of favoritism from co-workers notwithstanding. Romantic workplace relationships are addressed in Volume 2. Though office romance may have unanticipated favorable effects on those directly involved, many laws and programs designed to rectify employment inequity have unintended harmful effects. For example, affirmative action has been wildly successful at opening previously closed doors for women and minorities— particularly white women—but also has led to consequences that some fear have hampered additional progress.

xvi

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Furthermore, other equal employment opportunity–related programs focus on superficial problems and fail to discern (let alone address) their root causes. For example, Nydegger and coauthors point out in Volume 2 that workplace incivility and sexual harassment sometimes occur together. Rudeness at work, however, has been virtually ignored. Later, Callahan indicates that sexual harassment training implemented to deal with sexual assault by males in one branch of the military disregards the fact that its higher incidence and an increase in eating disorders among females in the same branch could be caused by perceived loss of personal control due to institutionalized resocialization practices. In the first chapter of Volume 2, Heilman and Haynes argue that affirmative action may have unintended consequences that should be dealt with. The effects of the Pregnancy Discrimination Act of 1978 (PDA), intended or otherwise, could not be adequately assessed or addressed for many years due to different judicial interpretations. Not until enactment of the Family and Medical Leave Act in 1993 (FMLA) did the debate subside. At issue was whether the PDA required employers to provide minimum jobprotected leave when a woman was physically incapacitated during childbirth and recovery. In some jurisdictions, women could be fired for absenteeism associated with complications of pregnancy or time off for childbirth if their employers lacked temporary disability insurance. Those interpreting the PDA narrowly argued that pregnant women had to be treated only as well or as poorly as ‘‘nonpregnant persons’’ who were disabled for a time, assuming that their employers offered insurance or had other temporary disability policies. Even then, the controversy was resolved only for employees who met eligibility standards and worked for firms covered by the FMLA. Those employed by organizations not required to comply with the FMLA still may have to contend with such interpretations if their state laws provide no additional protection. The FMLA allows all eligible employees, regardless of sex, unpaid, jobprotected leave in an attempt to dispel gender stereotypes about responsibilities for caregiving. Some employees, however, fear their career commitment will be questioned if they take FMLA leave; others cannot afford to do so. Ironically, the FMLA, which was to protect employees’ job rights when they needed time off work for caregiving, may deter employees—particularly women wishing to bear children—from job changes needed to advance in their careers because of its restrictive eligibility requirements. Stereotypes about the career commitment of pregnant women harm all employed women. Such mindsets, though incorrect, readily extend to all in the same general category when they are grouped together based on one uncontrollable factor instead of viewed as individuals. More than forty years after the Harvard Business Review published ‘‘Are Women Executives People?’’18 and over twenty-five years after ‘‘Women and Men as Managers: A Significant Case of No Significant Difference’’ appeared in Organizational Dynamics,19 the perception (though not the reality) of a link

Introduction

xvii

between management and masculinity persists. Several contributors deal with these stereotypes and the difficulty in eradicating them despite evidence that any true gender differences in leadership are small and situational.20 Such stereotypes may be all but intractable until women, who now represent half of all managers, professionals, and administrators, are no longer numerical tokens in the executive suite. Tokenism is another subject examined in this volume. Though much empirical evidence describes the organizational consequences of tokenism for women, the few existing studies on the impact of racial and ethnic minorities are narrow. More should be conducted. Those researching women who are tokens believe the same concepts may apply to minorities and have seen positive results among token women in powerful positions when the organization employing them purposely legitimated their authority. Any token group has far less power than the dominant class, but power can also be systematically taken from the numerical majority as is done in the military to resocialize recruits. Callahan’s previously mentioned chapter illustrates how power and control of one’s own life are systematically removed from both male and female air force cadets, resulting in dysfunctional consequences as both strive to regain it. An important distinction is that the women cadets seem to bear the brunt of the negative impact; not only do they experience eating disorders at a higher rate than other female college freshmen as they seek to control their bodies, but they also are targets of sexual assault by men cadets who react to being stripped of power by asserting control over women. Whether they are military recruits or powerful corporate CEOs, women and men still seem to be evaluated differently. This occurs despite the notion that U.S. institutions including the judiciary are gender-neutral and fair. Those who do not conform to intensified gender-related prescriptions for behavior, which are especially strong stereotypical expectations based on gender, are punished harshly.21 On the other hand, infractions of those violating relaxed gender-based proscriptions, or behaviors considered inappropriate for any U.S. adult but less so for males, may be dealt with less severely.22 Though the final verdict is still out at this writing, these findings may be relevant in the respective cases of Martha Stewart and Ken Lay of Enron, discussed in the last chapter of Volume 2.

VOLUME 3 Organizational and individual strategies for dealing with challenges faced by people of color and women based on case studies, personal reflections, and research are presented in Volume 3. Face-to-face interpersonal communication is proposed as the new frontier in which the promised benefits of diversity management will be delivered as individuals begin to know and trust one another. Other chapters dealing with diversity focus on the path Shell Oil U.S. took to become a model firm in terms of not only cultivating a heterogeneous

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workforce but also using each employee’s unique talents fully and best practices in diversity management, which include built-in accountability, top executive support, and aggressive promotion of diversity during recruitment. Today’s diverse workforce consists of about equal percentages of women and men. As the percent of sexual harassment cases filed by men increases, some might think harassment policies should be gender-neutral, but the authors of ‘‘Dirty Business,’’ a chapter in Volume 3, disagree. They discuss why sexual objectification of women—even if it occurs off the job—has devastating effects on the workplace, what can be done to change the culture that perpetuates objectification, and who should be involved in effecting such widespread organizational change. Another change in the workforce with implications for women and minorities involves career planning models. Vestiges from a bygone era that assume uninterrupted vertical movement within one company must be replaced by models with multiple career paths featuring flexible on- and off-ramps, lateral moves, and continuous learning. Crucial to career advancement of women and racial/ethnic minorities is the cultivation of social capital through developmental opportunities. Those who have lower positions or have been historically underrepresented may need to temporarily gain legitimacy by reflecting that of more powerful organizational members. Role modeling, another avenue for development, deserves more study. Being perceived as and serving as role models also may affect women and minorities positively. New forms of developmental relationships, such as a network of mentors, may be appropriate for a workplace in which demands for knowledge quickly outpace capabilities of any human, regardless of gender, race, or intellectual endowment. Other alternatives to the master-apprentice model are needed to ease the burden on executive women and minorities who are expected to help others advance but whose ability to sponsor prote´ge´s is limited due what has been dubbed a time famine.23 Some options are virtual-, peer-, and co-mentoring, and mentors-for-hire. If research supports the importance of developmental relationships for women and people of color, so does the life experience of contributors to this volume. Evans advocates greater use of peer mentoring and coaching and defines networking as ‘‘putting people together’’ for business reasons. Gee lists networking along with self-knowledge and reflection as strategies for dealing with gendered racism. Though the business literature focuses on developmental relationships and activities occurring at work, one’s personal life also can enhance leadership. Too often, personal life is assumed to detract from work, but that occurs only if resources are assumed to be limited. To the extent that multiple roles are energizing,24 the net result of personal experiences that teach skills transferable to the workplace may be positive, especially for those who have lacked equal access to company-sponsored development programs historically.

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Equal access and treatment are necessary but insufficient to create employment equity if certain groups face unequal limitations.25 All organizations, including those in higher education, must seriously consider personal and professional needs and realities of the employees they seek to attract and retain when formulating work-life policies and programs to minimize disparities in constraints. Perceived inequities may create stress. Thus, people of color and women are more likely than white male counterparts to encounter gender- and racerelated stressors. Glass and concrete ceilings, manifestations of individual and institutional racism, and historical traumas deep enough to wound the soul represent unequal constraints. The resilience some people of color and women exhibit in coping successfully with profound challenges or stressors is remarkable. It may lead to unparalleled gains in hardiness, self-efficacy, self-esteem, and empathy, qualities that can only help in future personal and professional endeavors. However, not all those in the workplace who have been harmed by ‘‘isms’’ related to gender, race, or ethnicity are gifted with such resilience. They must not be abandoned, nor must their possible future contributions as employees or executives be dismissed. Rather, organizations must fully commit not only to stress-reduction strategies but also to creation of an environment that optimizes the talents of all. NOTES 1. E. Murphy, Getting Even: Why Women Don’t Get Paid Like Men—And What to Do about It (New York: Touchstone, 2005). 2. S. A. Hewlett, ‘‘Executive Women and the Myth of Having it All,’’ Harvard Business Review 80 (2002): 66–74. 3. J. S. Lublin, ‘‘Women Aspire to Be Chief as Much as Men Do,’’ Wall Street Journal (2004, June 23): D2. 4. A. Bernstein, ‘‘Racism in the Workplace: In an Increasingly Multicultural U.S., Harassment of Minorities Is on the Rise,’’ Business Week (2001, July 30): 37–43, 64–67. 5. L. Pitts, ‘‘Rosa Parks: She Taught Us the Power of One,’’ Wisconsin State Journal (2005, Oct. 31): A6. 6. S. A. Hewlett and C. B. Luce, ‘‘Off-Ramps and On-Ramps: Keeping Talented Women on the Road to Success,’’ Harvard Business Review (March 2005): 43–46, 48, 50–54. 7. T. Joyner, ‘‘Ethnicity, Gender Bias Remain Common at Work,’’ Wisconsin State Journal (2005, April 15): C9. 8. S. Rynes and B. Rosen, ‘‘A Field Survey of Factors Affecting the Adoption and Perceived Success of Diversity Training,’’ Personnel Psychology 48 (1995): 247–71. 9. Catalyst, Women ‘‘Take Care,’’ Men ‘‘Take Charge’’: Stereotyping of U.S. Business Leaders Exposed (New York: Catalyst, 2005). 10. M. Llewellyn-Williams, The C200 Business Leadership Index 2004: Annual Report on Women’s Clout in Business (Chicago: Committee of 200, 2001–2004).

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11. D. L. Corsun and W. M. Costen, ‘‘Is the Glass Ceiling Unbreakable? Habitus, Fields, and the Stalling of Women and Minorities in Management,’’ Journal of Management Inquiry 10 (March 2001): 16–25. 12. S. Baron-Cohen, ‘‘The Essential Difference: The Male and Female Brain,’’ Phi Kappa Phi Forum 85(1) (2005): 23. 13. J. S. Hyde, ‘‘The Gender Similarities Hypothesis,’’ American Psychologist 60 (2005): 581–92. 14. Ibid. 15. Hewlett and Luce, ‘‘Off-Ramps and On-Ramps: Keeping Talented Women on the Road to Success,’’ 43–46, 48, 50–54. 16. D. Hajela, ‘‘The Color of Money Still Divides Blacks and Whites,’’ Wisconsin State Journal (2005, January 18): D1, D9. 17. Society for Human Resource Management, ‘‘Workplace Romance Survey (item no. 62.17014),’’ Alexandria, VA: SHRM Public Affairs Department. 18. G. Bowman, N. Worthy, and S. Greyser, ‘‘Are Women Executives People?’’ Harvard Business Review ( July–August 1965): 15–28, 164–78. 19. S. M. Donnell and J. Hall, ‘‘Men and Women as Managers: A Significant Case of No Significant Difference,’’ Organizational Dynamics (Spring 1980): 71. 20. Hyde, ‘‘The Gender Similarities Hypothesis.’’ 21. D. A. Prentice and E. Carranza, ‘‘What Women and Men Should Be, Shouldn’t Be, Are Allowed to Be, and Don’t Have to Be: The Contents of Prescriptive Gender Stereotypes,’’ Psychology of Women Quarterly 26 (2002): 269–81. 22. Ibid. 23. L. A. Perlow, ‘‘The Time Famine: Toward a Sociology of Work Time,’’ Administrative Science Quarterly 44 (1999): 57–81. 24. R. Barnett and G. Baruch, ‘‘Social Roles, Gender, and Psychological Distress,’’ in R. Barnett, L. Biener, and G. Baruch, eds., Gender and Stress (New York: Free Press, 1987), pp. 122–41. 25. L. Bailyn, Breaking the Mold: Women, Men, and Time in the New Corporate World. (New York: Free Press, 1993).

1

Women Leaders in Corporate America: A Study of Leadership Values and Methods Patricia H. Werhane, Margaret Posig, Lisa Gundry, Elizabeth Powell, Jane Carlson, and Laurel Ofstein

Despite enormous strides in the status of women in U.S. corporations, as of 2006, only ten women are CEOs in the Fortune 500 companies and twenty in the Fortune 1000 firms. In 2004, the last year for which we could obtain data, women made up 16.9 percent of the boards of Fortune 500 and 10 percent of Fortune 1000 firms. In 2004, women earned seventy-seven cents for every dollar earned by men.1 Only 81 representatives in the U.S. Congress (out of 535 seats) are women, and so far no woman has been elected vice president or president of the United States.2 These daunting statistics, however, belie another phenomenon: the growing importance of women in leadership positions in U.S. corporations. This chapter is a qualitative study of some of those women, their achievements, and the valueadded contributions they have made in their leadership positions. For this study we have chosen eighteen women from a variety of for-profit sectors of the economy. Some have started from the bottom of an organization; others have moved from one organization to another; still others have started their own businesses. Included in our study are women in finance, retail, service industries, education, labor, banking, accounting, consulting, architecture and design, energy, marketing, and health care. The data were collected from a series of personal interviews conducted in 2004 and 2005. This study is flawed in several respects. Our selection criteria were based on women who represented different sectors of the economy and those to whom we had access. Many women in this study are or were members of the Chicago Network, a selective organization of women leaders in Chicago. Others are graduates of the Darden Graduate School of Business at the University of Virginia. So our sample is small and hardly representative of a good cross-section of American women leaders. Second, merely because we have limited our study of leadership to women, we cannot conclude that the motivations, background, traits, and qualities of leadership we found are unique to women. At best, we can presume

2

Management, Gender, and Ethnicity in the United States

that the leadership stories these women tell display some commonalities among successful business women leaders, which might be factors in their careers. Studies of male leaders may reveal parallel factors and similar leadership styles, but that is not our concern in this chapter. Rather, we want to tell stories about women who have been successful and who are role models for other women still struggling in their careers. Third, this study deliberately focuses on women in business. Much has been written about women who are political or religious leaders, for example, Eleanor Roosevelt, Margaret Thatcher, Mother Teresa, and Hillary Clinton. Less has been written about successful women in the for-profit sector. As an increasing number of women enter the workforce and strive for leadership positions, our study may be helpful to them. Although the women in our study are exemplary, our aim is to do more than just celebrate their achievements. We were searching for common leadership styles as models for women now entering the workforce. Although we have selected women in a variety of sectors of the economy, we have found recurring themes—repeatedly similar styles of leadership. Each woman we have chosen to study has a different story to tell. Each comes from a different background, has had a variety of opportunities, and evaluates herself and her achievements from a unique perspective. Yet some similarities are striking. The women included in this chapter are models of a leadership style that Judith Rosener has labeled ‘‘nontraditional’’ or ‘‘transformational.’’3 Unlike leaders in hierarchically structured organizations, these women do not view their authority as a matter of power. They do not think of themselves as persons in superior positions of formal authority. These women are not transactional leaders who view leadership as a series of transactions between managers and employees, a trade of promotion or salary for good performance, or a punishment of demotion or firing for poor performance. Rather, they see leadership as an ongoing give-and-take process. They often see themselves as team leaders, as inspirational rather than directive. Their interactions with managers and employees are seldom transactional exchanges of rewards or demotions for superior or inferior performance. Instead, these women see themselves as working to coordinate and balance their interests and those of their employees, transforming these into shared corporate goals. This is usually translated into forms of interactive and participatory leadership that empower employees while achieving corporate ends. Often this leadership style is not aimed at transforming employees to adopt the values and goals of the company. Instead, leadership is thought of as a two-way interaction where both managers and employees are motivated and sometimes even changed.4 So the leadership style is more like coaching than directing; more participative than hierarchical. All speak of adding value in their organizations through a participatory inclusive style of leading their employees as colleagues rather than as subordinates or followers. Indeed, the terms subordinate and follower seldom surfaced in the interviews we conducted.

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As already stated, every woman in our study has a different story. Like leaders cited in Howard Gardner’s work, Leading Minds, they all weave narratives, or ‘‘identity stories,’’ that tell us something about themselves and, more important, communicate what they value.5 None are hypocritical: They lead from whom they are and what they stand for, and that transparency becomes obvious to those they lead. Each woman interviewed exhibits an absolute sense of self-confidence. Despite various struggles and challenges and even discriminatory treatment, each is very sure of herself and her abilities. This is not merely a mentality of survival; it demonstrates a positive view of capabilities, a disregard for discriminatory practices, and optimism that these challenges can be overcome. That optimism stems from a firm belief deeply embedded in the psyche of each woman that she is as talented and capable as her male counterparts and superiors, and indeed, that turns out to be the case. Are such traits genetically coded so that we can sort them out as evident in all women who are leaders? That conclusion is highly questionable and impossible to prove. What we found is that each of the leaders in this collection is extremely smart and, in the case of Eva Maddox, aesthetically gifted. These talents are necessary for the kinds of leadership that are manifested by these women. However, they are not sufficient to account for their successes. The evidence of self-confidence or self-assurance, the ability to address obstacles in a variety of situations, and the ways in which each has overcome a disparate set of difficulties are learned from their experiences and from those who have (or have not) mentored these leaders. One standard explanation for leadership success is related to well-developed mentoring experiences. Yet many of these women have not had positive mentoring experiences. At the same time they repeatedly speak of the importance of mentoring their managers and employees. Many have worked in hierarchical organizations where they were ignored. Yet they emphasize the importance of collaboration, listening, and inclusion in decision making. Is the leadership success these women exhibit due primarily to the situations in which they find themselves? Is their success contingent on particularly favorable circumstances, so that in other situations they would not have had opportunities? Or, given their talents, would they have been unsuccessful in other industries or under other market conditions? Of course the context in which one finds oneself plays a critical role in one’s ability to succeed or fail. And there is always a bit of luck involved. Anne Arvia’s appointment as CEO of ShoreBank, for example, was due to the death of her mentor. Had Maddox not come into contact with architect Stanley Tigherman, her creative path would have been quite different. But these women and the others we have studied also demonstrate the ability to make the most of their talents given their situations, and many demonstrate the ability to redefine that context. Communication as well as collaboration—communicating to and with managers and employees—is another theme running through the stories of these women. Transparency—sharing information and eliciting new ideas—is

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emphasized repeatedly. Although some of these women have been passed over for executive positions in the past, we find that each emphasizes the importance of hiring, promoting, and including managers who seem to be more capable than the leader. Thus there is an absence of fear of being second-guessed, sharing power, or being replaced. Many of these women have found themselves in difficult economic situations either because the company they are leading has experienced tough economic times, such as those occurring after 2001, or because they found themselves in a leadership position in an organization that had not been well led in the past. But rather than get discouraged, the women we interviewed saw these problems as challenges and attacked them with enthusiasm and intelligence. Women who have not experienced these challenges have become change agents in their organizations. Thus we see restlessness with the status quo and a quest for excellence. We had a selection bias: Each woman we have chosen to study has been a success in her organization or in multiple organizations. Failure seemed not to be an option, although there were (and still are) plenty of chances for failure for all the women in this study. Part of the many reasons for this may be because these leaders are ‘‘first-class noticers.’’6 That is, they listen, are attentive to context, and observe well. Noticers are skillful at recognizing talent, identifying opportunities, and grasping the economic context in which their company finds itself. So noticers can often identify good managers. They often have a good sense of ‘‘smell’’ for opportunities and potential pitfalls, and thus many have been able to guide their organizations to avoid some economic disasters as well as add value. This sort of talent was evident in almost every leader in our study. Finally, in different ways, each woman we studied exhibits what has been called elsewhere ‘‘ethical leadership.’’ That is, each integrates her values with those of her organization and ‘‘embodies the purpose and values of the organization and of employees within the understanding of ethical ideals. . . . She connects the goals of the organization with those of the internal constituents and the community.’’7 This principles-based ethical leadership was evidenced in every leader we interviewed.

THE ROLE OF INTELLIGENCE In Leading Minds Gardner argues that two conditions for leadership in any venue are intelligence, what he calls ‘‘the attainment of expertise in various domains,’’8 and a strong ‘‘sense of self,’’ which manifests itself in leaders as selfconfidence. We see both of these characteristics in all the leaders we studied. We leave it to the reader to decide whether they are inherited or learned, but obviously not all smart people or even smart and self-confident people are leaders. The consistent evidence of self-confidence that we found, however, will become apparent as we unfold the stories of each woman.

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It was also obvious that being smart is universally a characteristic of the women we studied. However, some literature links intelligence with education; in business it is often linked to undergraduate degrees in business or, better, MBAs. But our study does not verify that link to education or to management education in every case. Some anomalies are striking. Two subjects, Caroline Sanchez Crozier and Margaret Blackshere, were the first in their families to go to college. Eva Maddox is an internationally recognized interior designer. In 1975, she started and headed her own design firm, which she sold to Perkins and Will, one of the largest architecture firms in the United States, in 2002. Then with architect Stanley Tigherman, she founded Archiworks, an interdisciplinary school of environmentally sustainable design. Yet Maddox’s background and training as a designer belies her abilities as a manager, a founder, and the president of a large design firm. She studied design at the University of Cincinnati and spent several years selling design ideas for another firm. From her modest beginnings in a small town in middle Tennessee, she has become one of the top commercial designers in the United States today. As founder and president of Eva Maddox Associates, she provided leadership, motivation, design direction and overall vision for her firm while working with clients such as DuPont, Tootsie Roll, Hallmark, and Ogilvy & Mather. But Maddox never studied management or had a course in leadership. Phyllis Apelbaum’s background is even more dramatic. She left school after eighth grade to earn money for herself and her family. She began with a Chicago messenger service and after thirteen years, in 1973, quit to start her own firm, Arrow Messenger Service, now one of the largest messenger services in the country. Yet she never finished high school and has no formal management training. In her words, ‘‘My desire was to earn a living—nothing more, nothing less. I wasn’t looking for power. I was looking to earn a living. I was looking to be the master of my own fate.’’ Yet today Arrow has over 200 employees, and Apelbaum’s aim is to grow the company to at least 300. Interestingly Apelbaum, using herself as an example, tries to hire the less educated, whom she finds to be honorable and loyal as well as capable.

‘‘SURVIVE AND THRIVE’’ Apelbaum exhibits a common trait we found evident in most of the women we interviewed: a survival instinct coupled with a drive to succeed—the ability to survive and thrive in difficult environments under pressing economic circumstances. Another survivor-thriver is Paula Sneed, senior vice president for Global Marketing at Kraft Foods. Sneed grew up in Boston in a supportive family and attended Simmons College and Harvard Business School. She began her career at General Foods as an assistant manager. One of Sneed’s mantras is to ‘‘always have a ridiculous dream.’’ Her ridiculous dream at Kraft

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when she first started there, as she puts it, ‘‘was to be a general manager [GM] and there’d never been a black woman promoted above the first-level promotion and between that and the GM was something like nine slots. But my attitude was, ‘I want to do that,’ and by having that in my life I knew I would have to work like a dog or I would never get there. [But] I didn’t think I would see a woman GM in my lifetime.’’ Today Sneed is the only high ranking African American executive at Kraft and one of the few women in a senior position. A third example is Sondra Healy. She especially likes Winston Churchill’s dogged approach regarding failure: ‘‘When you fail, just continue and don’t have less enthusiasm going forward.’’ Healy grew up in Chicago and studied art and theater. As she worked to make a career in theater, her father, the founder of Turtle Wax, died suddenly. Despite her training and career aspirations, Healy began working at Turtle Wax as director of public relations. Later, with her new husband, she took over the management of that firm and has served as co-chair for the past thirty years. Possibly the best-known supplier of car care products in the United States, Turtle Wax has the majority of the market share. What does a survive and thrive instinct have to do with leadership? We argue that like intelligence, it is necessary for any leader. Having to survive in difficult environments or under stress or because of tragedy is one of many mechanisms that can push potential leaders into leadership positions. This does not imply that all those in such situations will become leaders. Such challenges, however, are prods and set the stage for those who are capable to become leaders. Part of the survive and thrive instinct is often coupled with a determination to never give up and a passion for achieving a goal. Mary Ann Leeper is a cofounder, president and chief operating officer of the Female Health Company. When Leeper, a pharmaceutical chemist who had risen through the management ranks of several pharmaceutical companies, set out with her partners to create a company around a new product—the female condom—she knew her business had strong social goals, but she never envisioned herself as a social entrepreneur. In the mid-1980s, Leeper recognized women’s need to protect themselves from HIV/AIDS and found a Danish physician, Lasse Hessel, who had invented a prototype female condom. The company formed to market this product faced two almost insurmountable hurdles. First, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration was very slow in approving this device, despite the fact that male condoms and diaphragms had been on the market for many years. This process of approval almost bankrupted the company. Second, Female Health Company executives mistakenly thought that because male condoms were so popular, marketing female condoms would be equally successful. This proved to be untrue. Most women in the United States were not interested in that kind of protection. As the company struggled to survive with large debts and without a market share, on Easter Sunday 1991 Leeper received a call from a woman identifying herself as ‘‘Anna.’’ Anna, who identified herself as an HIV-positive African American living in Harlem, had called to thank Leeper personally for creating

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a product that would protect her ‘‘sisters’’ from her fate. Leeper describes that moment as transformational. The company was no longer just another business, but now one with a deep and serious mission—to help women protect themselves against HIV transmission. Today, the female condom is sold commercially in 17 countries and distributed by public sector agencies in over 100 countries, most of which are in the developing world. In 2005, for the first time, the Female Health Company, a publicly-traded for-profit corporation, did not lose money. CONTINGENT AND SITUATIONAL LEADERSHIP Some leaders in this study appear to be what Northouse and others have called ‘‘contingent leaders.’’ That is they have happened to be in the right place at the right time with talents that matched the situation.9 Healy might appear to be a contingent leader. Yet what is striking is that despite her background and studies in drama and art, she has been a very successful CEO. More of the women in our study appear to be situational leaders, adapting and readapting themselves to new and changing situations.10 Deborah DeHaas began as an auditor at Arthur Andersen and is now managing partner at Deloitte Touche with a concentration in consulting. Donni Case, retired president of the Financial Relations Board (FRB), began as a student of history and economics. The FRB concentrates on the application of communication, message, and positioning of public companies’ corporate or financial brands and communicating that positioning to the largest portfolio managers in the world. It has offices throughout the globe, and until 2005, when she took early retirement, Case was responsible for its North American operations. Yet as she says, she was never groomed for the CEO position and learned how to lead only by observing models of leadership in her organization, some of which she rejected as not worthwhile. Margaret Blackshere, the first woman president of the Illinois AFL-CIO, is another example of a situational leader, someone who has stepped into various roles, all successfully. Blackshere was originally a schoolteacher. She says, I went to school to become a teacher in the ’60s and we thought we could do anything, improve things, and make life better. I was making $3,000 a year, we built a new school, and they didn’t consult the teachers. Teachers didn’t get treated with respect. I looked around in my community in southern Illinois and there were steelworkers, mineworkers, industrial unions that were really doing well because they belonged to a union and worked together. We formed a union and went to our superintendent, arguing that we deserved some respect and to be paid adequately. He seemed to agree and then later he said he couldn’t do it—we were outraged that he had lied to us. This was a good lesson for me—I realized that not everyone agreed with you. I couldn’t understand if you were doing something good why people disagreed with you.

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Later Blackshere became a lobbyist for the teachers’ union and then began working for other unions. Eventually she became secretary treasurer at the AFL. I felt that I had a role to play. The labor movement traditionally does a wonderful job on legislation, collective bargaining, and politics. I thought we should do more—coalition building, community effort . . . so that was my campaign. If we want to grow this labor movement then we would need to expand what we do; we can’t just take care of our current members, and we need to take care of working people.

Blackshere is now trying to change the culture at the AFL-CIO, traditionally an all-male organization. The board of AFL-CIO now has seven African Americans, two Latinos, and five women. Her goal is ‘‘to grow the labor movement and make it comfortable with all working people, immigrants, women, gays. This is a struggle because we have a lot of [members] who think they’re doing OK but their organization isn’t. [We have] high-priced labor leaders making $300,000 a year. I make $125,000. They told me that this was the upper salary.’’ THE QUESTION OF POWER How are these leaders motivated? Because each holds or has held positions of great power, one would imagine that personal or professional power would be a strong motivating theme. But it is not. Healy is primarily motivated to preserve what her father had started; Cynthia Sanchez Crozier, founder and CEO of Computer Services and Consulting, had created a family business and is motivated by concerns for the long-term viability of keeping the business going for all those who are employed. Cathy Calhoun, president of Weber Shandwick, a division of Interpublic Group, the largest public relations and management communication company in the world, says her greatest accomplishment was when the company was named the fourth-best place to work in Chicago. She comments, ‘‘What we’ve tried to do is to provide our clients excellence by selling our people and their skills—our intellectual capital. We’ve had to work really hard so that people want to stay and be creative. [Our aim is] to make this place better and make it an employer of choice in our industry.’’ For Donna Zarcone, president and COO of Harley-Davidson Financial Services (HDFS), I love to grow organizations; I love to grow things; I love to garden. That’s just who I am. I love to lead; it’s very energizing for me to be able to take a group of people, to build a team and then set a common purpose for that team to go accomplish and then go and make it happen and be part of that, whether it’s problem solving or leadership development or communication with employees or just all the different things of communicating and working with customers,

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I enjoy that, and I get a lot of personal satisfaction from that. So my motivation was to be able to lead. I really admire this company and found that this was a good fit for me because it is a very values-based company. People are held accountable for their expectations; the behaviors resonated very well with me, so I wanted to be part of this organization, and I wanted to help make it more successful.

These are not the traditional definitions of power, particularly for heads of large corporations. An interesting case of power management is Apelbaum’s approach at Arrow Messenger Service. The company had only been in business a few years when Apelbaum received the opportunity of a lifetime. A company she knew well was setting up package pick-ups nationwide, and she was approached to be the Chicago vendor with a contract worth $500,000. That was a lot of money eighteen years ago when Arrow was still a start-up. She agonized over how she could make it work but quickly realized that at that time, her company was simply too small to take the business on. She went back to the company and said that although she appreciated the opportunity, Arrow was not the right vendor for them. It was one of her most painful decisions but she knew she would not have been able to do a good job in the time frame the contract needed to be done. Apelbaum is, however, a firm believer in destiny. ‘‘When you turn business down for the right reason and in the right way, very often it will come back to you.’’ And it did. A few years after the fateful $500,000 question, Apelbaum got to bid on another large contract. Neiman Marcus was coming to Chicago and needed a courier company. Apelbaum’s anecdote proved to be a great selling point. She convinced the department store that she understood what it took to service a big account and even offered the company she had originally turned down as a reference. Others describe their motivation in terms of servant leadership. R. K. Greenleaf contends that a great leader is a servant first, and the conscious choice of wanting to serve first makes one want to lead. The ultimate goal of a servant leader is fulfilling others’ needs. ‘‘Exemplary leaders use their power in service of others’’ and enable them to act by strengthening them and developing them into leaders.’’11 This approach is in sharp contrast with a traditional transactional style of leadership that emphasizes power and control. Servant leaders serve followers to promote their empowerment and enable them to accomplish organizational goals.12 Dess and Picken have also noted that a great leader is a great servant. Servant leaders may be effective in providing keys to empowerment, such as flexible resources for employees, depending on their needs. For example, leaders may be coaches, listeners, or providers of information, if that is what their followers need. Servant leaders also facilitate the growth of their employees, both professionally and emotionally. They enable others to discover their own

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inner spirit and potential to make a difference and ultimately to develop into servant leaders themselves.13 Deborah DeHaas is the managing partner of Global Strategic Clients for the Midwest region of Deloitte Touche, one of the big four global accounting groups operating in over 120 countries. DeHaas exemplifies servant leadership both inside and outside of the workplace, and the roots of this leadership style may be seen in her upbringing and in the values that were ingrained in her. She puts those values into practice while serving her employees, clients, and community. ‘‘My roots are very much in client service. My job is all about helping other people be more effective in what they need to do in serving our clients.’’ DeHaas is motivated by opportunities to make a difference and help impact people in a positive way. She likes to get the best out of her people. What she calls her golden rules include being a good communicator with the people around her and treating them with dignity and respect and in a fair-minded way. She engages them in the consultation process and encourages them to come to conclusions that create solutions for the stakeholders. Unlike leaders who are driven by huge power needs, servant leaders like DeHaas make a conscious choice to serve others first; that is their primary motivation for leading.14 True to the servant leadership style, DeHaas helps the group find the best course of action, and in doing so helps others discover their potential to make a difference. In a service environment, DeHaas believes that it is important to have a servant mentality. ‘‘I practice servant leadership and am here to serve people. My position at Deloitte has given me tremendous opportunity to help the service, because I am in a service business that helps to make things better for the client.’’ Another outstanding servant leader is Paula Sneed. Sneed has worked for Kraft Foods for the past twenty-eight years and recently achieved the top position of senior vice president, Global Marketing Resources and Initiatives, having held numerous assignments in brand and business management, including leadership of the company’s Foodservice and Desserts division in the United States. This new position is the pinnacle of a career for which Sneed strived from the beginning. Despite her determination and a smart, competitive spirit, Sneed sees herself as a servant leader rather than as head of global marketing at Kraft. Power is something to be used very wisely. A leader should be a servant, and if a leader is not a servant in some meaningful way then [she is] not a good leader. You ought to be serving the people that you’re working with; you want to be encouraging them to reach to a higher level than they could imagine and to perform at that level, and you want to be, in addition, setting the role model. My model[s] of leadership [are] people like Gandhi and Jesus Christ who really provided leadership, both moral and personal. This kind of leadership makes a difference in the way people feel about what they do.

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Case summarizes this absence of a quest for power as the ultimate goal: ‘‘There was no way that I was ever groomed to be a leader. I wasn’t ever interested in being a CEO.’’

ROLE MODELS AND MENTORING As we mentioned in the introduction to this chapter, positive mentoring is often assumed to play an important (if not essential) role in developing leadership talent. In cultivating trust if not absolute loyalty, strong mentor relationships are very important. Experts such as Julie Indvik who have studied mentoring experiences argue that ‘‘one of the critical types of relationships for career advancement is a mentor relationship, in which a senior individual provides task coaching, emotional encouragement, and sponsoring the prote´ge´ with top level decision makers.’’15 Mentoring can make a significant difference in developing leaders, creating bonds between present and future leaders, and helping ensure the long-term leadership in a company. Part of being a successful leader is the ability to mentor and to develop other leaders in the organization. Yet ‘‘several studies have documented that women leaders have experienced lower support throughout their careers than similarly employed males.’’16 These studies show that in many companies women managers are mentored significantly less either by men or women. It is not surprising, then, that in 2005 where our data end, very few women are CEOs in the Fortune 1000 organizations and on corporate boards. We asked each woman about her mentors or role models from whom she developed her leadership opportunities and style. The responses were quite diverse, but we did not find consistently that every woman had a role mentor in her organization or profession. Many listed a parent or teacher as their most important role model rather than a mentor in their organization. So although many of these women exhibit the kind of mentoring leadership that Indvik describes in their organizations, in over half the cases leadership development did not uniformly come from a positive organizational culture or a strong managerial mentor. That this is unfair and discriminatory and that it creates unequal opportunities at the top of organizations should be obvious. But suppose you are a woman manager who finds herself in such an organization? How can one take the absence of mentoring or a negative mentoring relationship and use it to one’s own competitive advantage to develop survival techniques and leadership skills? Case, retired CEO of the FRB, is an example of someone who did this. She reports, My father was my big role model. . . . I honestly looked, and I tried to find role models that were in business. When I started out there weren’t any women, so that was something a little bit against me. I could never relate to the celebrity

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CEO types, and there are a lot of other scary characters. I realized very early as a result of my father’s incredible ethical behavior that I could never follow those types of people. My father was vice president of manufacturing of a small familyowned company, and he had to deal with family politics, unions, dumping, questionable incentives and other such practices.

She continues, The people I worked for were brilliant businesspeople, so you have to separate their ability to make and do business and to identify new opportunities in the marketplace from their people skills. A lot of people would say that that was a style of leadership, but I think that many of these leaders when I came to the industry had a kind of ‘‘George Patton’’ approach to leadership. They would stand there and command the troops and tell them what to do. They didn’t really want to invite opinion, and they didn’t really want to have any kind of a democratic forum. They pretty much thought that they knew it all already, and they even told you how they wanted you to say it. It was that type of thing.

As a result, as a woman in a man’s profession she received virtually no positive mentoring as she worked her way up the organization. Indeed, she found that some of the managers and executives to whom she reported became negative mentors. They not only did not help her; they discouraged her progress and demeaned her as a woman. Rather than becoming discouraged, however, Case used the negative mentoring she was receiving as data for ways not to manage and lead. Thus she turned what for most women are negative experiences that become detrimental to their careers into learning experiences from which she could develop her own leadership style as antithetical to that of these nonmentors. Seconding this, Donna Zarcone concludes: ‘‘You can learn as much from a bad leader as you can from a good leader. You just take it as a learning experience and say, ‘I’m never going to do that.’ I know how damaging it was for me to be working for a leader like that.’’ Fortunately, Zarcone and some other leaders in our study have had positive mentoring experiences. Zarcone talks in detail about one of her bosses at NF Computer Sales and Leasing Co. (NFC), where she was executive vice president and CFO with responsibility for accounting, treasury, legal, information systems, and other administrative areas. ‘‘He was a genius,’’ she says, ‘‘He had a photographic memory, understood detail, understood risk, and understood the structure of transactions in a way that made him a wonderful teacher for me because he would teach me and say, ‘You’re looking at it wrong; this is how you look at it.’ So his ability to take me under his wing and really help me understand was great.’’ An amazing mentor and role model to Pamela Strobel, who until 2005 was executive vice president and chief administrative officer of Exelon, was her grandmother. (Exelon is a large energy company and the holding company for Commonwealth Edison [ComEd], Chicago area’s largest source of electrical

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energy.) The first woman to earn an undergraduate degree in physics from the University of Illinois in 1918, Strobel’s grandmother went on to get her master’s degree in the same field and began working at ComEd in the early 1920s. It was fascinating and instructive to Strobel that in 1920, according to her grandmother, there was no better place in the world to work because you were part of bringing the most important thing into people’s lives—electricity. It was changing the world, and to be working at ComEd was, according to her grandmother, tremendously exciting. High growth and energized and extremely satisfied employees were the order of the day under the leadership of Samuel Insull, then the preeminent utility manager in the United States. Over time, of course, that euphoria got lost as the company, like any other in the economically depressed 1930s, encountered severe challenges. Strobel’s grandmother lived until 1999, which allowed Strobel six years of sharing what she was living through at ComEd and comparing it with her grandmother’s experiences. Because of her grandmother, Strobel decided that one of her missions at Exelon was to reinvigorate that culture of enthusiasm. Her motto is, ‘‘Every day, there’s more to do, so let’s do it.’’ Blackshere’s favorite role models are Eleanor Roosevelt and Mary Quinn, another teacher she met in her early teaching days. Quinn always reminded Blackshere of her roots and was a true stabilizing force. She taught Blackshere that you have to win before you can make changes. Interestingly, Blackshere has become a role model and mentor to other women in trade unions. She was thanked on innumerable occasions by letter and in person as other women recognized that she was an enabler and had broken through a male-dominated world and had the staying power to stick with a difficult situation. She gave other women hope and inspiration. Blackshere’s mantra is, ‘‘Take advantage of every opportunity, just do it because it will lead to something and make you a better person.’’ Cathy Calhoun describes her ‘‘really wonderful mentor, Barbara Molansky, who brought me along and made me her partner and when she decided to retire, I was the heir apparent. So I had good mentoring, good luck, and some skills that were valuable.’’ Anne Arvia, the current CEO of ShoreBank, was assistant controller of ShoreBank when her mentor and bank CEO, Margaret Cheap, was diagnosed with cancer and later died. As her mentor, Cheap was grooming Arvia for the CFO of the bank, but when she died, Arvia, then under age forty, was appointed to Cheap’s position. Arvia says of Cheap, It was a short time that I actually worked with her, but we were very close, and she was extremely visionary and strategic, and playful. She was that person who walked into a room and just lit up the whole room. You just knew that Margaret had arrived. And she wasn’t the center of attention or anything; she just had a tremendous presence about her that made people be drawn to her, in a very down-to-earth way. I learned a lot about business from her, about how to handle [difficult] situations.

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Without that kind of mentoring, Arvia admits, she would not be successful in her new role as CEO. Many women we studied, whether or not they were well mentored in their organization, speak of the importance of mentoring and in particular of mentoring women. Beth Prichard, former CEO of OrganizedLiving, says, In terms of mentors, I grew up before that was even invented—especially at Johnson Wax because I worked in the world of men. I’d never had a female peer until I went to work. At Johnson Wax I was the first woman they hired, the first woman manager, the first woman officer and never had a peer until the last year I was there. I remember when I was promoted to a manager in market research, and it was the first time that a man ever had to work for a woman, and I wondered if they said the same thing to men. I finally did have a mentor, the president and CEO of Johnson Wax. He was the group product manager of Household, and he took me on as his administrative assistant, which was not secretarial. It gave me all different jobs across the company, international and domestic, but what he really taught me was how to manage. I would do my work at night and I would follow him to meetings during the day, and he would tell me why he made decisions and what he looked for, and it was two years of the most incredible training so that was the mentor from heaven. I was doing two jobs—shadowing him plus doing my job. One of the things I’ve got pleasure out of is mentoring a lot of young women, some young men, too. I keep telling them, ‘‘You have choices and it’s your choice to go and work someplace where you will not have a life. It means that when you have to get things done, you’ll get things done at all costs, but it also means you make the right choice in terms of when something has to give or something has to go.’’

DeHaas summarizes the responsibility for mentoring. ‘‘I always look for opportunities to help mentor and develop people around me. It is a very strong responsibility to help women be successful. Madeleine Albright once said, ‘‘There’s a special place in Hell for women who don’t help other women.’’17 OPERATING IN A MALE-DOMINATED ENVIRONMENT Several women in our study were and still are in work environments that have been traditionally male-dominated. The women in financial services (Donni Case, Ellen Carnahan, and Anne Arvia), Margaret Blackshere in the AFL-CIO, Deborah DeHaas in audit and consulting, Donna Zarcone in HarleyDavidson, Sondra Healy at Turtle Wax, Beth Prichard when she was at Johnson Wax, and even Phyllis Apelbaum at Arrow Messenger Service are all in businesses that traditionally have had a paucity of women in leadership positions. About this, Case said, When I started the [financial services] industry was almost entirely male dominated, and we were marketing our services to professional investors and the

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investment community that was also entirely male dominated. I can say the first ten years of my career were exasperating in a lot of respects because as a female I was discriminated against. Some portfolio managers didn’t want to meet with me and some clients did not want to meet with me because I was a woman. I found this especially shocking coming from those who had daughters. Again, for perspective, I am talking about the old boys club of 30 years ago. The one saving grace of having gone through all this is that it made me very determined to mentor the people who came after me. Over time I built a team of brilliant women and men who took the company to new levels. Standing up for your people and building a respectful environment for both males and females helped change the course of how women were regarded and rewarded in our business.

Ellen Carnahan describes her work experience as the financial services industry was breaking with its reputed male-dominated tradition. At the outset, many men did not want the women there. But Carnahan soon got very comfortable with being an outsider. She got used to sitting in a room where everyone else was male. Carnahan is clearly comfortable in her own skin. She is exceedingly self-confident about her talents and capabilities and is something of an optimist. She doesn’t necessarily see these things in her career as obstacles but as challenges that she must determine how to overcome. Blackshere had an interesting challenge as the first women to run for the head of a major union. As a woman entering this man’s world, I became crazy about baseball. It is an unbelievable icebreaker, so if a woman can talk sensibly about it, it breaks through things. I ran for the office—a tradition within the labor movement if you are secretary treasurer. I had won the election for secretary treasurer with no opponent eleven years ago. The tradition was when the president retired, the secretary treasurer became president. I expected that to happen. But there was a challenge for the first time ever—a challenge for the presidency. I ran it like any other campaign that I’ve been involved in, and I won. After I was elected a union man with a beard came up to me and said I had been his kindergarten teacher.

In our interviews with Zarcone, she never mentioned any issues around women at HDFS. During her six-year tenure as president, the company’s annual operating income grew from $20 million to $168 million, and its managed loan portfolio increased from $1.1 billion to over $4 billion. Recently HDFS received the 2004 Catalyst Award, which recognizes companies with strong initiatives to advance women in business. Twenty-nine percent of HDFS’s corporate officers are women compared to the Fortune 500 average of 16 percent— an amazing statistic considering that the majority of Harley-Davidson customers are male! Equally impressive, two of the top five earners in the company are women.

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Apelbaum found herself in a man’s world when she first tried to get a license to operate her business. I decided to take my inheritance, which by the way was $3,500 . . . to get my license and to get started. The truth is I had seven hearings and did not get my license, simply because the Commerce Commission had never given a license to a woman—not for any other reason. Until I met the Chief Hearing Officer for the Commerce Commission. Today he’s the Supreme Justice for the state of Illinois, Charles Freeman. I lost. I lost my $3,500; I lost my opportunity to get my license, and at the end of the day I just went barging into his office. He says that I sounded like I sold fish for a living on Maxwell Street. I told Charles the story of what happened, and he corrected it. He saw to it that I got my license and became a mentor and a friend. And thus began the birth of Arrow Messenger Service. I opened up the doors on November 1st [1973] and went to work.

Looking back, when Barbara Provus, principal and founder, Shepherd Bueschel and Provus, started her own career in the late 1970s, very few women were in the executive search industry. She is proud to say that many more women in the field today than thirty years ago. In fact, according to Provus, the real growth has been in the past five to ten years. Not that long ago, Provus was named as one of the top twenty women in search and states that the award should now be for the top 200 women in search because it is a much larger universe. Provus believes that being female has helped, but she has been careful never to push the ‘‘female’’ agenda. She concluded early on that she would not get many assignments if her potential clients were uncomfortable working with that in mind. They know she does good work and suggests only candidates— particularly female candidates—who are strong in their own right.

TRANSFORMING AND TRANSFORMATIONAL LEADERSHIP One of the important elements of effective leadership is exemplified in the relationships that develop between a leader and her colleagues, managers, and employees. Motivating managers and employees, particularly in a corporate context where trust, creativity, good decision making, and efficiency are at stake, can make an enormous difference in the firm’s long-term effectiveness in highly competitive markets. Engendering trust and loyalty, and most important, retaining the best managers and employees are critical for adding value. As Sneed puts it, In corporate America life has been miserable in the last fifteen years. There’s been downsizing, there’s been outsourcing, mergers, a lot of personal upheaval. This is very different from the twenty-five years before then when companies

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were being built. In times like this leaders need to be close to people. They need to be clear about the present and aspirational about the future, and they need to make people want to do their best. I don’t know that we always have good leadership in corporate America today. There are a lot of people interested in their own perks but not necessarily interested in the kinds of things that will build companies and allow people to build their own personal futures.

Part of that leadership focus is creating a positive psychological contract between the leader and her employees, and transparency contributes substantially to that positive climate. In the volatile workplace of the twenty-first century, however, where workforce changes due to mergers, acquisitions, outsourcing, and economic exigencies are the norm, creating a positive organizational climate of trust is often difficult. Under the present economic climate, managerial and employee loyalty cannot be counted on. Often, too, in this volatile climate, employee perceptions of what a leader has in mind or what the organization is about can differ significantly from a leader’s intentions or the direction of the company. Schein contends that the primary means for changing and maintaining culture are the leader’s roles of modeling, coaching, and reacting to critical incidents. Although the structures of organizations and artifacts like the spoken and published mission statements should also be congruent with the primary mechanisms, they are of secondary importance to the leader’s role in organizational culture formation and maintenance.18 As mentioned in the introduction, in the women leaders we studied, we found consistencies with what the literature calls transforming and transformational leadership. The former, first proposed by James MacGregor Burns, defines transforming leadership as ‘‘a relationship of mutual stimulation and elevation that converts followers into leaders and may convert leaders into moral agents. . . . [This] occurs when one or more persons engage with others in such a way that leaders and followers raise one another to higher levels of motivation and morality.’’19 Examples of this abound. Prichard says of her leadership style, You have to get people that really commit to the same strategic direction of the business, so therefore it’s doing what’s right for the business to grow. Growth businesses are very different to manage than turnarounds, but [managing them] really demands that you clearly communicate . . . the overall goal—the strategy and the vision. But what makes a business successful is the commitment of the people and the understanding of what it really does stand for. Then you can get managers to understand the hard decisions and to participate in the responsibility and the accountability for those decisions.

Apelbaum is convinced that it is essential to be fair and equal to all people regardless of who they are. A sign on her door reads, ‘‘Say what you are going to do and do what you say.’’ She treats everyone with respect and courtesy, which provides an environment where nothing short of that is tolerated. Moreover, she is both realistic and humble in her business dealings.

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Transformational leadership, a term adopted by Bernard Bass, is slightly different, although the two are often confused. A transformational leader seeks to transform followers, but this is ordinarily a one-way activity rather than an interaction between leader and employee whereby both are changed. The transformational leader seeks to motivate the employee to redirect her self-interests to interests of the firm and to create change in the employee and the organization. The idea in business is to push people to perform beyond their own expectations, thus creating added value for the organization and the employee.20 Zarcone speaks of that kind of leadership style. You look at yourself and the company’s goals from the point of view of what you expect from your employees, how you evaluate them, and how you motivate them. We follow a business process where you set overarching goals and then you flow those goals down to the individual on the front line. Everybody knows what it is we’re trying to achieve, why it’s important, and how each person can make a difference; then you evaluate people on ‘‘how did you do?’’ Did you meet the expectations? Did you deliver on the goals? And if we did that right, do we have satisfied customers? You have to have metrics . . . and . . . a process in place to keep score and if you do that, and it’s very much about alignment of the people in the organization to key objectives, people are with you. You have to communicate it; you have to be accountable for it. You have to lead by example, but if you’re right there with the power of that unified force, working toward the accomplishment of that goal, [you] can just blow away the target.

In ‘‘Ways Women Lead,’’ Judy Rosener suggests that a distinctive and characteristic feature of women in leadership positions is their ability to engage in interactive leadership relationships with their managers and employees and a preoccupation with empowering others. Rosener does not mean to imply that men do not do this, but she suggests that empowerment is almost a mantra for women in leadership positions. As a result, she contends, women are usually not afraid of hiring or working with managers who are smarter or more capable than they are.21 Prichard contends, It starts with hiring very smart people. If you hire smart people then you need to listen to them and learn from them, so that’s the beginning. It’s also typified by looking at all the options or issues, not making a decision until you really have asked, ‘‘What are my alternatives, what am I trying to sell?’’ and then finally being willing to make a clear decision. It may be a tough [or] . . . an easy decision, but as a leader you have to have the ability to step up and make that decision and then live with it. Also as a leader you have to be able to admit when it was a wrong decision and very clearly be able to say, ‘‘We’re changing course; we tried this, made the wrong decision. At the time it might have been right but it’s not any more and we’re going to change.’’

Strobel says she strives to give the best of herself every working day—a quality she also expects from her team. Her philosophy is that people who do

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the very best job they can actually see it as an opportunity to make a contribution. Each day presents new challenges and opportunities when each individual really feels that she can do more. Strobel likes to select people who are growing in their jobs. She looks for intelligence, motivation, a great attitude, and a real willingness to work hard and go the extra mile. In her opinion, with these traits, an individual could work in just about any department and in any position. Case describes a transactional leadership style that almost none of the women we studied exemplified: It was easy in some respects to call yourself a leader a long time ago if you just thought you were a general. Now you have to really work on each individual person whom you need and who is really critical to your operation, and . . . somewhat adapt to that person, and so it’s a little trickier. You can’t just get up there and give fight speeches because they don’t resonate with a multigenerational team. When you look around the room, you need to note what perks up some people and who is shaking their head saying ‘‘Yeah, we’re just totally lost.’’ You have to adapt your style to different types of people. So I like to think of my leadership as being inclusive.

Crozier has a different style. Her working style is more hands-off. She prefers to be seeking out the next opportunity and predicting what is coming next. She has built a team of people who internally manage the office and take care of her staff. She has a female vice president of operations who has been with the company for ten years and a brother and sister who have been with Computer Services & Consulting (CS&C) since its inception. Part of being a transforming or transformational leadership is developing buy-in from employees. We were struck with how important that is to most of the leaders in our study. In particular, many took a team-based approach to managing their employees and creating change within the organization. According to the literature, the most effective teams are those that have been given ‘‘clear and engaging direction and clear goals, unified commitment, a collaborative climate, an enabling structure, expert coaching, and adequate resources.’’22 But the challenge is, as a leader, how do you create and sustain successful teams? In 2001 Arvia embarked on a massive change initiative within ShoreBank called Building ShoreBank Advantage. Change management was in Arvia’s blood—she had already overseen a review of operations with Boston Consulting Group. Because the original four founders of ShoreBank were no longer directly involved, management succession was a key issue. She also wanted to create a whole new environment within the bank and change the culture from one of less consistency to a focus on customer service. Arvia created a working group known as the Implementation Oversight Committee (IOC)—a cabinet of four people who developed an initiative that

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implemented a massive culture shift for ShoreBank. The IOC created teams of nine people, across all levels and departments, giving them a recommendation handed out by consultants. Each team was charged with giving ownership of that recommendation to ShoreBank. There was much discussion and changing of the recommendations until every department was satisfied with the final outcome. We created a huge process with specific deadlines and timelines, objectives, goals, and created the Change Monster. He became our little mascot and symbol of change because we know people are really afraid of change naturally, but he can also be very cuddly and cute and tame. It was amazing. We rewarded people with these silly little green cuddly monsters. A number of people would call me and ask how they could get their Change Monster across the organization. So I would say, ‘‘Well, let’s demonstrate behavior that’s in support of the change and I’ll send you one.’’ It became such that if you didn’t have a Change Monster . . . you had to have one. What was really great about this whole process was that the nine teams did their work, and we thought that they would be done with the initiative in a year. But they all came back and said they wanted to collaborate more across the organization; that’s what they thought made sense. They said, ‘‘We want to organize around these customer segments that we know we’re really good at. Let’s get rid of some of these things that we aren’t doing so well, but none of it will work unless we raise the quality of service across the bank. And by that we mean both how we treat each other internally and how we treat the customer.’’ One hundred percent of the teams came back and said the same thing. So we responded, ‘‘We hear you. Let’s create BSA Phase II to address those specific issues.’’ This took another year. And some great stuff—implementation plans, execution plans—came out of all that.

ENTREPRENEURIAL LEADERSHIP Women have launched entrepreneurial careers in record numbers during the past two decades. The emergence and growth of women-owned businesses have contributed strongly to the global economy and to their surrounding communities. The routes women have followed to take leadership roles in business are varied; but more likely than not, most women business owners have overcome or worked to avoid obstacles and challenges in creating their businesses. The presence of women in the workplace driving small and entrepreneurial organizations has had a tremendous impact on employment and on the culture of the workplace. As of 2004, there were an estimated 10.6 million privately held, 50 percent or more women-owned firms in the United States, accounting for nearly half (47.7 percent) of all privately held firms in the country.23 According to the Center for Women’s Business Research, between 1997 and 2004, the estimated

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growth rate in the number of women-owned firms was nearly twice that of all firms (17 percent versus 9 percent); employment expanded at twice the rate of all firms (24 percent versus 12 percent); and estimated revenues kept pace with all firms (39 percent versus 34 percent). Furthermore, women-owned firms employ 19.1 million people and generate $2.5 trillion in sales.24 The preferred management styles of women entrepreneurs may be associated with their motives for business ownership. The results of a multicase study on rural small business owners indicated that women entrepreneurs were concerned about relationships with their employees and with creating corporate cultures that minimized interpersonal conflict.25 These preferences were consistent with their motives for starting their businesses. Researchers have described these relational practices engaged in by women entrepreneurs, which included collaborative decision making. Founding their own businesses enables women to use, satisfy, and maintain high levels of skill, as perhaps they could not when working for a corporation.26 Women also cite layoffs, the ability to make one’s own decisions, and the need for more flexible working hours to accommodate family demands as reasons for starting their own businesses. Having young children was a strong positive influence on women’s self-selection of entrepreneurship.27 Still, additional motivation comes from the belief that the world can be different and that their businesses can provide a means to change things and make a difference for other women.28 One of the primary characteristics of entrepreneurial leaders is the passion that drives them. This passion is demonstrated by their perseverance in the face of adversity, the extraordinary initiative they take to accomplish challenging goals, and their strong need to achieve success accompanied by a low need for status and power. Apelbaum’s aspiration was never power or influence, but she was intent on being independent and self-sufficient. Right before my dad’s death in June of that year, the company [City Bonded] where I worked was sold. I had new employers, and I wasn’t really happy about the change. Whenever there’s a massive change like that, people are different, and so the environment is different. I had worked for a couple that were warm and caring and inclusive, and now I was working for somebody who was totally different, and then a month after that my dad dies suddenly. Coming back on the plane, I thought, ‘‘I’m just not going to let this happen to me.’’ [Her father died without fulfilling what he wanted to do with his life.] I decided I would go on and do something else. So I gave my notice and said that I would work until November 1, 1973. What happened during that period of time was my competitors—the people who were my competitors then and today—would call and say, ‘‘Oh, have we got a job for you, boy have we got a job for you.’’ And then, one night I was talking to a friend and that person said, ‘‘Could you imagine if you’re worth that much to them what you could be worth to yourself?’’ And I said to myself, ‘‘That’s a possibility.’’

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Nearly twenty years ago, Provus had the opportunity to leave the security of her comfortable salary working for an executive search firm and enter the unknown world of self-employment. Working in an environment where judgment and trust of people was paramount, it was essential that she liked and trusted her fellow workers and could see a great future ahead. Having discussed the idea with her husband, a very successful entrepreneur, Provus decided to press ahead and is now founder and partner of Shepherd Bueschel and Provus, one of the most successful executive search firms in the Chicago area. Provus enjoys recalling the early days when the firm was starting out. In the excitement of setting up their own business, the four entrepreneurs had not really thought through basic business set-up procedures, such as establishing a line of credit. Although they could get phone service, basic telephone equipment was not available to them because they had no credit rating! Madeleine Ludlow became an entrepreneur after several other careers. For many years she was at Cinergy, the leading energy provider in Cincinnati, as CFO. She left there in 2000 to join Cadence Network, a dot-com company. She worked for one of the original investors who had just raised venture capital. The company had $15 million to spend, and it was going to grow like crazy. The venture capital people recruited her away from Cinergy to Cadence to run it. As Ludlow describes it, I had grand plans, make my millions, take the company public, but the year after I got there we had taken the company from 105 people to 35. We had no money; we were on life support, and I spent the next two years after that getting the company to a point where it could survive, and it is now surviving, but there’s no growth in it. I realized that I had not left the job I had [at Cinergy] to run a tiny little company that’s not going anywhere. I left in January 2004 having agreed to an eight-month consulting assignment when I would come in with strategic stuff. They never called; they paid me, and so I essentially took 2004 off and stayed home with my son.

In 2005 Ludlow began a new job search and after interviewing with several large companies, decided that she would stay in Cincinnati and start her own business. I’m starting with a partner an investment banking firm here in Cincinnati to provide capital-raising and mergers and acquisitions advice to middle market private companies, which nobody in Cincinnati does. My partner was doing that with one of the local banks. The bank got bought last year, and the acquirer decided not to continue in that business. He and I began talking about this market, and it fits in with a lot of what I was doing earlier in my career, I have a lot more empathy with a small company than a traditional banker might have. So we started thinking about this last year. We raised capital for our own firm so that we can pay ourselves while we get it up and running.

Her new business, Ludlow Ward Capital Partners, was launched near the end of 2005.

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Not all entrepreneurs start or maintain their own businesses. This style of leadership is also found in organizations of all sizes. Today many contend that organizations must be more entrepreneurial to enhance their performance, capacity for adaptation, and long-term survival.29 Entrepreneurial management emphasizes taking a strategic approach, so that new initiatives can support development of enhanced capabilities for continuously creating and appropriating value in the firm.30 The basic challenge of entrepreneurial leaders is to envision future possibilities and enable the organization to transform its current transaction set.31 Several components of transformational, team-building, and value-based leadership enable powerful individuals to meet this challenge. Entrepreneurial leadership relies on the ability to (1) extract exceptional commitment and effort from organizational stakeholders, (2) convince employees and investors that they can accomplish goals, (3) articulate a compelling organizational vision, (4) promise their effort will lead to extraordinary outcomes, and (5) persevere in the face of environmental change.32 Prichard is an entrepreneurial leader. She was, until recently, president and CEO of OrganizedLiving. OrganizedLiving was privately owned by a large equity group focusing on retail concepts. This company had about $110 million in sales with twenty-five very large stores that focused on providing organizational solutions. Prichard was there only a year. Prior to that she spent fifteen years growing and developing Bath & Body Works, which when she started was nine little alcoves of an idea in a store. When she left it was about $2 billion in annual sales, with about 1,600 stores. Before that she spent eighteen years at Johnson Wax and started in the market research department and then in product management. She worked on several of their brands and her last position there was VP of Insect Control. Success has changed for me over the years. When I was at Johnson Wax before I had my daughter, success was getting the deal done, being promoted faster. Success was defined in terms of title and salary; that was in my early years. In my mid years success was defined as being in an environment where I could grow personally and professionally. Now success is providing opportunity and growth for many people; that’s the thing I get the most joy out of. You can only buy so many toys and . . . so many clothes. Now I can build a business not just because it makes a lot of money but because it is providing careers in general, which is wonderful.

VALUES-BASED LEADERSHIP At least four leaders we chose for our study are in organizations that have explicit social as well as financial missions. Three of these are in for-profit companies: the Female Health Company, ShoreBank, and CS&C. The fourth, Blackshere, is in the AFL-CIO, a conglomeration of labor unions that organizes

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workers primarily in the for-profit sector of the economy. Some of each organization’s explicit goals are directed to social change and improvement, broadly conceived. Values play an instrumental role in outcomes and their assessment. Leeper, whom we cited earlier, runs the Female Health Company with the mission to protect women’s health, particularly in less developed countries. Yet her organization is a publicly traded company with shareholders who hope for at least a break even performance every year. She was a woman driven by ambition to succeed, but in working with the female condom, what success meant was dramatically transformed into a social mission to help women around the world in HIV prevention. As she says, ‘‘For me it’s always about what we are doing. It isn’t about me as a person. It’s about what we are trying to accomplish—bringing the female condom to the developing world.’’ Crozier is the founder, CEO, and president of CS&C, a technology and education firm based in Chicago. She directs the company’s business development and strategic relationships and is recognized as a leading visionary in the field of instructional technology. CS&C provides innovative programs and services to enhance learning in education, business, and government on a local and national level. This firm’s aim is to improve education in Chicago and eventually around the country. Yet it is a for-profit operation and supports twenty-five employees, including a number of Crozier’s family members. ShoreBank, long known for its loan program in Chicago’s less developed neighborhoods, has a distinctive mission. A success story of the past few years, America’s first community development bank was founded in 1973 and is located in what was once one of the poorest neighborhoods in Chicago, the South Shore. Today it has banks in Cleveland and Detroit and partners with international micro lending institutions in some less developed countries. ‘‘What we started to do in the beginning was to provide credit to people who didn’t have credit,’’ says its CEO, Arvia, with pride. Yet ShoreBank has lower charge-offs of its loans than traditional banks. These leaders and the institutions they manage are committed to creating added social value as part of their mission and the mission of their organizations. The result is that although these institutions are not unprofitable, with the same investments they could have made more money in a different venue, or their leaders could have been more monetarily successful, if they had stayed in traditional corporate positions or worked in traditional markets. But none of these women would trade what they have created for a high corporate salary or position, because their goals are more socially focused, and their rewards are in satisfaction rather than money or power. Blackshere is also a values-based leader who is trying to create a new values system for the AFL-CIO. ‘‘Our deepest concern is for working families. We can work with everyone that wants to work for working families.’’ These were Blackshere’s words as she became Illinois AFL-CIO president in January 2000. Her idea is to change the values base of the union so that it does more than merely represent workers and their wage, pension, and safety rights. Blackshere

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views labor’s agenda as profamily. Under her leadership, the Illinois AFL-CIO has pushed for equal pay legislation in Illinois to prohibit employers from paying women less than men who work for the same employer performing equal work. Although the Equal Pay Act was passed several decades ago, Blackshere maintains that working on the state level to guarantee that the pay gap between men and women is addressed on the local and national union levels is important. Her other priorities include pushing for the passage of living wage legislation for employers that do business with the state and a corporate responsibility bill. She also has obtained family leave benefits for women and men who work for the AFL-CIO and has achieved more diversity in union membership and leadership.

ETHICAL LEADERSHIP AND VALUES INTEGRATION: VALUES ‘‘ALL THE WAY THROUGH’’ One leadership challenge in today’s changing business environment involves integrating one’s personal values in a competitive arena where ethical issues seem not to be part of everyday business. An important factor affecting managerial moral judgment is how managers and professionals prioritize personal, client, corporate, and professional responsibilities. The dilemma of which should take precedence and the misalignment of these values are well illustrated in the number of corporate scandals we have witnessed in the past few years. Moreover, in every institutional setting, some practices do not encourage independent decision making or provide avenues for questioning what might be unacceptable activities by standards outside the organization. Sometimes, too, professionals as well as managers become so involved in their roles and clients’ or company expectations of them that their judgments become identified with what they perceive to be their responsibilities. We are enmeshed in a collection of overlapping social, professional, cultural, and religious roles, each of which makes moral demands. This becomes problematic when the demands of a particular role become confused, conflict with another role, or clash with societal norms or commonsense morality. Role morality can constrain ordinary moral reactions. Sherron Watkins, a former manager at Enron, became an inside whistle-blower. Observing what she believed to be unethical and illegal activities when Enron booked losses to off-book partnerships, she wrote an anonymous letter to Ken Lay, then CEO of Enron, stating her doubts about these activities. She saw herself as a manager with the important role of flagging improprieties. But Watkins did not blow the whistle outside Enron, despite her accumulation of good data to support her suspicions. She was herself first in the role as Enron manager, placing company loyalty above professional, public, or shareholder interests.33 In contrast, at WorldCom, whose outside auditors were from Arthur Andersen, the vice president of internal audit, Cynthia Cooper, began to question Andersen’s

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method of financial audits. Following the mandate of WorldCom’s CFO, Scott Sullivan, billions of dollars in operating expenses were being booked as capital expenses, thus allowing WorldCom to show a profit instead of a loss for 2001. Both Sullivan and the Andersen auditors violated their professional code as auditors in countenancing these practices. Andersen may have considered the demands of its client, WorldCom, to be more important than its independent professional obligations. Only Cooper and her team of internal auditors, who redid the Andersen audit and eventually went to the board of WorldCom with their findings of fraud, prioritized their personal values of honesty and truth telling and the mandates of the professional auditor (American Institute of Certified Public Accounting) code before their loyalty to WorldCom.34 What is to be learned from these episodes is that scenarios such as accounting fraud tend to repeat themselves when individuals lack a perspective on their role and their institution and its demands and fail to integrate personal, social, and professional values into business practice. Unless managers can disengage themselves from the context of a specific problem and evaluate it from their personal and professional values perspective, decisions remain parochially embedded and result in an iteration of the very kind of activities that invite repeated moral failure. An integrative approach to values-based corporate leadership linking personal, professional, and managerial principles can help executives think more carefully about the issues they face in business. The leaders in our study do just that. What is the difference between ethical leadership and a values-based view? Values-based leaders create or propound values for their instrumental worth to create added social value, and they align employees and shareholders to accept and work for those values. Ethical leadership goes further in several ways. Ethical leaders frame everything they do and stand for in moral terms. They also assume that personal, professional, and organizational values are congruent. Second, the values embedded in the organizational mission and direction are worthwhile not only instrumentally but for their own sake. They are community or global standards that have moral worth even if the company in question fails to achieve them. Leeper’s preoccupation with women’s health will survive even if the FHC fails because women’s health is an intrinsic value. ShoreBank’s commitment to community development has become an internationally recognized social value, even for those who have failed at this. Education is always valued, whether or not Crozier’s company will succeed in improving it. An ethical leader, under this rubric, not only embodies her personal, professional, and organizational values but expects the same from her employees and managers, shareholders, and the organization. Finally, an ethical leader continually tests these values against societal norms, organizational consistency, and outcomes.35 Whether she is consciously aware of it or not, DeHaas clearly models her core values in the workplace and by doing so strengthens the organizational culture at Deloitte. Indeed, this leader’s actions are consistent with her values. As DeHaas says, ‘‘That is the most important thing I can do—constant, fair,

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respectful treatment of everybody, whatever [their] title.’’ Her personal values include the need for alignment in her working goals. In any long-term career, there ultimately must be a long-term relationship with the organization that promotes that thinking. Her core values include integrity, quality of client service, quality of people, and a strong commitment to everyone—her clients, staff, family, and community. Case relied heavily on her personal values and embedded them in her leadership at FRB. She fully supported meritocracy and firmly opposed entitlement; both of these are positions that take constant vigilance to enforce in an organization. She was raised to believe that you earn respect and promotion and are accountable for your destiny. Maddox’s work is diverse, yet it all shares her cardinal rule that ‘‘good design addresses problems, promotes business in an ethical climate, creates productive work environments, and is not mere decoration yet is aesthetically believable.’’ Zarcone expressed it this way: I believe that it’s very important to have high personal integrity. People need to know that what you say is what you believe. I’m also a big believer in fairness and equity to do the right thing. If you do the right thing, it will feel right, people will see it, you’ll be able to explain it, and people will follow you because they believe in you. . . . People see that, and they admire that and . . . want to follow it, so that’s an important thing for me. You also need to make sure you get your priorities right and value them. I’m married with children, and that’s the number one priority in my life, so it’s trying to balance that, and balance is hard. But keep your priorities straight, and don’t lose sight of what’s really important.

Calhoun describes the challenges of this sort of leadership from an organizational perspective. The ideal organization respects and listens to its employees, appreciates people’s life beyond work and makes that possible, but it also has to be financially sound enough to provide a stable ongoing opportunity for its employees to grow and make money. I think it’s a tricky balance; you’ve got to make money. All that hard work isn’t what everything is about, and you have to balance it.

Linking Calhoun’s statement to ethical leadership, An ethical leader realizes that there is no one set of leadership principles that work in all situations or in all organizations. A leader sees values and ethical principles as being applicable within certain spheres. She challenges herself and her organization to continually step back and rethink the values proposition they embody and operate under. That is, an ethical leader uses moral imagination to make difficult decisions that cross the boundaries of those spheres and frontiers of knowledge.36

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We argue that all the leaders we studied exemplified that kind of leadership. Finally, most of the leaders we studied in this small sample seem to care more about the sustained success of their organization than their own legacy. Jim Collins sees that as a trait of what he called level five leadership, where the future of the organization preempts personal glory. Such leaders realize that the best organization is one that can be great without them.37 ‘‘A leader always takes the risk of helping somebody along who is potentially going to supplant [her]. But that is what it is all about. You cannot lead forever, you cannot live forever’’ (Donni Case). NOTES 1. Evelyn Murphy and E. J. Graff, ‘‘The Wage Gap—Why Women Are Still Paid Less than Men,’’ Boston Globe, October 9, 2005, p. C12. 2. ‘‘Facts on Women Candidates and Elected Officials,’’ online document available at www.cawp.rutgers.edu/Facts/Officeholders/cawpfs.html (2005). 3. Judith Rosener, ‘‘Ways Women Lead.’’ Harvard Business Review (November– December 1990). 4. Richard A. Couto, ‘‘The Transformation of Transforming Leadership,’’ in J. Thomas Wren, ed., Leader’s Companion (New York: Free Press, 1994), pp. 102–7. 5. Howard Gardner with Emma Laskin, Leading Minds (New York: Basic Books, 1996), chapter 3. 6. Warren G. Bennis and Robert J. Thomas, Geeks and Geezers (Boston, MA: Harvard Business School Press, 2002), p. 19. 7. R. E. Freeman, Kirsten Martin, Bidnan Parmar, Margaret P. Cording, and Patricia H. Werhane, ‘‘Leading through Values and Ethical Principles,’’ in R. Burke and Cary Cooper, eds., Inspired Leaders (London: Routledge Taylor and Francis Group, 2006). 8. Gardner and Laskin, Leading Minds, p. 29. 9. Peter Northouse, ed., Leadership Theory and Practice, 3rd ed. (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 2004), chapter 6. 10. Ibid., chapter 5. 11. J. M. Kouzes and B. Z. Posner, The Five Practices of Exemplar Leadership (San Francisco: Pfeiffer, 2003), p. 8. 12. R. K. Greenleaf, Servant Leadership: A Journey into the Nature of Legitimate Power and Greatness (New York: Paulist Press, 1977). 13. G. G. Dess and J. C. Picken, ‘‘Changing Roles: Leadership in the 21st Century,’’ Organizational Dynamics (Winter 2000): 18–33. 14. Greenleaf, Servant Leadership, 1977. 15. Julie Indvik, ‘‘Women and Leadership,’’ in Peter Northouse, ed., Leadership Theory and Practice, 3rd ed. (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 2004), p. 280. 16. A. Morrison, The New Leaders (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1992), quoted in Indvik, ‘‘Women and Leadership.’’ 17. Reported by Andrea Hanis in ‘‘Morrison’s Journey to ‘Love’ ’’ [Review of a Toni Morrison Book], Chicago Sun-Times, November 7, 2003, p. 51. 18. E. Schein, Organizational Culture and Leadership (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1985).

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19. James MacGregor Burns, Leadership (New York: HarperCollins, 1982), pp. 19–20. 20. Bernard M. Bass, Leadership and Performance beyond Expectations (New York: Free Press, 1985). See also Richard A. Couto, ‘‘The Transformation of Transforming Leadership,’’ in J. Thomas Wren, ed., Leader’s Companion (New York: Free Press, 1995), pp. 102–7. 21. Rosener, ‘‘Ways Women Lead.’’ 22. J. R. Hackman and R. E. Walton, ‘‘Leading Groups in Organizations,’’ in P. S. Goodman and Associates, eds., Designing Effective Work Groups (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1986), pp. 72–119; C. E. Larson and F. M. J. LaFasto, Teamwork: What Must Go Right/What Can Go Wrong (Newbury Park, CA: Sage, 1989), summarized in Northouse, Leadership Theory and Practice, p. 211. 23. Center for Women’s Business Research, Privately Held, 50 Percent or More Women-Owned Businesses in the United States, 2004: A Fact Sheet (Washington, DC: NFWBO, 2004). 24. Center for Women’s Business Research, Top Facts about Women-Owned Businesses (Washington, DC: Center for Women’s Business Research, 2003). 25. S. Robinson, ‘‘An Examination of Entrepreneurial Motives and Their Influence on the Way Rural Women Small Business Owners Manage Their Employees,’’ Journal of Developmental Entrepreneurship 6(2) (2001): 151–67. 26. S. A. Alvarez and G. D. Meyer, ‘‘Why Do Women Become Entrepreneurs?’’ In Frontiers of Entrepreneurship Research (Wellesley, MA: Babson College, 1998). 27. R. Boden, ‘‘Gender and Self-Employment Selection. An Empirical Assessment,’’ Journal of Socio-Economics 25(6) (1996): 671–82. 28. L. K. Gundry and M. Ben-Yoseph, ‘‘Women Entrepreneurs in the New Millennium: Recent Progress and Future Directions for Research, Entrepreneurship Development and Teaching,’’ In H. Welsch, ed., Entrepreneurship: The Way Ahead (New York: Routledge, 2003). 29. V. Gupta, I. C. MacMillan, and G. Surie, ‘‘Entrepreneurial Leadership: Developing and Measuring a Cross-Cultural Construct.’’ Journal of Business Venturing 19 (2004): 241–60. 30. Ibid. 31. R. G. McGrath and I. C. MacMillan, The Entrepreneurial Mindset (Boston, MA: Harvard Business School Press, 2000); S. Venkataraman and A. H. Van de Ven, ‘‘Hostile Environmental Jolts, Transaction Sets and New Business Development,’’ Journal of Business Venturing 13(3) (1998): 231–55. 32. Gupta et al., ‘‘Entrepreneurial Leadership.’’ 33. Mimi Swartz and Sherron Watkins, Power Failure: The Inside Story of the Collapse of Enron (New York: Doubleday, 2003). 34. Susan Pulliam and Deborah Solomon, ‘‘How 3 Unlikely Sleuths Uncooked WorldCom’s Books; Company’s Own Auditors Sniffed Out Cryptic Clues, Followed Their Hunches,’’ Wall Street Journal Europe, October 31, 2002, p. A8; and from personal interviews with Cynthia Cooper in 2005. 35. Freeman et al., ‘‘Leading through Values.’’ 36. Quoted from Freeman et al., ‘‘Leading through Values.’’ 37. James Collins, ‘‘Level 5 Leadership: The Triumph of Humility and Fierce Resolve,’’ Harvard Business Review 79(1) (2001): 67–76.

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Toward an Inclusive Framework for Envisioning Race, Gender, and Leadership Patricia S. Parker

This chapter calls into question two predominant visions of leadership in the organizational studies literature. One model is based on the notion of masculine instrumentality—aggressive, rugged individualism—and the other is based on the notion of feminine collaboration—nurturing, relationship-oriented behavior. Although these models were formulated almost exclusively from studies of middle-class white women and men in Western societies, they are presented as race-neutral and generalized to all people (Parker & Ogilvie, 1996). The experiences and values of women and men of different races and ethnicities are excluded from these models, as are their potential contributions to the production of leadership knowledge. I propose an inclusive meaning-centered framework for envisioning race, gender, and leadership that would reclaim the leadership voices that are suppressed by the dichotomous and essentializing notions of ‘‘masculine’’ and ‘‘feminine’’ leadership. Meaning-centered approaches reflect a critical interpretive view of reality and provide the potential for a multifaceted feminist framework that advances new approaches to leadership and new sources of leadership knowledge in the postindustrial era of rapid change, globalization, and diversity. In the first part of the chapter I critique traditional leadership models and advocate for alternative approaches that are more meaning-centered, inclusive, and better suited to the postindustrial age. In the second part, I present an overview of the leadership approach derived from case studies of African American women executives, one group whose traditions of leadership have been suppressed. An inclusive framework for envisioning race, gender, and leadership necessarily employs intersectionality as a guiding principle for analysis. Intersectionality is ‘‘an analysis claiming that systems of race, economic class, gender, sexuality, ethnicity, nation, and age form mutually constructing features of social organization’’ (Collins, 1998a, p. 278). In this chapter, I focus on gender and race as two influential systems that form mutually constructing features of

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organizational leadership. Empirical and theoretical work in organizational studies has focused almost exclusively on gendered patterns of organizing (cf. Calas & Smircich,1996). Acker’s (1990) theory of gendered organization is one of the most comprehensive models (cf. Kanter, 1977; Marshall, 1993). Acker’s framework draws attention to the everyday social processes in which ‘‘advantage and disadvantage, exploitation and control, action and emotion, meaning and identity’’ (p. 167) are patterned through and in terms of gender. The sole focus on gender, however, masks the fundamental influences of race and other systems of domination in women’s work experiences (Amott & Matthaei, 1996; Essed, 1991, 1994; Rowe, 2000; Spelman, 1988). Yoder and Aniakudo (1997) pointed out, following Spelman, that ‘‘there is no raceless, classless, generic woman’’ (p. 325). Thus, the focus should be on the ways multiple systems of domination intersect in everyday interactions. In this study, I use critical communication and feminist theories to advance an inclusive framework for envisioning race, gender, and leadership. Critical communication perspectives direct attention to organization as intersubjective structures of meaning where identity and power relationships are produced, maintained, and reproduced through the ongoing communicative practices of its members (Deetz, 1992; Mumby, 2001). Connections among power, ideology, and hegemony are central to this view of organizational communication. Power is viewed as a dialectical process of domination (control) and resistance that is manifested in everyday organizational life. Hegemonic control functions not simply as ideological domination of one group by another but as ‘‘a dynamic conception of the lived relations of social groups and the various struggles that constantly unfold between and among these groups’’ (Mumby, 2001, p. 598). This directs attention to the tensions between organization as text (e.g., as discursively produced institutional forms) and organizing as conversation (e.g., how women and men struggle to ‘‘do difference’’). From a critical communication perspective, gender and race are not neutral elements but can be seen as constitutive of organizing and are primary ways of signifying power in social systems (Acker, 1991; Scott, 1986). Power and control are manifested in the hidden micro-processes and micro-practices that produce and reproduce unequal and persistent sex-, race-, and class-based patterns in work situations, such as recruitment, hiring, placement, promotions, and everyday interaction (Parker, 2003). Feminist theories, particularly poststructuralist approaches, enable the deconstruction of raced and gendered organizational leadership contexts, emphasizing the unstable, complex, and ambiguous nature of social reality (Calas & Smircich, 1996). This directs attention to leadership as a process by which organizational members—leaders and followers—struggle to create meaning within such contexts. Leadership processes and interaction provide a particularly good case for exploring the tensions and paradoxes of contemporary organization. Executive leadership represents an interaction context in which dominant culture norms and values regarding gender and race take on high symbolic importance (Biggart

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& Hamilton, 1984). Organizational members come to expect leaders to look, act, and think in ways consistent with the socially constructed meanings of organizational leader and leadership. Traditionally, those meanings have been in conflict with stereotypical assumptions about African American women (Parker, 2001). Thus, exploring the leadership experiences of African American women serves to make salient how race and gender intersect with key organizational leadership issues and processes in twenty-first-century organizations, and it provides insight into an approach to leadership I theorize is borne out of a struggle to balance the tensions and paradoxes of resisting and conforming to discourses of organizing. The model of leadership presented here is derived from a field study involving fifteen African American women executives, their subordinates, coworkers, and (in four cases) their immediate supervisors (usually the company CEO or equivalent).

VISIONS OF LEADERSHIP COMMUNICATION IN THE INDUSTRIAL PARADIGM: ODE TO THE GREAT (WHITE) MAN Our mythology refuses to catch up with our reality. We cling to the myth of the Lone Ranger, the romantic idea that great things are usually accomplished by a larger-than-life individual working alone. —Bennis & Biederman, 1997, p. 2

In the mainstream literature on leadership theory and research, the predominant vision of leadership is the Great Man—the triumphant individual taking charge and directing from a distance—in the tradition of white, middle-class constructions of rugged individualism (Bennis & Biederman, 1997; Manz & Sims, 1989; Rost, 1991). This view epitomizes the industrial vision of leadership, advancing . . . two problematic ideas about leadership. The fundamental problem is the view of leadership as good management, for it precludes views of leadership as distinct from management and limits an understanding of communication as constitutive of leadership process. It reinforces dualistic thinking about leadership, with an emphasis on individualistic (versus collective), monologic (versus dialogic) and transmission (versus meaning-centered) perspectives (Fairhurst, 2001). Furthermore, it reproduces a mythology grounded in the industrial paradigm that infuses the second problem, a traditionally masculine understanding of leadership that in turn helps normalize a race-neutral feminine-masculine dualism. Leadership as ‘‘Good Management’’ In his comprehensive critique, Rost (1991) emphasized that ‘‘leadership-asgood-management’’ is the twentieth century’s paradigm and notes that ‘‘this understanding of leadership makes perfect sense in an industrial economy’’

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(p. 94). It is a vision of leadership embedded in the structural functionalism of Western culture that is ‘‘rational, management oriented, male, technocratic, quantitative, goal dominated, cost-benefit driven, personalistic, hierarchical, short term, pragmatic, and materialistic’’ (p. 94). In this view, the collective body of leadership theory and research in the past century, which purports to distinguish among traits, styles, and contingency approaches, can effectively be summed up as, ‘‘Great men and women with certain preferred traits influencing followers to do what the leaders wish in order to achieve group/organizational goals that reflect excellence defined as some kind of higher-level effectiveness’’ (p. 180). Rost added that expressive characteristics, such as consideration and other aspects of humanism ‘‘boil down to a therapeutic, expressive individualism . . . [that] help enculturate women into what is essentially a male model of leadership’’ (p. 94). The leadership-as-good-management view sets up two problematic issues that have implications for leadership in the complex and ambiguous context of twenty-first-century organization. First, this view emphasizes the preeminence of the profession of management rather than advancing an understanding of the process of leadership as distinct from management. Management processes can be distinguished from leadership in that the former imply maintaining order through the coordinated actions of people in organizationally established authority relationships, whereas the latter implies intending change through mutually negotiated influence relationships ( Jacobs, 1970; Katz & Kahn, 1966/ 1978; Rost, 1991). A focus on leadership as distinct from management is critical in the postindustrial era of rapid change and globalization, where identities and relationships are not fixed but must be negotiated (Fairclough, 1992). The second problem with the leadership-as-good-management view is that it promotes an individualistic, goal-oriented approach to leadership study. Such a view shifts attention away from an understanding of leadership as a negotiated and emergent process. Fairhurst’s (2001) critique of the traditional leadership literature reinforces Rost’s (1991) claim of an overly individualistic focus and points to important implications for the study of leadership communication. Fairhurst identified the individual-system dichotomy as central among several dualisms in leadership communication research that highlight the paradoxical nature of leadership theory, research, and practice. She noted, as Rost did, that historically the predominant views of leadership have been influenced by a psychological view of the world where ‘‘in a figure-ground arrangement the individual is figure and communication is incidental or, at best, intervening’’ (Fairhurst, 2001, p. 383). Related secondary dualisms exist in the form of transmission versus meaning-centered views of communication and cognitive outcomes versus conversational practices. The focus on message transmission and cognitive outcomes (e.g., individualistic focus on leadership traits, cognitions, acts, and one-way meaning construction) has dominated the leadership literature (Fairhurst, 2001) and contributes to romanticizing the perceived role of the leader (Meindl, Ehrlich, & Dukerich, 1985).

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However, increasingly, scholars are emphasizing a systems orientation that reconceptualizes leadership as an emergent property of group interaction (see Fisher, 1985, 1986), exchanges between leaders and group members (Dansereau, 1995a, 1995b; Jablin, Miller, & Keller, 1999), a dialogue (Isaacs, 1993, 1999), or as distributed among leaders and followers who are empowered to bring about organizational transformation (Conger, 1989; Kouzes & Posner, 1995; Senge, 1990; Senge et al., 1999; Wheatley, 1992). A systems orientation directs attention to meaning-centered views of leadership communication and the relational and conversational practices associated with doing leadership. Yet rather than simply shifting from an individualistic to a systems orientation, Fairhurst (2001) advocated using ‘‘both/and’’ thinking about key dualisms and paradoxes in leadership research. Either/or thinking usually causes researchers to favor one view over another, and over time, produces dominant versus marginal perspectives, such as the race-neutral bias mentioned earlier, and the individualistic orientation of the leadership communication literature. A both/and approach allows researchers to see the wider systems concerns and individual concerns and to view communication more complexly, as transmission and meaning-centered, and studied as both cognitive outcomes and conversational practices. Normalizing the Feminine-Masculine Dichotomy: Leadership Communication as Traditionally Masculine Focusing on leadership as good management ultimately reinforces a masculine model of leadership communication, inasmuch as management processes have been defined in traditionally masculine terms, such as authority, structure, and instrumentality. As conceptualized in the leadership literature, the masculine model emphasizes a hierarchical approach in which leaders initiate structure while demonstrating autonomy, strength, self-efficacy, and control (Bem,1974; Eagly, 1987; Loden, 1985). This model is representative of male values (Marshall, 1993) and is most associated with traditional understandings of men’s socialized communication patterns (Tannen, 1990; Wood, 1998). According to this perspective, men use more instrumental communication—unilateral, directive, and aimed at controlling others—that is consistent with their learned view of talk as a way to assert self and achieve status (Eagly & Karau,1991). Distance and detachment are common communication themes associated with male values (Marshall, 1993). Common symbolic representations of the masculine leadership model include such characteristics as aggressiveness, independence, risk taking, rationality, and intelligence (Collins, 1998b; Connell, 1995). A traditionally masculine model of leadership communication pervades the mainstream leadership literature (Alvesson & Billing, 1997; Buzzanell, Ellingson, Silvio, Pasch, Dale, Mauro, Smith, Weir, & Martin, 2002; Fine & Buzzanell, 2000; Parker, 2001; Rost, 1991). Rost provided one of the most comprehensive critiques of this literature and, among other things, observes that this

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literature reinforces a male model of life. Fine and Buzzanell reviewed mainstream approaches to leadership that focusing on serving, including adaptive leadership (Heifetz, 1994; Heifetz & Laurie, 1997), transformational leadership (Burns, 1978), and self and superleadership (Sims & Manz, 1996). They concluded that these approaches are essentially ‘‘ ‘manstories’ (Gergen,1990; Marshall, 1989) [for] they involve often solitary searches for fulfillment and use service to others as a m1pns of developing followers who can assist in achieving organizational or societal goals’’ (p. 143). Even so-called alternative approaches, such as servant leadership (Greenleaf, 1977) and some feminine perspectives, are either primarily male-centered or implicitly reinforce traditional understandings of men’s socialized communication patterns and worldview (Fine & Buzzannell, 2001, p. 143). For example, Fine and Buzzanell noted that in describing servant leadership as an alternative to traditional approaches, Greenleaf ‘‘universalizes the experience of seeker, maintains organizational structures, and never questions the ways in which gender relations may make servant leadership a very different process for women and for men’’ (Fine & Buzzanell, p. 143). Furthermore, some feminist perspectives implicitly reinforce a traditionally masculine view and, some would argue, are being co-opted by masculinist aims (Ashcraft, 2005). Feminist critiques of the structural-functionalism of the industrial paradigm expose an alternative vision of leadership communication aimed at valorizing ‘‘feminine’’ leadership as having a relationship rather than an instrumental orientation (Helgesen, 1990; Lunneborg, 1990; Rosener, 1990). However, even in feminine leadership, instrumental outcomes primarily determine the effectiveness and usefulness of the leadership style (Calas, 1993; Fine & Buzzanell, 2001; Fletcher, 1994). Moreover, some scholars have argued persuasively that contemporary organizations standardize feminization while maintaining a gender-neutral stance (Ashcraft, in press; Fondas,1997; May, 1997). Notwithstanding the view that feminist leadership approaches implicitly reinforce a masculine view as the ultimate measure of effectiveness, the claims of valorizing feminine leadership as an alternative to masculine leadership explicitly reinforce a feminine-masculine dualism. That is, they portray feminine leadership as being in opposition to masculine leadership. However, these approaches do not acknowledge the diversity among women’s (or men’s) experiences that shape leadership knowledge, and the possibilities of femininemasculine duality (e.g., a both/and approach). Though not grounded in the implicit image of the great white man, as is the industrial model, the predominant vision of feminine leadership is implicitly based on an ideal white woman.

(WHITE) FEMININE VISIONS OF LEADERSHIP Feminist perspectives critique the persistence of male dominance in social arrangements and advocate some form of change to the status quo (Calas &

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Smirich, 1996). However, despite the common focus on critique and change, there are a range of feminist approaches—liberal, radical, psychoanalytic, Marxist, socialist, poststructuralist and postmodern, and postcolonial—that vary in their ontology, epistemological positions, and degree of political critique and therefore vary in the type of influence on leadership theory. Feminist visions of change range from ‘‘ ‘reforming’ organizations; to ‘transforming’ organizations and society; to transforming our prior understandings of what constitutes knowledge/theory/practice’’ (Calas & Smircich, 1996, p. 219). Overview of Feminist Approaches Feminist approaches to leadership communication are part of the voluminous literature on women in management that began to accumulate in the late 1960s and early 1970s when the number of white middle-class women in management (and to a lesser extent women and men of color) began to increase. These approaches range from the liberal feminist views of the 1960s and 1970s that advocated women emulate the masculine language of management to the more recent radical, psychoanalytic, and socialist views that advance alternative feminist leadership approaches (albeit from different epistemological stances), to poststructuralist and postmodern feminisms that deconstruct essentialist views of leadership as feminine and masculine. Universalizing the ‘‘Feminine’’ As will be discussed later, when combined in productive ways, feminist perspectives provide promise for informing a more inclusive and sufficiently complex framework for envisioning leadership in twenty-first-century organizations. However, I argue that the prevailing vision of feminist leadership is one that reinforces symbolic images of white, middle-class American women, which in effect silences women of different ethnicities, races, and class statuses. The so-called female advantage approach to leadership emerging from radical and psychoanalytic feminisms argues that a ‘‘distinctly feminine’’ style of leadership makes women better leaders than men (Helgesen, 1990; Lunneborg, 1990; Rosener, 1990). According to this view, feminine leadership is an outcome of girls’ and women’s sex role socialization that produces passive, nurturing, relationship-oriented leaders. This view is in stark contrast to men’s socialized leadership—aggressive, rational, strong, independent leaders (Helgesen, 1990; Loden, 1985; Rosener, 1990). The central argument, however, is that the feminine style, grounded in female values such as relationship building, interdependence, and being other-focused, is better suited than the male hierarchical approach to leading contemporary complex organizing contexts, but it is stifled by current male-dominated structuring that values hierarchy, independence, and self-efficacy processes (Grossman & Chester, 1990; Helgesen, 1990; Lunneborg, 1990).

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The view of feminine leadership as distinct from a masculine approach is advanced in organizational studies as well as in the popular literature on leadership—books and articles written by management consultants and organizational development specialists—contributing to its reification in the popular consciousness. Helgesen’s (1990) best-selling volume, The Feminine Advantage, is exemplary. In it, she described what she called the ‘‘feminine principles of management,’’ which are characterized as principles of caring, making intuitive decisions, and viewing leadership from a nonhierarchical perspective. Helgesen argued that whereas male-dominated organizations are almost always hierarchical, women tend to think of organization in terms of a network or web of relationships, with leadership at the center of the web, not at the top of a pyramid. The female advantage argument provides an important critique of the patriarchal discourses that exclude women’s experiences. However, it is problematic because it is presented as a race-neutral, universal representation of all women, based on the socialized experiences of middle-class white women (Parker & Ogilvie, 1996). Most importantly, it fails to acknowledge that notions of feminine and masculine are social, cultural, and historical products, constructed according to racial and sexual ideologies that conscript women’s and men’s embodied identities (Trethewey, 2000). This oversight is significant for the study of African American women leaders given that socially constructed images of white women historically have been used in the systematic oppression of black women (Morton, 1991). To advance a model of feminine leadership based on white women’s gender identity essentially excludes black women’s experiences in constructing gender identity and therefore excludes black women’s voices in theorizing about leadership. Thus, in an attempt to raise the voices of women in leadership, the feminine advantage model contributes to the silencing of marginalized groups, including (but not limited to) black women. The feminine advantage model does not critique the controlling images of woman as the enabling helpmate and man as the assertive status seeker. Instead, in many ways, it works to reify patriarchal authority and perpetuate distortions of women and men as ‘‘feminine’’ or ‘‘masculine.’’ In leadership theory, these images usually form around the dichotomized notions of men as masculine leaders—aggressive, rational, strong, independent leaders—and women as feminine leaders—passive, nurturing, relationship-oriented leaders (Helgesen, 1990; Loden, 1985; Rosener, 1990).

GENDERED LEADERSHIP COMMUNICATION AND THE PROBLEMS OF RACE-NEUTRAL THEORIZING Both the feminine advantage model and the leadership-as-good-management model of the industrial paradigm reinforce three problems of race-neutral theorizing—domination, exclusion, and containment. It reinforces Western (white middle and upper class) gendered identities as the ideal, and in upholding

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that ideal, it at once excludes the experiences of other groups and renders them nonlegitimate or peripheral. For example, because race-neutral descriptions of feminine and masculine leadership are treated as universal gender symbols and are often within dominant culture institutions (Collins, 1998b), African American women’s experiences are excluded or distorted, as are the experiences of other women of color, men of color, and non-middle-class white women and men. Patricia Hill Collins (1998b) made this point when she said that: Aggressive Black and Hispanic men are seen as dangerous, not powerful, and are often penalized when they exhibit any of the allegedly ‘‘masculine’’ characteristics. Working class and poor White men fare slightly better and are also denied the allegedly ‘‘masculine’’ symbols of leadership, intellectual competence, and human rationality. Women of color and working class and poor White women are also not represented [by universal gender symbolism], for they have never had the luxury of being ‘‘ladies.’’ (pp. 217–18)

Warren and Bourque (1991) made a similar point in their critique of approaches to ‘‘feminizing’’ technology and strategies for intervention in developing countries. As summarized by Calas and Smircich (1996), these researchers warn against a universal ‘‘natural woman(ness)’’ that is a product of the Western ideal of the egalitarian, nonviolent, and nurturing woman: This perspective dangerously romanticizes women’s values, the family, the separation of ‘‘domestic’’ and ‘‘public’’ spheres, and the nature of Third World societies, the negotiation of gender identities as they are realized in practice, and the interplay of family dynamics and legal systems to challenge these images of male and female. (Warren & Borque, 1991, p. 287, quoted in Calas & Smircich, 1996, p. 241)

The silencing of some groups of women and men while privileging others in the study of organizational leadership is a product of the theoretical perspectives that frame our understanding of gender, discourse, and organization. The leadership-as-good management view that has dominated the study of leadership communication is too limited for envisioning leadership in the postindustrial era, for it places an emphasis on goals and outcomes, which assumes we can objectively characterize persons (e.g., as masculine and feminine) and situations (as functionally ordered) to achieve those goals and outcomes (Cheney, Christensen, Zorn, & Ganesh, 2004). Although this view may have been effective for doing leadership in the industrial economy, it is too limiting for the rapid change and ambiguity of the postindustrial global economy (Rost, 1991). More fundamentally, it is not well suited for the multicultural, racialized, often contradictory viewpoints and paradoxical situational challenges of twenty-first-century organization (Parker, 2001).

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Here, I use the critical feminist framework to advance a meaning-centered view of leadership communication that would theoretically accommodate the complexity of postindustrial organization. I begin with a discussion of communication and postindustrial organizational cultures, as characterized by fragmentation, ambiguity, and difference; highlighting the centrality of race and gender in everyday organizing; and emphasizing the usefulness of critical feminist perspectives for conceptualizing leadership communication. Next is a meaning-centered definition of leadership that emphasizes a localized, negotiated process of mutual influence and change that occurs in dynamic tension with larger cultural texts.

COMMUNICATION AND POSTINDUSTRIAL ORGANIZATION: CONFRONTING ISSUES OF FRAGMENTATION, AMBIGUITY, AND DIFFERENCE A common way of envisioning contemporary, postindustrial societies is that in which identities and relationships are not fixed but must be negotiated (Fairclough, 1992). This condition emerges in part from globalization in a market economy that is increasingly diverse and multicultural (Cheney et al., 2004). People of both sexes and of different gender identities, ethnicities, races, classes, sexual orientations, and so on are interacting in ways that help them find meaning and connection in a social world that is increasingly fragmented and disconnected (Giddens, 1991). This view directs attention to postindustrial organizations as fragmented cultures. Cheney and colleagues (2004) define culture as ‘‘a system of meaning that guides the construction of reality in a social community’’ (p. 76). In organizations, cultural meaning systems are constituted in the members’ assumptions (e.g., core beliefs), values, (e.g., expressed in behavioral norms), and physical and performative artifacts (e.g., dress and logos, rituals, ceremonies, traditions, and stories [Schein, 1992]). The fragmentation perspective characterizes organizational cultures as diverse (not unitary or integrated) meaning systems suffused with ambiguity, where consensus and dissensus (e.g., the degree that reality makes sense) are issuespecific and constantly fluctuating (Martin, 1992). Communication takes on a particular negotiated character in a fragmented and ambiguous social world in which identities and relationships are not fixed. Fairclough (1995) identified several characteristics of communication in postindustrial societies that underscore the negotiated character of communication in this context. Some of these include an increased demand for highly developed dialogical capacities; social interaction that is more conversational, informal, and democratic; an increase in self-promotional discourse; and more technologically based communication. A larger cultural text that reproduces and institutionalizes racism and sexism poses particular challenges for developing and facilitating dialogic,

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conversational, self-promotional, and technologically based communication capacities. Following Essed (1991), I argue that the fundamental social relations of postindustrial society are racialized relations. This suggests that identities, including gendered identities, are negotiated as part of a larger cultural text that reproduces race relations. Essed used the term subtle gendered racism to characterize certain types of subtle discrimination that target African American women, and her theory of everyday racism exemplifies this. Using cross-cultural empirical data, Essed (1991) developed a theory of everyday racism, which she defined as a process in which (a) socialized racist notions are integrated into meanings that make practices immediately definable and manageable, (b) practices with racist implications become in themselves familiar and repetitive, and (c) underlying racial and ethnic relations are actualized and reinforced through these routine or familiar practices in everyday situations. (p. 52)

Similarly, critical race theorists point out that racism is ‘‘normal, not aberrant, in American society’’ (Delgado, 1995, p. xiv), and ‘‘because it is so enmeshed in the fabric of the U.S. social order, it appears both normal and natural to people in this society’’ (Ladson-Billings, 2000, p. 264). In the study of organizational communication, this calls for a shift away from race-neutral understandings of organization and the myopic focus on gender as distinct from a larger cultural text of race relations. Specifically, there should be a move toward reconceptualizing race not as a simple property of individuals but as an integral dynamic of organizations (Nkomo, 1992). As Nkomo aptly noted, this implies a move toward phenomenological and historical research methods that would contribute toward building theories and knowledge about how race is produced and how it is a core feature of organizations. Relevant to the present study, if organizations were viewed as fundamentally raced, then organizational leadership would have to take into account how race relations fundamentally impact everyday interactions within organizations. Ashcraft and Allen (2003) advocated foregrounding race as central to organizational life. Through their analysis of the racial subtext of organizational communication texts, they demonstrated how the process of reinforcing a particular way of viewing racial relations occurs through theory development in organizational communication, which informs organizational communication practice. They revealed five disciplined messages that ‘‘function to sustain raced organization, for they support and obscure the tacit Whiteness of much organizational communication theory’’ (Ashcraft & Allen, 2003, p. 28). Conceptualizing postindustrial communication contexts as multicultural and fundamentally raced reinforces the importance of a both/and approach to understanding leadership in terms of individual and systems phenomena. From a critical feminist perspective, leadership can be understood as a socially

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constructed process of negotiating difference, taking into account the interlocking oppressions of race, gender, and class that structure organizational life. Grounded in this perspective, I advance a meaning-centered leadership approach that takes into account tensions emerging from the individual-systems dualism and that shifts the focus to leadership as a process of change and emancipation.

FOREGROUNDING MEANING-CENTERED APPROACHES TO LEADERSHIP Meaning-centered approaches reveal leadership as an ongoing process of social construction (Bensen, 1977; Berger & Luckmann, 1966). These approaches reflect a critical interpretive view of reality, wherein ‘‘the individual takes an active, constructive role in creating knowledge through language and communication’’ (Fairhurst, 2001, p. 385). Grounded in the symbolic interaction perspective (Blumer, 1969; Mead, 1934), meaning-centered approaches reveal leadership as a symbolic, interactive process through which meaning is created, sustained, and changed (Avolio & Bass, 2002; Deetz, 2000; Fairhurst & Sarr, 1996; Parker, 2001; Rost 1991; Smircich & Morgan, 1982). Cheney et al. (2004) favored a socially constructed view of leaders and leadership situations ‘‘as being open to multiple meanings, readings, or interpretations’’ (p. 192). Much of this research centers on charismatic and visionary leadership. This literature takes a monologic view, focusing on the leader as the creator and manager of symbolic communication (e.g., myths, legends, stories, and rituals) (see Fairhurst, 2001). Another line of research shifts to a more systems interactive view. A number of theorists in this line advocate studying alternative approaches to leadership and organizing (Ashcraft, 2000, 2001; Buzzanell et al., 1994; Putnam & Kolb, 2000). For example, Buzzanell and her colleagues summarized this literature in terms of three alternative rationales for organizing. First are contrabureaucratic structures that resist organization that promotes ‘‘the employer viewpoint,’’ such as universalism. Second are contrainstrumental relationship approaches that resist the devaluation of noninstrumental and non–goal-oriented activities. Third are value-rational or ideologically focused organization approaches that resist societal values that privilege individual, corporate, and competitive ethics. These approaches are exemplary in illuminating the processes that constrain the development of participatory practices in leadership. However, they do so by emphasizing the either/or thinking in leadership theory that often suppresses other important elements in the process (Fairhurst, 2001). This chapter adds to the literature advocating alternative leadership approaches. However, in concert with other communication scholars and organizational development theorists (Baxter & Montgomery, 1996; Stohl & Cheney, 2001; Fairhurst, 2001; Senge, 1990), I advocate shifting attention

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toward more dialogic both/and views of leadership and organizing. This shifts the focus toward understanding the mutual influence of both structure and process. It captures more completely the relationship of leaders and followers in a flow of contested and negotiated meaning production. More specifically, I advance a meaning-centered leadership approach as seen through a critical feminist lens of emancipation and change.

DEFENDING LEADERSHIP IN THE POSTINDUSTRIAL ERA I combine two meaning-centered views that capture the process of leadership and change and that are exemplified in the approach to leadership derived from my study of African American women executives. First is the view that focuses on leadership as the management of meaning. Second is the view that focuses on leadership as socially critical and focused on emancipation and change. Smircich and Morgan (1982) advanced a view of leadership as the management of meaning. They defined leadership as ‘‘the process whereby one or more individuals succeeds in attempting to frame and define the reality of others’’ (p. 258). Standing alone, this definition, not surprisingly, leads some to conclude that Smircich and Morgan advocated a monologic view of leadership (see Fairhurst, 2001). However, when viewed within their larger theoretical framework, it is clear that Smircich and Morgan intended a more dialogic, coconstruction focus. Fundamental to their definition is an understanding of leadership as a process of social construction: Leadership, like other social phenomena, is socially constructed through interaction (Berger & Luckmann, 1966), emerging as a result of the constructions and actions of both leaders and led. It involves a complicity or process of negotiation through which certain individuals, implicitly or explicitly, surrender their power to define the nature of their experience to others. (Smircich & Morgan, 1982, p. 258)

They further emphasized this negotiated and coconstructed view when they stated ‘‘the phenomenon of leadership in being interactive is by nature dialectical. It is shaped through the interaction of at least two points of reference, i.e., of leaders and of led’’ (pp. 258–59). They added to this view of leadership as coconstruction in noting the power-based construction of organizational leadership. They asserted, ‘‘Although leaders draw their power from their [hierarchically legitimated] ability to define the reality of others, their inability to control completely provides the seeds of disorganization in the organization of meaning’’ (Smircich & Morgan, 1982, p. 259). Thus, from a monologic view, people in formal organizational leadership positions may have the opportunity to attempt to define and manage the reality of others. Yet a dialogic frame directs attention to the ability and willingness of leaders and followers to

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recognize the contested context within which that opportunity to manage meaning arises. Weick’s (1978) view of leader as medium is very similar to Smircich’s and Morgan’s (1982) approach in emphasizing the negotiated nature of leadership. Focusing on the group level of analysis, Weick argued that leadership is a process of mediating between the group’s organizing process (how things should be done) and their informational environment (the varied plausible interpretations of how things should be done, emanating from inside and outside the group). Morgan (1986) also acknowledged the negotiated character of leadership when he argued that leaders do not have to lead by placing themselves in the forefront of action. Instead, he asserted, leaders can play a background role, shaping the stage of action and the general direction that events will take but leaving choice about the details to those responsible for their implementation. However, the desire to implement the leader’s directives depends on whether others see fit to do so. These views of leadership as the management of meaning conceptualize leadership as a communication accomplishment (Fairhurst, 2001; Garfinkel, 1967). Smircich and Morgan’s (1983) definition is especially effective at emphasizing the individual-systems tensions that must be negotiated in everyday leadership situations, for they highlighted the unequal relationship that exists (either explicitly or implicitly) in the leader–follower relationship. However, their definition does not address the notion of change and emancipation. A critical feminist lens captures the elements of intended social change and emancipation that are crucial in postindustrial views of leadership and are not emphasized in the Smircich and Morgan definition. More fundamentally, a critical feminist meaning-centered approach to leadership shifts the focus away from structural-functionalist, management-oriented, and traditionally masculine views of leadership and toward the process of leadership and how it can facilitate social change. This positions leadership as a socially critical phenomenon, that is ‘‘fundamentally addressed to social change and human emancipation, that it is basically a display of social critique, and that its ultimate goal is the achievement and refinement of human community’’ (Foster, 1989, p. 46– 48). This portrays leadership as a localized, negotiated process of mutual influence that would theoretically accommodate the multiple, often contradictory viewpoints and paradoxical situational challenges of twenty-first-century organizations (Parker, 2001). The notion of transformational leadership (Bass, 1985; Bennis & Nanus, 1985; Burns, 1978; Tichy & Devanna, 1986; Rost, 1991) provides a basis for linking the ideas of leadership as the management of meaning and leadership as a process of social change and emancipation. The notion of transformational leadership was first articulated by Burns (1978) as a process of evolving interrelationships in which leaders influence followers and are in turn influenced to modify their behavior as they meet responsiveness or resistance. According to Burns (1978), transformational leaders seek to raise the consciousness of followers by appealing to higher

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ideals and moral values, such as liberty, justice, equality, peace, and humanitarianism, not to baser emotions, such as fear, greed, jealousy, or hatred. As Yukl (2002) observed, transformational leadership is viewed as both a micro-level influence process between individuals and as a macro-level process of mobilizing power to change social systems and reform institutions. Here, I use Rost’s (1991) reinterpretation of Burns’s (1978) notion of transformational leadership but with a critical eye toward postindustrial assumptions and values that Burns’s definition does not address. More importantly, Rost’s (1991) definition builds on the strengths of Smircich and Morgan’s (1982) definition (e.g., he implicitly acknowledged the creation of meaning through interaction), but he placed a critical emphasis on social change through dialogic interaction: ‘‘Leadership is [a multidirectional, noncoercive, but unequal] influence relationship among leaders and followers [in which the followers are active, and there is typically more than one leader in the relationship, and] who intend real changes that reflect their mutual purposes’’ (Rost, 1991, p. 102). Rost’s definition emphasizes social change and emancipation, as understood from critical/feminist perspectives. He positioned his work as a critique of structural functionalism in leadership studies that has been advanced in feminist scholarship (Buckley & Steffy, 1986; Calas & Smircich, 1988; Kellerman, 1984), and emphasized the development of mutual purposes as a way of working toward emancipation from the oppression of women, ethnic domination, and racial oppression. Mutual purposes, according to Rost, are ‘‘common purposes developed over time as leaders and followers interact in a noncoercive relationship about the changes they intend’’ (p. 151). For leaders and followers steeped in the ambiguous, corporatized, sexualized, and racialized contexts of twenty-first-century organizations, one can envision intended changes emerging from such an arrangement might include progressive activities, such as transformation and emancipation from oppressive and exploitative work processes. Taken together, Smircich and Morgan (1982) and Rost’s (1991) definitions conceptualize leadership in this way: Leadership is an influence relationship among leaders and followers who intend real changes that reflect their mutual purposes; these mutual purposes are negotiated through a process whereby one or more individuals (leaders and followers) succeeds in attempting to frame and define the reality of others. In summary, this view of leadership emphasizes a localized, negotiated process of mutual influence that would theoretically accommodate the multicultural, racialized, often contradictory viewpoints and paradoxical situational challenges of twenty-first-century organizations (Parker, 2001). Reenvisioning Instrumentality as Collaboration This chapter presents an overview of the leadership approach derived from case studies of fifteen African American women executives and their co-workers.

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In total, the leadership communication themes revealed in this study challenge the dichotomous notions of instrumentality and collaboration advanced in the gender and leadership literature. This section provides a brief overview of each of the themes and how they inform an approach to leadership that disrupts traditional masculine and feminine models. Later, I discuss the themes in more detail, including the voices of the executives and their co-workers. I show how the women’s leadership communication represents a meaning-centered approach that emphasizes both individual and relational (systems) concerns (Fairhurst, 2001). As mentioned earlier, two competing leadership models are advanced— masculine instrumentality versus feminine collaboration—based almost exclusively on studies of white women and men but presented as racially and culturally neutral (Parker & Ogilvie, 1996). The masculine model of leadership is theorized as representative of male values, such as distance and detachment (Marshall, 1993), and men are said to be socialized to use instrumental communication—unilateral, directive, and aimed at controlling others—which is consistent with their learned view of talk as a way to assert self and achieve status (Eagly & Karau, 1991). The feminine model of leadership is associated with female values, such as nurturance and support (Marshall, 1993), thought to be a reflection of traditionally defined white middle-class women’s socialized patterns of collaborative communication (Helgesen, 1990; Lunneborg, 1990; Rosener, 1990). Common symbolic representations of this model include characteristics such as nurturance, compassion, sensitivity to others’ needs, and caring (Collins, 1998b; Grant, 1988). Universalizing masculine and feminine models of leadership based on Western (white middle and upper class) gendered identities excludes the experiences of other groups and renders them nonlegitimate or peripheral in the production of knowledge. More generally, these competing models unnecessarily reinforce dualistic thinking about leadership, obscuring the meanings, tensions, and paradoxes of leadership as it is realized in practice (Fairhurst, 2001). The findings of this study challenge these trends by deconstructing and presenting a revision of traditional notions of instrumentality and collaboration.

OVERVIEW OF AFRICAN AMERICAN WOMEN EXECUTIVES’ LEADERSHIP APPROACHES Five themes related to leadership communication were revealed in the interviews and observations of the African American women executives and their co-workers who participated in this study. The themes are (a) interactive communication; (b) empowerment through the challenge to produce results; (c) openness in communication; (d) participative decision making through

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TABLE 2.1. African American Women Executive Study Participants Executive Title 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11

Vice President, Administrative Services Vice President, Marketing Vice President, Operations General Manager Area Manager Vice President, Marketing Area Manager Financial Officer Director Officer Vice Chair Mayor

12 13 14

Associate Superintendent Director Officer/Director

15

Director

Industry

Public/Private

Insurance

Private

Computer Communications Communications Communications Insurance Communciations Communications State Government Federal Government Political Party City Government Education City Government Federal Government State Government State Government

Private Private Private Private Private Private Private Public Public Public Public Public Public Public Public Public

collaborative debate, autonomy, and information gathering; and (e) leadership through boundary spanning (see Table 2.1). Interactive Communication This theme represents the central dimension of the African American women executives’ leadership because it forms the basis of their overall approach to communicating leadership. The women’s leadership can be characterized as interactive in both a theoretical and relational sense. In the theoretical sense, the women’s leadership emphasizes interaction of both individual and systems concerns. They are very much involved in negotiating the space between employees’ needs and values and organizational needs and values. The women’s leadership is also interactive in the relational sense. That is, all the executives placed a high premium on oral communication for creating and sustaining relationships. Their leadership is practiced primarily through face-to-face interaction. However, none of the executives are micromanagers who insist on having tight control over employee activities. Instead, the data revealed an interactive leadership approach reminiscent of the traditions supporting self-definition and self-determination in African American women’s history. Three themes elaborate the interactive approach as facilitating both personal and organizational growth and learning: (1) knowing the business, its mission, and its goals and being able to communicate that knowledge clearly, directly, and consistently; (2) being

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accessible to staff and customers; and (3) modeling effective behavior. The women and their co-workers presented an image of the executives as a kind of conduit through which organizational members could determine courses of action, hash out concerns, identify their own successes, and help bring about needed changes. Empowerment of Employees through the Challenge to Produce Results From the perspective of these executives, a key tool for motivating employees is expecting high performance, based on the executive’s confidence in the person’s ability to deliver and then setting specific goals for producing highquality results. This approach informs a strategy for empowerment that is simultaneously directive (e.g., transmission-centered) and nondirective (e.g., emergent or meaning-centered). It is directive in the sense that there is a clearly initiated structure; it is nondirective in that the employees are encouraged to exercise a great deal of freedom within the initiated structure and indeed to change the structure if they see fit. Employee descriptions of this approach as a form of empowerment provide persuasive evidence of its value. Openness in Communication The third leadership theme emerged from descriptions of the executives as direct communicators. Directness is a label that is often associated with African American women’s communication (McGoldrick, Garcia-Preto, Hines, & Lee, 1988). In the larger historical cultural context that devalues African American women, having a direct communication style is seen as negative, reflecting stereotypes of the black matriarch or Sapphire. Contemporary studies show that whites’ generalized perceptions of African American women’s communication style are negative (Kochman, 1981; Weitz & Gordon, 1993). However, as revealed in this study, perceptions of African American women’s communication in actual interaction reveal a more positive view of directness. From the standpoint of the women and their co-workers, directness as a form of leadership communication style was interpreted positively. Here, directness means (a) bringing important issues into the open, (b) making sure voices (including their own) that need to be heard on a certain issue get that opportunity, and (c) having no hidden agendas. The data revealed that this directness through openness is accomplished not only at the interpersonal level but also at the group and organizational levels. Participative Decision Making through Collaborative Debate, Autonomy, and Information Gathering The fourth theme emphasizes employee empowerment and community building through participative decision-making practices. The data revealed that all the executives used some form of participative decision making. Similar

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to the emphases on building community in historical traditions of African American women’s leadership, the women used personal involvement and attention as a medium for initiating structure, identifying places of struggle or conflicting viewpoints, and encouraging autonomy and self-definition. Specifically, the women used a combination of three tactics to facilitate participative decision making: collaborative debate, autonomy, and information gathering. The term collaborative debate is used to refer to the process of dialectic inquiry in which employees who are likely to disagree with prevailing opinions are invited to give input via one-to-one argument and explicit agreement and refutation (Kennedy, 1980) for the purpose of collaboratively reaching decisions. This might involve bringing together diverse or conflicting groups or simply pulling together the groups necessary to move forward on a project that had been stifled by indecision and disagreement. Decision autonomy is another decision participation tactic revealed in the data. Employee accounts showed evidence that the executives encouraged departments to be autonomous in making decisions, for example, ‘‘bringing the executive in the loop,’’ as one employee phrased it, ‘‘only when they needed to.’’ The third tactic for inviting participation is information gathering, with emphasis placed on assembling experiences and knowledge dispersed throughout the organizational unit. The women saw themselves as a conduit through which the diversity of viewpoints could be brought together, negotiated, and enacted, and their employees confirmed this viewpoint. Leadership through Boundary Spanning The women’s leadership communication revealed a reenvisioning of fixed organizational boundaries as permeable and fluid enactments of conversation and community building. According to the executives’ supervisors interviewed, women were effective in articulating the organization’s mission and purpose and connecting the organization to the community in positive ways. These connections reveal an approach to leadership, reminiscent of the kind of community building in African American women’s history, where it is possible to redefine a community based on a pressing need.

DECONSTRUCTING ‘‘TRADITIONAL’’ NOTIONS OF INSTRUMENTALITY AND COLLABORATION Taken together, these themes challenge traditional notions of instrumental leadership as directive and controlling and collaborative leadership as nurturing and caring. This study revealed an approach to leadership where collaboration is worked out at the intersections of control and empowerment. Control is (re)defined as interactive and personal, rather than competitive and distant, and becomes a means for empowerment. The leader’s focus is on the other, not as

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a means of affirming the other person per se—although that may be a likely outcome—but as a way of assessing points of view and levels of (others’ as well as their own) readiness to perform. Redefining Instrumentality Instrumentality as a leadership strategy is often characterized as direct— unilateral, competitive, and aimed at controlling others—consistent with traditional views of white, middle-class masculine communication patterns (Eagly, 1987; Itosener, 1990). In this study, African American women executives’ communication is described as direct, but the interpretations are positive and proactive. Grounded in the experiences of the executives and the people with whom they interact, the notion of directness is (re)defined as a type of openness in communication designed to invite dialogue and personal growth. This view reconceptualizes instrumentality as both direct and relational (Fairhurst, 2001). It is direct, in terms of the strategic framing and transmission of messages (Fairhurst & Saar, 1996), and relational in terms of the emphasis on dialogue and meaning construction. This view broadens the concept of instrumentality to include processes associated with transformational leadership— charisma, inspiration, providing intellectual stimulation, and showing individualized consideration (Avolio & Bass, 1988; Bass, 1985). Additionally, with the dual emphasis on strategic message transmission and dialogue, this expanded view of instrumentality casts both leaders and followers as active agents in the creation of organizational meaning. Redefining Collaboration In this study, collaboration is revealed as a negotiated and dynamic process that combines redefined elements of instrumentality, control, and empowerment. As a leadership strategy, this view of collaboration emphasizes the paradoxical practice of direct engagement (i.e., constraint/structure) that creates routes for individual empowerment and community building (i.e., creativity/ process). It contradicts the either/or thinking of traditional notions of collaboration and instrumentality and more accurately captures the both/and nature of organizational leadership (Fairhurst, 2000; Marshall, 1993). African American women executives’ interactive approach to leadership provides a way for leaders in an increasingly diverse workplace to serve as conduits through which a diversity of viewpoints can be brought together, negotiated, and enacted. Disrupting Traditional Views of ‘‘Feminine’’ and ‘‘Masculine’’ Leadership This view challenges the symbolic images of women as master collaborators who shun attempts to control others (Helgesen, 1990; Loden, 1985). Rather

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than viewing collaboration as an alternative to control, where control is defined in terms of traditionally masculine values such as distance, detachment, and inviting competition (Marshall, 1993), directness and control are a means for collaboration. Control is redefined as personal and interactive. The focus is on the other, as a way of assessing points of view and levels of readiness to perform. The (re)conceptualized notions of collaboration and instrumentality reported here counter the hegemonic discourses that have suppressed black women’s ideas and expands traditional views of organizational leadership. By placing black women at the center of analysis, we can begin to see the both/and quality of black women’s voices (Collins, 1990). Behavior deemed as controlling, conflictual, or acquiescent through a larger cultural text that devalues African American women is understood here as the capacity for these women to see the infinite possibilities of individual characteristics through a lens of constructing a solution. Emerging from a social location at the intersection of race, gender, and class oppression within dominant culture society, African American women’s voices are simultaneously confrontational (in response to different interests) and collaborative (in response to shared interests, Collins, 1998a). The result is a process of leadership that produces what Collins called ‘‘contextualized truth.’’ Based on Mae Henderson’s (1989) metaphor of speaking in tongues, ‘‘contextualized truth emerges through the interaction of logic, creativity, and accessibility’’ (Collins, 1998a, p. 239). Implicit in the process of producing contextualized truth is the willingness and ability to construe knowledge and values from multiple perspectives without loss of commitment to one’s own values (Bruner, 1990, p. 30).

CONCLUSION One of the greatest challenges in postindustrial organizing is creating communicative environments in which people find meaning and connection in a social world that is increasingly fragmented and disconnected. In the study reported here, I used a critical feminist perspective to examine African American women executives’ leadership communication within majority white maledominated organizations in the United States. By placing African American women at the center of analysis, this research challenged the hegemonic discourses that limit African American women’s access to the meaning-making process in leadership theory. As a result, this study revealed new ways of thinking about instrumental and collaborative leadership. In the twenty-first century, leadership theorizing should reflect the interplay and struggle of the multiple discourses that characterize postindustrial society. An important role of leadership is certainly to animate (i.e., bring to the foreground) and then facilitate the negotiation of this interplay. In the present study, this process is revealed in an interactive approach to leadership in which the executives see themselves as a conduit through which a diversity of viewpoints

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could be brought together, negotiated, and enacted. We should continue to explicate theories of leadership that acknowledge the facilitation of multivocality as a central process. The themes that summarize African American women’s traditions of leadership as an exemplar of best leadership practices are not intended as a final vocabulary on African American women’s approaches to leadership and organizing. Rather, they are put forth as a beginning—a positioning of cultural experience into the center of the study of organizational leadership. For too long, African American women’s strength as leaders has gone unacknowledged, devalued, and otherwise marginalized. My hope is that future studies of African American women leaders will broaden and enrich the leadership themes presented here.

NOTE Adapted and used with permission of Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc. from Patricia S. Parker, Race, Gender, and Leadership: Re-Envisioning Organizational Leadership from the Perspectives of African American Women Executives (Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 2004). # 2004 by Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc.

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Welter, B. (1966). The cult of true womanhood, 1820–60. American Quarterly, 18, 151–174. Welton, K. (1997). Nancy Hartsock’s standpoint theory: From content to ‘‘concrete multiplicity.’’ Women & Politics, 18(3), 7–24. Wheatley, M. (1992). Leadership and the new science. San Francisco: Berrett-Koehler. White, D. G. (1985). Ar’n’t I a woman? Female slaves in the plantation south. New York: W. W. Norton. Williams, J., & Dixie, Q. (2003). This far by faith: Stories from the African American religious experience. New York: William Morrow. Williams, L. E. (1996). Servants of the people: The 1960s legacy of African American leadership. New York: St. Martin’s Press. Witherspoon, P. D. (1997). Communicating leadership: An organizational perspective. Boston, MA: Allyn & Bacon. Wood, J. T. (1994). Who cares: Women, care, and culture. Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois University Press. Wood, J. T. (1998). Gendered lives: Communication, gender and culture (2nd ed.). Belmont: Wadsworth. Yoder, J. D., & Aniakudo, P. ( June, 1997). ‘‘Outsider within’’ the firehouse: Subordination and difference in the social interactions of African American women firefighters. Gender & Society, 11(3), 324–341. Yukl, G. (2002). Leadership in organizations (5th ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ: PrenticeHall.

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Leadership Journeys: The Courage to Enrich the World Nancy J. Adler

Do not forget, you are here to enrich the world. You impoverish yourself if you ever forget that errand. —Woodrow Wilson

This chapter focuses on the global aspects of business in the twenty-first century and the need for good leaders who have a global perspective. It is a review of the history of research on women in international management and global leadership, including studies on women as expatriate managers. I frame my understanding of the increasing role that women are playing both in terms of women’s need to gain international experience and in terms of the world’s need for a new type of leadership that can simultaneously bring fiscal and societal success. This chapter was originally drawn from a keynote address on women’s contributions to global leadership that was given at the Hofburg Palace in Vienna, Austria, to the executive leadership of the United Nations.

VIENNA, 2003 Vienna symbolizes the height of human civilization, having given the world great architecture, art, music, philosophy, psychology, and so much more. The Hofburg Palace stands in the center of Vienna as elegant testament to Austrian leaders and power, past and present. As executives from the twentythree major United Nations’ organizations and their international-development and private-sector colleagues enter the palace, they cannot help but feel awed by the grandeur of the sculptural facades elevating each building beyond the majesty of its neighbor, beyond mere practicality and everyday ordinariness.

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Vienna also symbolizes the nadir of civilization, and both the heights and the nadir are present with me this morning as I walk toward the palace along Vienna’s grand boulevards, meandering at random through her beautifully manicured gardens. ‘‘Was this the park where my mother played as a young girl? Is this the street where Nazi thugs kicked yet another Jew until he fell to the ground and then continued kicking while they forced him to scrub the boulevard with a toothbrush?’’ I enter the Hofburg Palace. My invitation is to deliver the keynote address on women’s contributions to global leadership to the assembled conferees, all of whom care equally passionately about the performance of their organizations and the quality of civilization on this planet. As I move toward the podium, I am aware of the necklace my grandmother smuggled out of Austria more than sixty years ago lying gently around my neck. Encircling my words is the strength, love, and support of multiple generations of my family, with its lineage of strong women, each of whom was a leader in her own time in history. Although my voice comes from inside me, it also comes from these strong and beautiful women. They died so I might be born; their voices cannot be denied, ‘‘Speak your truth Nancy, for if not, we died in vain.’’ Even moments before I begin to speak, I am still unclear as to exactly what I want to say. Yet as I begin, the words flow without hesitation. Nobody in this room chose their profession randomly. Nobody chooses to confront society’s inequities because a help-wanted ad happened to appear on the day they were looking for a job. Nobody makes this kind of commitment to contribute to the world unless they have the courage to see reality for what it is— complete with all its devastating imperfections—while simultaneously maintaining the hope needed to try to do better.

In poetry and paintings, the collage of wisdom I had created for the executives appears—an aesthetic reflection supporting profound and courageous leadership. The collage invites the audience of leaders to return to the deeper reasons they remain so committed to the world and its inherent possibilities, even in the face of terrorism and unimaginable inequities. As Hewlett-Packard’s former CEO, Carly Fiorina described it, the collage invites each executive into a ‘‘world of dreams expressed in art; [a world] . . . freed from the laws of every day.’’1 All of us chose our profession—our calling—because we know that the world is in trouble. All of us know we must do better than we have done historically. I too did not choose my profession randomly. I did not choose to focus on global leadership without reason. The reasons for my choice are embedded right here, in Vienna. As I remember my Viennese great-grandmothers, grandmother, and mother, all of whom lived in this city, I understand my choice, and I understand, at the deepest levels, why we must do much, much better. My mother was born in Vienna less than ten minutes from the Hofburg Palace. My mother’s first thirteen years were filled with all the splendor that has

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given Vienna its worldwide reputation for high culture. Then 1938 arrived and my mother’s world, along with that of all her neighbors, descended from cultured heaven into unadulterated hell. If it had not been for an Austrian family from a completely different religious and cultural background than that of my mother—a family who, unlike the vast majority of Viennese, chose not to deny the new horrifying and inhumane reality—my mother would not have lived. If it had not been for a family with extraordinary courage, that risked the life of every member of their household to hide a little girl, my mother would never have escaped, and I, needless to say, would never have been born. Good transcends evil; even as evil eclipses good.

‘‘. . . the unimaginable is now possible. The survival of the human species can no longer be taken for granted. The human species is now an endangered species.’’ Joseph Rotblat Artist ‘‘Marc Chagall gave this nihilist century a worthy concept—hope.’’ ‘‘We are all born with the potential to become human. How we choose to live [and to lead] will be the measure of our humanness. Civilization does not assure our civility. Nor does being born into the human species assure our humanity. We must each find our own path to becoming human.’’ David Krieger Carman Moore, ‘‘When I feel what it feels like to be really human, I hear music.’’ Ramon Munoz Soler: ‘‘At school we are programmed to give science and technology the last word, but in the maelstrom of our civilization we long to hear the first word.’’ ‘‘What we cannot comprehend by analysis, we become aware of in awe.’’Abraham Joshua Heschel Donella Meadows, ‘‘We do, with astonishing frequency, produce moments of nobility. Our culture just doesn’t choose to feature them on the nightly news.’’

Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Elie Wiesel reminds us that it is human to have hope; that hope is not an empirical conclusion based on the evidence at hand, but rather an individual choice to assert our humanity.2 Former U.S. President Woodrow Wilson insisted that our job, as leaders and as human beings, is to enrich the world. Our job is to confront reality with hope—not with a trite, superficial hope, but with a strong, robust hope founded on all our collective wisdom and experience. Fundamentally, leadership is about committing ourselves to things far greater than ourselves.3 It’s about returning reality to possibility. There is no possibility we can return the world to a civilization we are proud of without including the voices, wisdom, talents, and experience of people from

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all continents and countries. We need the very best of what women and men worldwide can contribute. Yet, up until now, the world has rarely listened to most people, including ignoring the voices of most women. The message from those, like my great-grandmothers, grandmother, and mother, who walked these streets and witnessed the apex of civilization dissolve overnight into its nadir, is that global leadership is too important to attempt alone. It is too important for us not to draw on the wisest among us, whether male or female, Buddhist or Christian, Jew, Jain, or Muslim; whether European or Asian, African or American. As poet David Whyte reminds us: [T]he journey begins right here. In the middle of the road. Right beneath your feet. This is the place. There is no other place. . . [There is] no other time.4

COMPETITIVE FRONTIERS: WOMEN MANAGERS IN A GLOBAL ECONOMY At this point in history, what does it mean to be a woman and a global leader? I have known for years that a global perspective was essential for twentyfirst-century leadership and have conducted research on both male and female leaders for more than a quarter century. In the late 1970s, however, as I finished my doctorate at the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA) and began looking for an academic home, I found few management schools at major U.S. universities interested in taking a global perspective. In interview after interview, I was told that international management constituted too narrow a focus. ‘‘Strange,’’ I thought, ‘‘They view domestic studies as appropriately broad, and yet global studies as too narrow.’’ At one top-ranked university, I was even told that they would offer me a professorship if I promised never to teach ‘‘that stuff ’’ (referring to international management) to their MBAs. I declined their offer and accepted a faculty position in Canada at McGill University. In Montreal’s multilingual and multicultural setting, I found a management school where the overall perspective was so cosmopolitan that no seminar needed to be explicitly labeled international—for what would the other seminars be labeled? Parochial? Offering managers a choice between the international and parochial (domestic) versions of a particular curriculum—be it marketing, finance, or strategy—seemed clearly absurd to me as well as to my new McGill colleagues. My research in the early 1980s focused on a broad range of cross-cultural management issues facing companies, including the complexities of strategic international human resource management. Given that I, along with many

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other observers of the rapidly shifting geopolitical landscape, was already convinced that successful businesses could no longer remain local, the paucity of women gaining international experience concerned me. No matter how much emphasis North Americans placed on employment equity, especially for the increasing number of women managers, it seemed highly unlikely that anyone would be promoted into the senior leadership of the next generation of global companies if he or she had not had the opportunity to work abroad. The results from my research on women expatriate managers confirmed my fears: whereas more than 40 percent of domestic North American managers by that time were women, less than 3 percent of the people being sent abroad by major multinationals on expatriate assignments were women.5 With this preponderance of men defining the universe of future corporate leaders, the situation did not bode well for either the women or the companies as they entered the most competitive economic era that business had ever faced. Why were multinational companies continuing to limit their competitiveness by restricting their choices to men? At that time, most multinational companies believed three ‘‘myths’’ and used them to explain the dearth of women managers being sent abroad. The truth of none of the three myths, however, had ever been tested:   

Myth 1: Women do not want to become international managers; Myth 2: Companies refuse to send women abroad; and Myth 3: Foreigners’ prejudice against women renders them ineffective, even when they are interested in going abroad and succeed in having their companies send them.

We researched each of the three myths to assess whether they were, in fact, true. Myth #1, we discovered, was blatantly false. Whereas women from prior generations may have hesitated to take foreign assignments, by the 1980s women and men had become equally interested in seeking opportunities to work abroad.6 Myth #2, on the other hand, proved true. The majority of multinational companies did hesitate, if not altogether resist, in providing their women professionals with opportunities for international experience. Myth #3 was more difficult to assess, but ultimately proved false. For years, companies had assumed that the level of resistance to expatriate managers varied according to the cultural traditions of host countries. To our surprise, however, we discovered that 97 percent of the women who were sent abroad succeeded, irregardless of country; a much higher success rate than that of their male counterparts.7 Indeed, almost half the women (42 percent) reported that being a woman offered them more advantages than disadvantages to their professional success.8 Only 20 percent reported that being a woman was a net disadvantage.9 Such evidence proved that the belief that host-country discrimination acts as a barrier against foreign women managers’ success was, in most

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cases, a myth. Host nationals, in most cases, treat foreign women managers with the respect they need to succeed. In the 1970s and 1980s, the women who worked as expatriate managers were very much pioneers. Typically, they were the first women their companies had ever sent abroad. Because international positions were rarely forthcoming, many had to persistently encourage their companies to send them, and often had to strategically position themselves within the company to seize international opportunities when they arose. Because, in most cases, there was no woman predecessor to act as a role model, their deliberate choices to seek positions abroad required courage, resolve, and resiliency—qualities other women, including my great-grandmothers, had displayed in other historic settings. The major barrier to women’s international success was rarely the women themselves, nor a falsely assumed discrimination by local host cultures around the world. Rather, the major barrier remained the resistance put forth by the women’s own companies as the decision makers continued to believe in Myths #1 and #3, and therefore chose, with few exceptions, not to offer international assignments to even their highest potential female managers. Given the increasingly competitive nature of the global economy in the 1980s and 1990s, companies needed to change their assumptions and provide more opportunities for both their high-potential women and men to gain expatriate experience. Summarized most succinctly by Harvard Business School Professor Rosabeth Moss Kanter: Meritocracy—letting talent rise to the top regardless of where it is found and whether it is male or female—is essential to business success in free-market economies. Within this context, the equality of women in the work force is no longer a political luxury. It has become a competitive necessity.10

To dispel the erroneous myths that were hindering companies from selecting their best candidates for international assignments, without regard to gender, our recommendations included: Don’t assume foreigners will treat expatriate women the same way they treat their local women; they won’t. Similarly, just because the prior era’s male expatriates often blamed failed assignments and early return on their wives, don’t assume that women in general have trouble adjusting abroad. The role of the spouse provides very different, noncomparable challenges to those faced by expatriate managers. Similarly, don’t assume that married women will not accept international assignments. If companies want women to accept assignments abroad and to succeed once there, they need to offer them flexible benefits packages and an infrastructure of support. Today, many companies offer packages that include executive-search facilities to help the trailing spouse find a job, airline tickets to allow commuting couples to stay connected, and other benefits designed for dual-career couples and single women expatriates. The era of simply offering a nice home and membership in the international club is over. Leading companies have discovered that they have

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much more control over women’s worldwide success—and therefore their own competitive success—than most had ever initially imagined. They have learned that exercising initiative leads to success for both the companies and the women.

GLOBAL LEADERS: NO LONGER MEN ALONE By the early 1990s, as my research shifted from focusing on expatriate managers to global leaders, I increasingly questioned the ‘‘pipeline myth’’—the belief that women just needed more time in their companies’ career-path pipeline before they would naturally be promoted into top positions. As I began examining the career paths of women who had actually achieved the number one leadership position in their country or company, it became clear that the women’s routes to power differed significantly from those taken by most men.11 Rather than working their way up through the corporate hierarchy—up through the pipeline—most women laterally transferred into their leadership positions. In the political realm, for example, most women presidents and prime ministers did not progress up through the political-party hierarchy. Instead, they laterally transferred into their country’s number one leadership position from other careers. Tansu Ciller, for example, taught economics at Turkey’s prestigious Bogazici University until shortly before she was elected Turkey’s first woman prime minister. Gro Harlem Brundtland, after having begun her career as a medical doctor, was elected as Norway’s first woman prime minister, and subsequently reelected for two additional terms before going on to lead the World Health Organization. In the business realm, a similar pattern holds true for many of the women who become CEOs of major multinational companies. Those who succeed rarely advance through the ranks of their company until they ultimately reach the top. Rather, they gain the number one position by laterally transferring into the CEO position in one company after having built their career in another company. Carly Fiorina is probably the most prominent example of this pattern. Fiorina grew her career at Lucent before being recruited to take over as CEO at Hewlett-Packard, a Fortune top thirty company. Certainly, the pattern of laterally transferring into senior positions of power calls into question the belief that a ‘‘glass ceiling’’ stops women from reaching the top. It appears that many women who become CEOs find it more expeditious to go around the glass ceiling than to try to break through it. Whereas it is true that within-organization hierarchical power structures in the political and corporate realms generally fail to support women as candidates for senior leadership, such lack of support does not stop the women from gaining power. Politically, for example, women often draw their support directly from the people rather than primarily from existing political-party hierarchies. Former president of Ireland Mary Robinson and former prime minister of Pakistan Benazir Bhutto provide good examples. Neither gained her support from a narrow political elite,

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but rather each campaigned in more small communities than any politician in her country had before her. Women business leaders often exhibit similarly ‘‘democratic’’ approaches, drawing their power directly from the marketplace rather than primarily from the hierarchical power structure within their own company. Successful entrepreneurs, of whom an increasing proportion worldwide are women, dramatically reflect this pattern. As Mary Robinson observed in her presidential acceptance speech: I was elected by men and women of all parties and none, by many with great moral courage who stepped out from the faded flags of Civil War and voted for a new Ireland. And above all by the women of Ireland . . . who instead of rocking the cradle, rocked the system, and who came out massively to make their mark on the ballot paper, and on a new Ireland.12

The nontraditional approach used by such women as Mary Robinson to obtain power and to reach the most senior positions offers an interesting model for twenty-first-century leadership that contrasts sharply with that used by most twentieth-century male leaders. Also contrasting the twentieth-century leadership dynamics surrounding most male leaders, women bring powerful public symbolism when they assume senior leadership roles that differs quite distinctly from the symbolism surrounding their male colleagues. In particular, because of their newness to such powerful positions, women are frequently viewed as symbols of hope, unity, and the possibility of change.13 When a woman is chosen to lead her company or country, especially in circumstances in which no woman has held that office before, people begin to believe that other more substantive and significant changes are possible. Similarly due primarily to their newness as senior leaders, women enjoy higher visibility than most of their male contemporaries. Carly Fiorina, for example, after being selected as the first woman and first outsider to lead HewlettPackard, received more press coverage in her first three months as CEO than Lew Platt, her predecessor, received in his entire eighteen years as CEO. Although the pattern is not yet clear at senior leadership levels, many suggest that women also use more democratic, inclusive, and unifying strategies than do their male counterparts.14 In the political realm, for example, it was a woman, Agatha Uwilingiyimana, former prime minister of Rwanda, who was willing to sign the peace treaty between the warring Hutu and Tutsis in an attempt to end the war in that genocide-ravaged country. Her predecessor, a man, refused to engage in a peace process that included representatives of all factions for fear he would be seen as disloyal by his own party and tribe. Demonstrating huge courage, Uwilingiyimana accepted the position of prime minister and signed the peace treaty at a time when no man was willing to do so. In one more tragedy in that already unimaginably tragic country, Uwilingiyimana was murdered for her leadership, not by the opposition, but sadly, by members of her own political

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party and tribe who resisted her attempts to reunify the country by creating an inclusive peace. Change, whether societal or organizational, whether sweeping or subtle, requires tremendous courage. The challenges facing today’s world leaders require a global perspective and extremely broad commitments. As former Body Shop CEO Anita Roddick recognized: ‘‘Leaders in the business world should aspire to be true planetary citizens. They have global responsibilities since their decisions affect not just the world of business, but world problems of poverty, national security and the environment. Many, sad to say, duck these responsibilities, because their vision is material rather than moral.’’15 Twenty-first-century leaders, whether women or men, derive their power from broadly based networks. They must be vision-driven, globally inclusive, and multiculturally persuasive, while simultaneously exhibiting courage and humility. As global leaders they are charged with taking ideas, people, organizations, and societies on a journey. The power to shape history means that a leader’s most critical task is to seek to enrich the world, rather than diminish it; to promote good and dispel evil; to propel civilization to its heights, while saving it from descending to its nadir. Economic viability and competitive success, while critically important parts of the equation, remain far from sufficient to define a leader’s most significant contributions.

THE ART OF LEADERSHIP: GIVING OURSELVES FOR THINGS FAR GREATER THAN OURSELVES16 Do women offer a greater possibility for significant leadership than do men?17 Symbolically, perhaps, but there is no gender-based entitlement to virtue or efficacy. Many predicted that women would demonstrate new, more inclusive and humanistic approaches. Examples of corrupt and damaging leadership, however, can be found among women as well as among men. As we have always known, but perhaps conveniently forgotten in other eras, our task is to seek out and to grow the types of leaders our time in history requires, not to inequitably prejudge either men or women as the ready-made, guaranteed solution. Today, to create the needed shift in our leadership approaches and vocabulary, I find myself turning away from most traditional leadership models and increasingly embracing the arts and artistic processes.18 The move from successful to significant leadership, as former CEO and president Frances Hesselbein describes it, cannot take place within the limitations of our current dehydrated leadership vocabulary.19 Significance relies upon traditional organizational efficiency and effectiveness. However, it is neither defined nor limited by these traditional management pursuits. Achieving significance demands new concepts, new imagery, and a new language; it demands that leaders reengage with the possibility of enriching the world. World-renowned corporate architect, recognized by Time Magazine as the 1999 Hero of the Planet,

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William McDonough reminds us, and our corporations, that being ‘‘less bad’’ does not make us good.20 And being good—being a contribution—demands new approaches. A global leadership seminar I conducted in the late 1990s for women business executives from around the world demonstrated the power of artistic processes to open new and needed perspectives. At the beginning of the seminar, I invited each of the participants to introduce herself by describing one time in which she had been particularly powerful at work. The discussion that ensued quickly turned overwhelmingly negative. The women saw power as primarily manipulative, coercive, military-based, hierarchical, and dominantly masculine. Indeed, these business leaders seemed on the verge of rejecting the notion of power altogether until one of the most senior women challenged the others by saying: ‘‘Unless you can tell me that the world is perfect, your country is perfect, your company is perfect, your community is perfect, and your family is perfect, don’t tell me that you’re not interested in power.’’ Everyone understood her message. As a professor and consultant, it is my goal to help executives access and use power for worthwhile ends; it is not my role to encourage them to reject power. In the seminar, my challenge was to find a way to reunite the women executives with their power without referencing the traditional, constricted, hierarchical modes that most had grown up with. My challenge was to reunite them with a contrasting approach to power that could support the possibility of enriching their companies and the world, rather than the probability of diminishing either or both. Such a conception of power, of course, demands courage, including:  



the courage to see reality as it actually is—to ‘‘collude against illusion’’ even when society and colleagues reject your perceptions;21 the courage to imagine a better world—to imagine possibility even when society and colleagues consider such possibilities naive, unattainable, or foolish; and the courage to communicate reality and possibility so powerfully that others can’t help but move forward toward a better future.

After my failure to engage the women executives in a productive discussion of power, I switched from words to an artistic process—in this case, to visual imagery. The following day, I offered the participants a pile of art supplies and invited them to create their own image of power. Without speaking or using any words in their artwork, each executive visually explored what power meant to her. After signing and posting their power-art, the executives interpreted the power images of their colleagues. What emerged was the most robust, positive, and owned definition of power I have ever witnessed. By shifting their vocabulary from words to images—from the commonplace to the novel, and from linear to holistic associations—each participant broadened her conception of

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power along with her relationship to its uses. After having viewed the gallery of power-art, everyone could again see the possibility of using power to simultaneously achieve positive personal, organizational, and societal outcomes. In the years that followed that initial experiment, other exciting programs for women who are global leaders have been successfully designed. One of the most exciting, the Judy Project, was launched this year as a living legacy to Judy Elder, an outstanding woman executive who died long before her full contribution as a mother, wife, and corporate leader could be fully achieved.22 To initiate the inaugural program, we invited Ben Zander, conductor of the Boston Philharmonic, to use music and artistic metaphors to open the realm of possibility. Similarly, Smith College and Dartmouth’s Tuck School of Business teamed up to launch the world’s first completely global program for women leaders.23 Did we use traditional approaches or leadership vocabulary in either program? Of course not. It was neither what we aspired to nor what would have worked.

LEADER AS ARTIST: ARTIST AS LEADER As an artist, my own paintings have involved similar, ongoing explorations. Artists, like leaders, constantly face the challenge of seeing reality as it is, even as they shift that reality into the realm of possibility, and communicate it powerfully and courageously. Perhaps the era has arrived when we can no longer be leaders of the economy and society without also reclaiming our birthright as artists and citizens. Success and significance cannot be achieved within the traditional language and models of twentieth-century leadership. As I described in my artist statement for the most recent exhibit of my paintings:24 For me, allowing a painting to be born is to stand in awe of one of life’s most beautiful mysteries. Invited by the blank paper, the best of my intentions and experience enter into a dance with uncontrollable coincidence. Neither the process nor the resulting art are ever completely defined. Which way will the colors run? What surprises will the ink reveal as it, ever so gently, touches the paint? I purposely use water-based media that don’t stay put where I place them on the paper. There’s never any illusion that I control the process. I only enter the dance; paintings emerge out of the dance. For me, being an artist is about giving birth to the possibilities inherent in mystery. Creation—whether on a canvas of words, visual images, or action—is, in fact, about relearning to dance with God.

VIENNA 2003: MUSIC SCAPES At the close of the United Nations conference, I walk onto the stage once again. This time, I am not preparing to speak but to paint—to visually accompany

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world-renowned violinist Miha Pogacik as he plays Bach.25 As soon as the music starts, the entire audience seems to disappear and I seemingly disappear with it, slipping into the music and the moment. The music surrounds me and becomes me. It is as though the music is choreographing me; I become a puppet following its motions. The paint gives birth to images; the music scape is born. The audience applauds; they, Miha, and I are engulfed in the magic. ‘‘Painting is not a performing art!’’ ‘‘Who cares! Leadership is a performing art.’’ I am in Vienna, where the apex and nadir of civilization have met. We are all in Vienna to engage in a new conversation about global leadership, and the role that both women and men are being invited to play. No one can erase the nightmare memories of past atrocities. Each of us, however, can and will shape future history. The choice is ours, today, to enter into a new conversation. The world needs us. The world is depending on us. For without our courage and compassion, there will be no future. By creating and entering into a new conversation, the world’s children will remember our contributions, and our leadership, with pride.

NOTES Reprinted with permission of John Wiley & Sons, Inc., from Linda Coughlin, Ellen Wingard, and Keith Hollihan, eds., Enlightened Power: How Women Are Transforming the Practice of Leadership (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2005), copyright # 2005 by Linkage, Inc. 1. Carly Fiorina’s commencement address at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) on June 2, 2000, available online at www.hp.com/ghp/ceo/speeches/mit.html. 2. Based on Mary Rourke’s article on Elie Wiesel titled, ‘‘His Faith in Peace Endures,’’ Los Angeles Times, fall 2002. 3. Based on Joan Chittister’s ‘‘To be human is to give yourself for things far greater than yourself,’’ as cited in Frederick Franck, Janis Roze, and Richard Connolly, eds., What Does It Mean to be Human? (Nyack, NY: Circumstantial Productions Publishing, 1998), p. 194. 4. David Whyte, The Heart Aroused (New York: Currency Doubleday, 1994), p. 27. 5. See Nancy J. Adler, ‘‘Competitive Frontiers: Women Managing across Borders,’’ in Nancy J. Adler and Dafna N. Izraeli, eds., from Competitive Frontiers: Women Managers in a Global Economy (Cambridge, MA: Blackwell, 1994), pp. 22–40. Also see Nancy J. Adler, ‘‘Women in International Management: Where Are They?’’ California Management Review, 26(4) (1984): 78–89. 6. Nancy J. Adler, ‘‘Women Do Not Want International Careers: And Other Myths about International Management,’’ Organizational Dynamics, 13(2) (1984): 66–79. 7. See Nancy J. Adler, ‘‘Pacific Basin Managers: A Gaijin, Not a Woman,’’ Human Resource Management, 26(2) (1987): 169–92. 8. Ibid. 9. Ibid. 10. Rosabeth Moss Kanter’s comment on Nancy A. Nichols’s Reach for the Top: Women and the Changing Facts of Work Life (Boston: Harvard University Business School Press, 1994), as cited in the book review by John R. Hook in Academy of Management Executive, 8(2) (1994): 87–89 (cited on p. 89).

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11. Nancy J. Adler, ‘‘Did You Hear? Global Leadership in Charity’s World,’’ Journal of Management Inquiry, 7(21) (1998): 135–43. 12. Mary Robinson’s presidential acceptance speech, RDS, Dublin, 9 November 1990 as reported by Fergus Finlay in Mary Robinson: A President with a Purpose (Dublin, Ireland: The O’Brien Press, 1990), p. 1. 13. Nancy J. Adler, ‘‘Shaping History: Global Leadership in the Twenty-First Century,’’ in Hugh Scullion and Margaret Linehan, eds., International Human Resource Management (London: Palgrave/Macmillan, 2003). 14. Alice H. Eagley and Blair T. Johnson, ‘‘Gender and Leadership Style: A MetaAnalysis,’’ Psychological Bulletin, 8(2) (1990): 233–56, cited in Susan Vinnicombe and Nina Colwill, The Essence of Women in Management (London: Prentice Hall, 1995), p. 32. 15. Anita Roddick, Body and Soul (New York: Crown, 1991), p. 226. 16. For a broader discussion of the ideas in this section, see Nancy J. Adler, ‘‘Leading Globally: Giving Oneself for Things Far Greater than Oneself,’’ Insights: Journal of the Academy of International Business, 1(2) (2001): 13–15. 17. For a discussion of predicted differences between women’s and men’s leadership, see Adler, ‘‘Shaping History.’’ 18. Nancy J. Adler, ‘‘The Art of Leadership: Coaching in the 21st Century,’’ in Howard Morgan, Phil Harkins, and Marshall Goldsmith, eds., Profiles in Coaching (Burlington: Linkage Press, 2003). Also see Nancy J. Adler’s seminar description at McGill University, ‘‘Leadership, Power, and Influence: The Art of Leadership,’’ Montreal, Canada, 2003. 19. Private conversation with Frances Hesselbein, former CEO of the Girl Scouts and president of the Drucker Foundation, at the Learning Network, Del Mar, California, January 2000. The phrase ‘‘dehydrated management vocabulary’’ comes from poet David Whyte. 20. From ‘‘The Next Industrial Revolution: William McDonough, Michael Braungart and the Birth of the Sustainable Economy’’ video program. See William McDonough, ‘‘William McDonough on Designing the Next Industrial Revolution,’’ Timeline, July/ August 2001, pp. 12–16. 21. See Parker J. Palmer, The Active Life: A Spirituality of Work, Creativity, and Caring (New York: Harper and Row, 1990) for a discussion of ‘‘collusion against illusion.’’ 22. The Judy Project, sponsored by a consortium of major Canadian companies, was launched in April 2003. Without the vision and support of Frank Clegg, CEO of Microsoft Canada, where Judy Elder had last contributed as a corporate leader, and Colleen Moorehead, president of E*TRADE Canada, this innovative program would not have been born. The author was a co-designer of the program. 23. The Smith-Tuck Program for Global Women Leaders was launched in 2003. The author was a co-designer and faculty member for the program. 24. Nancy Adler’s paintings were exhibited at the Aquatreize show, which opened on June 11, 2003, at Galerie Espace in Montreal. 25. Pogacik regularly combines his music with profound leadership messages for executive audiences worldwide.

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Corporate Culture and Leadership: Traditional, Legal, and Charismatic Authority Deborah A. Woo and Gillian P. S. Khoo

The accounting practices that rocked Wall Street in late 2001 prompted much of the country to question the leadership of several major firms. Since then, large institutional investors have sued, and elements of government have attempted to rein in wayward corporations, calling for a whole new level of financial accountability from corporate leaders.1 Had such corporate corruption been associated exclusively with women or persons of African, Asian, or Latino descent, media interpretations and explanations almost certainly would have speculated about how ethnicity and upbringing might have factored in. In sharp contrast, the subject of gender or race never arose when the alleged perpetrators of this unprecedented crime wave continually fell within a particular demographic profile. Although biographical details were not omitted as scandal after scandal identified the CEO at the helm,2 the sociological imagination of most reporters simply did not entertain the idea that race or gender were factors that might account for the patterns observed. We are not necessarily suggesting it should have, but the lack of symmetry illustrates a certain ubiquitous mindset pervading corporate cultures (i.e., the white male CEO as normal) such that minorities and women always have been more closely scrutinized and subjected to higher or different standards.3 This chapter focuses on the defining nature of leadership cultures—specifically the implications of traditional, legal, and charismatic authority for those who are culturally marginal. This chapter begins with a story of rebellion against a particular mold of corporate leadership, that is, the ‘‘tough’’ boss CEO. The high-profile drama involved consummate insiders within the business elite, that is, white males who were Morgan Stanley executives. The turmoil inside the organization marginalized those who self-identified with a more give-and-take subculture and who tried to distance themselves from the more autocratic leadership style. According to sociologist Max Weber, traditional authority implies status derived from personal allegiances, traditional customs, or age-old practices. This typically

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patriarchal authority commands personal loyalty and obedience that stem from sharing a common background rather than from specific rules for behavior. Its modern-day corporate equivalent similarly recruits advisors, associates, board members, and fellow officers from an informal network of favorites, already known or related to one another in some way. Not surprisingly, this form of recruitment excludes many women and minorities who are not part of this inner circle. By contrast, ‘‘legal authority’’ is anchored in an impersonal order, emphasizing objective rules and norms, whereby hierarchy reflects different levels or spheres of competence or specialized training.4 For minorities and women, the legal or rational bureaucratic order offers specific rights and protections otherwise denied those who are not part of the key social networks: ‘‘It may be true that the law cannot make a man love me, but it can keep him from lynching me and I think that’s pretty important’’ (Martin Luther King Jr.).5 The research in the second section of this chapter illustrates how within a given corporate culture traditional and legal authority can represent competing orientations and how in turn the traditional leadership culture erects a glass ceiling for Asian Americans. Ironically, although ensconced in a scientific workplace environment that celebrates the impersonal ideal of rational authority (science), these professionals became the quintessential representatives of the scientific ethos. In contrast to traditional and legal authority, Weber’s concept of charismatic authority captures the visionary perspective demonstrated by most highperforming executives. In Weber’s view, charisma is a rare personal quality or trait, that is, one that is not so much acquired or achieved via individual effort, coaching, or training but a quality with which one is gifted. However, we believe this quality can be inculcated under the right circumstances. In the third and final section, ‘‘Managing and Leading in the Twenty-First Century,’’ Khoo’s experience as an executive coach provides a case study that illustrates how strategic leadership can be actively fostered. Woo’s emphasis, however, is on how effective leadership inheres not simply in individual qualities but also in a set of relationships. If so, there are theoretically diverse ways in which a strategic, visionary, or charismatic leadership might be cultivated, depending on the social or cultural nexus in which such a person is expected to lead.

‘‘IN BUSINESS, TOUGH GUYS FINISH LAST’’ With the merger of Dean Witter and Morgan Stanley in 1997, a crisis in management ensued that eventually brought the authoritarian style of corporate leadership under scrutiny. The above title to a New York Times column might seem a strange observation to most.6 Whether one believes the playing field in corporate America is level or not, the image of alpha males falling behind the pack is incongruous. The Times story, however, was about a clash between two different corporate cultures at Morgan Stanley Dean Witter. The former head of

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Dean Witter, Philip J. Purcell, would run Morgan Stanley with the same autocratic style to which he had been accustomed for almost two decades. This was consistent with a kind of leadership that emerged during the 1980s—one that emphasized a certain brand of toughness, rule by fear, unapologetic ruthlessness, and brutal self-expression that took the form of fist-pounding, tough talk, abusive language, and explosive tempers. Purcell’s undemocratic and isolationist tendencies antagonized many who valued Morgan Stanley’s ‘‘culture of give and take and constructive disagreement.’’ Back in the 1980’s, Fortune published a feature called ‘‘America’s Toughest Bosses.’’ . . . If Fortune were compiling such lists today, Mr. Purcell might rank near the top. He wasn’t a screamer . . . Nor is he the sort to bang his fists on the table. But during his nearly two decades running first Dean Witter and then Morgan Stanley, where he became chief executive when the companies merged in 1997, he was ruthless, autocratic and remote. He had no tolerance for dissent or even argument. He pushed away strong executives and surrounded himself with yes men and women. He demanded loyalty to himself over the organization. He played power games. He had little contact with rank and file.7

Disaffection and defection were legion until eight former Morgan Stanley executives reemerged from retirement to organize Purcell’s ouster.8 Purcell’s tendency to insulate himself from detractors and surround himself with only loyals is a form of traditional authority,’’ which sociologists have long associated with feudal, highly exclusive patriarchal cultures that manifest themselves today in the old boy network. Aspects of Morgan Stanley culture, too, shared these problematic elements. In July 2004, the securities firm was found guilty of sex discrimination involving 340 women. The $54 million settlement was the second largest reached by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) with a company it has sued—a ‘‘watershed in safeguarding and promoting the rights of women on Wall Street,’’ according to federal judge Richard Berman.9 At least $12 million would be paid to Allison Schieffelin, a key plaintiff and bond salesperson who sued on the grounds she had been denied a promotion to managing director because of her sex. Her complaints also included inappropriate behavior witnessed or endured on the trading floor, lascivious male behavior, and retaliatory firing. Elizabeth Gross, the lead trial lawyer for the EEOC, saw Morgan Stanley as merely the tip of the iceberg: ‘‘discrimination is very much a problem. . . . I expect that we will hear more from women on Wall Street and from racial minorities on Wall Street.’’ Given that the $54 million was but a fraction of the $1 billion Morgan Stanley had earned the previous quarter, Purcell was likely pleased with the settlement: ‘‘We are proud of our commitment to diversity and would like to thank the E.E.O.C. staff for working with us to conclude this matter in such a positive way.’’10 Outside of the settlement costs,

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the company agreed to earmark $2 million to diversity programs, monitored by an independent agency to improve occupational opportunities for its women employees. If the seismic rumblings within Morgan Stanley represent two different movements within the corporate culture, the rebels challenging Purcell’s regime represent one fault line. The female employees challenging sexism represent another. Whether they are precursors to other, more fundamental changes in the corporate culture remains to be seen. When Carly Fiorina stepped up to the helm of Hewlett-Packard (HP), she believed (and may still believe) there is no glass ceiling for women made of the ‘‘right stuff.’’ Her departure, however, may have received more scrutiny because she was female.11 But her removal is also noteworthy not for reasons of gender bias but because she did challenge the HP culture while failing to establish strategic alliances with people within HP.12 Although corporations have moved toward more diffuse or decentralized forms of governance, and away from command-and-control models of management,13 this shift has not necessarily translated into mobility for women or minorities. Thus, despite growing appreciation for leadership qualities commonly associated with women, some organizations simply turned to training men in these skills, no longer seeing these traits as distinctly female. As doubts about the effectiveness of the command-and-control model made their way into the executive suite, these same behaviors began to appear in a positive light and were no longer considered female. They were now simply good leadership traits. . . . Similarly, when the attributes associated with the interactive leadership style are considered organizationally effective, they are often presented as gender-neutral. Ironically, in some organizations men are now being trained to be interactive leaders while women are still hitting the glass ceiling because they are interactive leaders.14

It has been speculated, moreover, that a glass ceiling for women derives from the fact that bosses and peers continue to use traditional sex role criteria in evaluating performance. For example, women who seek and value others’ opinions are seen as more effective by their peers than women who don’t; by contrast, this quality is irrelevant to men, who are seen by their bosses as more effective when they are adopt a ‘‘forceful, assertive, and competitive approach.’’15 At the most senior levels, these gender-specific styles persist, and although both men and women are seen as equally effective in their general leadership, women are at a certain disadvantage because they are more resultsoriented rather than strategically oriented. One theory is that they experience a greater need to prove their worth, perceiving strategic thinking as a luxury and a riskier endeavor.16 In attempting to arrive at core criteria for senior executive service (SES), the Office of Personnel Management conducted research that ultimately identified

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five core qualifications which would define the ‘‘SES corporate culture’’— leading both change and people, building coalitions/communications, being results-driven, and having business acumen.17 However, attempts to hire or promote from underrepresented groups matter little if, as the research in the next section points out, an implicit organizational preference exists for a narrow range of leadership skills.

CANARIES IN THE COAL MINE The phrase ‘‘glass ceiling’’ was coined in the mid-1980s as a metaphor for the artificial barriers preventing white women in corporate America from rising into the executive ranks. Documented complaints of such a ceiling had appeared at least a decade earlier—among Asian Americans. As ‘‘canaries in the coal mine,’’ however, they did not form the critical mass that white women did. White women, by contrast, were much better positioned as a cohort not only to be heard but to provide the major inspiration for alternative theories of leadership. Until the 1980s, these were primarily of three types—trait, behavioral, and situational.18 The theory that a stable set of core traits ensures the makings of a good leader with the right stuff has since been discredited. Yet a dominant type of personality continues to be selected and groomed for management. It is one, moreover, that continues to constitute a major glass ceiling barrier for Asian Americans. As a diverse population in the United States that comprises more than fifty subethnic groups, speaking over thirty different languages, Asian Pacific Americans (or more accurately, a specific subgroup of Asian Americans) have become highly visible in the professional occupations yet are disproportionately underrepresented as executives, faring worse than other minorities, with Asian American women doing even less well than their male counterparts. In 2002, their professional-managerial representation in private industry was a lopsided ratio of three to one, with things only slightly better in the federal workforce.19 By contrast, white males were overrepresented in management compared to their numbers in the professional workforce. Other studies have reported lower returns on education despite similar levels of education or work experience.20 This section focuses on how both the organizational culture and structure constituted serious impediments. The research site in question, referred to as XYZ Aerospace, is a government research center with a large concentration of scientists and engineers, accounting for almost 60 percent of XYZ’s workforce in 2000. From its inception, it was a highly prestigious organization with a culture that emphasized technical competence and an ‘‘ivory-tower’’ approach to research. The projects themselves had a certain glamour, and working in such an organizational enterprise bestowed the status of being affiliated with the best and the brightest.’’ The work situation alone was highly attractive—decentralized,

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flexible, providing a great deal of individual autonomy and control as well as abundant opportunities for hands-on experience that was intrinsically satisfying. Thus, although the salaries of scientists and engineers were not as competitive as in the private sector, recruitment of talented scientists and engineers was never a problem. Finally, the overall culture and politics of the workplace was described as a ‘‘liberal’’ atmosphere, which included leadership support for diversity. The description of the organization provided by Asian American employees is congruent with the organization’s public face. A 1991 survey of Asian American employees indicated they still saw XYZ as a place that gave one the opportunity to use one’s ‘‘talents and expertise’’ to reach one’s ‘‘maximum potential.’’ At the time of the study, downsizing and outsourcing, however, had already created a more bureaucratic and centralized agency, dampening the original e´lan and transforming managerial work into administrative burden. Thus one employee explained: I’m not too happy about the direction the whole agency is going. . . . Our budgets are being cut. . . the agency is suffering somewhat from administrative burdens, whereas in the beginning, I think, the agency had a ‘‘can-do’’ attitude, and they were able to do a lot of things. . . . There seems to be just everincreasing administrative burden—more reports, generating more reports. And it’s difficult to understand why these reports are needed. . . . And when you have reports and response to headquarters [it] takes the time away from your real management job. (Asian American male)

In an entity where scientists and engineers are the heartbeat of the organization, Asian Americans formed a critical mass at 13 percent of the science and engineering workforce, compared with 4 percent for Hispanics, 2 percent for blacks, and 1 percent for Native Americans. Their technical competence was unquestioned. However, for most of their history at XYZ, they have been largely absent in the executive ranks. Complaints about the glass ceiling formally surfaced in the early 1970s, when the Asian American Employee Association assumed the task of representing the career development concerns of more than 200 Asian American employees at the research center, approximately half of whom were scientists and engineers. According to one person, studies of their managerial representation were initiated at the request of the center director, whose explicit aim was to show that Asian professionals at the center were a ‘‘model’’ for other minorities, who were more vocal and aggressive about problems at XYZ. According to another view, the studies were launched only when the center faced a race discrimination suit from Asian professionals themselves. Whatever the motivating factor, the statistical findings proved surprising. Instead of being a model of mobility, Asian American employees were one grade lower than expected, and the critical comparison group was not other minorities but white males.

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Despite such documented disparity, for almost fifteen years there continued to be no high-ranking Asian American managers—not until the intervention of former Congressman Norm Mineta, which led to the appointment in 1986 of XYZ’s first Asian American senior executive. Since then, the pipeline has continued to be constricted, with repeated surveys eliciting similar concerns about racial discrimination, ‘‘preselected’’ candidates and disparities at the highest levels, the need to work harder than others, and the failure to realize substantial reform.21 In 2005, there were no Asian Americans at the senior executive level. The remainder of this paper discusses how the organizational culture and structure effectively screen out Asian American candidates.22 Although racial stratification is the outward and most visible manifestation of mobility barriers, the glass ceiling at XYZ in many ways was experienced not so much as a racial issue but expressly as a cultural issue. Culture Conflicts, Corporate and Ethnic The culture at XYZ, premised as it is on scientific pursuits, reinforces the impersonal rules for advancement that inhere in a legal/bureaucratic rationality, specifically merit-based criteria. Still, the corporate culture was perceived as problematic in many ways. First and foremost, the lightning rod for much criticism was the dominance of an authoritarian style that inhibited the full participation of all employees and represented a negative model for Asian Americans aspiring to be managers. Second, this corporate culture included a subculture and social network that converged to preselect candidates, while bypassing eligible and qualified individuals who were outside this traditional old boy network. One major form of culture conflict, therefore, was rooted in a clash between the traditional, authoritarian model, on one hand, and the more impersonal model based on scientific or legal/bureaucratic procedures on the other hand. Third, another form of culture conflict was rooted in ethnic differences in values and behavioral styles and a certain racial/ethnic consciousness. In terms of everyday interaction, race or ethnicity were not salient parts of consciousness, and work relations were seldom said to be characterized by overt or covert racial prejudice. However, the aggressive behavioral style of white males was identified as a major factor responsible for the glass ceiling experienced by not only Asians but women: The glass ceiling occurs because we’re still operating under the cultural values of white males, . . . not all that compatible with Asian American culture or . . . [the] culture represented by women. . . . If you’re not aggressive, self-promoting, direct and articulate and . . . viewed as a risk-taker—if you don’t have those traits—it’s hard to climb the ladder of management, unless, of course, the whole culture of the organization changes. (Asian American male)

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Because Asian Americans were not aggressively assertive or outspoken, they were not perceived as having the required leadership skills. I think if you sit in on several meetings at Aerospace, you’ll see that there’s a general style of communication, of how a decision is made. . . . The most vocal people will just get their opinions out there on the table, and try to drive them forward. That will be a small subset of the people represented there and typically the Asians . . . aren’t going to be the first ones to get their opinions out there, and sometimes they won’t get their opinions voiced at all because they don’t want to vocalize what they’re thinking for many different reasons . . . people who are more assertive and I think in some ways more aggressive will get their voices heard, will get perceived to be the more active-thinking, more involved people, and then so there’s kind of a mindset set up by the superiors, the higher-level managers—‘‘Well, Jim, he speaks up at all the meetings. He’s got leadership, whereas Ted, you know, he’s not voicing his opinions. He’s a good engineer, but I don’t see him as management material.’’ (Asian American male)

At its worst, the corporate culture favored those who adopted a ‘‘bullying’’ approach, where the prerequisite mentality was ‘‘to be willing to step on other people’s toes,’’ ‘‘think of only yourself, and not for the collective group,’’ ‘‘to beat other people down for their ideas, because your ideas are better.’’ Not surprisingly, such individualistic behavior stifled opinion and exchange, creating an atmosphere of intimidation. Yet as another researcher has noted, expert cultures reaffirm this authoritarian style by valuing the conspicuous display of expertise, a style that also happens to be consonant with the style of majority males. In the expert sector, with its majority of men and minority of women, one of the most salient aspects of the workplace culture is the emphasis on expertise and the need to prove oneself and one’s expertise; ‘‘conspicuous expertise,’’ a constant fear of ‘‘not being the expert,’’ and the common response of doing a ‘‘snow job’’ to impress others have been found to be characteristic of expertsector micropolitics. . . . Conspicuous expertise is more consistent with traditional male gender, giving men some advantages in the new types of micropoliticking. Masculinity has traditionally been associated with proving one’s expertise, particularly in technical matters.23

The act of transforming one’s self to fit this mold is experienced as ‘‘a very artificial and very uncomfortable choice’’ (Asian American female). Adjustment seemed to pivot around whether they possessed a ‘‘killer instinct.’’ The lone Asian American executive at XYZ at the time traced his own abilities in this regard to having attended a Jesuit high school, where students were socialized to develop this instinct, to see themselves as among ‘‘the best,’’ and to display their talents so that they were positioned to lead. This included the ability to take a ‘‘controversial stand,’’ to ‘‘do battle,’’ to choose direct confrontation over

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negotiation. By contrast, ‘‘the Asian personality tends to be low-key, quiet. We’ll talk when there is a requirement to talk. White males will pound the table’’ (Asian American male). Asian styles of participation, by contrast, revolved around cultural norms of modesty, self-effacement, deference and respect toward others, collective decision making, and consensus building. For many, the implicit bias in X YZ’s organizational culture transformed deeply held personal values into negative attributes. I was brought up by my grandparents who were very devout Buddhists, and you don’t, in Japan, for example, you don’t promote yourself. That’s a real ‘‘no-no,’’ you know. So I was brought up with that, so it’s very difficult for me, for example, in an interview process to say a lot of good things about [myself ] . . . that’s a detriment, and I think Asian Americans suffer from that, a lot of them. . . . I think it’s more ingrained than people realize, that trait.

Cultural modesty not only failed to earn one recognition at XYZ but was a serious liability. As a young, aspiring manager pointed out, bluffing and expressions of bravado are necessary for demonstrating one’s worth to others: ‘‘Most of them [Asian Americans] . . . do not know how to boast.’’ Even where Asian American employees are not actively self-disparaging (one way cultural modesty gets manifested), they still unwittingly undercut evaluations of their own job performance by failing to ‘‘toot their own horn’’ and by assuming the objective merits of their work are obvious. In sum, on the surface, ‘‘communication skills’’ or ‘‘leadership skills’’ are neutral criteria or standards, but given the relational dimension to these qualities, there are culturally diverse ways in which these might be displayed. At X YZ Aerospace, however, there was a deeply entrenched subculture that impeded the recognition of other managerial styles. When asked if there were any special Asian American managerial traits, respondents mentioned the following: (1) listening and consensus-building skills, (2) ‘‘thoroughness and follow-through,’’ (3) an ability to effectively coordinate a team, and (4) skill in assessing the individual rather than seeing the individual simply as part of a group. Listening skills lent themselves to organizational goals in different ways. They were associated with greater efficiency, especially given the competition for ‘‘air time’’ in compressed and hurried meetings. As one manager observed, a ‘‘quiet’’ person is likely to ‘‘make a very thoughtful decision, and you don’t have to hear a whole long, drawn-out dissertation before they reach that decision.’’ Similarly, another person noted that the same quality might facilitate the ability to quickly achieve consensus through the ability to hear and absorb different viewpoints. The etiquette involved in being ‘‘considerate’’ almost required a certain amount of mind-reading—being ‘‘considerate in the sense that you consider everybody’s needs and what they’re really saying or asking, with some

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thought about what they need.’’ In this way, good listeners were transformed into ‘‘consensus builders,’’ managers who are ‘‘not autocratic, not dictatorial,’’ departing markedly from the ‘‘real cutthroat kind of style.’’ A cultural concern about efficiency attends not only how things get communicated but how they actually get done. Thus, one person underscored ‘‘thoroughness and follow-through’’ as a trait Asian Americans are likely to bring to administrative tasks, which may explain their overrepresentation as low- and middle-level managers, as well as their criticism of managers with little followthrough: ‘‘I’ve seen a lot of other managers who jump from project to project and never finish their work, and it’s frustrating working with them.’’ The following middle manager echoed this view, noting that Asian Americans displayed a ‘‘get-it-done attitude.’’ When asked about artificial barriers, she responded: Some of what I perceive to be the barriers are just the differences in management styles. I’ve noticed a lot of non-Asian managers having a difficult time making decisions or at least expressing their stand on a subject area. Whereas most of the Asian American managers I’ve seen want to discuss a subject and come to a conclusion at the same meeting (‘‘get it done’’ attitude) and it becomes frustrating always waiting for things to happen. (Asian American female)

The very appeal of middle and upper managerial work was linked with the desire to achieve visible results, to have a direct influence on organizational decisions or policy. The opportunity to influence the direction of the organization through the grooming of successors was a second, key factor. As an interview with the sole Asian American senior executive explained: It [senior management] allows you to define, create, and implement a vision of where you want to go and where you want the organization to go, and how it fits within the overall [XYZ Aerospace] vision. And second is, it helps you groom and train your successors or your ‘‘fast track’’ people. (Asian American male)

Finally, the fourth self-ascribed trait that Asian Americans see themselves as bringing to managerial work are their sensibilities when it comes to assessing the individual. This may seem incongruent with a collective orientation, but the two issues are closely interconnected. Thus, an administrative manager in human resources reported that Asian Americans would ‘‘trust and believe in individual abilities,’’ ‘‘look at what a person can do,’’ elaborating, ‘‘They don’t look at a person as part of a group but as an individual.’’ At the same time, their cultural expectations about mentoring assume that supervisors will take a more active, paternalistic role in monitoring their careers. By contrast, the corporate culture at X YZ was that each person was individually responsible for managing

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his or her own career. The following person described how the culture clash worked against Asian Americans who focused simply on doing a job well. It’s easy to come into an organization, especially a large government organization, and say, ‘‘They’re going to take care of me. As long as I do my work, I’ll get recognized. I’ll get my promotions.’’ That would be fine, but that’s not always the case, and things aren’t going to work as smoothly as that at times . . . I think that this is a cultural value that Asians have. . . . But American culture focuses on the individual, and so you really need to take care of yourself, and XYZ is pretty clear in career development. They say career development is the individual employee’s responsibility, so even though there are certain mechanisms to help the employee—there’s the performance plan, and career development plans—your manager may not have the time to come to you and say, ‘‘I’d like to sit down with you . . . and work out where you’ll be in the next few years, so you’ll get what you need to get your job done, and get to your fifteen or twenty-year career goal.’’ . . . If the individual doesn’t take the initiative to go to his or her manager and say, ‘‘I want to sit down and spend some time with you and talk about the work I’m doing and the areas I need to improve,’’ that type of discussion isn’t going to happen, and they’re going to fall behind on their career. (Asian American male)

The individual cannot be entirely blamed for failing to take charge of his or her career. Long-range career planning was also thwarted by a ‘‘chaotic management structure’’ that was at odds with the ‘‘traditional Asian preference for clear lines of authority.’’ As a chair of the employee association explained: It’s a rather chaotic management structure where there are no clear levels of responsibility. It opens up opportunities to those who are aggressive. This is a cultural environment which is contrary to the traditional Asian preference for clear lines of authority. For example, I have two different bosses—a supervisor who is responsible for my performance evaluation and appraisal and a project manager who determines my assignments. They may not speak to one another, and I would have to get the project manager, who knows my work better, to lobby on my behalf. This kind of structure repeats itself all the way, with each person having two or three bosses.

For this reason, it is not simply mentorship in the form of periodic feedback that is essential but sustained mentorship over the long haul, for example, sponsorship in critical developmental assignments, ensuring that the individual maintains high visibility and exposure to wider networks. This kind of mentoring, moreover, was not simply there for the asking, and Asian Americans were rarely identified for fast-tracking. Ironically, though disinclined toward self-promotion, the very fact that Asian Americans were not part of the old boy network ultimately impelled many to exert greater initiative on their own behalf. Thus, the following GS-15 level

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manager described how his progress up the ladder had been arduous, the result of sheer perseverance and aggressiveness in applying for vacancies.24 He did not have the endorsement or sponsorship of his immediate supervisor, who resented these individual career moves and worked against him at every turn. The training office does say that ‘‘these positions are open and anybody can apply, and please come and take at look at what is applicable for you.’’ But if you’re not chosen by somebody or sponsored by somebody, it’s tough to get in. . . . I wasn’t appointed to high-visibility assignments. I actually went for them and aggressively asked for them. There were no role mentors. I had no individual career plan written. I had a goal and I didn’t have any feedback worthwhile from the supervisors.

Dual Ladders and Dual Standards If the corporate culture was implicitly skewed toward rewarding the behavioral styles of white males, this was not the only artificial barrier. The dual ladder and dual standards represented two quite different forms of internal structural barriers. The Dual Ladder The dual ladder is comprised of an administrative and a technical ladder. The promotional criteria for each ladder differ. The technical ladder was created to accommodate professionals who wanted to pursue their research careers rather than be forced into management, originating out of a sincere attempt by organization to ‘‘make alternative goals viable’’ to valued professionals.25 At XYZ, Asian Americans were concentrated on the technical ladder. Although senior executive positions are theoretically available to employees on either ladder and technical proficiency continues to be a formal requirement, in practice crossing over to the administrative ladder is difficult. For one, at the point of midcareer, when managerial aspirations are likely to develop,26 the window of opportunity for making the transition to the administrative ladder is exceedingly narrow. As one respondent explained, there might only be ‘‘two or three chances’’ in the course of one’s entire career. Personally, he was given few such opportunities in his formative years. My complaint in the past was if you were not given an opportunity to manage . . . when you are in the thirties and early forties, as a first-line manager, you would never reach a middle manager by the time you are fifty. And then you will never reach the top manager. And one person, any person, can have only two or three chances in his or her career to move from one area to the other . . . and if they don’t let you to do it, you will forever will be bounded in terms of the lower management, which is the most difficult part of the management. In the earlier part of my career, when I was in the forties and

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I aspired to choose a managerial career because I thought it will be a faster way of promotions, and whenever the chances arrived, I applied [on] a number of occasions. It was just a dead-end. (Asian American male)

Second, highly specialized training is now reputed to be a liability when senior management calls for broad-based organizational and communication skills necessary for participating in a global environment encompassing a wider range of publics, organizational units, or domains. In general, the dominant perception was that Asian Americans were neither interested nor qualified to assume such leadership positions. The head of the Diversity Leadership Consortium called attention to the pervasiveness of this stereotype as follows: I think the perception at XYZ and maybe a lot of organizations is that Asians don’t want to be in charge. They’re not meant to be in charge of anything. They’re good workers, they’re good analysts, they’re good engineers, they’re good accountants, because they really get in and learn it and do well, but they’re not meant to be in charge . . . [of a project] or an organization. Not just the people part, but the whole thing. Setting the tone, being accountable, being the one whom everybody comes to when something goes wrong. . . . That they’re not good business managers. Meaning actually managing the business of the organization.

The employee survey data, however, have repeatedly indicated significant managerial interest (53 percent) among Asian Americans at XYZ. Upper management, in fact, was described as complicit in creating the perception that Asians were ‘‘not interested’’ in management—for example, by soliciting applications from those already committed to research activities. As one person explained, ‘‘The game is being played that they don’t ask those, except those they know aren’t interested. . . . It’s a way to keep the pipeline dried up and empty.’’ Increasing seniority has been associated with increasing perceptions of a glass ceiling.27 Jayjia Hsia thus observed: ‘‘Across all fields, Asian Americans with less than 15 years of experience earned comparatively higher salaries than those with more experience. Overall, Asian Americans with 15 years or more of experience earned on the average up to 4% less than whites with similar experience.’’28 At X YZ, older employers were more likely to perceive artificial barriers than younger recruits. Age may be correlated with career mobility for three reasons: (1) cultural, (2) relative competitiveness on the labor market, and (3) location on the ladder. The cultural explanation suggests that older and less acculturated Asian Americans will have greater communication problems as well as greater social or cultural constraints preventing them from venturing outside certain networks or niches. Younger, more acculturated Asian Americans, by contrast, have the

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cultural currency for making themselves more visible, being less culturally reserved, more outspoken, ‘‘savvy,’’ or outgoing. A second possible reason for the greater barriers experienced by more senior scientists and engineers is related to institutional efforts to retain ‘‘young, promising’’ recruits who are competitively sought by other employers. According to one senior scientist, this practice occurs at the expense of ‘‘older, productive’’ members. Third, perceptions of a glass ceiling obviously vary by age because of one’s location on the ladder. At XYZ, opportunities to apply for managerial jobs with important decision-making responsibilities do not arise until one has already passed through certain grade levels. GS-13 is, strictly speaking, a ‘‘nonmanagerial’’ position and was considered the cut-off point or dividing line between nonmanagerial and managerial jobs. Younger employees, those below level GS-13, were said to be more optimistic about their career prospects. The following twenty-five-year-old male was thus ‘‘highly satisfied,’’ with the ‘‘exposure’’ already given him in terms of visible job assignments. Informally, he socialized with his supervisors and other superiors after hours, playing on a softball team. Overall, he was confident that his hard work will continue to pay off in the years ahead. I think I am on track. So at twenty-seven, you should be [at grade level] 13. At thirty, you should be at 14. If by thirty I am not on 14, that means I am slow. . . . There is ‘‘no unequal opportunity.’’ . . . I haven’t encountered any problems with promotion. . . . If you work hard, well, and are reliable, you will get promoted. You might have a problem communicating with your supervisors—as long as they know and that you don’t slack off. I do know interpersonal barriers exist, but I have not experienced it personally. If you are good, sooner or later you will get promoted. (Asian American male)

Despite the optimism of such young recruits, several of their senior counterparts pointed out that it is only with increasing seniority that one presses against the upper levels of the corporate structure. A chief engineer thus predicted: ‘‘The younger (Asian Americans) . . . don’t feel that strongly about the glass ceiling. And that’s because they haven’t bumped up against it yet. They’re not old enough, but it’s going to hit them sooner or later.’’ Another engineer, close to retirement, confirmed this, stating that his younger colleagues were now coming around to this view: ‘‘Some of the younger colleagues . . . Asian Americans didn’t see it [the problem of a glass ceiling] because they were in their twenties. Now they’re in their thirties. They recognize that I spoke with a voice of experience instead of a voice of dissatisfaction only.’’ Double Standards Depending on which side of the dual ladder one is on, there are different promotional criteria. A more sinister kind of double standard involves the

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arbitrary application of evaluative criteria and the numerous, shifting rationales invoked to justify a particular appointment or denial. Both middle-level and senior managers, for example, saw lack of management training as mere pretext for exclusion given that much of their work had been learned on the job—not as a result of prior training. As one person explained, it was a catch-22 situation to require management training beforehand, when eligibility for that very training tended to be available only after promotion to certain grade levels. Reflecting on her own experience, a thirty-sixyear-old middle manager stated: ‘‘I believe a lot of these skills (communication skills, interpersonal skills, supervisory, and leadership skills) must be developed while in a management position and cannot be learned and possessed before being in a management position’’ (Asian American female). Other managers minimized the value of in-house training precisely because it lacked this experiential component. A forty-five-year-old contracting officer with an MBA thus explained: The courses are designed to familiarize the specialist with the regulations, the processes, but it doesn’t teach him how to make a decision. So that kind of comes from the school of hard knocks. You make some good decisions and some bad, and hopefully you learn from the bad decisions, and the good decisions. (Asian American male)

A sixty-eight-year-old engineer with a thirty-nine-year history at XYZ similarly noted that managerial experience was primarily acquired on the job, humorously adding that in the past there was no pretense to these appointments being anything other than fairly informal and casual. ‘‘They give you a two- or threeweek course at the training facility back east, but they don’t really teach you how to be a manager. I think you really have to learn it on the job. What they used to do is they used to pick the best researchers. . . . They’d say, ‘Hey, we’re promoting you to a manager.’’’ A fifty-seven-year-old administrator with a doctorate in electrical engineering commented that on-the-job training was more important than the degree he had in hand. I have a Ph.D. in electrical engineering, and that background helps me to understand the research environment of our organization, R&D activities that go on in my organization. But I don’t use that training per se. I don’t have to have a Ph.D. to do my job. So it’s sort of like on-the-job training along the way, so to speak, which got me here. I think I’m a good manager, and I’ve learned various skills on the job and also through training. You just acquire lots of experience when you’re in management over the years, and you’re using all those experiences, background to manage this organization. So it’s pretty broad.

In keeping with the legal/scientific mentality that framed their organizational experience as scientists, Asian Americans took seriously the emphasis on

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the government’s professed concern for objective qualifications like educational and work experience. To be bypassed by less qualified candidates was the source of many grievances. The following account by a senior scientist with a doctorate is discussed at length because it best illustrates how various rationales were invoked to disqualify—lack of management training, lack of certain degree requirements, and concern over possibly losing a person’s valuable contributions as a researcher. He recounted how upper management repeatedly ignored his superior degree qualifications. Initially denied the opportunity to move into management because he lacked management training, he was subsequently denied training on the grounds that he was not management material. Refused the privilege of receiving training at the XYZ Aerospace’s own facilities, he relied on his own resources to pursue an MBA. So finally I said, ‘‘If I have to do it, I have to do it myself.’’ And to go to evening school . . . is one of the least desirable avenues for any X YZ employee because usually you get paid full-time to go . . . for training in the X YZ facilities. . . . Working full-time and holding an evening job is not desirable for most of the XYZ employees. [I wanted] to prove the point that management is not that difficult, or that it should be limited to a particular race or particular age group. That’s why I went for the MBA training.

Like management training, the MBA was seen as largely irrelevant— except as a screening device. As a chair of the Diversity Leadership Council frankly stated: ‘‘I’d be surprised if there were two MBAs at X YZ in managerial positions.’’ Eventually appointed as branch chief at the GS-15 level, this same manager was again bypassed on two subsequent occasions when he sought to move to the level of assistant division chief. As he related this, in the first instance the center hired someone from outside the division, who lacked his experience and superior degree qualifications. When confronted on the contradictions here, management offered a new rationale for its decision—alleged concern that his own technical project might suffer if he were to be promoted. I was told, ‘‘He [the other candidate] is an excellent candidate. He has excellent qualifications.’’ So I asked what was his qualification. They said, ‘‘Oh, he has a master’s degree in electrical engineering from Stanford.’’ ‘‘Oh,’’ I said ‘‘I have a master’s and a Ph.D. degree from the same university.’’ Then I was told he has an MBA degree from [name of university], which is a correspondence course. I said, ‘‘I have an MBA from [name of university], which is a much better university. Besides I’ve been in the division and know the things, and I’ve been at headquarters for a year.’’ But then the argument was, ‘‘You are so valuable as a member of the technical staff. We cannot afford to lose you. If you move up in the managerial ladder, your technical project will flounder.’’ I didn’t buy that argument at all. I could have trained and nurtured the project half time, and carried the managerial duties [as well] . . . that’s the first time I began to realize

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there is a subconscious—I’m not saying there is conscious discrimination—but there is a very inbred discrimination—they prefer white males over Asian Americans.

Later on, when the position of assistant division chief again became open, he once again applied and again was passed over, this time by someone with even lower qualifications. I was encouraged to apply and I did. I was not even considered, and the whole process was totally ludicrous to me because I was told they selected somebody who has better scientific qualifications. But in the end it’s somebody who has only a bachelor’s degree with no publications or records. . . . The rating is very subjective.

In sum, the decision-making process was perceived as overly subjective and arbitrary in the manner it removed certain candidates from managerial consideration and continually adjusted the rationale for exclusion. As one person succinctly stated, ‘‘If they want to promote you, they don’t need a reason. If they don’t want to hire you, they’ll come up with a thousand reasons why not.’’ Perfunctory interviews of minority and women candidates reinforced this view. One person thus recalled not being taken seriously in his own interview: I remember one time there was an opening for this technical assistant, and I applied for the job. And then he invited me in for an interview. And I remember sitting upstairs in his office, and he had a set of questions that he had prepared. So he’d read off a question, and I’d start to expand—you know, give him my answers. And I looked at him, and he was kind of looking out the window . . . he wasn’t really paying attention. All he was doing was going through the motions, so he could say, ‘‘I interviewed an Asian.’’

In sum, although the popular mindset is accustomed to thinking of preferential treatment in terms of unfair advantages given to minorities and women, the strong opinion among Asian American professionals was that preferential treatment has been disproportionately accorded to white males. Reflecting on his history with the organization over the past several decades, another manager singled out the buddy system as the major reason for the glass ceiling. Promotion is not on merit but through social circles. . . . The criterion is not ability but friendship. I don’t think people are out to ‘‘get’’ Asians. I just think that Asians aren’t in these social circles. You can quote me on that. . . . It’s my perception that what had happened in the old days was that the old white boy network reserved the managerial jobs for themselves. That was their preserve; they didn’t want to let any minorities in.

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In the context of his immediate work sphere, he had observed his supervisor promoting only a small coterie of individuals: ‘‘all his white male friends . . . got to be deputy directors, directors, branch chiefs, division chiefs, despite some of them being very, very poor administrators and very poor researchers.’’ That these individuals turned out to be inferior or mediocre in both research and management is perhaps the most objective evidence that the standards were vulnerable to inappropriate subjective bias. Bad appointments not only impeded those working under such administrators but produced periodic crises for the organization as a whole. I know I’m a very good manager. I’ve been told by my subordinates as well as my superiors that I was very good manager, in terms of administrative ability as well as personnel judgment. . . . The disappointment was that the people who were chosen above me were not as competent. . . . I mean, it’s not only one occasion, there are a couple of occasions. Their lack of performance [indicates] . . . that system is not choosing the best person available.

According to an employee survey conducted during a widespread organizational crisis in the 1970s, one division head had garnered more than 200 complaints. Suboptimal performance among white male administrators, however, rarely evoked sanction. In this instance, the division head was not fired but moved ‘‘upstairs.’’ Moreover, poor leadership was more likely to be framed by center management as an individual problem rather than as a problem generalizable to other white males. Tolerance of mediocrity and failure by white males was a luxury not granted others. By contrast, minorities and women who experienced difficulties as administrators often became lightning rods for backlash against minorities, women, and all those labeled ‘‘affirmative action’’ hires. One respondent described this dual standard as follows: I am appalled by the quality of individual that gets promoted here very often, who gets put at the level of responsibility that I think they have no qualification for or no right to be there. . . . I’m amazed by the incompetence that’s rewarded and promoted here. . . . There’s a tolerance for white males to get promoted even though they’re totally incompetent, whereas there’s not tolerance for an Asian, or other type of minority, or woman to get promoted, if they’re incompetent. So I think in one way that the glass ceiling is manifested in the lower tolerance that people feel towards Asians specifically and minorities in general. . . . Poor leadership has been a problem since the late 1970s and X [Asian administrator] was merely the lightning rod for people to focus their dissatisfactions with the center and the future onto him. The same thing with other Asians who get promoted. . . . So in a nutshell, I think women and minorities are scrutinized much more closely than white men. (Asian American male)

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MANAGING AND LEADING IN THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY Ideas such as diversity and excellence, the diversity advantage, and diversity management emerged in the 1980s and were publicly embraced by leaders in government, corporations, and universities alike. However, concern or uncertainty continues about how this diversity is achieved and the extent to which the selection process is optimally designed to recognize diverse criteria for excellence and thereby broaden the pool of eligible leaders. The preceding section echoed what many social analysts have already pointed out in other contexts—that employer evaluations are highly subjective, vulnerable to subtle biases that implicitly favor certain candidates over others.29 At XYZ Aerospace, glass ceiling barriers indicated a playing field tilted to favor a narrow group of individuals and an authoritarian style of leadership. Weber’s concept of traditional authority is an ideal type that captures many elements of this leadership style—a command-and-control form of management exercised through a patriarchal structure and revolving around individuals linked through personal loyalties and shared backgrounds. Asian Americans were quick to note that this leadership culture was antagonistic to their own culturally preferred modes of social interaction. Interviewees repeatedly observed, moreover, that while promotions were cloaked in the language of merit and universalistic criteria,30 so, too, was discrimination. Their grievances drew legitimacy from a government bureaucracy that is publicly committed to providing standardized, bureaucratic guidelines related to job assignment, evaluation, and promotions. In short, all of this occurred, moreover, in a liberal workplace environment that has claimed to pride itself on diversity. More than two decades ago, Rosabeth Moss Kanter observed that the authoritarian model is becoming increasingly outmoded: In the new environment . . . the unquestioned authority of managers in the corporation of the past has been replaced by the need for negotiations and relationships outside the immediate managerial domain, by the need for managers to persuade rather than order, and by the need to acknowledge the expertise of those below.31

Other writers subsequently echoed this theme, acknowledging that more innovative organizations call for more flexible, nonhierarchical relations that give employees greater initiative and discretion in problem solving.32 This dynamic operating environment now characterizes a number of working environments where micromanaging—being in full control—can actually cripple one’s capacity to lead. At X YZ, Asian Americans were perceived as being perfectionists, unwilling to delegate for fear that another’s mistakes would negatively affect their own performance: ‘‘They try to control everything. And that’s disaster for them because when you get to be a division head, there’s no way

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you’re going to be able to control all this stuff ’’ (Asian American male, senior executive). Jean Otte, founder and CEO of WOMEN Unlimited Inc. (WUI), made this similar observation when discussing this tendency as the most troublesome of the top five issues facing women executives at Fortune 1000 companies: (1) trying to do it all, (2) lack of confidence in the position (‘‘impostor syndrome’’), (3) lack of strategic alliances (no old girls network), (4) not feeling valued by their organization, and (5) the tension between women in the workplace.33 In her coaching work, Gillian Khoo is often called by the board of directors of a company where a CEO’s performance is undermined by some character flaw. A typical profile is someone who is ‘‘charismatic, results-oriented, technically brilliant but whose abusive style is causing high turnover and low morale.’’ Thus one executive was capable of being ‘‘extremely charming’’ but could transform into an abusive boss when his orders were not carried out to the letter. In short, Weber’s three types of authority, though historically based, are analytically distinct as ideal types. In practice, today’s CEOs can embody elements from one or more ideal types. The following case study illustrates how certain obstacles to advancement can evaporate with the strategic intervention of an executive coach. As described by Khoo, the case illustrates how coaching was effective in broadening and deepening the skills of an Asian American female manager who was thereafter able to cultivate a strategic orientation that enabled her to move into the senior ranks. Khoo’s client’s challenges are not unique but are faced by many (male and female, from different industries and racial and cultural backgrounds) at both the managerial and executive ranks with whom she has worked over the past fourteen years.

CASE STUDY: FAZ FINANCIAL SERVICES Mavis works at a Fortune 100 company, FAZ (pseudonym), a financial services firm that has cornered the market on credit cards, auto loans, and home mortgages. The culture at FAZ is young, aggressive, and fast paced. The majority of associates, a handful of whom are already VPs, are in their twenties. It is common for associates to have four different bosses in one year as FAZ aggressively reorganizes and restructures to keep ahead of business trends and challenges. FAZ values intellectual exchanges for what they might generate in terms of new ideas or solutions. Mavis joined FAZ five years ago and was viewed as an interpersonally skilled manager with excellent project management skills. A single Indian female who grew up in Asia, she was in her early forties at the time of her coaching experience, and had been a U.S. resident for about eighteen years. She enjoyed a strong reputation for delivering superior results on time and under budget. Yet despite her qualifications and exceptional record of achievement she was viewed

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as a ‘‘subject matter’’ expert, that is, one who was not capable of leading a larger organization with multiple jobs and functions. She therefore hired Khoo as her executive coach to help her overcome the barriers to the next level of promotion. Khoo conducted a series of 360-degree qualitative interviews with Mavis’s key stakeholders, after which she worked explicitly on broadening Mavis’s leadership skills. Specifically, this included strengthening her strategic thinking and alignment as well as her self-confidence and influencing skills. Mavis was successfully promoted within six months. Strategic thinking refers to a leader’s ability to recognize relationships and complexities, understand the broad implications of issues from multiple perspectives, and visualize what might or could be, all the while tying day-today operations to broader organizational goals. Strategic planning is an event, whereas strategic thinking is an approach. Many mid-level managers experience difficulty thinking strategically because the requirements of management focus the individual elsewhere, namely, on executing tasks and delivering short-term results. So it is not surprising that Mavis was perceived by her peers, superiors, and internal customers as having a narrow bandwidth when it came to leading an organization with multiple functions. Specifically, her challenge with thinking strategically had less to do with an absence of skills per se than with an overemphasis on details that prevented her from integrating the business challenges she was working on with the complexities FAZ was facing. This misplaced emphasis prevented her from focusing on the broader context and in turn created a perception of her as a leader who was not capable of thinking strategically. One of her superiors thus suggested the following: She still has a greater opportunity from where she is now from an analytical perspective to a strategic perspective. She will dive into the details, which is fantastic, but she has a tendency to go to the details versus solving a broader problem. What I have seen others do is you have the person on the ground who will take care of the tactics so you don’t have to concentrate on that. It is a delegation issue. It frees you up to build up the longer-term strategy.

Her internal customers, in turn, offered the following insights: The most critical thing that Mavis needs to do is engage in integrative thinking and specifically define what are the big opportunities. Organize the opportunities, define the problems, and effectively govern her team through producing results that come out from a really well-thought-through strategy. She knows what is going on strategically, but she does not put in into context. How is she aligning herself against those strategic priorities and how is what we are doing aligned with those priorities? How is she explaining it, representing her and her team against that strategic vision?

A second barrier for many mid-level managers pertains to the lack of strategic alliances across their organizations. Strategic alignment involves networking and

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building relationships throughout the organization, cultivating deep pockets of support, and influencing key stakeholders who are willing to back up and expand one’s visibility. About the importance of strategic alliance, Otte succinctly observed, ‘‘It’s not what you know. It’s who knows you know.’’34 Mavis’s visibility was narrowly confined to her areas of responsibility, and she lacked visibility with her boss’s boss and the rest of the senior executives. Her boss’s boss commented: Content wise, she has yet to create a story for her business or herself. What is the elevator speech on Mavis? I don’t know. To date, that five-minute story, what she has done and where she has proven her competencies has been single dimensional. She has that opportunity now, which she didn’t before, to . . . influence, help shape the strategy, and contribute. Mavis needs to put a stake in the ground and say, ‘‘Here is what I am doing. Here is what I can do for you. Here is what we can do together.’’ Otherwise, how will I know what she can do? How can I sell her to my peers (the rest of the senior management team) if I don’t know what her story is?

The quote illustrates that strategic alignment involves more than just building key relationships; it requires framing one’s value proposition (‘‘this is what I am about’’) and inspiring followership (‘‘this is what we can do together’’), establishing one’s identity as a leader (‘‘this is what I stand for’’). Incorporating these perspectives, Khoo adopted the following steps to put Mavis on track. The two worked together to modify not simply Mavis’s behavior but her overall cognitive orientation toward her work, so that her objectives encompassed larger outcomes. Strategic Thinking 1. We started by having Mavis envision the many possibilities and opportunities in her line of business and for the overall company. She was encouraged to generate as many possibilities as she could from a variety of perspectives: In her current role as a group manager, in her desired role as a senior director, and as the CEO. These exercises freed her from artificial constraints, helped her extrapolate different business opportunities across the organization, and then ground her goals and vision by building the business case for it. 2. Recognizing her tendency to dive into the details and tactics, Khoo had Mavis concentrate instead on organizing opportunities and defining problems. This enabled her to become more proactive and less reactive. Some of the key questions Khoo had Mavis ask herself were: ‘‘What are my business goals and how am I aligning myself against my strategic priorities? How will success be measured? What are the implicit and explicit conditions of satisfaction? What is the 180-degree view of what

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I want to do and what is the impact of that? Where can I focus my energies to yield maximum impact? To what extent am I managing that change and impact?’’ 3. In addition, Mavis started holding regular sessions with her team whereby they shifted their focus from activity (tasks, details, what needs to be done) to impact (‘‘What do we want to achieve at the end of the day? In what ways will it support the broader strategy?’’). The distinction between impact and activity was an important one and assisted Mavis in governing her team toward producing results from a well-thought-out strategy. 4. To counter the perception that Mavis was not capable of leading a larger organization with multiple jobs and functions because of her perceived (narrow) subject matter expertise, we leveraged her strong interpersonal skills to help her use the expertise of others. Whereas in the past Mavis might have felt compelled to become a subject matter expert, she now had to learn how to use her relationships to get the work done. Mavis began to meet with experts in and out of her areas of responsibility, and was careful to listen to their challenges and input. As a result, she was able to paint a picture of the business and political landscape that captured the web of relationships essential to success.

Building Strategic Alliances 5. Mavis was willing to acknowledge that her deep expertise and strong record of achievement did not automatically qualify her for a promotion, and that it was necessary for her to develop more effective influencing and political savvy skills (strategic alignment). Though she was initially frustrated, she did not allow her frustration to turn into resentment. This paved the way for her to have conversations with those above and around her as to how she was perceived and what she could do to address their concerns about her perceived lack of leadership and strategic thinking skills. These conversations, along with her genuine willingness in addressing their concerns, had the added benefit of helping Mavis establish closer relationships and garner support for her promotion. 6. With the assistance of Mavis’s boss, Khoo and Mavis mapped out an action plan that redirected Mavis’s efforts into projects that would yield the biggest payoff and alignment to FAZ’s most pressing business challenges. They also included a stakeholder analysis and incorporated opportunities for Mavis to interface and influence these stakeholders in their action plan. Her boss was very willing to discuss her achievements with his boss and his peers and was conscious about including Mavis in these meetings, where appropriate.

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7. They focused on strengthening and fine-tuning Mavis’s communicating and influencing skills and used a variety of mediums (role-plays, observing, and/or video-taping Mavis at meetings and presentations) to reinforce these learnings. 8. Mavis was accountable for having follow-up conversations with key stakeholders about her progress in addressing their concerns. This gave her the opportunity to share her ongoing accomplishments with them and allowed her to better manage their perceptions. 9. Mavis and Khoo administered a mini-survey after three months and again at six months to measure the extent to which Mavis was being perceived as being more effective on the skills she was cultivating. For example, ‘‘On a scale from 1 (ineffective) to 5 (very effective), to what extent has this person become more (or less) effective at the following behaviors?’’ The executive coaching engagement was concluded on Mavis’s successful promotion six months later. Coaching is more effective than formalized mentorship programs because the latter does not enforce accountability. If an individual’s company does not have the resources to provide coaching, Khoo offers the following recommendations: 1. Let go of the thinking and expectation that great work and stronger qualifications will automatically lead to greater promotions. Although this may be true at the lower and more technical levels, it stops being so at the upper levels of management. 2. Take full responsibility for your own career advancement. Have regular and candid discussions about what it takes to be successful. For example, what are the behaviors that are rewarded? Punished? 3. Cultivate a deep understanding of your own strengths and opportunities. For Asian Americans, make sure the list of developmental opportunities is not greater than your strengths. 4. Learn how to seek and give feedback (at least monthly) without being defensive. 5. Have the courage to ask your boss, peers, internal customers, and direct reports about what they see as your key areas of strengths and opportunities for development. Thank them for their feedback, and act on their suggestions where appropriate. 6. Become a student of organizational politics. Who has the most influence, and how do they exert and use it? Do you know who your key stakeholders are and what matters most to them? Which relationships are most important to cultivate? How are decisions made in your organizations? Whose decisions matter most? What can you control or influence? What can’t you?

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7. Create a network of support as you work to address areas for development and strengthen your strengths. People love to help if asked, . . . and asking for help is not a sign of weakness but a sign of strength. 8. Have quarterly meetings with your bosses to discuss current business goals and critical priorities. If you don’t, you will waste your time working on the least important thing instead of refocusing your energies on that which will lead to the biggest payoff. 9. At the end of the day, practice gratitude for all that you are and for all that surrounds you.35 FINAL THOUGHTS Although corporate cultures have changed over the years, two competing models of authority—traditional versus legal/rational—still play themselves out as crosscurrents in many organizations. The subjective interpretation of objective standards is one major example of how these crosscurrents converged. As contradictory subcultures, they together erect artificial barriers for women and minorities. One reason is that newcomers to the scene fervently want to believe in the legal/rational ideal of merit-based promotion—that they will be judged based on their qualities, not by some ascribed attribute like race or gender. At the same time, these individuals are excluded from those professional networks that are tied into higher levels of decision making. Their objective achievements mean little, in other words, without the strategic alliances that make these accomplishments visible to upper management. For both Woo and Khoo, an important aspect of leadership is to provide opportunities for employees to grow. The tough boss model is highly problematic in diverse workplace environments where a heterogeneous workforce manifests different cultural sensibilities and behavioral styles. Environments of fear suppress the free expression of ideas. The directive style is more common among older managers and leaders (i.e., in their fifties or older) and more prevalent in stable organizations (e.g., government) than, say, in fast-paced and leaner companies on the cutting edge. Although a directive style is associated with Asian and Asian American leadership styles, other valued traits include humility and self-knowledge.36 By contrast, the aggressive domineering style evident among white males at XYZ Aerospace allowed no room for more collective styles of expression and persuasion. The closed nature of the old boy network, in turn, denied outsiders access to strategic alliances. Although FAZ did not revolve around an autocratic culture like that at XYZ, it nevertheless favored a certain group of employees (i.e., young males in their twenties). Specifically, the company espoused competitive, ‘‘in your face’’ business debates to generate new ideas and solutions. Young, aggressive males, however, are more willing to ‘‘stick their neck out’’ in situations of conflict and engage more forcefully than are females, who, for the most part, are more

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inclined to adopt an accommodating or collaborative negotiating style. Khoo’s intervention enabled her client to redirect her existing skills in other ways that were self-transformative. In doing so, she demonstrated that executive skills are not simply inborn qualities often associated with charismatic leaders. Rather, they can be cultivated, acquired, and fine-tuned with systematic mentoring or coaching. Woo and Khoo differ in their orientation toward legal/rational authority as well as in their interpretation of the glass ceiling and what should be done about it. For Woo, legal/rational authority provides women and minorities a modicum of official protection against the arbitrary abuse, and therefore glass ceiling complaints that are framed in these terms need to be taken seriously. For Khoo, however, the very notion of objective standards and neutral criteria is extremely misleading, belying what actually counts in the upper levels of the organizational world. Hence, she downplays the paper re´sume´ in her coaching work because re´sume´s focus mostly on activities and not impact. She is not surprised that technical expertise has served Asian Americans well as an indispensable qualification for middle management or that they are blocked from further advancement. Rather she perceives this as a direct result of their naive belief in bureaucratic rationality and their unrealistic expectation that superior qualifications will guarantee promotions. The barriers they face are not so much artificial but real. Asian Americans may complain about a glass ceiling when in fact they overestimate their abilities because they lack the broader organizational perspective of what is required for executive success. Hence, her earlier advice to Asian Americans to ‘‘make sure the list of developmental opportunities is not greater than your strengths.’’ There is no glass ceiling, no artificial barriers but rather individuals who mistakenly believe they are qualified and ignore the political and organizational realities of what it takes to be successful. Woo, on the other hand, believes that there continue to be many factors that artificially prevent otherwise qualified individuals from advancing, including the fact that the magnifying glass of scrutiny is overly applied to minorities and women. As project managers, Asian Americans at XYZ were skilled at managing problems associated with teamwork and employee participation. Their marginality to important social networks constituted an artificial barrier that excluded them from further developmental opportunities. The epitome of disregard for legal authority was the promotion of those who failed to meet what Woo would call even the basic procedural qualifications in the bureaucratic selection process (e.g., a high school diploma being acceptable in the case of white males but not other applicants). Both authors agree that an individual’s re´sume´ may imperfectly mirror a person’s actual qualifications, that the selection process can become very subjective, and that the qualification standards themselves may not be reliably linked to ability to do the job. For both Woo and Khoo, this has consequences for the organization. Khoo is optimistic about helping clients individually transcend these barriers, whereas Woo is concerned about the need for greater organizational commitment toward addressing

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inequities that arise from the differential application of standards and the differential distribution of resources, whether they are personal connections or career development opportunities.37 When Woo revisited the situation at XYZ in 2005, she learned that the proportion of Asian Pacific Americans in the workforce had risen to 18.8 percent, and a higher percentage than ever before had now reached the GS-14 and GS-15 levels, poised for an SES appointment.38 However, none were in the SES ranks, and there were now new organizational requirements as to what was required for promotion into the SES ranks, specifically, greater emphasis on ‘‘outside’’ management experience and the requirement to take an SES Candidate Development Program, which stipulates a minimum of two assignments outside of XYZ. ‘‘For some strange reason, there are no SESers,’’ remarked one employee, who went on to point to an Asian American candidate who was exceptionally well qualified.39 It’s been two years since A went through the SES Candidate Development program. . . . I’m baffled why he’s not an SESer. You usually get an appointment within twelve months usually. . . . He’s done very well. People respect him, think he has leadership qualities. He has all the desirable traits. Excellent communicator, good strategic thinking, tech savvy, knows how to play the networking game. Very good about getting new business. Has done his time in Washington.

No reason has yet been offered for why this person has not been promoted. A glass ceiling, however, cannot be ruled out. Congressional testimony given by the Asian American Government Executives Network in October 2003 drew on two major reports from the Government Accountability Office, pointing to ‘‘the pervasive and pernicious existence of glass ceilings for Asian Pacific Americans throughout the federal government.’’40 Another difference between Woo and Khoo relates to their perspectives on intervention. As an organizational psychologist, Khoo tends to see solutions in more individualistic and actionable terms, for example, coaching the highpotential individual to better meet the requirements of a designated position within the company. FAZ, for example, is described by Khoo as among the best companies in terms of its willingness to invest heavily in various forms of employee and leadership training, which is highly effective when combined with executive coaching for their high-potential candidates. The fact that FAZ has been able to capture and demonstrate a positive and significant correlation between the impact of executive coaching and performance evaluations and business results reinforces the value of micro interventions. Woo applauds such efforts but believes that grooming a select few for success leaves intact those undesirable aspects of the closed corporate culture that cause many to leave. Even enlightened leaders at XYZ and FAZ largely emphasize mentoring and assimilating individuals into the workplace rather than challenging

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the dominant corporate culture, or optimally realigning organizational structures and cultures so that the potential of all employees can be maximized. Most large companies in the financial industry, for example, have lagged in providing the kind of flexibility that women often need if they are to pursue both family and career.41 Had Mavis not been single and childless, she might have encountered an impenetrable glass ceiling, regardless of the coaching she received. Finally, Woo and Khoo agree that the talent or training required at any particular level of XYZ or FAZ does not smoothly convert into skills needed at the next level. All employees thereby have a steep learning curve when it comes to cultivating those interpersonal skills and strategic alliances that would enable them to perform more effectively in a more encompassing context. Mid-level managers, for example, have great difficulty with the transition to upper management because their work requires micromanagement as opposed to developing a more long-range vision for company goals. This tends to handicap Asian Americans as well as women in general, who are also inclined toward a perfectionism that leads them to overlook the broader implications of the business in favor of the details. About the negative effects of such perfectionism on individuals, Otte states, ‘‘They spend an enormous amount of time collecting information on which they will base their decision. Unfortunately, the quest for perfection can lead to missed deadlines and lost opportunities.’’ 42 For Khoo, perfectionism is more a personality trait—an ‘‘inner glass ceiling’’—that one has to unlearn. For Woo, perfectionism is organizationally structured into the position of middle managers. Organizations, in other words, create these very transition problems by narrowly circumscribing the nature of tasks at this level. Like the doctor who is rushing to save people who are drowning at the bottom of the river, the organization needs to be more alert to how dangers upstream are propelling individuals into the river. How organizations structure middle management positions may be shortsighted, causing them to lose some of their best employees. Again this is not to suggest that individual rescue measures, such as coaching and mentoring, are for naught. As another anecdote elucidates, a person standing along the shoreline desperately sought to save individual fish that somehow got washed ashore. A passerby commented on the futility of saving them all: ‘‘What difference does this make?’’ To which the other smilingly replied as she tossed one fish back into the sea, ‘‘To that one, all the difference in the world!’’ On the issue of the glass ceiling, the crux of the difference between the authors’ perspectives is an important conceptual one that has to do with how the glass ceiling has been defined. Officially, the glass ceiling has been defined as ‘‘artificial’’ barriers impeding otherwise qualified individuals from advancing. ‘‘Real’’ barriers by extension imply that an individual lacks the necessary qualifications.43 Although the federal Glass Ceiling Commission did not explicitly draw this contrast, the distinction was implicit and deserves closer examination because of the fine line that exists here. Importantly, it has implications for the degree of responsibility to be borne, respectively, by employer and employee.

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Even if one takes the bottom-line view that all hiring and promotion decisions should be based simply and solely on qualifications, the dividing line between real and artificial barriers is blurry. The commission explicitly designated lack of mentoring and lack of management training as artificial barriers. Yet these artificial barriers have a direct bearing on real barriers, preparedness, and the very issue of who is—or is not—qualified. If women are unprepared to enter managerial work because they have been poorly mentored compared to men or provided with fewer developmental opportunities, what is to be done? If their lack of required skills is the main consideration, then they may be seen as held back by barriers so fundamental that little can be done. If, on the other hand, it is recognized that mentoring and management opportunities have gone disproportionately to white males, then employers are better positioned to remove such artificial constraints. In short, despite commonly held assumptions of a level playing field, the issue of where one draws the line between artificial and real barriers is ultimately a political decision, one that has less to do with the capabilities of the candidates than with the judgments of decision makers. In sum, leadership in the twenty-first century needs to be agile and responsive to the situational demands of a heterogeneous environment. The diversity of the workforce and the rich and varied possibilities that can constitute excellence here have yet to be fully appreciated. Minorities and women can provide a radical critique of the organizational culture, to which astute managers would be well advised to heed. Rather than suffer these employees to be canaries in the coal mine, it would be better to explore the gold mine that they represent as unique and complex individuals as well as social markers for equally unique and complex collective experiences. Potential, moreover, should not be narrowly construed as merely innate. In the case of leadership, it is precisely the intrinsically relational character of the concept to which organizational analysts should turn more of their attention. NOTES Modified from Deborah Woo, ‘‘Glass Ceiling at X Y Z Aerospace,’’ as it appeared in Glass Ceilings and Asian Americans (Lanham, MD: Alta Mira Press, 2000). Used with permission of Rowman and Littlefield Publishing Group. 1. Geoffrey Colvin, ‘‘CEO Knockdown,’’ Fortune, April 4, 2005. 2. Ariana Huffington, Pigs at the Trough: How Corporate Greed and Political Corruption are Undermining America (New York: Crown), 2003. 3. Bari-Ellen Roberts and Jack E. White, Roberts vs. Texaco: A True Story of Race and Corporate America (New York: Avon Books, 1999); Anthony Stith, Breaking the Glass Ceiling: Sexism and Racism in Corporate America: The Myths, the Realities and the Solutions (Los Angeles: Warwick, 1998); Ellis Cose, The Rage of a Privileged Class: Why Do Prosperous Blacks Still Have the Blues (New York: Perennial, 1995). 4. Guenter Roth and Claus Wittich, eds., Max Weber: Economy and Society, vol. 1 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1978), pp. 217–41. 5. Stith, Breaking the Glass Ceiling, p. 136.

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6. Joseph Nocera, ‘‘In Business, Tough Guys Finish Last,’’ New York Times, June 18, 2005. 7. Ibid. 8. Bethany McLean and Andy Serwer, ‘‘Brahmins at the Gate,’’ Fortune, May 2, 2005. 9. Patrick McGeehan, ‘‘Morgan Stanley Settles Bias Suit with $54 Million,’’ New York Times, July 13, 2004. 10. Ibid. 11. Amy Joyce, ‘‘If a Man Falls in the Firm, Does Anybody Notice?’’ Washington Post, February 20, 2005. 12. ‘‘She was the poster child of a leader who didn’t realize you have to have followers. There was no alignment with people in her corner who could speak for her’’ ( Jean Otte, ‘‘Special Executive Forum: Workplace Issues and Success Strategies for Women,’’ Brisbane, CA, July 21, 2005). 13. Judy B. Rosener, America’s Competitive Secret (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995), pp. 26–44. 14. Rosener, America’s Competitive Secret, pp. 12–13. 15. Helen Peters and Rob Kabacoff, ‘‘A New Look at the Glass Ceiling: The Perspective from the Top,’’ Management Research Group, Portland, ME, 2002. 16. Robert I. Kabacoff, ‘‘Gender and Leadership in the Corporate Boardroom,’’ Management Research Group, Portland, ME, 2000; Robert I. Kabacoff, ‘‘Gender Differences in Organizational Leadership,’’ Management Research Group, Portland, ME, 1998. 17. U.S. Office of Personnel Management, Executive Core Qualifications, July 1, 1998; U.S. Office of Personnel Management, Guide to Senior Executive Service Qualifications, February 24, 1998. 18. Margaret Karsten, Gender, and Race in the 21st Century (Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 2006), chapter 1. 19. Presentation by Nancy Chen, Career Advancement for APA Women—Breaking the Glass Ceiling, FAPAC Conference, 2004. 20. Deborah Woo, Glass Ceilings and Asian Americans (Lanham, MD: Alta Mira Press, 2000), chapter 2. 21. Woo, Glass Ceilings and Asian Americans, chapter 5. 22. The major goal of the interviews was to identify barriers as well as obtain a perspective on how diversity is officially managed within the organization. Thus, the interviews included middle-level managers facing barriers to their own mobility as well as senior executives who could provide a rare glimpse into these same issues from their own perspective. To provide some insight into the organizational culture and structure, I also contacted former chairs or cochairs of the Asian American employee association, two EEO officers, two members of the EEO Council, two members of the Diversity Leadership Council, and two human resources personal. In total, nineteen individuals were interviewed, fifteen of whom were Asian American. Nine were chairs or cochairs of the employee association, and ten were managers, two of whom were senior executives. The majority of Asian interviewees were male (eleven out of fifteen), with some diversity here in terms of age (from twenty-five to sixty-eight) and length of employment at Aerospace (from four to thirtynine years), both of which influenced perceptions of the glass ceiling, as well as attitudes toward how aggressive the employee association should be in advocating for social change.

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23. Beverly H. Burris, Technocracy at Work (New York: SUNY Press, 1993), p. 100. 24. Federal government positions have been designated by wage grades referred to as GS (general schedule) or GM (general management) levels. At X YZ Aerospace, the GS levels ranged from GS-4 to GS-16, and the GM levels ranged from GM-13 to GM15. (The GM category was in the process of being phased out, a response to downsizing efforts.) GS-14 is the minimum pay grade for senior engineers, scientists, and managers. The highest grade is SES, and the glass ceiling is seen as resting at around the GS-12 or GS-13 levels. 25. Fred H. Golder and R. R. Ritti, ‘‘Professionalization as Career Immobility,’’ American Journal of Sociology 72 (1967): 489–502. 26. In Striking the Mother Lode in Science (New York: Oxford University Press, 1992), Paula Stephan and Sharon Levin offer several theories about the relevance of age for researchers in scientific fields. In a chapter titled, ‘‘Why Age May Matter,’’ the authors discuss how age is related to ‘‘the will to do science,’’ or the willingness to continue along this career path. Even though they do not directly explore age in relationship to managerial aspirations or rewards, what they do indicate is of relevance to the glass ceiling in that at the midcareer point researchers begin to personally review and assess their career accomplishments and weigh these against other life goals. These scientists were academic scientists, primarily doctorates in the physical, earth, and life sciences (as opposed to mathematics or engineering). The ‘‘puzzle, ribbon, or gold’’ are the three motivating forces behind the will to do science. These undergo a reassessment or reevaluation as one approaches one’s middle years (around age forty) or midcareer (associate or full professorship). From this developmental point of view, scientists are like other human beings who begin to recognize their own mortality. They begin to weigh their work aspirations against other sources of rewards in their lives as well as against the possibility of achieving or satisfying the goals that originally motivated them in their early years. For scientists, this means taking stock of their present status in the scientific community, their productivity or contributions (ability to solve ‘‘the puzzle’’), and the degree to which this has won them social recognition among their colleagues or peers (‘‘the ribbon’’). The ‘‘gold’’ factor takes the form of determining whether there is sufficient material incentive for placing work issues above nonwork issues. Increasing age makes it increasingly apparent that financial rewards will decline with each additional year simply because there are fewer years left in one’s career to collect. As a result, one may make rational calculations as to whether the costs of doing research and the further investments in time required are worth the effort. Because the remaining years in which one can cash in on one’s investments are limited, the kind of financial rewards a scientist is receiving from publications, royalties, consulting fees, and speaking engagements may be important factors determining whether he or she continues along this path. In this accounting process, material factors can also affect whether the puzzle aspect of science continues to be intrinsically satisfying or whether the funding pressures for doing this work become too onerous. Alternative professional opportunities, moreover, may present themselves as viable, competing alternatives to research at this time, including a detour into administration. 27. Asian Americans for Community Involvement (AACI), Qualified But . . . : A Report on Glass Ceiling Issues Facing Asian Americans in Silicon Valley (San Jose: Asian Americans for Community Involvement of Santa Clara County, 1993), pp. 18–19. 28. Jayjia Hsia, Asian Americans in Higher Education and at Work (Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 1988), p. 199.

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29. Barbara F. Reskin, The Realities of Affirmative Action in Employment (Washington, DC: American Sociological Association, 1998); Avery Gordon, ‘‘The Work of Corporate Culture Diversity Management,’’ Social Text 44 13(3) (fall/winter 1995): 3–30, pp. 4, 7; Gertrude Ezorsky, Racism and Justice: The Case for Affirmative Action (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1991). 30. For a discussion of how the discourse around merit and universalistic criteria has been permeated with arbitrary rationalizations for exclusion, which serve mainly to perpetuate the existing structure of privilege, see Troy Duster, ‘‘The Structure of Privilege and Its Universe of Discourse,’’ American Sociologist 11(2) (May 1976): 73–78. 31. Rosabeth Moss Kanter, The Change Masters: Innovation and Entrepreneurship in the American Corporation (New York: Touchstone, 1983), p. 48. 32. Taylor H. Cox Jr. and Joycelyn A. Finley, ‘‘An Analysis of Work Specialization and Organization Level as Dimensions of Workforce Diversity,’’ in Martin Chemers, Stuart Oskamp, and Mark A. Costanzo, eds., Diversity in Organizations: New Perspectives for a Changing Workplace (Thousand Oaks: Sage, 1995), pp. 62–88; Roosevelt Thomas Jr., Redefining Diversity (New York: Amacom, 1996), pp. 57–78; Annalee Saxenian, Regional Advantage: Culture and Competition in Silicon Valley and Route 128 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1998). 33. On this last point, Otte sadly remarked that women were more inclined to take conflicts personally, whereas men engaged in fierce debate or angry exchange understood that such joustings were part of the ‘‘game.’’ Nevertheless, women must still walk a tightrope so that they don’t appear overly aggressive or domineering, on the one hand, or else unassertive or unsure. A few, like Carly Fiorina, are able to get away with a competitive negotiating style if it is part of their nature. ‘‘Special Executive Forum: Workplace Issues and Success Strategies for Women,’’ Brisbane, CA, July 21, 2005. Jean Otte writes about the impostor syndrome in chapter 3 of her book, Changing the Corporate Landscape: A Woman’s Guide to Cultivating Leadership Excellence (Atlanta, GA: Longstreet Press, 2004). The impostor syndrome, she says, is a experienced by successful individuals who are so driven by perfectionism that they have an unrealistic assessment of their own abilities because they typically exaggerate their shortcomings, while failing to appreciate their strengths. 34. ‘‘Special Executive Forum: Workplace Issues and Success Strategies for Women,’’ Brisbane, CA, July 21, 2005. See also Otte, Changing the Corporate Landscape: A Woman’s Guide to Cultivating Leadership Excellence, p. 179. 35. Because many clients focus on the negative, on what’s wrong and what’s missing in their careers, having them practice gratitude helps shift their attention and energy away from being the victim toward being more their own advocate. 36. D. Quinn Mills, ‘‘Asian and American Leadership Styles: How Are They Unique,’’ Harvard Business School Working Knowledge, June 27, 2005. 37. Neutral procedures such as personal connections and qualification standards have been found to have ‘‘the greatest racist impact within employment’’ (Ezorsky, Racism and Justice, p. 24). 38. FAPAC Conference, May 31, 2005. 39. Interview with Asian American male manager, September 2, 2005. 40. Jeremy Wu and Carson Eoyang, ‘‘Asian Pacific American Senior Executives in Federal Government,’’ in Deborah Woo, Guest Editor, special issue of AAPI Nexus, ‘‘Glass Ceiling?’’ Winter/Spring 2006.

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41. Kathleen Pender, ‘‘The Glass Ceiling Is Still Intact,’’ San Francisco Chronicle, August 4, 2005. 42. Otte, Changing the Corporate Landscape, p. 239. 43. This distinction is discussed in Woo, Glass Ceilings and Asian Americans, chapter 6. Given a certain discursive slippage in the English language, there is likely to be confusion over what is an artificial barrier and what is a ‘‘real’’ barrier, for lack of a better term. Woo is by no means suggesting that ‘‘artificial’’ barriers (e.g., discrimination) are not ‘‘real.’’ Although the claim that one is being discriminated against might need to be established, once this is established, discrimination clearly has an objective reality or substantive consequences. What she means by ‘‘real barriers’’ are those having to do with the individual prerequisites for promotion, for example, education, work experience, and the like. Those who lack these bottom-line qualifications—legal, rational, bureaucratic criteria—can be perceived as in the pool of eligible candidates who are otherwise qualified to advance.

5

American Indian Women: Ways of Knowing, Ways of Leading Linda Sue Warner

THE HEART OF THE EXPLORATION American Indian women’s interests in sovereignty and self-determination have solidified radically in recent decades.1 The results include a transformation of roles—roles that now more readily exemplify tribal autonomy and cultural preservation. The role of American Indian women in leadership is not investigated enough. Johnson points out that native women’s leadership experiences in both historic and contemporary times have been largely overlooked.2 As a result, the research literature describes this role in terms such as ‘‘invisible’’ or ‘‘hidden’’ and references of ‘‘mystical’’ behaviors often are attributed to American Indian women. Studies on the double bind of minority women,3 including American Indian women, appear as well. Fitzgerald characterizes the silence surrounding indigenous women and leadership as ‘‘deafening.’’4 Her characterization of the research of leadership behaviors of indigenous women represents efforts which invite mainstream researchers to consider different views. This essay seeks to illuminate the complexities of the relationships in Indian communities, putting the leadership role of American Indian women in formal organizations at the heart of the exploration. The analysis of the material introduces perspectives from the pedagogy of native ways of knowing. It raises questions about the nature of gendered identities and power relations in tribal communities and how they might relate to wider discourses on social and economic reform. Some of the existing literature conceptualizes American Indian women as marginalized, yet the evidence from narratives and experiences presented in this chapter suggests that gender relations are not so simply and universally determined unless we apply just one lens. Indeed, it points to alternative discourses and practices and to the evidence of clear resistance to stereotypes of princesses or squaws.

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After a general review of writings about and by American Indian women, I propose a theoretical model for indigenous leadership that will enable a more focused research approach. The model is designed to characterize indigenous leadership as contextualized within a tribal community and maintained through persuasion. It is important to stress the persuasive use of words in the exercise of leadership and how that differs from corporate leadership. In contrast to corporate leadership, which is linked to a hierarchical set of specialized job performance requirements, indigenous leadership, based in native ways of knowing, has fewer boundaries. For example, tribal governments often operate many business ventures and function as successful mainstream corporations. As such, they require job descriptions and personnel performance evaluation consistent with standard business practices. Is it possible to use these business tools in a tribal context? In a Wisconsin Indian corporation, the use of such standardized business operations was modified to incorporate American Indian core values so that budget and job performance were linked directly to the business mission. In 2003, Susan Applegate Krouse and Heather Howard-Bobiwash traced this company’s history in an article titled ‘‘Keeping the Campfires Going: Urban American Indian Women’s Community Work and Activism.’’5 They note that ‘‘native women have adapted traditional approaches and concepts to the contemporary contexts.’’ American Indian women formed the initial corporation, negotiating precedent-setting agreements to obtain trust status and secure the organization’s financial status. The leadership continues to be provided by American Indian women when new controversies and challenges emerge. I begin this discussion first with a disavowal of the white Eurocentric notions of leadership and propose that the historical lens that included patriarchal language is ill-equipped to provide an understanding of the roles of American Indian women in societies that are not always patriarchal. Although many factors affect the process of role construction in any culture, I propose that it is not enough to reframe these roles in contemporary social constructions with comparisons to other minority women’s roles. Although that process reflects a stage in a continuum of understanding these roles, we may also inquire into the more basic adaptations of role construction using native ways of knowing. Am I suggesting that one cannot understand American Indian women’s roles in leadership contexts without first understanding the fundamentals of traditional languages and cultures? Perhaps. But that would take a lifetime of experiences; the nuances of culture get reduced to the individual within it eventually. I am suggesting that ways of viewing the world and one’s role in it are decidedly different for American Indian women who honor their traditions and cultures by navigating issues of success in community terms. And I am further suggesting that the lessons of this leadership style have value for disparate cultures, including those found in corporations. For these suggestions to be valid, dealing with the range of cultures found in Indian country is critical.6 Currently over 500 federally recognized tribes

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exist; this figure contrasts with the nearly 1,000 tribes and bands estimated to have occupied what is now the contiguous United States at the time of European contact.7 The decline in the number of tribes is the result of many factors; however, contemporary American Indian communities are not simply surviving remnants of precontact societies. These communities survived the combined results of (1) political policies and practices enacted by the U.S. federal government in their sovereign-to-sovereign history and (2) American Indian efforts to shape, accommodate, or resist those policies and practices. American Indian women’s leadership role exemplifies the latter through this traditional Cheyenne saying: ‘‘A nation is not conquered until the hearts of its women are on the ground. Then it is done, no matter how brave its warriors nor how strong their weapons.’’ White Eurocentric male descriptions shaped the literature and public perceptions of American Indian women through an identity controlled by forces of capitalist patriarchy and theology. It is tempting to dismantle these conceptual frameworks as a reassuringly critical stance in relation to those found in the academic literatures of feminism and the world of work; however, the connections among identity, power, and gender in American Indian communities are more complex than the collective and deterministic descriptions provided to date.

GENDER, RACE, IDENTITY: A RESEARCH EVOLUTION So although I propose to rethink role acquisition and its connection to leadership from an indigenous perspective, I did not start this inquiry at that point. The inquiry began with the same quantitative lens designed by mathematicians for hypothesis testing, moved to a more holistic perspective (still bound by conventional design), and evolved (is evolving) as a process to bridge naturalistic inquiry with native ways of knowing, teasing out the similarities and highlighting the rigor in language usage. In the late 1980s, a quantitative correlation study of American Indian women supervisors was designed to test the relationship of gender, race, and job satisfaction.8 This study, ‘‘Stereotyping and Job Satisfaction among American Indian Female Supervisors,’’ was a correlational study of ethnic stereotypes, gender stereotypes, and job satisfaction based on Festinger’s hypotheses on dissonance avoidance.9 I found that the interaction of gender and race created contradictory roles, especially when compared to similar research on women of color. The dissatisfaction with stereotypes was higher in gender-specific roles than with stereotypes of ethnicity; yet overall, the 144 women who participated in the study did not indicate high levels of dissatisfaction as supervisors in positions in education, law, health care, governmental services, and social services—at least not statistically significant results. In fact, compared to the literature on other minority women at the time, it appeared as if American Indian women supervisors fared well in terms of job performance and salary.

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The substance and strength of stereotypes shape the identities of American Indian women outside tribal communities, yet within their own tribal and intertribal interactions, specific roles are acknowledged and accepted. A later ethnographic study, ‘‘A Study of American Indian Females in Higher Education Administration,’’ describes six American Indian women living and working in Lawrence, Kansas, at a federal boarding school.10 The analysis provides theoretical insights into notions of self and the construction of identities within the context of the federal workplace. The study finds that identities of gender, race, and leadership intersect and often produce dissonance within the workplace. Role-modeling emerged as a theme throughout the interviews. These American Indian women valued their contributions to the community in terms of their ability to affect other American Indian women’s career choices. In this study, conclusions mirrored previous results that minimized or negated the double bind for American Indian women. These perspectives on gender, race, and identity combine to represent strong connections with narrative examples provided by participants on identity construction. However, what is particularly relevant about this work is that the discussion is framed through standard, traditional contexts for academic research. The federal context and the nature of the conclusions make this work an important predecessor to the next examination. The 1995 study generated questions about a. the nature of work identities in federal context; b. how those identities relate to wider discourses; and c. what aspects of race and issues of gender might manifest themselves across the tribal communities. The dissonance these women described was produced when the requirements of work conflicted with the constructs of tribal community traditions. For example, an American Indian female supervising an elder American Indian male resisted using organizational sanctions for poor performance because of his status as an elder in the community. The roles within the community constrained her corporate, bureaucratic behavior. The last study is even more narrowly focused. It is a longitudinal, comparative case study of school leadership with female and male American Indians as subjects.11 Observation, shadowing, and interviews over a period of four years found that gender and race were linked inextricably to leadership in a fundamental community process. For both, spirituality and the sense of tribal connectedness was key to the leadership function. Leadership in indigenous communities reflects situations within traditional practices inherent in daily interactions of both the leader and the community of followers. Indigenous leadership may be constrained by gendered identities but within tribal communities is both complex and unambiguous.

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INSIGHTS FROM INTERTRIBAL NARRATIVES A discussion of intertribal issues, such as the one focusing on leadership, necessitates the conventions of comparison and this discussion on the role of American Indian women is no different. In spite of assertions and personal beliefs about differences among tribes, I have moved this discussion to one of similarities across tribes with which I am familiar through experience or scholarship. Despite the range of environments and narrative myths surrounding indigenous women, they have made and continue to make essential contributions within their communities. The United Nations Platform for Action Committee’s (UNPAC) essay on aboriginal women and the economy provides a compelling narrative of indigenous perspectives on women’s work; discrimination based on gender, race, and tradition; and the resiliency of indigenous women in today’s market economy.12 The report includes efforts to develop alternatives to exploitive economics. Clearly situated in native ways of knowing, UNPAC advocates economic models based on sustainability acknowledging indigenous women’s place in the informal economy. Another essay describing misrepresentation of female roles in Lakota cultures and traditions gives evidence linking American Indian women’s role in tribal communities to activism. The nine American Indian women who coauthored this article on misappropriation of cultural roles note that ‘‘men and women have different roles in Lakota society; they [women] are not subordinate, they are just different.’’13 Based on their direct knowledge of the Lakota tribe’s traditions and oral histories, the coauthors critique a children’s book that misrepresents American Indian women’s role in that tribe. The act of writing the article acknowledges a leadership role and situates this leadership in a context of community activism. To describe the relationship among leadership and gender, race, and identity in indigenous communities, I rely on perspectives from several fields to better understand the leadership role of American Indian women. Beatrice Medicine, a cultural anthropologist, provides a basic understanding of the shifting, negotiated, and relational nature of identities and the subtle deployments of leadership in matriarchal and patriarchal communities.14 The body of work that Medicine contributed precedes the feminist narratives of Paula Gunn Allen, Leslie Marmon Silko, Winona LaDuke, and Wilma Mankiller in exploration of conditions of leadership in contemporary tribal communities. Medicine’s career is a hallmark for scholarship that describes indigenous relationships and the role of women in American Indian societies. Trained as an anthropologist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, Medicine’s advocacy continues to influence native and nonnative scholarship, including that of scholars mentioned in the previous paragraph. For example, an essay by Paula Gunn Allen, a Laguna Pueblo/Sioux, titled ‘‘The Sacred Hoop Perspective,’’15 links traditions and practices through

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feminists’ relationships to provide indigenous perspectives on women’s roles. Silko’s (Laguna) fiction and poetry portray the relationships between traditions and practices in contemporary lives of American Indian women who attempt to negotiate these relationships daily. Silko’s Almanac of the Dead converges around the lives of two American Indian women and seeks to define the search for balance.16 Winona LaDuke is an Anishinaabeg (Ojibwe) and founder of White Earth Land Recovery Project. In both 1996 and 2000, LaDuke ran for vice president on the Green Party ticket. Her activism on behalf of American Indian and environmental issues can be seen in Last Standing Woman,17 which is fiction, and in a nonfiction work titled All Our Relations.18 Wilma Mankiller, former principal chief of the Cherokee Nation in Oklahoma, attributes her own community activism to her understanding of her people’s history, including her own family’s forced removal to California and her subsequent participation as a student in the occupation of Alcatraz Island.19 Thus, the nature of American Indian women’s roles as represented in oral histories, biographies, fiction, and poetry reinforces social science scholarship on these same leadership roles. A more extended argument made recently by Mihesuah in Indigenous American Women: Decolonization, Empowerment, Activism is that the concept of leadership negates the separation of individual identity and tribal community, as the individual American Indian woman and her role in the tribal community are inextricably intertwined.20 This suggests that a different conceptualization in the study of leadership for indigenous people exists placing community at the center of future inquiry. Mihesuah’s work quotes Katsi Cook, a Mohawk activist, describing leadership by traditional women from a matrilineal clan through ‘‘relationships, not roles, within the universe and within society.’’21 Mihesuah’s scholarship on feminists, tribalists, and activists mirrors this theme and grounds the discussion of leadership in relationships within native communities. In contrast, Jaimes and Halsey premise their discussions on individual authority and authentic voice, equating American Indian female leadership with individual activism.22 For their discussion, the American Indian woman in the leadership role must be Indian or feminist enough on some personal scale of these variables. Their scholarship appears to exclude the lives and work of the majority of contemporary American Indian women. The role of American Indian women is not only underresearched, but existing readings such as the ones noted often focus on individual identity. Native ways of knowing can refocus the study of leadership roles, bringing new perspectives to bear on attempts to answer such questions as the following: What sort of leadership is this? What is the relationship among gender, race, and identity roles in indigenous leadership within tribal communities? To answer these questions, we consider narratives within intertribal cultures and find traditions, cultures, and values (native ways of knowing) at the essence of the separate and varied answers. We move away from a linear research model

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into a holistic model that embraces observation (regardless of its method). We can, and sometimes do, use indigenous mathematics and science to explain the world, and such frameworks allow us to consider native ways of knowing in the social sciences, as well. Native Ways of Knowing Indigenous mathematics relies on other disciplines, for example, anthropology, archeology, and linguistics.23 The diversity of number systems includes different levels of maturity, variety in their bases, and simultaneous or contemporaneous existence prior to white contact.24 Mainstream mathematics relies on a base ten number system; indigenous mathematics may use other bases, for example, the Yup’ik use a base twenty. Denny makes a compelling case that the ability for abstract thought is equally well developed in subsistence hunting cultures and industrial societies.25 Indigenous science has a theoretical and philosophical basis in relationships. Cajete describes indigenous science as the ‘‘cornerstone of tribal community’’ and the ‘‘foundation of tribal identity.’’ Indigenous peoples relate their self-identity to a ‘‘communal soul’’ of their people.26 Leadership is therefore based on service to one’s community, and indigenous communities perceive it as a role earned in the commitment to a tribal community’s well-being. Cajete’s assertion that our ‘‘physical and biological survival is intimately interwoven with the communities we create’’ and reciprocally with those communities that ‘‘create us’’ provides a succinct explanation for indigenous science in complex physical, social, and psychological relationships today. Indigenous society further acknowledges a ‘‘deep and abiding relationship to place’’ orienting discussion of leadership, particularly women’s leadership, to geography, that is, to their traditional home and community. The result is that the opportunity for inquiry expands, as we acknowledge the rigor of indigenous methods and use them to complement more familiar ones. This understanding of inquiry allows—perhaps requires—that we include narratives, such as oral traditions, in analyses for answers to our questions.

WARNER/TAHDOOAHNIPPAH LEADERSHIP MODEL For purposes of comparison, the Warner/Tahdooahnippah Leadership Model (WTLM) begins with familiar linear expressions of variables and research methods. The descriptions are then migrated into a model that reflects native ways of knowing and begins to contextualize leadership holistically. The type of leader, determined by the extent to which the variable occurs, merges finally into the Tekwanipapu, literally ‘‘one who speaks for us all.’’ The definition/s of leadership variables for the proposed WTLM, particularly those describing American Indian roles advance from the following:

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1. perspectives of quantitative and qualitative research methods, including specific studies; 2. related narratives and oral traditions; including fiction, poetry, and creative nonfiction; and 3. experiences. The combination, or intersection, of these three combines variables that create the beginning of a conceptualization of a leadership model for Indian country using native ways of knowing. The proposed model is the next iteration in the study of American Indian leadership and builds on the original descriptions and model.27 The WTLM is aligned philosophically with Smith’s argument that indigenous peoples must become active participants in the research act if the goals of indigenous self-determination are to be realized by including input from colleagues and peers.28 This model mirrors other indigenous scholars’ efforts, such as Karen Gayton Swisher’s initial article, ‘‘Authentic Research: Interview on the Way to the Ponderosa.’’ Gayton Swisher continued to encourage indigenous scholarship with her 1996 publication of ‘‘Why Indian People Should Be the Ones to Write about Indian Education.’’29 In a special topics issue of Harvard Educational Review published in spring 2000, Lomawaima discussed issues such as access to subjects and analysis and interpretation of data, including issues of intellectual property rights.30 In the same year, Brian Brayboy added to this scholarship in his essay on reflections of current practices.31 Recently, Carolyn Kenny linked native ways of knowing to aboriginal research in a study of First Nations to consider a culturally appropriate research method to encourage the development of indigenous peoples as researchers.32 This is not a claim that the WTLM is a universally appropriate and applicable leadership model for all tribes or for American Indian women specifically; rather, it demonstrates through one case just how American Indian models allow us to include native ways of knowing in our own research perspectives. The WTLM allows us to contextualize American Indian female leadership roles in an indigenous design. The design of this leadership model was conceived as a circular, interconnecting model (see figure 5.1a). As Black Elk suggested, ‘‘Everything an Indian does is in a circle, and that is because the power of the world always works in circles, and everything tries to be found. In the old days, when we were strong and happy people, all our power came to us from the sacred hoop of the nation, and so long as the hoop was unbroken the people flourished.’’33 Traditional American Indian leadership is based on a core of spirituality tied to the community. Each of the leadership styles in this model is derived from a spiritual core that connects it to an indigenous community; in other words, though American Indian communities are spiritual communities, they are not all alike. This particular model’s characteristics describe a time and

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FIGURE 5.1. Warner/Tahdooahnippah leadership model.

place of leadership using four primary leadership skills, derived from the use of language, specifically the concept of persuasion. Leadership by persuasion is similar in effect to that which Alfred describes in Peace, Power, Righteousness: An Indigenous Manifesto. Alfred defines leadership as persuading individuals to pool their self-power in the interest of the collective good. His essay draws on Russell Barsh’s concept of the ‘‘primacy of conscience,’’ where there is no central or coercive authority and decision making is collective. ‘‘Leaders rely on their persuasive abilities to achieve a consensus that respects the autonomy of individuals.’’34 Leadership is conceptualized as distributed within a community based on the skills and experience an individual accumulates. Figure 5.1a is a graphic representation of the four primary modes of persuasion that facilitate leadership, namely, observation, experience, tradition, and narration. These four modes are descriptive of the use of persuasion, whether written or spoken. The model intersects with and overlays each of the other types of persuasion. This allows us to conceptualize, in the series of Figure 5.1a–d,

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the dynamic of leadership as exactly that—moving and shifting with the circumstance or situation. This model embraces inclusion of the variables in differing degrees for various situations. Its dynamic, temporal nature is difficult to represent on a grid or page. No numerical, hierarchical scores are associated with each because no predetermined best rank exists; instead diagrams in Figure 5.1 are merely heuristics to facilitate understanding. In Figure 5.1a, I represent each of the four variables as separate to describe them and their connection to persuasion. In reality, none of the variables would exist as discretely as a Western model likely would propose in a grid or even as these four discrete circles.

DEFINITIONS The modes of persuasion (variables) are proposed as anchors to begin the discussion of American Indian leadership and are defined as follows: Narration is the objective, first-person retelling of events. Observation includes objective, third-person witnessing and data collection as a participant observer. The ability to contextualize data from an experience base is experience, which is defined as subjective and in the first person. Finally, tradition is defined as subjective collective wisdom or understanding of a community and is best contextualized by those participants most closely affiliated with the community. Each variable is situated in words or actions that allow an individual to persuade other individuals (plural). I did not include the singular because that would appear to warrant a different type of discussion of leadership and is not central to this one. These definitions are specific to the description of this model. Figure 5.1a presents an incomplete model using persuasion to form the framework for determining four variables (observation, narration, experience, tradition). Persuasion is linked to the use of written and spoken words and actions, that is, a leader may persuade followers through observation, narration, experience, or tradition. A social scientist may persuade followers by presenting the logic found in data collection or observation. American Indian social scientists, scholars who study American Indians from an insider perspective or as participant observers, are more frequently found in academic scholarship. Before the end of the twentieth century, the number of American Indian scholars in academe had increased greatly. An author persuades through the use of written words; however, the types of writing vary. Authors may include leaders who write fiction or nonfiction, curriculum designers, Web masters, and professional development trainers in any field who use technical expertise to provide knowledge, skills, or abilities to others. They may use creative nonfiction to persuade. An elder relies on community traditions and expectations to persuade. Each community, urban or reservation, defines an elder. Most of these leaders

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use the spoken word to persuade. Elder status is frequently linked to age by outsiders; however, many communities define an elder as a leader whose traditional knowledge and experience is an important link to community decision making. The role model persuades followers using actions as examples. The role model’s experiences provide community credibility for followership, and this individual bases decisions on tribal cultural traditions. Table 5.1 lists each of the four variables for each leadership style. The order of the variable represents its strength for each characteristic. For example, for the social scientist persuasive rendition of observation is the primary means of leadership enactment, followed by narration, experience, and, least of all, tradition. Each leadership role uses each of the variables to differing degrees. For this model, the type of leadership exhibited is based on the primary use of the four variables. The author would use narration, writing fiction, creative nonfiction, poetry, news articles—essentially any venue for written expression— as the primary locus for leadership. The elder would use oral traditions to complement traditional experiences as the primary locus for leadership. The role model would use experience, and persuasion would be linked to actions.35 As the variables related to persuasion (words and actions) move closer together, the proposed leadership model is more accurately pictured in Figure 5.1b. Figure 5.1b in this representation exhibits each of the circles, now intersecting, to indicate that the styles often merge. In this specific representation, Figure 5.1b shows narration visually to the forefront; it would represent the author as the primary leadership style. From this representation, we see observation, tradition, and experience in the same space, yet ordered in the same manner as in Figure 5.1a. Each of the leadership styles could be represented in the same manner, with the variables in similar fashion. As the leadership model moves to represent Tekwanipapu, shown in Figure 5.1d, the next iteration would be something similar to Figure 5.1c. In Figure 5.1c, the leadership styles begin to merge into one; so that by Figure 5.1d, we have all circles combined to create one circle. In this model, I continue to merge the circles that represent the strength of the variables because in

TABLE 5.1. WTL Model Warner/ Tahdooahnippah Leadership Variables

1 2 3 4

Social Scientist

Author

Elder

Role Model

Observation Narration Experience Tradition

Narration Observation Tradition Experience

Tradition Experience Narration Observation

Experience Tradition Observation Narration

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American Indian communities a leadership role is linked by the tribal community to the use of persuasion from words and actions so completely that the strongest leaders will exhibit abilities to move from through these four roles as the situation requires. The strength of their abilities to merge the four roles results in the designation illustrated in Figure 5.1d. Figure 5.1d shows the complete fusion of each of the four leadership styles; Tekwanipapu translates to ‘‘one who speaks for us all.’’36 This designation is gender-free. This model, then, visually represents the ability of American Indians, and for this discussion, American Indian women, to assume leadership roles in several tribally specific community contexts. The leader, designated Tekwanipapu, can move into various situations and use different forms of persuasion to Indian communities. American Indian women who use persuasion by words or actions can be found in traditionally matrilineal and patrilineal tribes. The leadership role, as identified by these variables, is not specific to a tribal culture and was designed to describe behaviors that are more easily seen as cross-cultural or intertribal. The variables are not specific to tribe, gender, class, or culture. In summer 2003, the Institute of American Indian Arts in Santa Fe, New Mexico, invited 100 scholars to the Convocation of Scholars to begin planning for Achein: A Lifelong Learning Center. This convocation mirrored those of the 1970s, first at Princeton University and then at the Aspen Institute for Humanistic Studies.37 Some participants in the 2003 convocation, including Pulitzer Prize winner N. Scott Momaday, had attended the first two meetings. The 2003 convocation was patterned after the earlier meetings held by the American Indian Historical Society and attracted participation from each of the four leadership styles in the proposed WTLM. Examples are:











Social scientist: Janine Pease Windy Boy (Oglala) founder and former president of the Little Big Horn College and recipient of the MacArthur Fellows . Pease is the author of several articles on native ways of knowing and indigenous pedagogy. Author: Rayna Green (Cherokee), chair , Division of Cultural History and Director of the American Indian Program at the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of American History. Green writes on the politics of culture in contemporary American Indian art and music and American Indian women.38 Elder: Henrietta V. Whiteman (Southern Cheyenne) is a professor of Native American Studies at the University of Montana. Whiteman worked to draft legislation that created the American Indian Religious Freedom Act.39 Role model: Della Warrior (Otoe/Missouria) is the former president of the Institute of American Indian Arts in Santa Fe. Warrior is the first and only woman elected as chairperson of the Otoe-Missouria Tribe.

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The leadership styles represented here are embedded in a tribal or multitribal organization. Is it possible, then, that these abilities, the variables of persuasion identified as key in tribal communities, do not allow American Indian women to successfully work in nontribal, corporate management?

RED WHITE-COLLAR WOMEN Corporate managers in the United States come in all colors. Initially the Industrial Revolution produced a metaphor of white- and blue-collar workers; in 1977 Louise Kapp Howe coined the term ‘‘pink collar’’ to describe the female equivalent of the blue-collar worker. In 1985, Robert E. Kelley used the term ‘‘gold-collar’’ worker to describe corporate, highly skilled individuals. None of these phrases describes American Indian women in corporate management; unless the corporation is tribal-owned and -operated, it is unlikely that we can find a group of such women. American Indian women in leadership roles are found in tribal services, government services, and education. They are more often found in leadership roles in service organizations that provide support to tribal communities. Johnson characterizes this in her research as ‘‘life and leadership are woven into one.’’40 Krouse and Howard-Bobiwash describe urban Indian women’s community work and activism. They make the case that Indian women adapt traditional approaches and concepts to solve problem in urban Indian communities, specifically in the shaping of identity and community membership.41 The corporation they describe is a multimillion-dollar enterprise that operates an educational facility in tandem with other social and health services. In their article describing an urban Indian initiative in Milwaukee, they note that women moved a home school program into a multimillion-dollar nonprofit corporation. Indian women’s activism sustained the change; yet like other initiatives where American Indian women lead in social change, their efforts are targeted to schools and health care—in other words, to issues of community. Castle’s work centers on American Indian women activists, documenting the history of the Red Power Movement, Women of All Red Nations, the Black Hills Alliance, and others.42 For most of the corporate world in the United States, American Indian women are on the other side of the fence—activists against corporate irresponsibility, environmental racism, and consumerism. Miller’s overview of gender roles in tribal politics begins with an overview of feminist perspectives and concludes that American Indian women’s participation can be seen in family networks and community well-being.43 He found that American Indian female tribal leaders began their political careers at an early age, influenced largely by leadership roles within their immediate families. American Indian women in politics within the majority culture face different constraints; the gender gap is more evident in mainstream politics.

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Theresa D. LaFromboise and others explored traditional and contemporary roles of Indian women and their resilience despite continuous role readjustment, value conflict, and economic pressure.44 They found the continued use of traditional coping mechanism was affirmed through tribal diversity and predominantly egalitarian structural similarities in roles of leadership, particularly as transmitters of cultural knowledge. Celene Krauss’s work on race, class, and gender examines activism and American Indian female leadership as basic to tribal communities where their traditional roles as mothers create a resource for their resistance activities in such broad issues as the inequality underlying environmental hazards. Krauss’s study underscores that leadership in tribal communities, particularly by females, is secured in social issues that affect the community.45 At the federal level, specifically regarding Indian education and health, American Indian women are found in such positions as Assistant Deputy Secretary in the Office of Indian Education within the Department of Education (Victoria Vasquez) and U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (Eugenia Tyner-Dawson).46 Ada Deer, former Menominee chairwoman, was the first Assistant Secretary for Indian Affairs, the highest federally appointed position held by an American Indian in the U.S. government. Cynthia LinquistMala, president of Cankdeska Cikana Community College (aka Little Hoop Community College) in Fort Totten, is the current chairwoman of the National Advisory Council on Indian Education, appointed by President George W. Bush in 2002. I find evidence of scholarship and role modeling in each of these examples.

INDIGENOUS LEADERSHIP THEORY The disquieting feature of Western leadership theories is the limited and traditional way in which the work of corporate leaders and managers continues to be conceptualized, structured, and researched. Western thinking suggests that a normative leadership theory is possible and assumes that leadership is a fixed and rational activity that can be affected in culturally specific ways. We need to explore, in various forms, the relevance of this discussion of leadership in a global society. Russell Barsh’s ‘‘Nature and Spirit of North American Political Systems’’ describes the characteristics of a native leader and transformative leadership which he situates in four general traits:47 Such leaders draw on their own personal resources as sources of power, set an example, are modest and funny, and serve as role models. Alfred builds on these characteristics in his Indigenous Manifesto by describing native leadership as a demand for mutual respect between leaders and the community.48 This link to community helps us begin to understand indigenous leadership and the role of women within native communities, giving

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insight into the function they play. The leadership role and influence of women in American Indian communities is hard to ignore. They are seldom presented as leaders, and their roles are underresearched in academic scholarship. Their particular invisibility can be reexamined using indigenous pedagogy. But this exploration suggests that ultimately instances of subtle deployments of leadership require us to question any view that indigenous women are powerless or ignored within their own cultures. It further suggests the difficulty of interacting in non-Indian communities where separate cultural dynamics inform the practice of leadership roles. Identity and one’s relationship within a culture are inextricably linked to roles of leadership and followership. Leadership is long established as a fundamentally social rather than individual process because it requires followership. American Indian leadership may be constrained by gendered identities, but situated in tribal communities, it is multifaceted or ambiguous to outsiders. Male patriarchal identity, as a construct in tribal communities, can be recognized in matrilineal and patrilineal tribes, the women at times collaborating in its production and maintenance. The complexity of gendered identities in tribal communities necessitates the use of native ways of knowing to reveal multiple, shifting forms of leadership that are constantly negotiated and renegotiated in separate tribal communities. How does this conceptualization, the WTLM, of leadership intersect with leadership roles for American Indian women? In an effort to describe a culturally specific phenomenon, the cultures become less specific in the model. For the reader, then, the question is whether this adds to the understanding or muddies the waters.

NOTES 1. I use American Indian, Alaska Native, or Native Hawaiian when referring to indigenous people in the United States in my scholarship. When other authors use native, Native American, or First Nations, I cite those as found. In citing individual membership, I defer to the individual, for example, Linda Sue Warner (Comanche) rather than Linda Sue Warner (Nunumuh). 2. Valorie J. Johnson, ‘‘Weavers of Change: Portraits of Native American Women Educational Leaders’’ (PhD diss., Michigan State University, 1997), p. 60. 3. Double bind is that set of conflicting expectations that may be created when an individual is considered to have membership in two distinct groups, including references to dual discrimination of race and gender; also, referred to as double jeopardy. This term was coined in 1972 by Frances Beale and referenced in the literature as interactive discrimination. 4. Tanya Fitzgerald, ‘‘Locating Indigenous Voices in Educational Leadership,’’ paper presented to the New Zealand Education Administration and Leadership Conference, Rotorua, 2002. Cited with permission, August 14, 2005. 5. Susan Applegate Krouse, ‘‘Keeping the Campfires Going: Urban American Indian Women’s Community Work and Activism,’’ American Indian Quarterly 27(3&4) (Summer and Fall 2003): 489–90.

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6. Indian country is defined sociologically to include urban regions, border towns, and checkerboard regions. It is not limited to the legal definition found in Arizona v. Blaze Construction Company (1998) codified in 18 U.S.C. § 1151 as including (1) federal reservations, whether created by statute or Executive Order, see Donnelly v. United States, 228 U.S. 243 (1913), including fee land. 7. John Reed Swaton, The Indian Tribes of North America (Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1971). 8. Linda Sue Warner, ‘‘Stereotyping and Job Satisfaction among American Indian Women Supervisors’’ (PhD diss., University of Oklahoma, 1989). 9. Leon Festinger, A Theory of Cognitive Dissonance (Evanston, IL: Row, Peterson, 1957). Festinger’s hypothesis of dissonance avoidance proposed that pressure to reduce dissonance appeared as soon as the dissonance was manifested. 10. Linda Sue Warner, ‘‘A Study of American Indian Females in Higher Education Administration,’’ Initiatives: Journal of NAWE 56(4) (1993): 11–18 (ERIC Document Reproduction Services No. EJ: 504-687). 11. Linda Sue Warner, ‘‘The Double Bind for American Indian Women: Two Decades of Inquiry,’’ International Studies in Education Administration, CCEAM (forthcoming). 12. UNPAC, ‘‘Women and the Economy: Aboriginal Women and the Economy,’’ online document available at unpac.ca/economy/awe.html (accessed August 8, 2005). 13. Ann Rinaldi and others, review of My Heart Is on the Ground: The Diary of Nannie Little Rose, A Sioux Girl Carlisle Indian School, Pennsylvania, 1880, Dear America Series (New York: Scholastic, 1999). Online document available at www.oyate. org/book-toavoid/myHeart.html, p. 15 (accessed August 8, 2005). 14. Beatrice Medicine, The Native American Woman: A Perspective (Las Cruces, NM: National Education Laboratory Publications, 1978), p. 334. 15. Paula Gunn Allen, The Sacred Hoop: Recovering the Feminine in American Indian Traditions (Boston, MA: Beacon Press, 1975, 1986, 1992). 16. Leslie Marmon Silko, Almanac of the Dead (East Rutherford, NJ: Penguin Press, 1991). 17. Winona LaDuke, Last Standing Woman (Stillwater, MN: Voyageur Press, 1999). 18. Winona LaDuke, All Our Relations: Native Struggles for Land and Life (Cambridge, MA: South End Press, 1999). 19. Activities associated with American Indian activists, particularly AIM (American Indian Movement) in the 1960s and 1970s include the occupation of Alcatraz, the Trail of Broken Treaties, Wounded Knee, and the Longest Walk. AIM began in Minneapolis when urban Indians organized to assert rights and reclaim their heritage. 20. Devon Abbott Mihesuah, Indigenous American Women: Decolonization, Empowerment, Activism (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2003), p. 43. 21. Cook, ‘‘Seeking the Balance: A Native Women’s Dialogue,’’ Akwe: won Journal 10 (summer 1993): 16–29. 22. M. Annette Jaimes and Theresa Halsey, ‘‘American Indian Women: At the Center of Indigenous Resistance in North America,’’ in M. Annette Jaimes, ed., The State of Native America (Cambridge, MA: South End Press, 1989), pp. 311–44. 23. Michael P. Closs, ed., Native American Mathematics (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1997), p. 2. 24. Ibid., p. 24.

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25. J. Peter Denny, ‘‘Cultural Ecology of Mathematics: Ojibway and Inuit Hunters,’’ in Michael P. Closs, ed., Native American Mathematics (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1986), p. 131. 26. Gregory Cajete, Native Science: Natural Laws of Interdependence (Santa Fe, NM: Clear Light), p. 86. 27. Linda Sue Warner and Keith Grint, ‘‘Native Ways of Knowing: American Indian Leadership and Culture,’’ paper presented at the 3rd International Studying Leadership Conference, December 15–16, 2004, University of Exeter, UK. 28. Linda Tuhiwai Smith, Decolonizing Methodologies: Research and Indigenous Peoples (London: Zed Books, 1999), p. 125. 29. Karen Gayton Swisher, ‘‘Authentic Research: Interview on the Way to the Ponderosa,’’ Anthropology and Education Quarterly 17(3) (1986): 188; ‘‘Why Indian People Should Be the Ones to Write about Indian Education,’’ American Indian Quarterly 20(1) (spring 1996): 83–90. 30. K. Tsianina Lomawaima, ‘‘Tribal Sovereigns: Reframing Research in American Indian Education,’’ Harvard Education Review 70(1) (spring 2000): 1–21. 31. Brian M. Brayboy, ‘‘The Indian and the Researchers: Tales from the Field,’’ Qualitative Studies in Education 13(4) (2000): 415–26. 32. Carolyn Kenny, A Holistic Framework for Aboriginal Policy Research. Research study funded by Status of Women Canada’s Policy Research Fund (October 2004). 33. Black Elk and J. G. Niehardt, Black Elk Speaks (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1961). 34. Gerald Taiaiake Alfred, Peace, Power, Righteousness: An Indigenous Manifesto (Ontario: Oxford University Press, 1999), p. 25. 35. Originally published in a slightly different form in Linda Sue Warner and Keith Grint, ‘‘American Indian Leadership: A Model for Research,’’ in Peter Chase, ed., Leadership (Lancaster, UK: Sage, 2006). 36. Linda Sue Warner and Keith Grint, ‘‘Native Ways of Knowing: American Indian Leadership and Culture,’’ paper presented at the 3rd International Studying Leadership Conference, December 15–16, 2004, University of Exeter, UK. 37. Princeton University convened the first Convocation of American Indian Scholars in March 1970 with 200 participants; in September 1971, the Aspen Institute for Humanistic Studies hosted the second Convocation of American Indian Scholars; and the third Convocation of American Indian Scholars was hosted by the Institute of American Indian Arts in Santa Fe, New Mexico, in June 2003. 38. Rayna Green. For a more complete list of research projects, honors, and publications, see National Museum of American History, online document available at amer icanhistory.si.edu/about/staff.cmf?keyþ12&staffkey¼166 (accessed August 17, 2005). 39. American Indian Religious Freedom Act of 1978. P.L. No. 45 U.S.C. chapter 21. Subchapter I, later amended as P.L. No 103-344 in 1994. 40. Johnson, ‘‘Weavers of Change,’’ p. 291. 41. Susan Applegate Krouse and Heather Howard-Bobiwash, ‘‘Keeping the Campfires Going: Urban American Indian Women’s Community Work and Activism,’’ American Indian Quarterly 27(3&4) (2003): 489. 42. Elizabeth A. Castle, ‘‘Keeping One Foot in the Community: Intergenerational Indigenous Women’s Activism from the Local to the Global (and Back Again),’’ American Indian Quarterly 27(3&4) (2003): 840.

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43. Bruce G. Miller, ‘‘Women and Tribal Politics: Is There a Gender Gap in Indian Elections?’’ American Indian Quarterly 18(1) (winter, 1994): 25–41. 44. Theresa D. LaFromboise, Anneliese M. Heyle, and Emily J. Ozer, ‘‘Changing and Diverse Roles of Women in American Indian Cultures,’’ Sex Roles: A Journal of Research 22(7–8) (April 1990): 455–76. 45. Celene Krauss, ‘‘Women and Toxic Waste Protests: Race, Class, and Gender as Resources of Resistance,’’ Qualitative Sociological 16(3) (September 1993): 247–62. 46. Victoria Vasques, Assistant Deputy Secretary, Office of Indian Education is Diegueno of the San Pasqual Band of Mission Indians, California. See: http://222.ed.gov/ print/about/offices/list/ods/oie/vasques.html (Accessed August 22, 2005). Eugenia TynerDawson (Sac and Fox Nation) is Senior Advisor for Tribal Affairs, Office of Intergovernmental Affairs, Immediate Office of the Secretary, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. See: http://www.hhs.gov/ofta/Bio_Tyner_Dawson.html (Accessed August 22, 2005). 47. Russell Barsh, ‘‘The Nature and Spirit of North American Political Systems,’’ American Indian Quarterly 10(3) (summer 1986): 181–98. 48. Alfred, Peace, Power, Righteousness, p. 90.

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This Is How We Do It: Black Women Entrepreneurs’ Management Strategies and Styles Cheryl A. Smith

Management is . . . planning, organizing, coordinating, controlling, thinking. Managers efficiently control resources, financial, human, and social. Management also has ‘‘softer’’ elements, such as leadership, followership, spirituality, respect, process, and flow. Most of all, management is about awareness; good managers are aware of themselves, their employees, their vendors, customers, and markets. Many entrepreneurs in particular have a holistic view of their businesses, understanding the social, cultural, economic, and political contexts that impact how they manage. Small business owners are usually also aware of their style of managing, having made a choice about how they will run their businesses and the company culture they will create. This chapter presents the management strategies and styles of nineteen black women entrepreneurs identified as successful business owners and by extension good managers. The business experiences of these women entrepreneurs from New York state provide a glimpse into their lives, culture, and history as they relate their strategies for starting and managing their small businesses. In-depth interviews provided the rich data that contribute to their stories, most often unknown, untold, and unrecognized in traditional management literature.1 Types of capital accumulation will be discussed as illustrations of how they affect the management approaches of these black women business owners. I will show how their human capital or the skills, abilities, and knowledge accumulated, coupled with their personal characteristics, contributed to their management abilities and styles and how their cultural traditions, especially their social capital networks of support, including black women and extending beyond them, guided their holistic approach to operating their businesses. In addition, I will explain how human and social capital formation strategies, in turn, contributed to the growth of their financial capital, usually identified as the main goal of a business and job of a manager. Finally, I will discuss the impact of race, culture, and gender on this group of women’s management styles and strategies, recognizing

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that other factors such as class and ethnicity should also be considered. While understanding that black women (defined here as women of African descent) are not a monolithic group, that this small sample of women do not represent all black women entrepreneurs, and that these strategies are not used by only black women, I present their stories as a beginning discussion of the way in which the intersection of their many unique realities reflect the way they manage, the goals they set for their businesses, and the way they measure success.2 As a black woman entrepreneur, scholar, and educator, I know that we as a group are rarely identified as skilled managers, hitting concrete ceilings in the corporate world, having more difficulties obtaining financing than other groups of entrepreneurs, and being essentially ignored in the world of entrepreneurship as presented by traditional business schools and organizations. It is not surprising that non–business school models of management, encompassing some of the softer elements mentioned earlier, are ignored or trivialized. A more inclusive and expanded look at management is therefore warranted to understand the significance of these black women entrepreneurs’ approach to business.

DEFINITIONS OF MANAGEMENT Merriam-Webster: man-age-ment. Function: noun. ‘‘1. The act or art of managing: the conducting or supervising of something (as a business). 2. The judicious use of means to accomplish an end.’’3 Management is a broad term, often used without thought, to describe how people, businesses, and institutions are governed. Management is a usually thought of as a business term, regulated by hard-and-fast rules for what makes it good and what makes it work. Those rules come out of corporate America, which has created a discipline, a field of practice, and a market. The history of the American Management Association has its roots in the corporate world; it was founded in 1913 as the National Association of Corporate Schools. Since its founding it has merged with a number of similar organizations, including many dedicated to management education, culminating in its recognition as an educational institution by the state of New York.4 This corporate paradigm, taught almost exclusively in business schools, is grounded in a white, male-dominated perception of what constitutes good business and success. In entrepreneurship education, also as taught in traditional business school, the Schumpterian model of business creation and management is the model, based on a goal of cornering a market while crushing the competition.5 Strategies to achieve those ends, defined as success for individual gain, are taught to would-be managers and entrepreneurs. As we know from the recent spate of corporate scandals, judicious means to achieve their ends are sadly lacking in many corporations and financial institutions. However, management and similarly entrepreneurship have interdisciplinary roots, including economics, history, education, psychology, and sociology.

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A paradigm precludes open, inclusive, and holistic approaches that can be more effective on many levels, including ethical, respectful, and collaborative practices that can result in excellent profitability. Additionally, these strategies are often antithetical to many groups, including people of color and women, as well individuals from countries and cultures in which collaboration, concern with, and connection to community and outcomes that benefit the common good rather than individuals alone are their exemplars. An increasing number of challenges of this dominant worldview are being seen as people, often those marginalized by the dominant group, reject the traditional ways of doing business and create their own based on their own value systems, goals, and motivations. Those creations often come from entrepreneurs. Entrepreneurs are the ultimate business managers, for they usually do it all, especially in the start-up phase of their business development. For the purposes of this work I use the terms entrepreneur and small business manager interchangeably while recognizing the differences: Entrepreneurship involves the creation of new enterprises for the purpose of making a profit, whereas small business management is for the purpose of growing and sustaining businesses. Entrepreneurship involves creativity, and small business management involves assessment. The women business owners whose stories will be told are both creators and sustainers. Their small businesses, or more accurately microenterprises, are constantly being monitored, reviewed, and changed as needed, usually by one person, the business owner. Their people and processes have to be understood holistically. To sustain and grow the businesses, they need to know key individuals as they relate to a social order in a given community. They need to understand the economic and political forces in the broader society that impact their businesses and how they manage them.6

BACKGROUND AND CONTEXT Black women entrepreneurs have a history and tradition of thousands of years of entrepreneurial activity and success beginning with the powerful market women of ancient Africa. But their stories remain largely untold in entrepreneurship, management, or history yet ‘‘in their business activities, black women have sustained a commercial cultural tradition of self-help that has distinguished the economic lives of black women in America for almost 400 years.’’7 The tradition of excellence in entrepreneurship, management, and economic development has continued over time and place and is visible in the present-day economic activities of black women entrepreneurs. Their views of the world, their ways of acting in and on it, while displaying many commonalities with entrepreneurs in general, possess some unique aspects resulting from the intersection of race, gender, and class in their lives. These include their spirituality, their concern for balance, their integrity, their will,

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their coping mechanisms and their connections with others, notably their mothers and their ‘‘sisters,’’ their communities, and the larger society. For them, Black women’s history and culture have positively impacted their business activities. Their ways of doing business, anchored by centuries-old cultural traditions, offer alternative models of business development and expanded definitions of success, wealth and power.8

The literature in management, business, and economics is replete with references to small business management and entrepreneurship in general. The literature base on women in management and entrepreneurship has grown exponentially in the past two decades. In contrast, there is a paucity of literature focused on black women entrepreneurs. Most research has focused on how women manage differently than men, how women manage men, how women should or should not try to be more like men to succeed in business, how female entrepreneurs do business, what their management style is, and the like. When black women are studied as businesswomen and entrepreneurs, they are usually peripheral to the research and counted twice, either as a woman or a ‘‘minority’’; they are two-fers. Happily, literature and research by, for, and about black women entrepreneurs is growing, though still sparse. Graduate schools of management, such as Simmons, in Boston, are gradually beginning to notice the value of studying and surfacing the stories and strategies of this group of women. The Center for Women’s Business Research, formerly the National Foundation of Women Business Owners, is the premier organization conducting research and disseminating information on women’s business ownership. It is a standout organization because it is one of the few (if not the only) broad-based entities that produces studies placing women of color in the center of their research rather than ‘‘integrated’’ into studies of mainstream women. The center has conducted two recent studies that pertain to the progress and status of black women, a term I prefer because African American does not apply to all black women in the United States. It excludes Caribbean, African, Latina, and Native American women who identify as black. The broader based term is more accurate and inclusive, providing a global perspective on the lives of women of the African diaspora. Statistical and comparative data that situate black women entrepreneurs in the wider context in which they operate is instructional in understanding how they compare to other groups of female entrepreneurs and to entrepreneurs in general. The groups studied are African American, Latina, Asian, and Native American. The center’s 2002 report, ‘‘Women Business Owners of Color: New Accomplishments, Continuing Challenges,’’ updates the 1998 study, ‘‘Women Business Owners of Color: Challenges and Accomplishments.’’ The key finding was that ‘‘Growth Is the Key Focus for All Women Entrepreneurs, Regardless of Ethnic Background.’’ The critical issue in this finding, however, is that how and how fast growth is achieved differs for women of various ethnic and racial

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groups. For example, there are many commonalities among all groups, including regarding their primary goal, business growth, the fact that most started their businesses from scratch, capitalize their businesses primarily through business proceeds, and face the challenges of being taken seriously by the men in their own or other ethnic groups. However, the striking difference is that although approximately 25 percent of three ethnic groups reported problems when seeking financing, almost twice as many or 47 percent of black women reported obstacles. They were also the most likely to need additional financing in the following year.9 These findings point out that gender is not unifying, that the playing field for women entrepreneurs is not even, and that business growth is impacted by factors associated with discrimination, racism, and sexism, those that go beyond merit, ability, and accomplishments. It is likely that the outcomes of these differences will result in slower growth rates and smaller profits in these businesses, rendering them ‘‘unsuccessful, uninteresting, and nonimportant’’ in the eyes of economists, entrepreneurship and business educators, bankers, policy makers, and the general public. The myth of black women not being good business managers and owners is thus perpetuated. The reasons for these discrepancies need to be examined in the light of differential life and business chances of black women, whose unique standpoint in U.S. society is a result of the 400-year-old ongoing legacy of discrimination based on racism and sexism. As Lynn Burbridge, who fashioned the theory of time poverty, believes, ‘‘in order to challenge the dominant economic paradigm of researchers, scholars and educators, we need to examine the totality of factors and life challenges of Black women entrepreneurs.’’10 The center’s most recent findings on the state of black women’s businesses in the United States are, however, encouraging. Its 2004 fact sheet presents the most up-to-date data on African American women’s majority-owned, privately held businesses in the United States. The most cogent findings:  



African American women–owned businesses exceed 414,000, employ nearly 254,000, and generate $19.5 billion in sales nationwide. 29 percent of firms owned by women of color are owned by African Americans; they own 6 percent of all majority women-owned firms in the United States. African American–owned businesses are in all industries, with the majority (78.3 percent) in the service sector, where there was the greatest growth between 1997 to 2002.11

These most recent findings exceed those reported in the 2002 Fact Sheet and attest to the fact that in spite of barriers and obstacles to obtaining financing and not being taken seriously as efficient and excellent business owners, black women continue to open, build, and manage profitable businesses. They are a force to be reckoned with on the economic landscape. Business start-up and growth are accomplished by good management. To understand the significant

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and continued growth of black women–owned firms, looking at the way they started and manage their businesses is useful. One way to begin this analysis is to understand what managers do. A self-study seminar of the American Management Association titled ‘‘What Managers Do’’ breaks the job down into its components: ‘‘planning, organizing, staffing, directing, and controlling.’’12 Recognition of the stylistic differences in management is a hopeful sign that even in the most traditional management education, there is variation, fluidity, and recognition of personality, styles, and values that speak to how the content is delivered. Similarly, the style or way a business is managed is as important to its success as what, or the content, that is managed. The softer components of management stated in the beginning of this chapter account for style or how the businesses are managed, and the traditional, linear view is related to what is managed. Black women are known for their style and the way they manage their businesses. Though not all the same, they share some common styles and concrete substance that contribute to their success. The discussion is especially important considering the rapidly increasing diversity of businesses, managers, and employees in the global marketplace. Manfred Davidmann has written extensively on management, management behaviors, and style. He identifies two styles of management: authoritarian and participative. The authoritarian style is a top-down, military-type hierarchy where decisions are made at the top and orders given to those below; people are assumed to hate work and fear motivation. In contrast, participative styles delegate work, use teams, co-lead, invite participation in decision making, assume people want to work well, and reward motivation and creativity.13 A more recent and entertaining take on management and business styles is offered in the popular literature that says the same thing while addressing the differences between men and women. A book by Ronna Lichtenberg takes on the gender stereotypes of women versus men by identifying pink and blue management and business styles. According to Lichtenberg, pink style people put their emphasis on connection and relationships, whereas blue style people focus on the task at hand, the activity of the business. Pink can be aligned with the participative style of Davidmann and the blue with the authoritarian. She proposes that pink is usually true for a woman and blue for a man, but not necessarily so. Blues see themselves as independent of relationships in the workplace and view their success, defined as being well paid, as a result of their individual efforts.14 Lichentenberg’s position is that men and women alike should use both styles to achieve business success. In relation to business success, management styles and perceptions are literally also colored by race and gender. Two Simmons management professors, Stacy Blake-Beard and Laura Morgan Roberts, have examined another popular medium, television, for examples of how styles are perceived and responded to when taking into race into account. They examine the stereotypes that prevail in the workplace that drive assessment and success as illustrated by

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the popular reality show The Apprentice, in which contestants compete to win a place as Donald Trump’s apprentice, running one of his businesses for a year. The only African American contestants in the first season were Omarosa Manigault-Stallworth and Kwame Jackson. Highly credentialed, these two provided much of the excitement and tension apparent in the competition. However, given the interest the show has generated among the general population, in water cooler discussions in offices around the country, and even in schools of business and management as a teaching tool, Blake-Beard and Morgan felt compelled to raise the ‘‘more challenging conversations around the underlying issues of race, gender, and class that scripted the group dynamics and created the true drama in this show.’’15 As black women and professors of management, they felt duty-bound to look at the unique standpoint of those two would-be apprentices, the outcomes of the contest, and the lessons learned from their experiences that can inform our ideas about the impact of race, gender and class on business success. The overarching issue people of color, particularly black people, face in dominant-controlled organizations, businesses, the academy, and many aspects of everyday life is that of invisibility and hypervisibility.16 Used as a frame of analysis of Omarosa’s and Kwame’s strategies on the show, Blake-Beard and Morgan identify two methods each employed: Omarosa’s approach was to make herself visible by standing out from the crowd, Kwame’s was to blend in and slip under the radar. Omarosa was ‘‘fired’’ after nine weeks of competition, and Kwame remained in contention until the final cut was made. He did not win. In Omarosa’s quest to win by becoming hypervisible to succeed, she employed tactics taught in business schools to stand out from the crowd to become winners and leaders. They included displaying traits such as intelligence, autonomy, aggressiveness, and self-confidence.17 Of course, these behaviors work for white men but are problematic for women, especially assertive black women who are perceived as being arrogant, abrasive, and confrontational; ‘‘uppity’’ black women do not know their places. Omarosa was ostensibly fired because she was perceived to be in constant conflict with her team. It can be argued that Omarosa displayed a blue style of management. Perhaps she was more memorable than the winner, a white male, as BlakeBeard and Morgan argue that maybe ‘‘Omarosa has become a caricature, holding all the negative stereotypes, anger, and fear that this culture has of Black women.’’18 She may embody one of the most pernicious and persistent stereotypes, that of Sapphire—a loud, emasculating woman; this and many other deeply ingrained negative stereotypes about black women had their origins in the times of chattel slavery and post–Civil War U.S. society. According to Leith Mullings, a scholar and researcher in black studies and black feminist theory, ‘‘women of color, and particularly African American Women, are the focus of wellelaborated, strongly held, highly contested ideologies concerning race and gender.’’19 History, therefore, as well as race and gender, impacts how black women in management and business are perceived and regarded.

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Kwame, on the other hand, took the other road. A Harvard Business School graduate, he chose to slip under the radar, becoming invisible at times rather than standing out from the crowd as he may have been taught. A Harvard Business Review article reveals the prevailing views of success strategies in business: ‘‘Winners in our society are still defined as those who step forward and ‘employ killer strategies’ for trouncing the competition.’’20 This approach enabled him to stay in the game until the last round. Kwame may have taken this approach because he recognized the visceral reactions of whites to black men, especially assertive, aggressive ones who often are perceived as threatening, dangerous, violent, and criminal. Interestingly, his management style with his team was pink and participative, focusing on relationships, cooperation, and collaboration. This softer approach ultimately cost him the contest. Similar to Lichtenberg’s suggestion for the use of a combined pink and blue style, either alternatively or even simultaneously, Blake-Beard and Morgan suggest that ‘‘tokens’’ or ‘‘onlys’’ in majority-dominated organizations blend the visibility strategies to achieve what they call tempered visibility.’’ Omarosa and Kwame might have done well to take a page from each other’s books and employ cooperation and collaborative tactics so that at least one of them could win. These insights from the corporate workplace can be extrapolated to provide a theoretical frame of analysis of the management styles and strategies of black women entrepreneurs whose history, culture, race, and gender are also critical to how they create, grow, and manage their businesses. One must be careful, however, of cultural determinism. Societal issues and strictures such as racism, sexism, and classism affect black women entrepreneurs in particular ways given their unique standpoint in history yet by no means determine how every black woman does business. Black women doing business in the hegemonic white male–dominated economic system, however, face unique challenges. These challenges also impact other groups, as seen in the case of Kwame, as well as white women, nonelite whites, and immigrants who have been marginalized in the existing economic systems. The differences may be more in degree than in kind. Nonetheless, black women entrepreneurs, operating under the double yoke of racism and sexism in an economic system that has ignored or trivialized their accomplishments, have fascinating and instructional stories to tell that will benefit all regardless of race, ethnicity, or gender.

THE STORIES Women of the African diaspora in the United States are unique. As I pointed out in Market Women: Black Women Entrepreneurs Past, Present and Future, black women’s uniqueness is related to the fact that they ‘‘share with White women a similar experience of what it means to be female in a sexist society and with Black men what it means to be Black in a racist society.’’21 In addition, black women have been historically viewed as an ‘‘inferior’’ sex of an ‘‘inferior’’ race.

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African American women also share the experience of being women of color in a white male–dominated society but are different even from other women in that many of their ancestors were brought here in chains from Africa and suffered under chattel slavery for centuries. More importantly, black women are barely noticed in history because until relatively recently, history was written by white men, and black history by black men. Absent from standard histories of business, economics, and entrepreneurship, I discovered the extensive history of women of African descent who have a long tradition of entrepreneurial activity, skill, and success by reading across disciplines. This tradition provided for the retention and adaptation of entrepreneurial marketing skills over time and place and advanced the success of several black women entrepreneurs in both the slave and free communities in the colonial and antebellum eras of American history, throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries to the present day.22 Any discussion of black women entrepreneurs’ management skills and styles would be incomplete without presenting the stories of women whose accomplishments provide the foundation for the economic activities, values, and strategies that underlie current methods of achieving business success. The women’s histories were presented in detailed chronological order in Market Women, establishing a sense of time, place, and historical context, so here I will only share a few of the stories of women of the past who can serve as unknown mentors and sources of inspiration to market women of the present. I will then present some market women of the present, using narratives that illustrate in their own words the management strategies, skills, and attitudes they used that enabled them to manage their businesses successfully and effectively.

MARKET WOMEN OF THE PAST According to Melville Herskovits in his groundbreaking work The Myth of the Negro Past, the genius of ancient African women in the economic sphere had many facets, including their management strategies and abilities: In the field of production, this discipline takes the form of cooperative labor under responsible direction and such mutual self-help is found not only in agricultural work but in the craft guilds, characteristically organized on the basis of kinship. This genius for organization also manifests itself in the distributive processes. Here the women play an important part. Women, who are for the most part sellers in the market, retain their gains often becoming independently wealthy. With their high economic status, they have likewise perfected disciplined organizations to protect their interests in the markets. These organizations comprise one of the primary price-fixing agencies, prices being set on the basis of supply and demand, with due consideration for the transportation of goods.23

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Far back in history, black women displayed excellent management skills they used to control not only individual businesses but also cooperative guilds and empires. I begin the historical journey with one of the most famous of the ancient African queens and pharaohs, Hatshepsut, who lived and ruled in the 1400s B.C.E. The Queen Hatshepsut is the direct descendant of Ahmose-Nofretari through royal incest. She is notable because, as the daughter of a god, she chose not to rule as a regent but declared herself Pharaoh. When she did so, she shed her feminine exterior, appearing with a symbolic beard and loincloth. Her achievements included a rule of peace that was an oasis between wars. She focused on the prosperity of the Kingdom, managing its wealth skillfully, exercising her strength and desire for peace such that no war occurred during her reign. Trade was established with people of the East and with the Greeks. Turquoise mines were opened in the Sinai and rather than use slaves cruelly, she requested and obtained Egyptian volunteers and Bedouins to harvest the stones. She also sent caravans deep into Asia and the land of Punt around 1495 B.C.E.24

This queen behaved in such a way that her kingdom prospered without cruelty or war. She was a leader who used cooperation rather than competition and coercion to rule and manage, providing a tradition that endured after her reign. As we can see from Hatshepsut’s story, issues of gender, power, and control were evident in her time. Refusing to bend to the prevailing gender stereotypes of the day, she took control over her kingdom, as was her birthright, and continued to use her power with rather than over people. However, like many of the female rulers in the ancient world, she acceded to the conditions of the times by donning a beard as a symbol of masculinity when wielding her power in recognition of the patriarchal nature of her culture. She managed her kingdom and its economic systems using a combination of pink and blue styles for the benefit of her people. Her success was measured in a kingdom that prospered without conflict, establishing an ongoing tradition of peace, cooperation, and collaboration for the greater good. As we move along the continuum of history, I will tell a bit of the story of Elleanor Eldridge, an entrepreneur of note in New England in what was then the colony of Rhode Island. There was also a great deal of entrepreneurial activity in the New England colonies, known for its ‘‘female economies’’ of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. According to Angel Kwolek-Folland, a white woman historian, 10–25 percent of the female population in preindustrial America was engaged in entrepreneurship, primarily in the retail trade in urban areas.25 Although she talked about the business activity of New England women in those ‘‘female economies,’’ Kwolek-Folland did not mention Eldridge, a figure whose activities were well documented in New England history. Eldridge (1784–1845) was from Rhode Island and was an entrepreneur and amateur lawyer who started a series of businesses in her lifetime, based on the skills she developed as an apprentice in several places in which she was

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employed. She was born free on March 27, 1784 in Warwick, RI. At 14, she was a full-fledged master weaver skilled in ‘‘double and ornamental’’ weaving and made carpets, tapestries, and the like. After leaving the weaving business at age 16, she worked at a dairy owned by a Captain Benjamin Greene, soon becoming a cheese-maker, said to have been the best ‘‘premium quality’’ cheese maker in Warwick. After the death of her father and Greene, she and her sister Lettise went into business together, weaving, making soap, and providing nursing services. With the money earned from that business Elleanor began to buy real estate, buying a lot, building a house and renting it out for $40/year. Upon the request of another sister, she moved to Providence where she opened other businesses, including a wallpapering and painting business that were so successful she was able to expand her real estate holdings. She continued making significant profits in all her areas of endeavors, continuing to buy and build houses. Having accumulated $600, she bought a lot that cost $100, for which she paid for ‘‘all in silver dollars.’’ She then built a house for $1,700, one side of which she lived in adding an addition on several years later, she rented the addition at a rate of $150/year.26

While Elleanor was recovering from typhoid fever, one of her white male neighbors tried to steal her property from her. She went to court in 1837, sued, and won; her case was made in part from the testimony of one of her white women friends. One of the reasons we know Elleanor’s story is because of the court case, which was documented and the fact that in 1838 she wrote The Memoirs of Elleanor Eldridge, one of the few such accounts written and published by a free black woman.27 The fact that her story was left out of Kwolek-Folland’s history of women in business in the United States is evidence that black women continue to be peripheral in the academic business literature. On the other hand, black and white women historians such as Darlene Clark Hine, Katherine Thompson, and Dorothy Sterling have told Eldridge’s story in several of their histories of black women in the United States. Elleanor’s story illuminates the stresses and triumphs of black women trying to do business in colonial America. Her management strengths indicate true entrepreneurial skills, including opportunity recognition, vision, persistence and perseverance, and use of her family social capital resources as well as her networks of support outside her immediate family and community. She increased her profits in each business, skillfully managing her cash flow and using those profits to create new businesses, succeeding in tough times. One of the most fascinating figures in history is Mary Ellen ‘‘Mammy’’ Pleasant, (1814–1904), a black female entrepreneur and activist in San Francisco whose life spanned the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. One of a number of eminent black women of the Old West, she was best known for her participation in the financing of John Brown’s raid on Harper’s Ferry. Her biographer, Lynn Hudson, has provided a detailed account of her life and,

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importantly to this piece, her entrepreneurial history. Through Hudson’s excellent work, we learn the details about how she made the money she used for social and political activism. Everything about her life was contested. Called a madam, a voodoo priestess, an ex-slave, a mammy, Pleasant manipulated the press and the media at the time so that she told her own story, rather than having her identity and personhood defined by others. Possibly born and definitely raised in New England, including Nantucket Island in Massachusetts, Mary Ellen learned business skills from being employed by Quaker women business owners on Petticoat Row. She also learned about ‘‘entrepreneurship and institution building: public spaces and institutions that black people controlled’’ from the Black business community in New Guinea, the Black neighborhood on Nantucket. Leaving Nantucket, she went to Boston, becoming involved in that city’s ‘‘female economy’’ further honing her skills, accumulating capital, both financial and social, that would enable her to go West during the Gold Rush. Like many other Black people, Pleasant went West somewhere between 1849 and 1852 where . . . the climate for business and living was [considered] more hospitable for Black people than any other area in the country. Using her domestic skills and taking advantage of the prevailing stereotypes about Black women and mammies, she worked as a cook, picking up investment tips from her wealthy clients, buying laundries, purchasing real estate, trading commodities and stocks. She chose her businesses well, watching and analyzing the needs of the mostly male population in Gold Rush California, for example purchasing and running an exclusive brothel where she picked up even more investment tips.28

According to Hudson, Pleasant’s varied business activities in San Francisco consisted of men’s businesses, such as investments in mines and land as well as those based on women’s work such as laundering and running boarding houses. What is fascinating about Pleasant’s story is how she used her gender-based skills to achieve success in her business ventures. Then, having attained economic self-sufficiency, she used observation of white men’s ways of doing business and obtaining information in less than judicious ways to further her business growth. Then, in the tradition of black women entrepreneurs, she used the profits from those businesses for activities and activism for the purposes of betterment of her community of black people. However, because she used tactics that were not considered to be genteel or even legal, she is not seen in the same light as many other social reformers of the time. The silence she kept about the details of her own life enabled her to control how and what people said about her. Silence was used for self-definition, and as with many black people, especially women, as a means of resistance and survival. Finally, the last unknown mentors and role models from history I will discuss are the Walkers: Maggie Lena and Madame C.J. I discuss them briefly because they are the most well-known black women entrepreneurs of the past.

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Maggie Lena Walker (1867–1934) was the first woman of any color in the United States to found, own, and operate her own bank, the St. Luke’s Penny Savings Bank. In addition to the bank, she created many other businesses from her base, the Order of St. Luke’s in Richmond, including a printing business and a department store. The bank still exists, although it is now called the Consolidated Bank and Trust Company of Richmond; her home and businesses are now preserved as part of the National Park Service in that city.29 Madame C.J. (Sarah Breedlove) Walker is best known as the first self-made black woman millionaire in the United States. Her business was the creation and manufacture of hair care products and processes for black women. She created a vast empire, including her own factory, a cadre of sales agents and trainers who crossed the country teaching people the ‘‘Walker method’’ of hair care, a chain of beauty parlors, and a training center for her agents.30 Born in the same year, Maggie Lena and Madame C.J. Walker each came to create their businesses in different ways and yet each had as their primary motivation the economic empowerment of black women and social and political justice for black people. Their own words describe their management strategies, motivations and goals best: I see as my first work to draw around me the women . . . to put their mites together, put their hands and their brains together and make work and business for themselves. (Maggie Lena Walker)31 The girls and women of our race must not be afraid to take hold of business endeavor and, by patient industry, close economy, determined effort, and close application to business, wring success out of a number of business opportunities that lie at their very door.32

MARKET WOMEN OF THE PRESENT Juliet E. K. Walker, the premier black business historian, believes ‘‘ . . . that reviewing the economic activities of African women in America from the Colonial period to the development of the new nation provides a basis on which to establish the foundation of business activities of African American women.’’33 As can be seen from the narratives, the skills, strategies, values, and motivations of market women of the past are interconnected, consistent, and viable. Their descendants, the present market women, display similar skills, strategies, and styles, grounded in part in the Afro-centric humanistic worldview that lies at the heart of black culture and tradition. In the vignettes that follow, we will see evidence of participative management styles, based on the cooperative economic system of African communities; we will hear how the women learned to do business and from whom, how the use of profits connects them to the ongoing battle for social justice and equality, and how tried-and-true as well as innovative approaches to doing business their own way work for them. First,

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I will provide a short description of the research methodology used and summary of the demographic profile of the nineteen study participants and their businesses. The research methodology employed here was qualitative or naturalistic. I used several qualitative data collection methods to gather information, including interviewing to obtain life and business experience information, critical incident to obtain and confirm participants’ perceptions of business success and learning experiences, and document review or analysis to gather demographic and statistical information. The study population consisted of nineteen black women entrepreneurs who are successful graduates of the New York State Entrepreneurial Assistance Program (EAP), a training and technical assistance program. They all self-identified as being black; several were of Hispanic ethnicity and two were Caribbean-born. A majority of the study group participants were between thirty-one and forty years old; one participant was over sixty. The group was composed of a highly educated group of individuals, several with postgraduate and doctoral degrees. They also brought years of work experience and both business and communication skills, and thus had a high degree of human capital accumulations, which they brought to bear on their businesses. In terms of family configuration, over half were married with children; the remaining were single, divorced, or separated, some with and some without children. Most had supportive family members, spouses, and partners. The businesses they owned clustered in the service industries; one also had a manufacturing component. The average age of the businesses was three years because the EAP program focused primarily on start-up, however, two of the businesses were over ten years old. Over half the women engaged in what is called income patching, that is, working full- or part-time while running their businesses. A majority of the businesses had revenue ranging from $50,000 to $100,000 per year,34 a level that traditional business researchers and educators consider unimportant and uninteresting. Owners of such businesses definitely would not be considered successful. However, these women constructed their own definitions of success, much as they employed management approaches that would not make them winners in the white male business climate. They present worldviews, business acumen, management strategies, and contributions to success that offer alternative ways of doing business that may be more comfortable and livable for groups not privileged by race, gender, or class. The black women’s themes that emerged from their stories have been affirmed in many of the recent studies that place black women at the center of their research; they relate directly to capital formation methods. I will discuss those aspects of the black women entrepreneurs’ human capital accumulations as they bear directly on their management skills. The overarching finding of my study was the breadth and depth of social capital possessed by these women, so I will highlight a few whose business approaches are representative of how social capital enhances business success and ways in which social capital activities were

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Black Women’s Themes Sisterhood: having, feeling, and acting on a sense of connection with other black women and women of color.      

Mother–daughter bond: bond with mothers and with daughters. Spirituality: sense of faith, belief in higher being, use of prayer, values. Community: concern for and involvement with community. Will: determination, strength, and force of will. Trust: Ability to trust others and being trustworthy. Time poverty: social, familial, economic factors that are more compelling for black women than other women.

interwoven with the women’s financial capital growth. Because time management is a component of traditional management education, I will share how the issue of time poverty has been dealt with by these time-poor women so that they can run their businesses.

HUMAN CAPITAL When asked to describe the personal characteristics they felt most influenced their business success, all participants in the research described the business skills they had accumulated, in other words, what they knew and what they could do, their human capital. The skills reported included marketing, pricing, purchasing, negotiating, strategic planning, budgeting, cash flow management, human resource management, and time management—all core skills involved in managing a small business successfully. How they learned is also part of who they are. Outstanding findings about educational experiences of this group related to their levels of education, use of both formal and informal learning strategies, and their continual learning to improve and expand their businesses. They are a group of lifelong learners.35 Table 6.1 exhibits their own descriptions of the acquired business skills they brought to bear on the management of their businesses. The women accumulated those skills through work experience, education, and training. According to the Center for Women’s Business Research, black women are more likely to obtain training and seek advice than other groups of women entrepreneurs. There may be several reasons for this phenomenon; one might be that the tradition of using education to achieve self-sufficiency and to advance the race is embedded in black history and culture. Education has always been viewed as a route to freedom, both literally and figuratively. Second, cooperative learning rather than competition is the rule rather than the

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Business Skills

They have to be segmented. So that’s why you have not masses but only X number of people who can hear it. That’s why targeting the market is so important because that’s what I’m doing with the various markets. So I know that you double what you make and that’s what I assumed. So what that will do is make me a master at the one thing or master at my particular style of development. It’s not about just kicking out a bunch of stuff and getting a million customers anymore . . . organize, plan, project, visualize . . . I would say, um, it became apparent when you, when I needed to order more inventory for shows and stuff because I had to create a, credit line. And sometimes it’s tough when you first start off because they don’t give you much credit. So we went back and I had to negotiate with the fabric people to get them to come down on their minimum. The longer I can hold my money the better it is for me. By having so many parties, I know how much food you’re going to need, okay. And then for my reference material, it’s. it’s X number of dollars for adults . . . da, da, da. My cash flow is better. I think I can keep track in terms of knowing whether or not I have been taken for a ride. Oh yeah, I manage it . . . that has increased my business 15 percent. In business, you know, I can negotiate well. I’m trying to grow it very slowly. And in a developmental way, field test and market to find out that whether or not people are interested in this, if this is a demand. I made constant lists. And I have a book for everything I spent. I had to make a list of now of what I do I need. I live by my lists. I plan for one whole year already. Because I know that it’s important in order to get the business off the ground. And plus it’s helping me to look at future things. And it turned out the company would give me fifteen days terms. Then I said by my first year I wanted to make, $ . . . K Next year, $ . . . K. Go up and up. And pretty much I’m on track. I negotiate, I try to get the barest minimum as much as possible. I have an ad in the Yellow Pages and I’ve gotten a lot of big jobs. I mean literally, I had so many phone calls I could not believe it, off that one ad. I’ll establish a fee schedule for them to be able to book it. I mean that’s the plan. I have good computer skills We’ll do it for ourselves. We have some designers but we will also be using the CAD system.

exception in the black community and is closely connected with the practice of cooperative economics. Therefore, black women in particular actively seek and use advice from peers, friends, and family mentors, known and unknown. Using and seeking advice is also a social capital formation strategy that intersects with the human capital aspect of doing business. In their own words, they describe

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how and what they learned in informal learning settings outside of the classroom. For black women in particular, much of the learning is in the informal sector as well as in formal learning settings. This type of learning is powerful and effective. The women of the group speak clearly about how that learning enhanced their business management. Devya is a mediation mentor who has been operating her business for over fifteen years. She provides mediation training workshops and seminars as well as mediation products. She was over sixty years old when she entered the EAP program and felt her whole life and work experiences have been a preparation for this business, which she identifies as her life’s purpose: ‘‘I also realized that everything I’ve ever done in my entire life was training me or developing me or moving me to this life . . . building me up . . . and I think that’s what moved me into the life’s purpose.’’ Efua owns a janitorial and maintenance company serving individuals and commercial clients. She discussed the fact that she learned a good deal of her business management techniques from experience: ‘‘I think the everyday running of the business is the best learning experience. You don’t know until you do it. I mean anybody can tell you what they want to tell you but it’s nothing like that actual every day dealing with payroll, dealing with taxes, dealing with the bank.’’ Deborah is a forty-something woman, a divorced mother of two, who owns and operates a floral arranging business using fresh and artificial flowers; she uses Afrocentric fabric in her arrangements. She initially talked about how she first learned to make them form her former business partner: And my partner D. said ‘‘Ah, I know how to do that.’’ And I said ‘‘You do? Well I want to learn how to do it.’’ So she said ‘‘I’ll show you how to do it.’’ And . . . she showed me how to make a bud and we started making them up. I also had an individual study with ah floral, a flower, a teacher from Japan who made actual flowers.

Collaborative learning and cooperative economics, seeking and using advice are all approaches Deborah continues to use as she readily gives advice to others interested in going into business for themselves. One factor to which business success is attributed is the presence of an entrepreneur in the family. Three women recalled working or being apprenticed in a family business from an early age. They told stories about working in their family business from a very young age and learning about the value of business ownership not only in developing general skills but also in cultivating specific business skills—accounting, stocking and doing inventory, purchasing, marketing and selling, and customer relations. More interesting, they learned the value of honoring relationships in business from observing their family members.

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Helen, a Caribbean-born woman, is also a Buddhist nun whose business was a community-based retail store operated as a not-for-profit service to her local community. She recalls: I was, I probably went down there [grandmother’s store] from six years old until I left. . . . Because my grandmother ran a boutique. It wasn’t even really a store. What it was, was it was when the ships came from the harbor. It started out as racks. Clothing racks . . . and they would make all these dashiki things for the tourists and real cool shirts. So it was in my heart. [Selling] was kind of in my blood.

Relationship and connectivity, a subtheme in social capital accumulation, were also prominent in the incidental, self-directed management education of these black women. Recognition of their true support systems—that is, who their real friends were—enhanced knowledge and affirmed their need to maintain positive relationships with vendors, customers, colleagues, and employees. This was an essential part of their learning about how to do business successfully. Most of the women reported that they learned the value of social capital and its accumulation, the significance of relationship in business, the importance of commitment to the work contract, and concern for quality and efficiency of operations from a variety of sources. Some of their own words follow: Jackie K. a high-end hat designer and manufacturer: It’s taught me about having your stuff in order. Keep your stuff in order. And I’ve been on the train and how people give me lessons like that [laughter] just talking to you about things . . . listening to older people say things . . . there are also young people, you know, you can just learn from everyone . . . even on TV. [laughter]. Ava, a single woman from Brooklyn who owns a health food store: And so I’m very proud of—what I’ve learned about business, is building relationships. That’s the key. I try to help people in the community and I try to work with people in the community. But I learned that you have to give the job to the person that can do it best. Sandy, the owner and founder of a family-owned apparel retail and manufacturing business: I’ve learned that . . . if you want to keep your business successful always involve your customers and your community. These women exhibit management approaches that are not based on crushing or killing the competition but on ‘‘raising all boats’’ in the community, a purpose long honored in the black tradition. One aspect of social capital is the use of mentors and role models. Using the assistance of mentors and role models as well as serving as both was a contributor to and a measure of success for this group of black women

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entrepreneurs. The prevailing notion in the management literature is that black women have few (if any) role models and mentors, which often preclude their ascent up the corporate ladder. Because most research conducted in this area focuses on wage-earning workers in corporations, access to other types of role models known and unknown is often unrecognized in the corporate sector.36 Sharon, who holds a doctorate in education, owns a tea gallery and conducts workshops and seminars for women of color intended to help them maintain a balance in their busy lives. She reported meditating before she begins her day, when she calls on her mentors and models. During the meditation, she thinks about a host of historical figures and identifies the attributes she admires and seeks to emulate in her daily life and business. Her historical role models include: 

     

Bessie Coleman—at a time when you could not even conceive of a woman flying, this was a black woman who flew. She went to France to get skills to do this and didn’t settle for keeping her dreams grounded. She became airborne. Nat King Cole—his elegance, his sophistication, his command of his God-given gifts. Hattie McDaniel—her personal power and love of people. Zora Neale Hurston—her writing ability and insight into people, customs, and cultures. Josephine Baker—her worldliness, humor, sophistication, and ability to speak a foreign language . Mother Hale—her ability to work with children. Adam Clayton Powell—his charisma, confidence, competence, oratorical skill, innovation, and originality.

Ella Bell and Stella Nkomo, in their definitive study of the different ways of black and white women managers in corporate life, also found that many of the black women in their participant group used images, photos, and paintings of their cultural ancestors in their offices to remind them of those who came before them, ground them in their cultural traditions, and remind their majority colleagues that they were proud black women.37 They, too, used them as sources of inspiration and models for how to conduct themselves in hostile environments or difficult situations, affirming the methods of my market women for seeking inspiration, support, and guidance. The market women of this study identified three elements of black women’s lives that contributed to their success: sisterhood, the mother–daughter bond, and spirituality. Those elements are not surprising because they are integral parts of African traditions and survival strategies that shaped life for Africans in America. They are reflected in the black women’s themes and have also been found to be elemental in black women’s lives by many researchers, including Bell and Nkomo, Blockson, Johnson and Johnson, Woodward, and

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FIGURE 6.1.

Spirituality indicators in entrepreneurship.

Ehrhardt-Morrison.38 Figure 6.1 displays the elements of spirituality as found in these women’s lives and how it serves to support, inspire, and guide their business management decisions.

FINANCIAL CAPITAL If a business does not make money, it is not a business. Financial capital growth is one of the tasks of an owner of business, and the main task is cash flow management. The market women speak briefly about how they raised and retained capital so their businesses would grow and prosper. Paulette’s story is especially illustrative of the way in which human, social, and financial capital intersections are critical to the growth if these businesses. Paulette, the Scarf Lady, is the owner of a very successful accessories retail business. We enter her narrative as she discussed how she needed to raise capital to move her business from a home-based one in which she sold her products in various venues. She has an opportunity to move into retail space in an excellent location with very short notice. Because her margins were relatively thin and she had not yet obtained outside financing, she was in danger of losing the opportunity to move. She tells her story: And when I walked in, all my girlfriends were there. And they all had $100 bills on the floor. Twelve of them. I had $1,200. Because they all said ‘‘We knew what was happening. None of us really had any money that we could give you or

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loan you, but we figured we could do this together. You know you could do something with it.’’ So I had $1,200 the week coming in. It was so unexpected . . . and it was a gift. I cried like a baby. Because I know that they’re single mothers, most of them, and I know that $100 means a lot.

Paulette was able to move into her retail space, and her business is now thriving. The nurturing social capital bonds of her sisters enabled her to raise the funds she needed to take her business to another level. Once seed capital is raised, the next step in financing a business is usually to leverage the seed capital into financing from outside sources. Paulette was able to leverage her start-up capital, the funds she raised and received from friends, to obtain an expansion loan from a traditional lending source. Similarly, other women reported they had obtained or were in the process of obtaining financing from outside sources, which included local loan funds, traditional SBA bank-based loans, loan funds specifically for women-owned businesses, and in one case, a special grant for businesses started by women living or doing business in low-income areas. As we know from recent studies, black women continue to have the most difficulty obtaining outside capital compared to other women, yet they continue to do so in creative ways, including using nonmonetary sources of financial capital from their support network. Those sources include bartering of services, ‘‘free’’ labor, space, time, and goods from friends, family, and even vendors and potential customers.39 Another aspect of financial capital that is important to these black women is the use of profits. Similar to black women throughout history, these women are concerned with their families and communities and so have as goals and measures of success the extent to which they can help their families and communities. A few representative words from Jackie L., the hat designer who wanted to achieve a level of financial success to ensure independence and security for herself and her family: ‘‘As a Black person, it is so important to have your own, to own your own, and I just [wanted] to make sure there would be something there I would have that you know, my friends and I would see my family, many times they got laid off and want a job; this was a place where they could come and get a job.’’ Figure 6.2 provides a visual image of how the intersection of human, financial, and social capital enhances business growth.

TIME POVERTY It takes time and energy to meet the challenges of entrepreneurship and to make things work well. Burbridge defined time poverty as occurring when women who do double duty of working and raising families become increasing time poor, which directly affects the income data used as measures of economic

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FIGURE 6.2.

Management, Gender, and Ethnicity in the United States

Capital accumulations.

success.40 This concept can be applied to entrepreneurship, when women, especially black women, do triple duty, starting businesses, working for wages, and raising families while fighting racism and sexism along the way. As reported earlier, black women, possibly more often than other women, including other women of color, are likely to own and operate businesses without partners and run them part-time while working full-time. These responsibilities constitute a very heavy load. The market women of my study were very clear about their time poverty issues and the steps they took and price they paid to manage their business and families. Their words best describe their experiences. Jackie L. says: ‘‘I’m one person. One person pretty much runs this business. . . . Me, I’m the only one.’’ Some women made reference to the fact that they had too little time to go to networking events they knew would help them grow their businesses. Nancy, the owner of a music production company, says: ‘‘It’s through no fault of the association [professional trade], I need to put more energy, but right now as I said my time . . . is somewhat limited as I’m sure you know, everyone else’s is.’’ Networking, a way to build social capital and contribute to business success, presents many opportunities but as can be seen from these statements, is not always accessible because of time. These issues often impact women entrepreneurs of varying ethnicities but do not have the same impact on women of upper socioeconomic classes.

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These issues are especially pressing for women with families and children: The most pervasive and powerful reported indicators of time poverty involved family and business balance. They were especially true for those women who were single parents, most of whom were in very labor- and time-intensive businesses. Cheryl H., a single mother of a school-age son, describes herself as a cake and balloon artist who serves individuals, churches, and organizations and often feels frustrated because I kept on saying I can’t have a business because I just didn’t think I could, you know, I was just a single parent, how am I going to have a business? But then I didn’t know how to work out the situation with my son. Like who’s going to take care of him . . . because I’m a real single parent. I’ve got to do everything with him. So I had to think of all these things.

She did and planned for them, managing her time by putting into place supports from her extensive nurturing network and having her son help her in the business. Burbridge’s concept of being time poor also involved not having enough leisure time or time for oneself. Several women specifically mentioned lack of time for themselves and the effect on them mentally, physically, and socially. Sharon, who started the tea gallery and consulting business, said she wanted to provide a way to help women achieve balance in their lives: ‘‘a time out that women generally don’t take for themselves. Somewhere down the line you’ll get a chance to do this. But then that’s when I started to take care of me a little bit and do a few things for me. Things I had never done.’’ Other women talked about the personal price they paid in trying to do everything. Cheryl O. is an artist with a thriving arts and craft business. She is married with a grown son and a very supportive husband, and yet to run her business she admits, ‘‘I don’t do vacations, and I don’t spend a lot of money, and my house is in shambles’’ (laughter). These market women are time poor for a variety of reasons. They have all made the choice to do business, delaying immediate and personal gratification. Many hope the financial success of the business will enable them to have a better lifestyle that is more balanced and includes leisure, relaxation, and time for themselves. The irony is that the time poverty they experience also precludes their businesses as being seen as successful and interesting. They are judged as being small, inefficient, and unsuccessful, resulting in a lack of equitable access to capital and markets and perpetuating the stereotype that black women are lacking in business skills. The matrix of factors that impact women’s business activities is complex and interconnected. Only by truly appreciating their experiences within their unique contexts and using multiple measures of success can statements be accurately made about their business acumen. Burbridge, who developed the theory of time poverty, believes that to challenge the dominant economic paradigm of researchers, scholars, and

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educators, we need to examine the totality of factors and life challenges of black women entrepreneurs. As we have heard many times, what doesn’t kill you will make you stronger. The challenges, coping strategies, and triumphs have enabled women of the African diaspora, past and present, develop a strong sense of self. We need to recognize ‘‘the importance of kinship networks, time poverty, and the valuation of unpaid labor and support received from extended family networks in conducting holistic research on Black women’s economic lives.’’41

LESSON LEARNED The market women of my study learned many lessons about how to start, grow, and manage their businesses and have provided insights they share with those who are coming behind them. They are role models and unknown mentors to many who seek success in businesses and other endeavors. Their personal characteristics—strength, will, determination, perseverance, creativity, vision, honesty—are those associated with success in entrepreneurship; however, they have their own style and grace in the way they do business. Grounded in their traditions, they consciously or unconsciously base their ways of doing business on their historical and cultural mores and values. They are all pink, understanding and valuing the use of relationships in their businesses, however they are blue when needed. And, as affirmed by the preliminary findings of a long-term study being conducted by Blockson, Johnson, and Johnson, they employ ‘‘a low-key, laid-back approach in operating their businesses.’’42 Additionally, as recommended by Bell and Nkomo and Blake-Beard and Morgan, they employ the tactic of tempered visibility when dealing with vendors and lenders, create strategic alliances with bridging social capital networks, and strengthen the ties with their nurturing networks, including their sisters, mothers, and communities. The role of spirituality in their lives, both personal and business, is paramount and guides many of their decisions about the way they do business, using judicious means to achieve their ends. Race and gender had a significant (mainly positive) impact on the way these black women entrepreneurs do business. Those who described negative experiences as a result of their sex and or color stated that those incidents only served to inspire them to work harder and better as they overcame obstacles placed in their way. All felt that race had a greater impact than gender on their business lives, a finding supported by Woodard’s similar study of black entrepreneurs, male and female. He found that although black men and women faced barriers in doing business in a white world, black women had more to contend with. To deal with gender-based barriers is an additional burden for black women doing business. To their credit, black women entrepreneurs consider this a moot issue and see any bias, regardless of the source, as just another impediment to navigate before conducting business.43 He found, as did I, that they were adroit at turning

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negative situations into positives for the benefit of their businesses. Race, like gender, is thus not always unifying either. The unique standpoint of black women in U.S. society and, in fact, the world accounts for the strength, determination, and willfulness they display in their endeavors. David McClelland, who has written extensively on achievement and motivation in business, has identified several factors that distinguish outstanding from average entrepreneurs.44 Those factors are displayed in Table 6.2, juxtaposed with the advice given by my market women for those seeking success. These black women entrepreneurs are vibrant, funny, feisty, caring, concerned, connected, skillful, and successful by their own measures. They manage their businesses well and in their own ways. By redefining success in their own terms, they empower themselves and others. They are sources of hope, inspiration, and guidance. They say it best: ‘‘I am phenomenal . . . charming . . . smart . . . strong . . . stubborn . . . blessed.’’ TABLE 6.2.

Business Strategies Associated with Entrepreneurial Success

McClelland Proactivity  Increase verbal and written communication skills, become assertive  Ask for what you want, need  Reach out to others

Efficiency Orientation  Recognize opportunity and act on it  Operate business efficiently and have excellent products/services  Plan your business/write a plan

Commitment to Contract  Make a commitment to work respectfully with others—customers, clients, vendors, family  Make commitment to work contract

Market Women Human Capital Learn your business, get training, train your employees  Be clear about what you want to do, make lists  Know your business and be committed to it 24/ 7, 100 percent  Take calculated risks  Have a vision, dream big, do it 

Financial Capital Make a personal investment of money  Develop a cash flow, put savings back into the business, watch your money  Write a business plan 

Social Capital Surround yourself with professional, knowledgeable people  Network with people who have the same vision  Build relationships in and outside of the industry  Be true to yourself 

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NOTES 1. C. A. Smith, ‘‘Market Women: Learning Strategies of Successful Black Women Entrepreneurs in New York State’’ (PhD diss., Organization and Leadership, Teachers College, Columbia University, New York City, 1999). 2. Cheryl A. Smith, Market Women: Black Women Entrepreneurs Past, Present and Future (Westport, CT: Praeger, 2005). 3. Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary [online dictionary] at www.m-w.com. Merriam-Webster, 2005. 4. ‘‘Our History,’’ American Management Association, 2005. Online document available at www.amanet.org/history.htm. 5. Smith, Market Women. 6. The term microenterprise comes from a number of sources and is defined by Women’s World Banking, and the term small business is defined by the U.S. Small Business Association (SBA) in the following ways: Microenterprise: Revenues of less than $500,000, five or fewer employees, minimal distinction between the business and the principal (owner) (Women’s World Banking, ‘‘Innovative Banking for Microbusinesses,’’ 1995). Small Business: Fewer than 500 employees and less than $6–12 million in sales depending on the industry (U.S. SBA Size Standards. U.S. SBA, 2002; Online document available at www.sba.gov). 7. Juliet K. Walker, ‘‘Trade and Markets in Precolonial West and West Central Africa: The Cultural Foundation of the African-American Business Tradition.’’ in T. D. Boston, ed., A Different Vision: Race and Public Policy (London and New York: Routledge, 1997). 8. Smith, Market Women, p. 12. 9. ‘‘Growth Is Key Focus for All Women Entrepreneurs Regardless of Ethnic Background,’’ Center for Women’s Business Research, 2002. Available online at www. nfwbo.org/mediacenter/10-22-2002/10-22-2002.htm. 10. Lynn Burbridge, ‘‘Black Women in the History of Economic Thought: A Critical Essay,’’ in T. D. Boston, ed., A Different Vision: African-American Economic Thought (London and New York: Routledge, 1997). 11. ‘‘African-American Women-Owned Businesses in the US: A Fact Sheet,’’ Center for Women’s Business Research, 2004. Available online at www.womensbusiness research.org. 12. ‘‘Managerial Skills,’’ American Management Association, 2005. Online document available at www.amanet.org/self-study/manskills.htm. 13. Manfred Davidmann, ‘‘Role of Managers under Different Styles of Management,’’ American Management Association, 1998. Available online at www.solbaram.org/ articles/clm/clm2su.html. 14. Ronna Lichtenberg, Pitch Like a Girl: How a Woman Can Be Herself and Still Succeed (New York: Rodale, 2005). 15. Stacy Blake-Beard and Laura Morgan Roberts, ‘‘Releasing the Double Bind of Visibility for Minorities in the Workplace,’’ CGO (Center for Gender in Organizations) Commentaries, 4 (2004): 8, 1. 16. Ella Bell and Stella Nkomo, Our Separate Ways: Black and White Women and the Struggle for Professional Identity (Boston: Harvard University Business School Press, 2001); S. Harley, ed., Sister Circle: Black Women and Work (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers

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University Press, 2002); Blake-Beard and Roberts, ‘‘Releasing the Double Bind,’’ p. 2; Marjorie Jones and Cheryl A. Smith, ‘‘Value-Added: The Impact of Faculty of Color on Students in Higher Education,’’ Proceedings of the 23rd Annual Conference of the Adult Higher Education Alliance, Asheville, NC, October 2003. 17. Blake-Beard and Roberts, ‘‘Releasing the Double Bind,’’ p. 3. 18. Ibid. 19. Leith Mullings, ‘‘Images, Ideology and Women of Color,’’ in M. Zinn and B. Dill, eds., Women of Color in U.S. Society (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1994). 20. Blake-Beard and Roberts, ‘‘Releasing the Double Bind.’’ 21. Smith, Market Women. All references are Chapter 1. 22. Ibid. 23. Melville J. Herskovits, The Myth of the Negro Past (Boston: Beacon Press, 1941). 24. S. Schwarz-Bart with A. Schwarz-Bart, In Praise of Black Women: Ancient African Queens, trans. R.-M. V. Rejouis (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2001). 25. Angel Kwolek-Folland, Incorporating Women: A History of Women in Business in the United States (New York: Palgrave, 2002). 26. Darlene Clark Hine and Katherine Thompson, A Shining Thread of Hope: The History of Black Women in America (New York: Broadway Books, 1998); Dorothy Sterling, ed., We Are Your Sisters: Black Women in the Nineteenth Century (New York: Norton, 1984). 27. Sterling, We Are Your Sisters; D. C. Hine, E. B. Brown, and R. Terborg-Penn, eds., Black Women in America: An Historical Encyclopedia, 2 vols. (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1993). 28. Lynn M. Hudson, The Making of Mammy Pleasant: A Black Entrepreneur in Nineteenth-Century San Francisco (Urbana and Chicago: University if Illinois Press, 2003). 29. Virginia G. Drachman, Enterprising Women: 250 Years of American Business (Chapel Hill and London: Schlesinger Library, Radcliffe Institute of Advanced Study, Harvard University, and University of North Carolina Press, 2002); Hine and Thompson, A Shining Thread of Hope. 30. A’Lelia Bundles, On Her Own Ground: The Life and Times of Madame C. J. Walker (New York: Scribner, 2001); Drachman, Enterprising Women; Hine and Thompson, A Shining Thread of Hope. 31. Brown in Drachman, Enterprising Women. 32. Bundles, On Her Own Ground. 33. Walker, ‘‘Trade and Markets in Precolonial West and West Central Africa.’’ 34. Smith, ‘‘Market Women: Learning Strategies.’’ 35. Ibid., and Smith, Market Women. All findings and participant quotes appeared first in the 1999 dissertation and appear in the 2005 book as well. 36. Laurent Parks Daloz, Mentor: Guiding the Journey of Adult Learners, 2nd ed. (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1999). 37. Bell and Nkomo, Our Separate Ways. 38. Ibid.; D. Ehrhart-Morrison, No Mountain High Enough: Secrets of Successful African-American Women (Berkeley, CA: Conari Press, 1997); M. Woodard, Black Entrepreneurs in America: Stories of Struggle and Success (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1997).

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39. Smith, ‘‘Market Women: Learning Strategies’’; Smith, Market Women. 40. Burbridge, ‘‘Black Women in the History of Economic Thought.’’ 41. Ibid. 42. L. Blockson, J. Robinson, and S. Robinson. ‘‘Doing It Our Way: Economic and Sociological Influences on the Success of African American Women Entrepreneurs.’’ (Paper read at Eastern Academy of Management, Springfield, MA, June 2005). 43. Woodard, Black Entrepreneurs in America. 44. David McClelland, ‘‘Characteristics of Successful Entrepreneurs,’’ Journal of Creative Behavior 21 (3) (1986): 219–33.

7

Blue-Collar Women in Traditionally Male Jobs: Reconsidering the Glass Ceiling Jeanie Ahearn Greene

In 1991, as part of Title II of the Civil Rights Act of 1991, the U.S. Congress passed the Glass Ceiling Act and created the Glass Ceiling Commission. The commission’s purpose was to examine artificial barriers to the advancement of women into corporate management positions. The findings confirmed ‘‘the existence of invisible, artificial barriers blocking women and minorities from advancing up the corporate ladder to management and executive level positions.’’1

THE GLASS CEILING COMMISSION AS A NATIONAL POLICY ANCHOR FOR WOMEN’S OPPORTUNITY AND DISCRIMINATION IN MANAGING THE WORKPLACE The purpose of breaking the glass ceiling is to allow individuals to ‘‘achieve their full employment potential’’ and to develop ‘‘a national corporate leadership fully aware that shifting demographics and economic restructuring make diversity at management and decision making levels a prerequisite for the longterm success of the United States in domestic and global market places.’’2 The commission endeavored to expose the artificial barriers by examining the component parts, particularly the specific behaviors, practices, and attitudes, that prevent advancement by minorities and women. Beyond looking at women in top-tier executive positions, the mission of the commission was expanded to include the investigation of ‘‘women’s advancement in a broader range of occupational groupings, including the skilled trades.’’ Up to now, the public’s principal perception of the Glass Ceiling Commission activities has been the advancement of women into mid- and upperlevel white-collar corporate positions. This perception must be changed to include minorities’ and women’s advancement potential in a broader range of

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occupational groupings, including the skilled trades. Too often, minorities and women are steered into jobs that limit their career growth, with the a rationale that they have insufficient or inappropriate skills or that they are just not interested. This includes being steered away from blue-collar traditionally male and skilled trade jobs. The commission stated that the specific discriminatory behaviors, practices, and attitudes that prevent advancement into management also stop minorities and women from ‘‘reaching positions where they can even see a glass ceiling.’’ Specifically, the commission’s ‘‘advancement study’’ should examine the ways that various forms of sex- and race-based discrimination at every step and level of the work force create the glass ceiling. Yet the focus of the glass ceiling investigation, and women’s advancement in the workplace in general, into decision making, leadership, and management positions has remained on women in executive and top-level corporate positions. But what of the women who are in trades and skilled occupations that are traditionally male? What of the invisible barriers blocking their advancement? What of the career, leadership, decision-making power, and economic growth of individual women (with) in blue-collar traditionally male occupations? To understand the daily work lives, occupational choices and the ‘‘invisible’’ or ‘‘pervasive’’ barriers to women’s advancement in employment, I conducted intensive interviews with seventeen women in traditionally male blue-collar jobs over more than ten years. Although this is not a policy analysis of the glass ceiling, it is a response to the request for identifying the invisible barriers that exist and a consideration of the contribution of women in the skilled trades to management in the workplace and their more general contribution to the economy of the United States. I propose that the reason that women working in traditionally male bluecollar jobs do not promote into management positions is twofold and is due, first, to informal interpersonal barriers and second, to formal organizational and policy barriers. The combined results are that the personal and occupational costs of moving from a blue-collar or skilled trade job into management positions often outweigh the benefits. What I have found is that women in bluecollar jobs usually do not advance within a workplace or organization into upper-level management positions; however, they perform key management functions and contribute to the success and functioning of the workplace as managers while continuing to perform traditionally male blue-collar jobs. This is in part by choice and in part due to employment discrimination. However, because of the invisible, insidious, and pervasive nature of employment discrimination, drawing a clear line between the interdependent overt and covert nature of the glass ceiling is impossible. In this chapter, I explore the artificial barriers to advancement into leadership and decision-making positions as experienced by women in traditionally male blue-collar jobs. I then consider the advantages and disadvantages to women working in those jobs of accepting traditional management positions versus remaining in the skilled trades or shifting

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to different careers altogether. Finally, I consider how women who remain in traditionally male blue-collar jobs contribute to the workplace organization by performing management functions, although they are not in management jobs.

WOMEN IN BLUE-COLLAR TRADITIONALLY MALE JOBS I place women’s occupations into three categories: (1) blue-collar, both skilled and unskilled labor-intensive jobs; (2) pink-collar, including secretarial, clerical, and administrative jobs; and (3) white-collar management, decisionmaking, leadership, and professional positions. As the U.S. economy has changed over the past century, the line between the different employment collars has become increasingly vague and targeted to the culture of the particular workplace or product. For example, in one utility a customer service representative may be a pink-collar clerical job, whereas in another workplace it may be a blue-collar traditionally male job when it means working with contractors monitoring the installation of power lines. In still another, it may be a white-collar management job if it is not union represented and involves supervision and coordination of products and services within the organization and with customers. The same ambiguities exist across workplaces and cultures with regard to whether a job is traditionally male or female. When we talk about women in management, we usually look to women’s advancement into corporate positions. Although they may move from one company to another, for the most part the progression into management is a linear progression up a ladder into positions with increasing pay, decision-making capabilities, and overall power, prestige, and leadership. For women working in blue-collar traditionally male jobs or in the trades, management jobs are clearly differentiated from blue-collar jobs. Moving from blue-collar jobs to management usually means loss of union representation. Thus, representation (or lack thereof ) is a clear dividing line. For the purposes of this chapter, management positions are referred to as nonrepresented jobs. Ambiguity exists in this distinction between labor and management, however, because supervisors usually are top-level union-represented jobs before incumbents advance to management. By definition, a supervisor is considered a manager. Though union/nonunion status differentiates labor from management artificially, organizations typically rely on that distinction to define their labor force. Because of the ambiguities about what is traditionally male versus female and what is blue-collar versus management, in my interviews I asked women to self-identify as blue-collar women performing traditionally male jobs. What is consistent is that women are historically and presently underrepresented statistically in traditionally male occupations of management (white-collar) and labor (blue-collar) job categories. According to the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), sex-based occupational representation and

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job segregation are similar for women whether they have crafts and trades, management, or professional positions when looking at the broad occupational job classifications that define the U.S. labor force (see Table 7.1). Furthermore, within these broad statistical categories women’s representation decreases even more when the jobs are higher level, whether in management or the skilled trades, yielding to the need to further probe the intricacies and impact of the glass ceiling. Women’s representation in the higher-paying, higher-status jobs of management and the professions is similar to their representation in traditionally male jobs in the crafts and trades and as laborers. Like management positions, higher-paying blue-collar nontraditional jobs represent a way out of poverty for women.3 Although the wage gap is narrowing and women’s labor force participation has increased, the percent of women in high-paying, traditionally male blue-collar occupations and in upper-level management remains low. Pay equity and occupational representation indicate quantitatively that men and women have unequal employment status and infer that opportunity for women in higher-paying and higher-status blue-collar and white-collar positions is not equal. The costs of the occupational divide go beyond wages to broadly impact the personal, economic, and social lives of women. Pay inequality and occupational segregation result in economic disadvantages for women and their families. They may live in communities where they have less purchasing power and economic independence than men. The impact spans the life cycle as the disadvantages extend to denial of promotions to highly compensated jobs; this results in lower pensions, social security payments, and other employment benefits, such as health care. Beyond economic inequality at work is social inequality and ‘‘power’’ in the workplace. Workers gain a sense of self, personal power, and prestige from the work organization.4 In a bureaucracy, which is characteristic of most work organizations in the United States, including blue-collar workplaces, as individuals are promoted, they attain increasing levels of power and prestige. Though the level of power and prestige attached to positions varies in general and from one workplace to the next, it is the upper-level management jobs that are particularly characterized by power, leadership, and prestige. These are the jobs to which the glass ceiling ultimately denies women access and which the Glass Ceiling Commission seeks to address. Additionally, the commission calls for broad consideration of the glass ceiling as well as barriers to women to all jobs that offer increased power, prestige, and leadership. Equal employment opportunity policy and practices seek to rectify the tangible problems of sex-based disparate compensation and job segregation and the social inequalities of low-paying unskilled jobs—key indicators of the less tangible artificial barriers and discrimination referred to as the glass ceiling. Labor force indicators show that discrimination continues over time and across workplaces and occupations. They do not explain why or how women are

TABLE 7.1.

2002 EEO Occupational Employment for Private Industry by Sex Participation Rate

Sex

Total

Male Female Total

52.5 47.5 100.0

Officials and Managers 65.3 34.7 100.0

Professionals

Technicians

Sales Workers

Office and Clerical Worker

47.9 52.1 100.0

53.2 46.8 100.0

44.3 55.7 100.0

20.2 79.8 100.0

Source: EEOC, 2004, Employer Information Report EEO-1.

Craft Workers 87.0 13.0 100.0

Operatives 72.2 27.8 100.0

Laborers

Service Workers

65.3 34.7 100.0

42.6 57.4 100.0

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discriminated against and denied upper-level management positions. Subsequently, twenty-five years after the passing of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, Congress created the Glass Ceiling Commission as part of the Civil Rights Act of 1991 to identify and address the invisible barriers that were continuing to affect the ongoing disparities in occupation status, representation, and pay for women—specifically women’s and minorities’ advancement into decision-making management positions. However, more than a decade after the Glass Ceiling Commission’s report, occupational segregation continues with women disproportionately holding lower-paying, lower-status jobs with less power to direct the workplace and economy. To better understand the glass ceiling, blue-collar women’s experiences are best considered on two levels: (1) their experience working as blue-collar women in traditionally male jobs and (2) their experience in pursuit of management roles. Women in blue-collar jobs have been found to endure the same daily adversity and discrimination as women in management positions.5 As skilled workers, women in blue-collar jobs receive pay similar to or higher than the management positions for which they are qualified. What differentiates bluecollar traditionally male jobs from management positions, in most cases, is the skills-based nature of job performance, the promotional structure, the compensation system, and the impact of a bargaining agreement, because most bluecollar jobs are associated with union representation and hourly wages. When one considers the glass ceiling from the perspective of women working in traditionally male blue-collar jobs, one can focus on the both the informal and formal barriers and functions of managing that go beyond pay and the quantifiable realms of the glass ceiling. One can consider the interpersonal and organizational constraints and uncover the unrecognized contributions that women working in blue-collar traditionally male blue-collar jobs make to the workplace organization.

INFORMAL BARRIERS TO PROMOTION Most women in traditionally male blue collar jobs who were interviewed were so consumed and boggled by the constant daily harassment and adversity from co-workers, supervisors, and managers that they did not even think about promotions. Their energy was spent on just surviving and performing the job that they were hired to do. Daily work life was fraught with a continuum of sexbased discriminatory, harassing, and hostile behaviors ranging from devaluing their competency to verbal harassment to interference with job performance to physical and sexual assault.6 When this harassment persisted, it was a constant reminder that they were unwelcome in their present job and were unlikely to be considered for—or want—promotions. The first promotion for some women was just moving from their entry-level job to the one for which they had originally applied and been hired. For some,

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an entry-level job had been created purposely to discourage them from even taking it in the first place and/or designed to make them quit once in the job. The carpenter was hired at a national historic park as a maintenance mechanic, which meant ‘‘you had to be able to fix everything’’ but was ‘‘warned’’ that her job included cleaning the toilets and taking out the trash to discourage her. For a woman who was hired to fill a position on the state highway road crew, The supervisor swore he would never hire a woman for the road crew. He had six vacancies and they told him that the next new hire would be a woman. So, he invented a new job position, actually it was on the books but it hadn’t been filled in twenty years. He called it the barnsman, basically a janitor. I was going to be hired to scrub the urinals and [was] warned that he couldn’t control the men urinating all over the walls. And I would have to make the coffee and keep the lunch room clean. I did some research and found out that he could make me be the barns-man or barns-woman because I was the new hire. But he still had five other vacancies to fill . . . by September and this was March. If he didn’t fill those five vacancies by September, then those five positions would be eliminated. If he filled the jobs with men, and they put those men out on the road and left me in the barn, then he’d face a sexual discrimination lawsuit. So, I thought, ‘‘You have to grit your teeth and scrub the urinals for a little while but at the most it will be till September.’’ Before September I was on the road.

The frontline manager or supervisor contributed to hostility and adversity both by affecting daily work and by circumventing promotions. The supervisor was in a position to impose interpersonal harassment; to control, interfere with, and sabotage a woman’s ability to do her job; and affect promotion opportunities by evaluating her job performance. A meter reader describes her supervisor’s interference with her job and impact on her reported performance: It started with him not liking the way I did my time sheets and progressed to him not giving me overtime to complete my work, even though he gave it to the guys. As a matter of fact, one day I got off the phone with him, and I was brought to tears. It was just one of these, ‘‘You’re getting paid good money to do your job, and I don’t think you’re doing your job.’’ And I said, ‘‘Well, name something that I’m not doing. You know, maybe I don’t know what I’m supposed to be doing.’’ ‘‘Well, I can’t think of anything right now but I know. I have a notebook on you. I’m watching you and I think you’re not doing your job.’’ And I thought, ‘‘Oh, God!’’ You know it’s bad enough if you have to hoof it every day and you’re in the snow and you’re tired. You just want to come in. You want to do your job. You don’t want to be badgered.

This harassment from the supervisor and co-workers made performing the job difficult or impossible. Promoting to management would only mean further entangling themselves in the same hostile workplace. When asked whether they had considered management positions, and if not, why they hadn’t, the answers varied. The nuclear fire watch quickly stated,

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‘‘It never occurred to me. I never thought of it. I was just there doing my job.’’ In response to more probing, she said, ‘‘I knew it wasn’t an option; I wouldn’t have been considered. You had to know someone or be related to someone and I wasn’t.’’ On the other hand, the customer service representative in the utility said that she aspired to management, but the informal eligibility path was not from her position. She had applied for such jobs repeatedly. ‘‘You have no idea how many times I tried to get into management. I always felt my heart . . . [was] more with management, as I felt I was a good worker.’’ Having a promotional opportunity, to an extent, depended on connecting with and then being ‘‘pursued’’ by the supervisor in the sought-after department. The customer service representative wanted to promote into management but did not apply for a promotion until Suddenly, his ‘‘assistant.’’ a guy I used to work with, called me and asked if I had put my re´sume´ in. I said no and told him why. I wasn’t sure the job was a good fit and I would have to commute forty-five minutes to work. He emphatically told me that John wanted me to apply and that this guy had been instructed to call me. So I did, and went up there and interviewed with the assistant.

A security guard considered applying for groundskeeper and, to increase her odds of being selected, connected with workers and supervisors in that department as they passed in front of her guard station each day. The electric planner had started at the utility as a security guard. She was promoted from security guard to meter repair when the head of the meter repair shop asked her to train and apply for a job. From there, she sought the electric planner position, which involved much more training, but the experience with her promotion into meter repair gave her confidence to pursue further promotions in the organization. Yet when asked if she aspired to be in management she reiterated, ‘‘No, I have the best job in the company now.’’ This confidence and increased assurance became more important for workers as they aspired to higher-level jobs, which were fewer in number and more competitively sought after by men, who had traditionally held them. As can be shown statistically, this narrowing of opportunity follows whether pursuing upper-level blue-collar traditionally male jobs or management positions. To qualify for a promotion, a woman had to be liked, respected, and pursued by management, in addition to meeting the qualifications posted on the job opening announcement. Managers did not recruit women who were feminists. Another informal barrier was that the women had to first establish themselves as ‘‘one of the guys.’’ Becoming one of the guys included ‘‘working twice as hard and being twice as good’’ as the guys, but it also meant ‘‘not causing any trouble.’’ Feminists on the other hand, ‘‘fight sexist oppression against women.’’ One woman indicated that she ‘‘went from being angry to having the tools to fight,’’ but remained a ‘‘closet feminist,’’ perhaps because she feared jeopardizing her chances for promotion if she declared her feminist beliefs openly.

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Regardless of how accepted women were and how well they had proved they could perform the job, they still said that being related or connected to the person doing the hiring was essential. Even the police officer who had ranked second on her civil service test had to get a reference and had to have shown exemplary work performance. Because she was a woman, her supervisor had avoided putting her in the dangerous situations that would have set her apart from her co-workers, the men. These informal requirements or invisible barriers typically excluded the women I interviewed from consideration for management jobs. The women interviewed learned of promotional opportunities within their workplace either formally, through job postings, or informally, through word-ofmouth. Typically, a combined formal and informal notice was necessary before women would consider pursuing a promotion. Many were initially hired at an entry level to meet a minority specification for that position. This made them all too aware that without a similar specification, a promotion was unlikely, if not impossible. When a job of interest was posted, they assessed the likelihood of being hired, which included determining if an affirmative action requirement existed for the desired position and if someone already had been slated for the position. They were less likely to apply for a job that was not earmarked for a woman or minority and/or one for which someone already had been preselected. On the other hand, if they learned of a promotion requiring an affirmative action hiring, they might apply for a job they hadn’t considered before. The auto assembly worker assessed her odds and applied for an apprenticeship leading to an electrical journeyman position, which would be a significant promotion involving the use of higher-level skills. This is how she describes her decision: Every so often they have applications for apprenticeships. I always put it off because although I’m smart enough, the test is real hard; they only take the top third of the test for the interview, and you have to go through the interview, and that’s pretty tough. And, in places like auto plants or these big factories, it’s a man’s world. But I learned that there are fifteen positions, and at least two have to be women or minorities, and no blacks applied and only three women. I am waiting to hear.

The women interviewed cited three primary conditions needed to compete for promotions both within blue-collar trades and in management and professional jobs. They had to (1) be visibly accomplished at their current jobs; (2) complete training, apprenticeships, and education certifying their qualifications for promotion; and (3) know somebody or have a mentor. Although all three involved artificial barriers and sex-based discrimination, the most frustrating and defeating was the third criterion—knowing and being sponsored by someone. For example, although the police officer scored second on the civil service test for captain, she was passed over for a man who was one of the boys.

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The security guard took a required screening test and applied for a meter repair position due to the department supervisor’s prompting. The postal worker considered management only because human resources told her that she was qualified based on a test she had passed and her seniority. Still, human resources encouraged her to stay in the secretarial career path, but she chose the traditionally male path. Having promotional standards that included training, education, tests, and seniority seemed to provide a rational basis for selection decisions, but the need to know someone and be visible often took precedence. Such standards at least helped women determine whether they were locked out of promotions due to personal inadequacies or the discriminatory nature of the workplace. As recognized by the Glass Ceiling Commission, the overriding obstacle to women’s advancement is that existing, persistent barriers and discrimination exclude them from positions ‘‘where they even see the glass ceiling.’’ At face value it might seem that the women simply did not pursue or want management jobs because they did not apply, thus making it appear to be a personal choice. Not to negate their astute judgment in declining management opportunities and promotions, a more critical look reveals that embedded circumstances and a pervasively hostile environment influenced many of their decisions. For women in blue-collar traditionally male jobs, this discrimination includes daily sex-based verbal, physical, and sexual harassment and abuse that interfere with their ability and opportunity to perform their jobs. A promotion into management often means exchanging one hostile male-dominated work environment for another. Although many of the women believe that they would bring to management expertise, understanding, and capabilities beyond those of male co-workers, they refuse to pay the personal price of increased hostility and adversity they likely would find in management. As one woman who worked as a longshoreman and in an engineering firm as a grant writer said, the sexual harassment was pervasive in both workplaces, ‘‘but the engineers should have known better.’’ These women already knew from their experience as front-line workers that management most often did not support them as female employees. Workplace policies did not protect them from misery at work, and it was understood that this adversity was pervasive at any level, whether front-line worker or manager.

ORGANIZATIONAL BARRIERS TO PROMOTIONS Choosing to promote from skilled laborer, craftsman, or service worker into blue-collar jobs often means a loss of many of the attributes of the job that attracted women in the first place. Promoting into management meant losing some protections and benefits that had made enduring harassment and hostility tolerable. These changes were apparently neutral but had differentially adverse consequences for women working in traditionally male blue-collar jobs, thus contributing to the glass ceiling.

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One cost of promotion into management for women in traditionally male blue-collar jobs who were interviewed is loss of certain union protections. For example, harassment by co-workers, sex-based or otherwise, violates the collective bargaining agreement between the union and management. In nonrepresented jobs, harassment must violate federal civil rights or state human rights laws to be illegal. Thus, it is only prohibited if it is based on sex, race, religion, ethnicity, age, or another designated protected class. Employees in union-represented jobs can grieve harassing behavior and be protected from management and co-worker exploitation without having to play the sex card. Having to identify unwelcome behavior as sex-based further alienates them from male co-workers and increases the risk of being labeled a feminist, which usually diminishes their chances to be promoted. Another disadvantage of management positions is the expectation that the manager will serve the company without additional compensation, regardless of how many hours it requires. Workers in blue-collar traditionally male jobs, on the other hand, usually are paid an hourly wage. In blue-collar jobs the union and labor law protections require compensation for overtime. Generally overtime is anticipated, and accommodations are made for personal responsibilities and costs (e.g., child care, meals). For some jobs, the blue-collar work schedule has seasonal fluctuations, which, because they can be anticipated, allow for enhanced opportunities to balance family and home. For example, the carpenter worked at a national park, which meant that she could take leave for the academic year while she was attending college. The trucker worked for a construction company and was laid off for the holidays, when she spent time with her family, and in the winter, when she vacationed in the South. The security guard could work second shift so she and her husband could split child care duties and avoid the expenses of paid day care. One characteristic often ascribed to management is autonomy. Women in nontraditional male occupations who become managers often have reduced autonomy and independence. Moving to management may mean a loss of flexibility to balance jobs with home responsibilities, education, or leisure activities. Most management positions do not allow for such liberal accommodations. The community police officer describes the benefit of her line job over management as: I have a choice. I don’t work any overtime now due to my job of being a mother. I’m exhausted. I don’t really have the time. When I was married, I worked more overtime because my husband was home with the kids. Some of the other women are in their forties and fifties, and they choose to do the overtime.

Furthermore, autonomy and independence in their daily work lives allowed women a way to distance themselves from the stress and adversity imposed by coworkers. When the electric planner could not take the harassment in the office, she would do a field inspection. The truck driver spent most of her hours driving

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the truck alone and only encountered her co-workers at the beginning and end of a day. This relief would be lost if these women moved into management. One reason to take a promotion is for increased compensation and the potential for future pay raises. For many women, accepting a traditionally male blue-collar skilled trade job involved a promotion and a substantial pay increase compared to their previous, traditionally female jobs as secretaries, clerical, or service workers. For others, skilled trade positions paid more than the low-level business or social service jobs that they qualified for after completing a college degree. In an economy with limited entry jobs in any field, a skilled trade job was the best if not the only option. In other words, the women had already received monetary benefits of promotion by entering a blue-collar traditionally male job; they just had not promoted into management. Increased pay does not offer an appreciable incentive for women in traditionally male blue-collar jobs to move into management. Blue-collar traditionally male jobs offer high pay for rewarding work, clear seniority and promotion lines, and good benefit packages. Entry-level management jobs do not usually offer any net gain in pay or benefits. The community police officer does the math: I make $21,000 base. I’m maxed out on my raises. I can work all the overtime I want. One girl works in my job made $35,000 last year, but all she does is work. Now a cop’s base pay is like $26,000. I’m $21,000–$22,000—the extra $5,000 is not worth it to me. I can make it up and then some with overtime.

The cumulative effect of loss of union protections, increased work demands, loss of independence and autonomy, and negligible increased compensation combined with the interpersonal and informal barriers to promotion made it less likely that women would apply for or be promoted to management jobs.

CAREER PATHS FOR BLUE-COLLAR WOMEN IN TRADITIONALLY MALE BLUE-COLLAR JOBS What was striking about the women interviewed was their degree of excitement and enthusiasm for their jobs. Whether painter, auto assembly line worker, electric planner, meter reader, police officer, longshoreman, or truck driver, they all thought they had the best job in the company. They were proud of their jobs and were committed to doing them well. Any problems involved adversarial relationships with co-workers and company policies and practices, which made work difficult and, at times, unbearable. All of the women considered and most had taken steps to move to another career, occupation, or job. However, having the best job in the company, or performing a skill or providing a ‘‘service they loved’’ was valuable enough to cause some women to avoid changing jobs and, instead, to remain and endure the (inter-) personal anguish of the workplace.

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Most often the women chose promotions within the trades or blue-collar jobs to keep doing the work they loved, continue to receive union pay rates and protections, and avoid either going into management or stagnating. Job choices were not primarily motivated by increased power or prestige but by a desire for increased leadership, challenge, and compensation. The electric planner had worked as a security guard and completed a difficult training regime to be hired in that position, moving from security guard to meter repair shop to electric planner. She described her job as the best in the company. She was still in a union-represented blue-collar position and did not aspire to be promoted further because it would mean moving into management, which was of no interest to her. Although she completed a bachelor’s degree in social work while employed at the utility, she decided to continue as a planner because she loved her job, and its pay and benefits exceeded her potential earnings as a social worker. The painter completed an associate’s degree in dental hygiene and worked part-time as a dental assistant to escape the hostility of the male-dominated painting industry. She worked in a dental office but also continued painting as an independent contractor because ‘‘I just love to paint. It’s too bad it just couldn’t have been a better experience.’’ These are two examples of women who could not even see the glass ceiling. Over time many women accepted the harassment and abuse as business as usual and decided to put up with it to be able to perform the job they loved and receive the pay and benefits. Options for getting out of their current occupations theoretically included promotions into management, but these women did not consider such a move. The most common solution for escaping an unacceptable or unbearable work situation was to retrain in a related skilled job, usually at a higher level within the trades, or return to school and earn an academic degree in a new profession. Working in a blue-collar traditionally male job usually provided benefits that would pay for education. The women did not pursue education, however, to gain an internal promotion into management. Education was usually in a helping profession, such as teaching, health, or human services. Follow-up interviews found women pursuing or having completed degrees in conflict resolution, nursing, social work, dental hygiene, and sociology. Many were teaching at the college level and were committed to workplace diversity, social justice, and civil rights. Many wanted to become advocates for women’s rights, particularly with regard to work. Others combined their educational degree with their traditionally male blue-collar trade. The state highway crew worker completed her master’s degree in social work while on leave, but when she graduated, she chose to return to the highway crew because she liked the work, benefits, and job security and could use her social work skills by being the Employee Assistance Program liaison for her co-workers. An additional consideration for women in blue-collar career paths is the impact of aging and disability. Because these jobs are usually physically demanding, career or job changes are required to accommodate incapacitation. In

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adapting, the women did not want to give up their passion for their work. Opportunities were pursued that provided either a direct connection to the same trade or replaced the specific trade with a related occupation. When she became disabled, an electrician moved into apprenticeship training. Another electrician promoted to industrial hygienist (electrical inspector) to accommodate her age and disability and stay connected to electrical engineering, which she loved. The truck driver in her fifties completed her certification to teach truck driving so she could share her skills and enthusiasm with other aspiring truck drivers. Determining whether the reason why some women changed careers was due to aging and the job’s physical demands or due to the stress of the hostile workplace is unnecessary and impossible. The result, however, was that after years of performing personally and economically rewarding jobs and enduring physically and psychologically demanding work, they switched careers rather than promote into management within their own trade or company. The longshoreman went to work for an engineering firm while still in her twenties, then returned to school and became the director of a conflict resolution center during her thirties. The police officer became a professor of criminal justice and a playwright; the postal worker, carpenter, and electrician became professors. In addition to teaching at a college, the electrician also became a videographer and activist. The nuclear fire watch opened a computer business and then began working at a technology temporary employment business. After ten years, only two of the twelve women contacted were still performing a traditionally male blue-collar job, and only one had ever promoted into management. The others had all pursued alternative careers or left the workforce.

FUNCTIONAL MANAGEMENT BY BLUE-COLLAR WOMEN Based on interviews with women in traditionally male blue-collar jobs, focusing on women’s promotion on a linear management track is myopic. Doing so falls short of revealing women’s impact on the leadership and management of the workplace and, more generally, the U.S. economy, consistent with the ultimate vision of the Glass Ceiling Commission. Regardless of whether women are denied promotions into management or choose not to be promoted, they still seek to perform ‘‘management’’ functions. Redefining or reconsidering management in terms of its functions shows that blue-collar women performing traditionally male blue-collar jobs are not only capable but also creative in fulfilling their desire, need, and ability to work as managers. Managing differs and goes beyond leading to include controlling, planning, and organizing.7 Blue-collar women in traditionally male jobs provide the opportunity to expand our understanding of the functions of management by example. Although women in traditionally male blue-collar jobs may not aspire to or be promoted into management positions, they want to contribute to the

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workplace or their trade as leaders, role models, mentors, and ‘‘managers.’’ When we go beyond identifying women as managers by job title and consider their performance of management functions, we see that women in blue-collar traditionally male jobs may have broken through the glass ceiling. They are working in skilled jobs; they have higher pay and more benefits than are typically available in pink- and white-collar jobs for which they are qualified; and, like managers, they provide leadership, decision making, and analytical functions at work and, more globally, for their trade or occupation. I propose that we step outside the word management and look at the functions that define it. This shifts us from a linear construct to a functional approach. Austin, Kettner, and Kruzich conceptualize management functions as a triangular framework organized into three major dimensions—leadership, interactional, and analytic.8 Leadership can be conceptualized as the ability to direct, empower, and motivate people toward a common goal. It includes teamwork, strategic planning, organizational development, and boundary spanning. While working in bluecollar jobs, women found both formal and informal opportunities to be leaders. Many were the first or only women to hold such leadership positions. Unions provided leadership opportunities for many women, but to assume them, they had to be elected by their peers—men. Women were elected union stewards, executive board members, and presidents of the local chapters. These were formal leadership positions in which they had power, strategic planning, and decision-making responsibilities. In many cases, the union leadership roles also allowed the women to move from being perceived as women doing the job to being regarded as respected co-workers. Other women assumed more informal leadership positions by uniting with females to confront the adversity and hostility that male co-workers and the workplace in general imposed. It could be as simple as choosing not to quit and instead applying for an apprenticeship, guaranteed by a company’s affirmative action plan, to serve as a role model for other women or as grand as founding and leading community and national tradeswomen or women’s rights organizations. For many, it involved taking courses in feminist studies, labor relations, or employment law and carrying the word back to other women at work and in the community. For one woman, it entailed combing the Internet for strategies to create a more welcoming and productive workplace for all employees. Reaching beyond the work organization and representing the company or job to the larger community is the leadership role of boundary spanning. Many women assumed this role by becoming active in tradeswomen organizations, promoting women in trades, entering apprenticeships, and policing schools to alleviate employment discrimination. Working with customers and representing the company to them provided an additional opportunity to lead outside the firm or span the organization–community boundary. The painter worked with the employer to negotiate the job and ensure satisfaction, and the electric planner worked with contractors and other utility companies to assure quality,

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safe, and coordinated service delivery. The police officer negotiated between hostile citizens and also provided guidance and leadership to the courts, community businesses, children, and elected officials. Interactional rolesincludecommunicating, advocating,andfacilitating. Many women in traditionally male blue-collar jobs state that one attribute they bring to the workplace is a caring, nurturing component that is not typically present in male co-workers. This they ascribe to sex-role socialization, but nonetheless it is an important part of their contribution to work. They feel that it more than compensates for their limitations in performing some of the mechanical tasks of the jobs that male sex-role socialization typically includes. Nurturing and caring played out in both leadership and interactional functions. In some workplaces the women set up informal committees and work groups with other females. The electric planner was the only woman in her department when she started her job, but over time, six more were hired. After the number of women increased, the electric planner said that the ‘‘girls had an unwritten rule that if they had a problem or didn’t know how to do the work’’ they would first go to each other and then ask a man. When the assembly line worker was sexually assaulted at work, she talked with another female co-worker to see if she had been singled out or if that was how women were treated there. Because the women had proved themselves to be strong emotionally by enduring harassment and adversity, male and female co-workers sought them for advice on handling problems, particularly with management. Overall, the women had to establish complicated communication lines to navigate the workplace. They had to communicate in a way that was perceived as masculine but that would not stigmatize them. In a nonthreatening way, they had to educate the men, including the managers, about acceptable and harassing behavior. In this way they had to advocate for themselves, for Title VII rights in general, and for other women co-workers. For women working in blue-collar traditionally male workplaces, communicating, advocating, and facilitating were high-level skills that required persistence, diplomacy, and political savvy. Some women had to pursue interactional opportunities outside the workplace. They found these opportunities in tradeswomen groups, the union hall, academic settings, and informal collectives of their female peers. These associations led them to advocate for women’s work rights and define tolerable and unacceptable workplace behavior, thus affecting the way business was done across workplaces and, on a small scale, the way employment discrimination was defined. Such interactional associations resulted in consciousness raising among many of the women, who became more aware that business as usual was not only unacceptable but illegal and intolerable. They transformed their intolerance from being a victim to being a leader by finding ways to connect with other women within and outside of the trades. They became public speakers, writers, activists, and teachers. Unfortunately, the double-bind was that if they stood up for their rights, they often were labeled troublemakers and then not sought after for promotions into management.

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Some women were not interested in forming bonds with other females. Instead, they pursued interactional ambitions by becoming active within their male work group. Informally, one step in opening communication and facilitating change was being invited to have lunch with the men or go out ‘‘drinking with the guys.’’ Being invited was considered a rite of passage and an accomplishment that signaled progress toward being accepted as co-workers; it was part of joining the brotherhood. One woman said she was ‘‘like their mother.’’ Another was ‘‘like their sister,’’ and male co-workers felt they could go to her with their problems. In time, some men asked these women for advice about how to deal with the boss, because the women often had to develop more creative, stronger strategies for dealing with adversity than the men had. Male co-workers chose one woman to be the employee assistance representative to advocate for help with their personal problems. This degree of acceptance and camaraderie with co-workers, particularly men, was what had first prompted some women to join the blue-collar traditionally male workplace. Performing interactional functions on behalf of male co-workers was a notable accomplishment. The women were seen as negotiators, facilitators, and advocates within the workforce, across work groups, and with customers and the community. The police adopted a policy requiring women officers to be considered or used to negotiate hostage and domestic violence incidents. The truck driver was asked to file a lawsuit, and her male co-workers supported her pursuit of a sex-based human rights violation against the employer. Analytic roles of work include enforcement of policy, increasing efficiency of job production, and evaluation of job performance. Through the union protections and agreement, many women contributed to the analytic dimension of the workplace. Many could quote the bargaining agreement and professed the need for all represented employees to be versed in their rights and protections. Because of a perceived physical vulnerability in a workplace designed for men, they made themselves aware of municipal codes and demanded the enforcement of safety regulations. The painter refused to stand on a snow-covered roof in oversized boots. The industrial hygienist insisted on red-tagging any substandard electrical box. Beyond safety, the women were acutely aware of their employment rights in general and as union employees. They worked hard to be able to differentiate between what was illegal and what was just intolerable. Improved sanitation and the addition of bathroom facilities for all workers was the result of demands by women to provide combined Title VII and Occupational Health and Safety Act protections. Regarding injuries and physical risk, women were vulnerable to ridicule if they were injured because they were considered ‘‘weak women.’’ As a result, when the assembly line worker hurt her back, she was sent to the company doctor and then returned to work. A male co-worker, on the other hand, was placed on medical leave. The women countered this differential treatment by having clear knowledge and understanding of disability and sick leave policies.

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Performing their jobs required the ability to protect them by being versed in company and union policies and applicable state and federal laws. To avoid co-worker ridicule, the women said they had to outperform men doing the same job. This was a twofold task. It often meant determining more efficient ways to perform the job, because the usual way was devised for and by males. It also meant being able to evaluate their job performance compared to the standard and to the performance of the men. For the carpenter, doing the job required ensuring that her tool belt was always ready for any task. For the truck driver, it meant being able to ask for help to change a tire that was too big for any one person to change. The police officer had to combine physical and mental acuity to negotiate hostile and criminal situations. These women took great pride in finding different ways to perform their jobs that replaced their assumed lesser or different strengths than male co-workers with skills and attributes they had, such as caretaking, organizing, negotiating, and teaming. Analytic functions usually were performed as part of their normal daily job routine. In most cases, however, management did not benefit from the expertise and creativity of the women, who were not valued in blue-collar jobs due to their gender. No one asked for their ideas or gave them the opportunity to share efficiencies or innovations. More often, the women tried to disguise their creativity because doing the job differently than the male way might have been seen as indicating incompetence or weakness, which would leave them open to ridicule. Although most women in traditionally male jobs do not aspire to management, they want to perform management functions. They provide leadership, interactional skills, advocacy, and innovation. In addition, they facilitate change in the work group, organization, and economy while remaining in bluecollar traditionally male jobs.

RECONSIDERING THE GLASS CEILING The Glass Ceiling Commission’s vision was to promote women’s leadership at a national level. When we require use of the words management or corporate managers in job titles to indicate whether women occupy key decision-making and leadership positions in the workplace, we miss and misunderstand women’s potential, role, and impact there. It has been over forty years since Title VII of the Civil Rights Act outlawed sex-based employment discrimination. Although progress has been made, discrimination and hostility continue and are pervasive. One result is the underrepresentation of women in top executive positions. The glass ceiling is the point where sex-based discrimination, harassment, and workplace hostility merge to impose artificial barriers to the advancement of women into management, particularly its upper levels. The reluctance of blue-collar women in traditionally male blue-collar jobs to enter management is due partly to overt discrimination in promotion and

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hiring and partly to covert discrimination of interpersonal harassment and hostility. These women are reluctant to accept promotion into positions that may mean reduced protection, benefits, job security, or personal accommodation. They are reluctant to move higher among co-workers whom they have found hostile, adversarial, and even abusive based on their experiences as line workers. The first step in removing the barriers to women’s advancement at work and getting women to a place where they can see the glass ceiling is to aggressively enforce Title VII. Although not in management jobs, women in traditionally male blue-collar jobs perform management functions at work and for their trade in general or among their co-workers. In blue-collar traditionally male jobs they earn wages and benefits, which are high compared to those they could earn in comparable traditionally female jobs. In blue-collar jobs they find camaraderie, job security, the schedule, and their ability to perform a particular job or trade or use certain skills attractive and satisfying. For these reasons many are not advancing and being promoted in the sense described by the Glass Ceiling Commission and tracked by the U.S. Department of Labor. Yet in many cases, these women have attained leadership, status in their occupations, workplace autonomy, and pay usually associated with management positions. In many cases, a promotion to management would only reduce their compensation, benefits, job satisfaction, and job security. The result is a subtle, obscure form of employment discrimination that falls into the invisible and artificial barriers the Glass Ceiling Commission sought to expose. These women offer suggestions to other women for creating a career path that is fulfilling, family-friendly, highly paid, and secure, but that may or may not be in management. When we identify the managerial behaviors and contributions of bluecollar women working in traditionally male jobs, we ‘‘reconstruct knowledge from the point of view of those that are on the margins.’’9 Based on the choices that women in traditionally male blue-collar jobs make, we can identify some invisible barriers to management. Affirmative action is necessary and should be expanded to counter embedded workplace nepotism and favoritism and to give male and female workers notice that women are encouraged to apply for jobs and promotions. Employers must offer and pay for training, apprenticeships, and education that lift women’s qualifications for promotions to compensate for inequities in skill development both in our culture and when on the job. Additionally, although union membership and influence have plummeted in recent decades, employers must offer the same benefits, protection, and accommodations typical of union jobs to retain productive, qualified employees and encourage them to promote, lead, and manage. Without assuming management positions, women have taken on workplace, community, and national leadership roles and responsibilities in which they can make decisions, provide supervision, enhance (teach/mentor) the workforce, and increase productivity. Based on interviews with seventeen

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women employed in traditionally male blue-collar occupations, women excel, promote, and develop as leaders and skilled tradeswomen within the trades and in traditionally male blue-collar jobs. They have careers. They also hit glass ceilings. However, the obstacles they face and the remedies they devise differ markedly from those of white-collar, often upper middle-class women, whose situations the Glass Ceiling Act seemed designed to address.

NOTES 1. U.S. Glass Ceiling Commission, A Solid Investment: Making Full Use of the Nation’s Human Capital (Final Report of the Commission). Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1995. 2. Glass Ceiling Commission, Vision Statement, available online at www.mith2. umd.edu/WomensStudies/GenderIssues/GlassCeiling/LaborDeptInfo/mission-statement (retrieved July 22, 2005). 3. K. Kissman, ‘‘Women in Blue-Collar Occupations: An Exploration of Constraints and Facilitators.’’ Journal of Sociology and Social Welfare, 17(3) (1990): 139–49. 4. R. M. Kanter, Men and Women of the Corporation, 2nd ed. (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1993). 5. P. K. Mansfield, P. B. Koch, J. Henderson, J. R. Vicary, M. Cohn, and E. W. Young, ‘‘The Job Climate for Women in Traditionally Male Blue-Collar Occupations.’’ Sex Roles, 25(1/ 2) (1991): 63–79. 6. J. A. Greene, Blue Collar Women at Work with Men: Negotiating the Hostile Environment (Westport, CT: Greenwood, in press). 7. Margaret Foegen Karsten, ‘‘Race, Gender, Class and Management: An Introduction,’’ in Management, Gender, and Race in the 21st Century (Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 2006), pp. 19–26. 8. M. J. Austin, P. M. Kettner, and J. M. Kruzich. Assessing Recent Textbooks and Casebooks in Human Service Administration: Implications and Future Directions. Paper presented at the Journal of Administration in Social Work Editorial Board Meeting, University of South Carolina, Columbia, 2002. 9. M. L. Anderson and P. H. Collins, ‘‘Reconstructing Knowledge: Toward Inclusive Thinking,’’ in M. L. Anderson and P. H. Collins, eds., Race, Class and Gender: An Anthology, 5th ed. (Belmont, CA: Wadsworth, 2003), pp. 1–5.

8

The Ties that Bind and Separate Black and White Women Stacy Blake-Beard, Maureen A. Scully, Suzzette Turnbull, Laurie Hunt, Karen L. Proudford, Jessica L. Porter, Gina LaRoche, and Kelly Fanning

Ignoring the differences of race between women and the implications of those differences presents the most serious threat to the mobilization of women’s joint power. —Audre Lorde

INTRODUCTION Audre Lorde (1984, p. 117) offered these words over two decades ago—and they ring as true today as they did when she wrote them. In the years since Lorde’s proclamation, women have both progressed and stalled. Recent statistics support the progress that women have experienced in navigating their careers. In 2001, women earned a growing proportion of educational degrees (57.3 percent of U.S. bachelor’s degrees, 58.5 percent of all master’s degrees, and 44.9 percent of all doctorates) and increased their presence in the workforce (in 2002, women made up 46.5 percent of the U.S. labor force and 50.5 percent of management and professional specialty positions) (Catalyst, 2004). Yet despite the growing numbers of women in the professions, they still hold a small number of the top positions in organizations (Catalyst, 2004). Women make up only 15.7 percent of corporate officers and 13.6 percent of board directors; ten are Fortune 500 CEOs. If we look at the situation facing women of color, those statistics become even more dismal. Several factors are offered as barriers preventing women from reaching the tops of organizations in proportion to their presence in the workforce. These obstacles are exclusion from informal networks, challenge in accessing mentoring relationships, stereotyping and misconceptions about women’s roles and abilities, and failure of senior leadership to be accountable for women’s advancement (Catalyst, 2004).

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In this endeavor, we wanted to look beyond these organizational and societal factors to focus on how women can help each other. How can women help each other? Two decades later, Holvino (2005, p. 1) echoes Lorde’s sentiment. She firmly maintains that ‘‘the best way for women to achieve power, support each other and make our organizations better is by engaging with our differences as women within and across racial-ethnic groups.’’ In this effort, we focus specifically on the discourse between black and white women in the workforce. From an organizational context, black and white women are often the two largest groups of women represented (U.S. EEOC, 2003). As such, it is particularly important to understand how these two groups might be allies; it is equally important to understand what gets in their way. We do not see the challenges between black and white women as totally encompassing or illustrative of struggles that other women of color have with white women, or with black women for that matter. As Lorde (1984, pp. 127–28) so eloquently notes ‘‘The Woman of Color who is not Black and who charges me with rendering her invisible by assuming that her struggles with racism are identical with my own has something to tell me that I had better learn from, lest we both waste ourselves fighting the truths between us.’’ Holvino (2005) purposefully centers on the experiences of Latinas to give voice to their often ignored perspectives. All of our stories are important; other scholars have devoted energy and time to illuminating the experiences and stories of women of color (Anzaldu´a & Keating, 2002; Eng, 1999; Hurtado, 2003; Moraga & Anzaldu´a, 1983). The scope of this chapter is focused on the unique conversation between black and white women. It is based on a structured conversation among four black and four white women about their past experiences with women across the racial divide. We specifically asked one another a series of structured questions; the overarching guide to our research was to explore the ties that bind and separate us in our efforts to work together. We offer an exploration into the sociohistorical tale between black and white women as it is with us now—the ways that we connect and disconnect from one another. Furthermore, we recommend actions that black and white women can take to support one another.

UNEASY HISTORY: THE DIFFICULTY AND PROMISE OF OUR SEGREGATED SISTERHOOD As we began this project, we had ample evidence (Bell & Nkomo, 2001; Blake, 1999; Connolly & Noumair, 1997; Granger, 2002; Lorde, 1984; Thomas, 1989; Thompson, 2001) that our sociohistorical pasts should be considered. Thomas (1989) writes about the impact of historical race relations, particularly the legacy of slavery, on the development and maintenance of relationships between blacks and whites formed in an organizational context. Delving into works that documented black women’s participation in the feminist and civil rights movements (Giddings, 1984; hooks, 1989; Hurtado, 1989), we

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found a historical bias undergirding the challenging relationships between black and white women. Although not widely acknowledged, several black female activists were ardent advocates of black women’s participation in the women’s rights struggle (Breines, 1996; Wallace, 1979). Yet black women faced virulent racism from their white counterparts as they worked ‘‘together’’ in the feminist movement. The differences that emerged in the suffrage movement continue to affect contemporary relationships between white and black women. Bell, Meyerson, Nkomo, and Scully (2003)—two black and two white female academics working together on a research project—describe the impact of traditional race relations on their interactions. One of the black women claimed that due to her assumptions, which were based on past experiences, she had low expectations of white women’s willingness to speak out on her behalf. One of the white women replied that such assumptions made it quite challenging to enter their partnership with a nondefensive stance and contribute her critical perspective, particularly if she disagreed with her black colleagues. In her dialogue with a white female colleague, Connolly confesses that ‘‘I do approach White women with skepticism until I get to know them as individuals and we work through our historical relationship. If there is no opportunity to work through our troubled collective past, there is no hope for a real personal relationship in the present’’ (Connolly & Noumair, 1997, p. 324). This legacy of anger, mistrust, and fear of betrayal has important implications for relationships in which black and white women can engage. They are not starting with a clean slate; so understanding the dynamics of their relationships, both the difficulty and the promise, is necessary to overcome this legacy.

OUR PROCESS Our effort started with a set of questions that Blake-Beard (a black woman) wanted to answer—what allows black women and white women to support one another? What enables these relationships? What gets in their way? She extended an invitation to three black and four white women colleagues (see Table 8.1 for a description of coauthors). Several examples exist of researchers who have entered this dialogue of understanding relationships between and among black and white women in a similar way (Ayvazian & Tatum, 1994; Connolly & Noumair, 1997; Granger, 2002). Granger’s (2002) research on black and white women’s friendships offers an example of Blake-Beard’s recruitment strategy to enlist her fellow contributors. For her study, Granger selected black and white female acquaintances who were involved in cross-race friendships. Rather than using purposeful sampling, Granger specifically wanted to connect with and study women who were committed to working against injustice and had a certain degree of sophistication and savvy in understanding and dealing with issues of race and racism. Connolly and Noumair (1997, p. 323) describe their collaboration as ‘‘a political act. It is a dialogue between two women, one Black

TABLE 8.1.

Coauthors of Study

Stacy Blake-Beard

Black

Professor, Simmons School of Management











Maureen Scully

White

Professor, University of Massachusetts, Boston










Suzzette Turnbull Black

Associate Director of MBA Program, Simmons School of Management











182

PhD in Organizational Psychology Two step-children Married Oldest of four siblings Born in Washington, DC Grew up in Maryland Research is on mentoring and diversity Three Important Things: * Authentic Interactions * Empathy * Community PhD in Organizational Behavior One child Married Oldest of four siblings Born and grew up in Massachusetts Research is on employee grassroots efforts and meritocracy Three Important Things: * Purposefully teaching in social responsibility in business school * Teaching and writing to address social inequality and change * Enjoying being mom to 4-year-old MBA No children Single Born in Jamaica Grew up in Jamaica, New York, and Florida Second of three siblings Expertise in staff and volunteer management and fundraising Three Important Things: * Tactile and detail oriented * Goal to think and talk more provocatively * First time engaging in an intimate discussion and analysis of race relations

TABLE 8.1.

(Continued)

Laurie Hunt

White

Consultant and Coach, Laurie Hunt & Associates











Karen Proudford

Black

Professor, Morgan State University











Kelly Fanning

White

Internal Consultant, Blue Cross Blue Shield










MA in Gender Studies No children Married Born in western Canada Grew up in Ontario Third of five siblings 20þ years in high-tech industry Three Important Things: * Values are important—integrity, courage, respect, health, * Formerly was a white woman who didn’t ‘‘get it’’ * Challenge is to control Canadian arrogance PhD in Management No children Single Born in Germany Grew up in Delaware Youngest of four siblings Research is on intergroup dynamics, leadership, and diversity Three Important Things: * Loves doing conceptual/theoretical work * Loves doing applied work with practical implications for change * Very ‘‘in tune’’ and up-front about race dynamics MBA No children Committed long-term relationship Grew up in Massachusetts Youngest of two siblings Background in youth and social services Three Important Things: * Very honest * Greatest strength and weakness is works hard and has high standards * Traveled abroad to counter upbringing in racially homogenous town (continued)

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Management, Gender, and Ethnicity in the United States

(Continued)

Gina LaRoche Black Managing Director, INSPIRITAS










Jessica Porter

White Research Associate, Harvard Business School












MBA Two children Married Grew up in New York and Massachusetts Oldest of three siblings 18þ years in sales and training in high-tech Three Important Things: * Athletic—training to do first marathon * Fled corporate America and started two companies, one with husband * Love to help people grow MBA Two children Married Grew up in Michigan Oldest of two siblings Founder and past Executive Director of Association of Labor Assistants and Childbirth Educators (ALACE) Three Important Things: * Like to have fun while working * Gestates ideas, so silence should not be mistaken for indifference * Appreciates feedback from people with whom she works

Data for this table were compiled from coauthors’ bios and their responses to one of the invitation questions: As we are jumping into this work, what are three important things that we should know about you?

and one White. It is a deeply personal account of both our thoughts and feelings about race, gender, and sexuality and a description of the processes involved in exploring them within ourselves and with each other.’’ Much like our predecessors, we wanted to create a space to do a deep dive into our similarities and differences. In her initial invitation, Blake-Beard suggested, ‘‘I wanted to assemble a multicultural community of scholars whom I trust to really mull over this topic. I see this chapter as an invitation to actually do what we are writing about—draw from our past experiences to illuminate how black and white women can effectively and authentically work together.’’ We are alike and different from one another in interesting and important ways. Our group represents different disciplines and professions; our varied backgrounds add to the depth of our effort. We all hold advanced degrees. Half of us have children. Some are married; some are in committed relationships; others are single. We hail from several states in the United States, as well as

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Jamaica and Canada. Most of us reside and work in the Boston metropolitan area; only one lives in another state. The common denominator was that BlakeBeard knew and trusted each of the invitees; she believed that each would be able to enter this collaboration open to authentic sharing and learning. Bell and colleagues (2003) also provide a model for our work—their research evolved from an investigation of black and white women’s efforts to address workplace inequality to include a focus on their process as black and white women engaged in change. They acknowledged that for their work, the act of writing became a microcosm of their topic of inquiry. Bell et al. (2003) suggest that work done in this manner represents a ‘‘spirit of reflexive ethnography,’’ which they describe as ‘‘an ongoing conversation about experience while one is simultaneously living in the moment. By extension, the reflexive ethnographer does not simply report the ‘facts’ or ‘truths’ but actively constructs interpretations of his or her own experiences in the field and then questions how those interpretations came about.’’ Like Bell et al. (2003), we were writing about our own interaction as black and white women; our discourse with one another was the subject of our research effort. Unlike Bell and her colleagues, our entire team never met face to face. All of our research was conducted using a series of email messages, dissemination of shared documents, and conference calls (see Figure 8.1 for a timetable and description of our process). In addition to the structured conversations and analysis of these conversations, Turnbull also conducted a literature search to uncover historic themes characterizing the challenges and opportunities facing white and black women working together. We juxtaposed the themes identified in the literature with the issues emerging from our own discourse. Our next step was to break the team into four cross-race dyads. Each of the four pairs was charged with documenting the learning on one of several themes that we identified as critical in our work together. Each pair used the documents that we had produced as a team and the literature on black and white women to understand the dynamics we saw emerging in our group. The four pairs directed their documents to Blake-Beard, who synthesized our separate pieces into one cohesive document. Each coauthor was then given an opportunity to respond to Blake-Beard’s synthesis, correct any glaring misperceptions, and ensure that the words in this chapter accurately reflected her experience of our interactions.

THEMES Through the process of our structured conversations, e-mail compilations, conference calls, and dyadic work teams, several themes emerged. We focus on three in particular to deepen our understanding of factors that both get in the way and support collaborative action between black and white women. These three themes, which we found were interrelated, are intragroup and intergroup connections, fear and silence, and making friends and building allies.

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FIGURE 8.1.

Research process.

Connections: Intragroup and Intergroup Dynamics among Black and White Women Women must recognize that power circulates in many directions, and because we all have the experiences of advantage and disadvantage, this knowledge allows for the possibility of connection that breaks the cycle [of denial, accusation, confession and disconnect in women’s groups]. —Holvino (2005, p. 5)

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As we discussed our reactions to our personal histories, we recognized interesting patterns. For example, we noted that the black women seemed to connect to each other’s experiences. The social psychological processes of similarity and attraction (Byrne, 1971) were operative as the black women recognized and were drawn to one another. LaRoche said, ‘‘I felt an immediate collegiality with the black women on the call. I only personally know about a handful of powerful black women (outside my family), so I think this group has grown to a place of special meaning for me.’’ Proudford indicated, What was most striking to me about our conversation was what seemed like an instant affinity among the black women and the lack thereof among the white women. As a black woman, I think I listened for points of connection with the experiences of other black women—because it is so (or has been) so rare to be in situations with my black female peers. As soon as I hear one, I feel a rush of excitement and want to say, ‘‘Yes! That’s just how I saw it!’’ or ‘‘That’s just what it was like for me!

Blake-Beard described these feelings as associated with being wrapped in a warm, comforting, perhaps healing blanket. The reaction of the black women may have been tied to also being one of few, or holding token status in their career journeys. Kanter (1977, p. 207) described tokens as ‘‘the few of a different type in an organization with a numerically dominant type.’’ Many professional black women are still one of few in their work settings. Rarely do they have an opportunity to see and interact with other women of color—so when the opportunity is offered to connect with other black women, the interactions are valued and treasured. As Turnbull indicated, ‘‘When you’re in the minority and you see a peer, those feelings rise within you, and you gravitate to that person. Sometimes, just knowing you’re in the same room or in the same organization can provide that sense of relief.’’ The warm blanket metaphor seemed to resonate with white women as well. Hunt noted, ‘‘I was envious. There were three other white women ‘dissidents’ on the call. . . and yet we did not feel that sense of community so evident among the black women.’’ One described a recent experience at a conference attended by women of color: the white women sat at two tables individually and the black women immediately created a community in a large circle. I looked across the room in envy that time as well. What do white women need to create that type of community? . . . What is it that keeps us at a distance and prevents us from getting close to keep each other warm as black women do?

This striking contrast between bonding among black women and the experiences of white women was echoed by other white women. As Scully indicated, ‘‘White women have seen this quick way in which black women are relieved and delighted to meet another sister who ‘gets it.’ I think white women

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are a little envious of this fast bonding and know that we don’t have this quick connection at work in general, except in some very male-dominated environments.’’ Hunt added, White women do not come from the same place or level of ‘‘getting it.’’ Although we have a common underpinning, our experiences are not immediately unifying. The competitiveness between white women and the resulting lack of solidarity means I can’t totally rely on my fellow white women to be supportive even knowing they are fellow dissidents. There are various levels of ‘‘getting it’’ for white people and seemingly a more absolute level of ‘‘getting it’’ for black women because it is their lived experience—their warm blanket of common experience.

Turnbull was not surprised at the differences in how the two groups formed at this conference. ‘‘I’ve taken that dynamic for granted, because it’s the way we’ve always interacted as a race. For the same reason, I’ve never noticed that white women don’t gravitate the same way to one another.’’ It may be that white women were engaged in an internal (intragroup), perhaps even intrapsychic dialogue about race. Porter said, ‘‘I see how race has shaped me in the form of privilege, but when I examine my identity I don’t feel a tremendous bond or affinity with other white people. In fact, I am more likely to feel alienated and embarrassed by them.’’ Porter’s experience is illustrated in Bell and Nkomo’s (2001) exploration of white and black professional women. They found that the black women were very vocal in stating what they cherish about their racial identity. In contrast, the white women expressed ambivalence, confusion, and frustration when asked to describe what they cherished about being white women. As we grappled to understand the differences we saw between the black and white women in our group, we suggested potential explanations for the lack of connection that the white women in our group felt. Scully offered this explanation: ‘‘In our own dynamics on the phone, it seemed like the white women were not so much directly connecting with each other as simultaneously engaged in the activity of working on understanding the black women’s perspective.’’ Although there is a problem with white women and trust (intragroup), Hunt suggests that the dynamic on our first conference call was the white women trying to find the balance between respectfully listening to what the black women had to say—letting their voices be heard—while at the same time contributing to the conversation. Scully suggested that the need to bond may not be as urgent for white women because they are now present in larger (though not large) numbers. Scully’s suppositions are supported by Ely’s (1995) research on proportional representation and gender. In her research on female lawyers, Ely found that in firms with a greater number of women in high-status positions, women throughout those organizations experienced several benefits. Women in sex-integrated firms were

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more easily able to integrate aspects of masculinity and femininity and regarded feminine attributes as a source of strength, in stark contrast to women in maledominated firms. As more women enter and advance in the workplace, and token status diffuses, women draw strength from their numbers and the presence of alternative models of successful women. Drawing on her past experiences as a woman in a predominantly male organization, Scully speculated: Here’s what I think may be going on for white women: White women have now infiltrated many work places in great enough numbers such that we aren’t in solo positions and starved for connection with someone in similar shoes, but not in such great numbers that there is gender equity and no need for bonding. I remember at [a leading business school], the faculty women talked about how when there were 6 women on a faculty of 100, they met regularly and gave each other a lot of sustenance. By the time I was there and there were 17 women out of 100, there were too many of us to find a time and fit at any one person’s dining room table for dinner, but we were still few enough that there were plenty of gender issues.

The presence of those remaining ‘‘issues’’ and challenges ensures that connection will remain a priority. As Hunt indicates: I think white women do come together for bonding. More and more in organizations women’s networking groups are appearing with a focus on addressing gender issues and for connection. . . . I think white women are starved for connection. I know I was for most of my corporate marketing career in a maledominated industry (high tech). When I became involved in women’s leadership and diversity, I can still remember the overwhelming sense of ‘‘I am not alone’’ once I started to realize how many other women felt the same isolation— regardless of race or ethnicity or job or level in the organization. When it comes to race, however, I think white women just don’t know what it means to consider race; they don’t understand the significance of race to them as white women. So . . . in conversations like the one we’re having in this group, for race-conscious white women, I think we’re just trying really hard to get it right.

Hunt’s comments make it clear that it can be quite difficult for white women to engage in a discussion with each other about race. So intragroup connection among white women is complicated, making intergroup connection with black women more complicated. We are tentative about reaching conclusions about the dynamic we have noted, however. On closer inspection, the intragroup dynamics among black women and among white women do not fall neatly into a solidarity/ lack of solidarity dichotomy. There are, for example, ways in which white women act in concert. Dumas (1985, p. 330) gives an account of the backlash encountered when a black woman assumed a position as dean in a large university:

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When she took the position her faculty, all White women seemed very happy to have her, and wanted to get to know her better. She spent a great deal of time with them in social gatherings and orientation meetings. However, when the time came to turn her attention to work, she began to have problems. The faculty that seemed so eager to work with her and who appeared from the academic and professional credentials to be well qualified for their jobs began to appear more and more insecure and immature.

The dean’s efforts to have faculty members take more responsibility for their work were met with stiff resistance. Dumas indicates that faculty complained when the dean was away, seemed unable to keep small disagreements from escalating into major conflicts, and reported being less satisfied with their jobs. The lone faculty member who did accept the dean’s challenge and on whom the dean had come to rely, received an Afro wig in the mail. Though no evidence exists that white women knowingly engaged in a concerted effort to oust the dean, the actions of at least several white women—and presumably, the silence of white women who may not have been so inclined—resulted in overtly racist behavior. Such examples raise the question of what being ‘‘connected’’ looks like for white women—or of what the possible consequences of disconnection may be. Nor are the dynamics among black women easily codified. Black women also disagree intensely about a range of issues including age, skin color, and socioeconomic status, which challenges their ability to sustain relationships with one another. As Connolly and Noumair (1997, p. 325) note, ‘‘Internalized racism and sexism are felt most profoundly in the contempt that Black women feel for each other. Sisterhood works conceptually but does not begin to touch how angry, judgmental, and vicious we can be with each other.’’ Black women are not immune to the ‘‘queen bee syndrome,’’ the competitive and even destructive behavior senior women visit on more junior women whom they are not willing to help (Poe & Courter, 1994; Rindfleish, 2000). Black women also may struggle with competitiveness if they are in an environment that signals that only one spot is available at the top. Connolly indicates that she is ‘‘most in touch with my feelings of competition and envy when I am around smart, highachieving, successful Black women’’ (Connolly & Noumair, 1997, p. 325). A lack of connection among black women may not look the same—may not be as visible—as it is among white women. But it still exists. Lorde (1984, p. 160) names black women’s pain in not being in connection with one another, ‘‘In order to withstand the weather, we had to become stone, and now we bruise ourselves upon the other who is closest.’’ The perception about who is or is not connecting can affect the level of trust between the groups—both whether or not each group sees itself as trustworthy and trusts the other. As Porter pointed out, ‘‘It seems that we have this critical question in front of us, which is: how do we help black women to trust that white women are capable of being loyal and antiracist and how do we assist

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white women to step forward into a relationship where they feel disempowered and likely to be rejected?’’ The complexities of intragroup and intergroup dynamics affect how we perceive trustworthiness within and between groups. Our perceptions often turn into self-fulfilling prophecies. We tend to look for and focus on information that confirms our prior perceptions about a person’s trustworthiness and ignore or minimize information that disconfirms them. If we don’t trust a person we will look for, find, and remember incidents of breach of trust. If we trust a person, we are more likely to overlook or forget a breach of trust if it does happen. We must become adept at navigating both intra- and intergroup dynamics. Reaching conclusions about who is more and less connected is difficult, though we certainly have impressions that drive our behavior (in ways that may further highlight and reinforce only the differences). The intragroup dynamics among white and black women have a similar ring. However, when juxtaposed against the larger organizational and societal dynamics, these distinctions may be overshadowed by the intergroup power dynamics. Acknowledging the intragroup dynamics reminds us of the similarities, whereas recognizing the intergroup dynamic reminds us we are not identical. The interplay of both sets of dynamics may erect barriers, particularly fear and silence that preclude black and white women from fully seeing and experiencing each other. Fear and Her Sister: Silence I have come to believe over and over again that what is most important to me must be spoken, made verbal and shared, even at the risk of having it bruised or misunderstood. —Lorde (1984, p. 40)

Our group realized that this task that Lorde discusses in her germinal book Sister Outsider is at the heart of the work that we must do together to realistically and effectively answer the question of how black and white women can work together. In fact, to connect with one another across dimensions of race and other dimensions of difference, we need to be visible and present. How is it that we each bring our authentic voice, including the questions and doubts, the concerns and the insecurities, to understanding our common and unique destinies? The concept and presence of voice, the distinctive expression of an individual (hooks, 1989), is critical. Through our work together, we also learned that bringing our authentic voice to our endeavor is no easy feat—in fact, there are many ways that we can be fearful as we engage with one another across dimensions of difference. Proudford said, ‘‘probably the biggest fear is that my contributions will be discounted, ignored—or worse, reformulated and presented as someone else’s. I am always concerned about ‘getting lost.’’’ Lorde’s work is a powerful source of understanding for us; her writings are relevant and salient because she has lived

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the very phenomenon we are trying to describe and live through our group experience. A challenge we faced as were doing our work was the fear of self-revelation in such a way that might lead our colleagues to reevaluate our worth. Lorde (1984, p. 42) talks about fear as emerging from the act of self-revelation, ‘‘And of course I am afraid, because the transformation of silence into language and action is an act of self-revelation, and that always seems fraught with danger.’’ For some of us, it felt that opening up and sharing might put our relationships at risk, so we remained silent. Hunt remained silent ‘‘because whiteness and privilege are a part of me in ways that are not apparent to me, I’m afraid sometimes to speak because my privilege and racism will surface unknowingly.’’ As we thought about our interactions, the symbol of a mask emerged. We drew from Dunbar’s (1913) imagery of a mask that we wear, a mask that ‘‘grins and lies, it shades our cheeks and hides our eyes.’’ The symbol of a mask is an apt one; it speaks to the covering up of what is real to present a false face. But we actually didn’t see the same fear emerging from black and white women in our group; we saw different faces across the two groups. Lorde (1984, p. 42) also describes our individual causes of donning the mask: ‘‘In the case of silence, each of us draws the face of her own fear—fear of contempt, of censure, or some judgment, or recognition, of challenge, of annihilation. But most of all, I think, we fear the visibility without which we cannot truly live.’’ Black and white women in our group expressed different reasons for donning the mask, different sources of fear. For black women, we talked about being fearful of letting white women in because there could be dire consequences for us in relation to our professional safety. So when white women reach out to black women, they may ‘‘not respond to friendly overtures by white women for fear that they will be betrayed.’’ hooks (1994) talks about black women’s fear of betrayal from white women—that at some unpredictable moment, white women will assert their power and privilege. So black women do not open up and let their white colleagues in. As Scully concluded, ‘‘a lot is at stake if the feared risks of letting down one’s guard to form a friendship actually materialize. At stake is the black woman’s job and livelihood—a livelihood that may support an extended family given the persistent socioeconomic disparities by race in the U.S.’’ White women talked about fear from a different perspective. They talked about the fear of being seen as ‘‘not getting it,’’ or not being aware of their privilege. hooks (1994, p. 107) describes white women as being fearful of exposure—fear of black women seeing ‘‘the gap between their words and their deeds, saw contradictions and inadequacies . . . that Black women have the power to see through their disguises, to see the parts of themselves they want no one to see.’’ Thompson (1996, p. 101) described how ‘‘My fear of admitting to the reality of White skin privilege turned out to be a mask which hid how access to unearned privileges and self loathing can co-exist.’’ In our experiences, white women in our group talked about not wanting to be perceived as racist or

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unaware of their privilege. As a result of their fear, they may opt not to reach out for fear of rejection or losing their friendships with black women. Although the origins of our fears were unique, we often had a common response—silence. As we interacted with one another, we found that we were not silent about everything. In fact, we shared a great deal about our backgrounds and past experiences, positive and negative, with women across racial boundaries. We saw silence in areas where we were likely to bump into challenging dynamics— when we had to address substantive issues where we may have to confront loaded sociohistorical schemas across race. In these charged relationships between black and white women, we see social psychological processes that engender silence. Some black woman consciously or unconsciously hide behind allegations of racism to shield themselves from criticism. For them, any critique offered from a white woman must be motivated by racism rather than the intent to share critical and necessary feedback. Wilson and Russell (1996) describe this behavioral strategy as selfprotection (p. 170)—members of stigmatized groups hold on to their self-esteem by attributing criticism to the racism of others. White women, suspecting that feedback of any kind will lead to accusations of racism, engage in a kind of silence that Thomas (1989) has called ‘‘protective hesitation.’’ This occurs when participants in a relationship characterized by different identity and power groups hold back on sharing critical information for fear of being accused of insensitivity due to racism, sexism, or some other ism. These dynamics of self-protection and protective hesitation set in motion a dance of weariness and wariness among black and white women. For both groups, costs are associated with silence. As Fanning noted, ‘‘Black women fear letting White women in, so they build a wall. White women fear being seen as racist, so they don’t fight to get in. Thus things stay as they are.’’ There were consequences for our team of not speaking out and letting fear silence us. The white women experienced the feeling that silence kept them alone and farther from that ‘‘warm blanket’’ that the black women had wrapped around themselves. For the white women, silence also meant that they could not locate each other. Fanning wondered ‘‘if I didn’t speak up because I was worried that if I were skeptical or disagreed, it would be disregarded as a result of my white privilege or innate racism. . . . But I feel like I am not getting a true sense of my feelings in relation to other white women because I am not speaking up and neither did it appear the majority of white women in our group were.’’ For black women, the silence implied fear or uncertainty among the white women regarding a discussion of race. Proudford noted that white women’s silence also left black women with ‘‘the familiar feeling of black women taking the lead during the conversation about race.’’ Beyond the conversations of our small group of black and white women, silence has larger implications for professional relationships between black and white women in general. From the fear of speaking comes silence and loneliness, where no one truly can be wrapped in a warm blanket. Silence inhibits women

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from forming relationships, which in the professional realm means white and black women are missing out on potentially strong alliances. Gloria Anzaldu´a (1987) describes the Borderlands as being ‘‘physically present wherever two or more cultures edge each other, where people of different races occupy the same territory . . . where the space between two individuals shrinks with intimacy.’’ Silence in the face of race does not allow black or white women to inhabit the Borderlands. In fact, when black and white women are separated from one another, through the dynamics of protective hesitation and self-protection that accompany fear and silence, our ability to act as allies and supporters for one another is hindered. It is challenging to go to the mat for the sister whom you do not fully know—we are not able to vouch for one another in crucial ways. Making Friends, Forming Allies I knew of no intimacy, no deep closeness, no friendship between Black and White women. Though never discussed, it was evident in daily life that definite barriers separated the two groups, making close friendship impossible. —hooks (1994, p. 94)

As our discourse evolved, we discovered a significant challenge to forming relationships between black and white women at work. Namely, the white women appear to be more interested in forming relationships with their black peers than the reverse. The black women in our group were unanimously uninterested in forming friendships with white women at work. In contrast, the white women wanted at least to make alliances with black women, if not form fullfledged friendships with them. In addition, the white women were shocked to learn that black women were not interested in forming cross-race friendships, and some were quite hurt to learn how one-sided the desire for friendship was. Digging deeper, we turned to the question of allies, wondering if black women sought white women as allies in their organizations. Again, the answer was no. In fact, many of the black women had had such negative experiences in the past—being used, ignored, or insulted by white women—that they did not form alliances with white women at work. Furthermore, the reality is that in the majority of organizations in the United States, white men hold the most significant positions of power. Given this, black women, like white women, turn to white men as allies to help them navigate their careers and progress in the organization’s hierarchy. In fact, many of the black women felt that they were competing to some extent for access to white men’s power. The white women, on the other hand, were more likely to take their access to white men for granted. Hurtado (1989, p. 834) underscores this competition for access to white men, ‘‘The conflicts and tensions between White feminists and feminists of Color are viewed too frequently as lying solely in woman-to-woman relationships. These relationships, however, are affected in both obvious and subtle ways by how each of these two groups of women relate to White men.’’ Our

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differential relationship to white men has implications for our relationships with one another. As Hurtado (1989, p. 843) notes, ‘‘White men use different forms of enforcing oppression of White women and women of Color. As a consequence, these groups of women have different political responses and skills, and at times these differences cause the two groups to clash.’’ As we thought more about how to breach this divide, we began to wonder about an alternative way to think about it. Rather than seeking strategies to help black and white women want to become friends, we realized that making connections with each other is important. By associating with each other in our organizations, we build strength for ourselves, each other, and the organization. So it is essential to consider the obstacles preventing white and black women from really bonding, both personally and professionally, at work. We identified two major hurdles to making this connection. First, both black and white women face risks when forming friendships with one another, though those that blacks encounter are greater. The second hurdle can best be described as a subtle power shift that we observed occurring in black/white women’s friendships, leaving both parties in unfamiliar territory. Understanding how these barriers manifested for ourselves and our black/white counterparts is crucial if we are to move forward together. During our conference call, the black women agreed that building relationships with their white counterparts in the workplace poses significant hazards. One colleague mentioned, ‘‘One strike you’re out; for black people, one mistake and it’s hard to recover.’’ The white women had difficulty visualizing these risks and found their existence surprising. Scully said, ‘‘I just realized as I was writing this that I am not exactly sure what the feared risks look like in detail.’’ Our discussions revealed that black women’s lack of trust of white women is deeply embedded. Black women are taught at an early age to beware of white women/people; they also have a host of experiences to support the wariness. As Scully stated, ‘‘The black woman, necessarily aware of the risks of opening up to friendship at work, may scan the scene to see how the white women relate to each other. Will a white woman be a loyal ally? Let’s see how she relates to other white women. Will a white woman stick up for me when the going gets tough? Let’s see if white women have each other’s backs.’’ It is clear that white women hold the power in the professional realm, which was reinforced by Scully’s statement, ‘‘The corporate world is a white woman’s world.’’ That realization, coupled with the existing wariness, speaks volumes about the level of risk black women perceive in building friendships with white women. As a result, black women focus on their professional lives while in the workplace and form ‘‘invisible fences’’ as a form of protection from the perceived risks. In some cases, white women are either completely unaware or unconscious of how these factors dictate the actions of black women in the workplace. ‘‘White women see Black women as distrusting and distant. Black women, however, see themselves as occupied with a unique set of concerns that White women will not understand’’ (Proudford, 2002, p. 2).

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The gains of women are really the gains of white women—the ‘‘whitewash dilemma’’ (Betters-Reed & Moore, 1995). Black women feel the pressure of having to work twice as hard to prove themselves and advance in their careers. The frustration of seeing their hard work primarily benefit white women exacerbates the risks of forming cross-race friendships. Additionally, literature on workplace social networks (Combs, 2003) has shown that informal social networks (reactions to opportunities and problems of the work environment) are imperative to career advancement. However, Combs stated, ‘‘The Catalyst (1999) study reports that 40 percent of the African American women surveyed stated that their advancement is inhibited by a lack of informal networks and social systems in the workplace’’ (Combs, 2003, p. 385). Black women do not perceive white women to be supportive or helpful in the workplace; the perception is that white women are self-focused and only interested in advancing their own careers. LaRoche’s personal experience reflected that perception. ‘‘Over time I saw that the woman [a senior white woman] was only interested in her career. She did nothing to bring up other women or support them; all of our projects benefited her and we got no capital back from them. I began to feel used. Slowly our relationship deteriorated and she moved on to others that could help her.’’ White women do not extend the professional channels to black women; in turn, black women are less likely to allow white women into their personal realm. Black women are concerned about the potential threat to their career should they allow white women into their world. The perceived risks can manifest themselves in different ways depending on the organization, but they will most certainly make the black women’s jobs more difficult or threaten their job security. This lack of trust, due in part to past experiences, has created uncertainty about white women’s actions if the invisible fences are removed. Seeing the benefits of cross-race relationships is difficult for black women, because they do not perceive their white peers as allies in their career advancement, though the white women have more power in the professional realm. Although some white people may be reluctant to admit it, they face risks in reaching across race as well. When white women confront issues of racism, they risk repercussions from other white people (Bailey, 1998; Segrest, 1994). Many white people are consciously or unconsciously invested in protecting their racial privilege. They might find it threatening to see other white people working to break down (rather than maintain) barriers between white and black women. In this era of 360-degree reviews and upward and downward feedback, white women might feel that reaching out to black women at work poses risks to their careers. In fact, one white woman in our team experienced this sort of backlash as a result of initiating a conversation about race in her job. Afterward, someone anonymously contacted her calling her a ‘‘race traitor,’’ because in that person’s opinion, as a white woman her allegiance should be to other white people first. White women also face the risk of exposing their own privilege and racism when they form friendships with black women. As Hunt described it, ‘‘Because

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whiteness and privilege are a part of me in ways that are not apparent to me, I’m afraid sometimes to speak because my privilege and racism will surface unknowingly.’’ Scully added another perspective, ‘‘What we did not mention, and again is rather taboo, is that . . . in subtle ways, we check out whether a black woman might be amenable to connection or will lecture us about our racism.’’ In our conversation, we observed an unexpected power shift between black and white women. Although white women hold infinitely more power than their black peers in the professional domain, in interpersonal relationships, black women hold the power to accept or reject white women’s friendship. As Blake-Beard stated, in the relational dance that happens between white and black professional women’s personal relationships, the power dynamic is different. I feel as if black women have this power to withhold their friendship and connection. Two caveats are that they withhold because they may have been burned in the past, or they just got the message, ‘‘You can’t trust white people,’’ over and over again passed on from lips of great grandmother to grandmother to mother. The second caveat is that this withholding is not without cost to the black woman.

Scully reinforced this power shift with her observation that ‘‘in the interpersonal realm, it is white women who are ‘proving themselves.’’’ Keeping this power in perspective, however, is important. As Scully put it, ‘‘In the whole scheme of life, it is just an eye-dropperful of power.’’ However, we need to consider this power shift to understand the challenges white and black women face in making connections with one another. White women often feel they need to prove themselves to black women—prove that they ‘‘get it’’ and understand their own privilege. As a result, they can appear to be overeager in their attempts to connect with black women (Wilson & Russell, 1996). Black women, on the other hand, perceive so many risks to friendship with white women, that they can come off as uninterested and undereager to make connections. This creates a cycle in which white women fear rejection and either stop trying to connect or never even start, which reinforces black women’s perceptions that white women are indifferent or don’t value their contributions, personally or professionally. A double bind results from this dynamic. Black women keep white women at a distance to protect themselves in the workplace, but it has a significant impact on all women. Turnbull stated, ‘‘having relationships at work is risky because performance is tied to success. If it goes awry, the cost is hefty. However, not having relationships at work is also risky, because it diminishes the effectiveness of women in the workplace and prevents us from unleashing our power as a group.’’ We inhibit ourselves from being a stronger, more influential group in the workplace. Furthermore, maintaining the invisible fences exhausts black women. It requires a daily effort to take protective measures, and this diminishes personal effectiveness. We can learn so much from each other and

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have incredible resources to share to support everyone’s career advancement. Blake-Beard shared a powerful visual of the impact of the double bind. An image of black and white women walking on parallel paths, each with obstacles and hurdles in the way . . . At some places, the paths are actually close enough so that one could jump out and reach the other. But she doesn’t because she is scared she is going to fall into the gap—it doesn’t matter that the gap is only three feet; she’s been conditioned to know that to jump is a sure way to pain. . . . This image makes me so sad—because in fact, there are times when the black woman could really use the white woman over there on her parallel path. Sometimes, the white woman could use a tip or strategy from her black counterpart. So they can’t share important information, strategies, and support with one another.

Early in our process, the team talked about the benefits of working with the opposite race; the responses were positive, encouraging, and powerful. We talked about ‘‘the additional perspective gained from interacting with a woman of the opposite race. There was a focus on what could be learned, what she would learn about herself, and access gained to that world.’’ Yet instead of working together, black and white women turn to white men as the logical allies. This means women of both races are competing for the same allies. Overall, organizational effectiveness continues to decline because women are working in a disjointed way due to cross-race divides. As the workforce becomes more diversified, strong cross-race relations are becoming imperative. Organizations will not be able to succeed without drastic improvement in this area. To break the cycle, we need to create a world where white and black women share the power in professional and personal realms. They each bear burdens as members of their individual groups. Yet they also bear a collective burden as women. Given the competitive nature of organizations, particularly at higher levels, black and white women must start making connections and easing each others’ burdens early in their careers. Doing so will allow them to build a bridge between white and black women, so that when they—we—get to those high levels, we can pull each other up instead of shutting each other down. Understanding the risks and barriers to building those friendships is crucial to overcoming them. INSIGHTS FROM OUR COLLECTIVE WISDOM One of the most powerful aspects of this project was the opportunity to be with one another and to learn from and draw on our collective wisdom to understand and posit conditions for successful support of relationships between black and white women. We found from our research, our experiences, and the literature that several practices support white and black women in their efforts to connect with one another.

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Entering the Space: Declaring Our Intentions Because of the history between black and white women, one thing that we acknowledged early on was the importance of our willingness to enter into this work with one another. Because of the way the invitation was expressed and the identity of the person issuing it, we started from a basis of willingness to engage and consider trust that rarely accompanies cross-race relationships in organizational contexts. Hunt visualized our beginning conversations and the ensuing bonds that we built with one another as a ‘‘circle of trust’’ (see Figure 8.2). She identified three components that contributed to building relationships across dimensions of diversity—respect, communication, and relationship. Because no particular entry point into the circle exists, breaking in is challenging. Respecting people allows one to trust them enough to enter into relationship. Communicating with them should engender additional respect, trust, and so on. All three elements (respect, communication, and relationship) seem to be necessary (based on our responses) to build trust. A way to overcome the barriers to the creation of a circle of trust is to focus on a common objective or passion. Many of us described our positive relationships with black/white women within the context of a pursuing a common purpose. In those relationships we respected each other and communicated effectively. We moved beyond the visible differences to another level that enabled us to learn from and trust each other. Fanning put

FIGURE 8.2.

Circle of trust.

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this insight into concrete terms: ‘‘I will force myself to leave my comfort zone and talk about race in terms of differences, similarities, and opportunities. [I will] engage people to consider learning from past experiences to form stronger interracial relationships.’’ Working Together through Our Differences Our tendency in doing this work as black and white women is to focus on our similarities. But rather than suppressing our differences as black and white women, we can also learn from them. Holvino (2005) suggests that the four skills enabling white women and women of color to work together are inquiring and disclosing, asking difficult questions, making differences explicit (confronting), and showing support and seeking common ground. Our group used each of these skills to build our strong connections. We started with inquiry; at each stage of our research, we asked and answered questions posed by our group. And our group responded immediately with a level of disclosure and sharing that we each recognized as a rare, invaluable invitation. In reaction to one of our early group conference calls, Porter shared her response, ‘‘I’m impressed by how open each one of us was, including sharing some difficult moments, personal challenges, and, for many of us, self-doubt.’’ We also asked one another difficult questions. When we recognized the pattern of black women being very vocal and the white women being more muted, we challenged each other to unpack this dynamic. What did we learn about ourselves individually and as a community as we looked at differences between black and white women in the modes and frequency of communication? Once differences are examined and confronted, black and white women can shift their attitude toward each other. LaRoche wrote, ‘‘I have been humbled and thrilled to know that there are white people in the world who look at race on a [regular] basis. . . . These four women have permanently altered my view of white people and what it means to be white.’’ Attending to the Structural Holvino (2005) is unequivocal in advocating for acknowledgment of the systemic and societal dimensions of difference. Though it is important for black and white women to be able to connect with one another on an individual level, really working across differences requires more than this micro-level discourse. If we act as advocates, allies, and mediators for one another, we also will need to acknowledge structurally supported differential treatment. For black and white women to be committed to working together, we must also be willing to interrupt dynamics of institutionalized racism and sexism when we see this particularly virulent combination bearing down on our sisters. Blake-Beard was recently a participant in a train-the-trainer session on a particular experiential process for group work. When she raised an issue about how she, as a woman of

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color who is a trainer, might need to interact with this process using different tools than the white male facilitators at the front of the room, her questions and concerns were summarily dismissed. The dismissal, which is a common occurrence but no less painful, was only bearable because a white woman in the room took up her question, challenging the white male facilitators. Although this white ally also was dismissed, she had stood up—she had identified herself as an advocate willing to address the very systems that benefit her as a white woman. Both white and black women will need to take action and move beyond the traditional bystander role that we often take in cross-race interactions. A measure of courage and willingness to take risks is necessary as black and white women act as advocates, allies, and mediators for one another. As Segrest (2002, p. 221) says, ‘‘birthing such new structures will require both great patience and great impatience.’’ Acknowledging Our Simultaneity As we worked together, we were cognizant of and sensitive to the multiple identities that each one of us brought to our interaction. Holvino (2005) describes this aspect of working across difference as simultaneity. ‘‘Simultaneity means that we each belong to many social groups at the same time, which complicates our identities and the fluid quality of our advantages and disadvantages within same-race and same-ethnicity groups and with other racial and ethnic groups’’ (Holvino, 2005, p. 4). Our multiple identities add another layer of complexity to the task of building relationships between black and white women. For example, to the extent that black women are not aware of their complex identities, they may speak from a ‘‘race’’ perspective; conversely, white women may be aware of other identities and thus see themselves in that context, although rarely from a race perspective. Proudford explains how multiple identities have affected her perception of connecting with white women. I was also thinking about our complex identities as we talked. For example, I am from a middle-class background. That influences what I do, how I do it, etc. It feels fine to me to ‘‘own’’ that. People from a working-class background might get quite frustrated with me because I don’t always ‘‘get’’ class in the same way they do . . . thinking about myself in this complex way helps me connect to white women. Our conversation helped me take that complexity seriously.

CONCLUSION We see the distinctions identified between black and white women as critical, a creative and necessary force for change. Holvino (2005) notes that the most effective way for women to achieve power, support each other, and make our organizations better is by engaging our differences both within and across

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race. We need to be able to both build on our similarities and not be afraid to step into our differences. But engaging these differences is not easy work—or as Bell et al. share (2003, p. 410), ‘‘there are no easy papers on race.’’ Our team definitely found this statement to be true; working virtually underscored the challenge of this collaboration. The process in which we engaged was marked by tense silences, hard questions, and tender vulnerabilities—a challenging translation of the issues that hurt and heal us. As Lorde (1984, p. 127) notes, ‘‘for it is in the painful process of this translation that we identify who are our allies with whom we have grave differences, and who are our genuine enemies.’’ Through analysis of our conversations (those held through electronic means and via conference calls) and the literature review, we identified several critical factors that get in our way and that enable us—the ties that bind and separate. The factors that separate us include challenging intergroup and intragroup dynamics, fear, and silence. Those that bind us together are processes of building a circle of trust to hold challenging conversations, taking risks in transforming our working relationships to friendships, and identifying allies and advocates across race. We entered this dialogue with one another from a place of hope—as Porter said, ‘‘by staying silent we just feed into the cycle of distrust, fear, and misunderstanding. I realize now that the risks of trying to connect and being rejected are much less significant than the risk of never connecting at all.’’ REFERENCES Anzaldu´a, G. E. (1987). Borderlands: La frontera—The new mestiza. San Francisco: Aunt Lute Books. Anzaldu´a, G. E., & Keating, A. (2002). This bridge we call home: Radical visions for transformation. New York: Routledge. Ayvazian, A., & Tatum, B. D. (1994). Women, race and racism: A dialogue in black and white. Work in Progress #65. Wellesley, MA: Stone Center Working Paper Series. Bailey, A. (1998). Locating traitorous identities: Towards a view of privilege-cognizant white character. Hypatia, 13(3), 27–42. Bell, E. L. J., Meyerson, D., Nkomo, S., & Scully, M. (2003). Interpreting silence and voice in the workplace: A conversation about tempered radicalism among black and white women researchers. Journal of Applied Behavioral Science, 39(4), 381–414. Bell, E. L. J., & Nkomo, S. (2001). Our separate ways: Black and white women and the struggle for professional identity. Boston, MA: Harvard Business School Press. Betters-Reed, B., & Moore, L. L. (1995). Shifting the management paradigm for women. Journal of Management Development, 14(2), 15–30. Blake, S. (1999). At the crossroads of race and gender: Lessons from the mentoring experiences of professional black women. In A. J. Murrell, F. J. Crosby, & R. J. Ely (Eds.), Mentoring dilemmas: Developmental relationships within multicultural organizations (pp. 83-104). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

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Breines, W. (1996). Sixties stories’ silences: White feminism, black feminism, black power. NWSA Journal, 8(3), 101–122. Byrne, D. (1971). The attraction paradigm. New York: Academic Press. Catalyst. (2004). The bottom line: Connecting corporate performance and gender diversity. New York: Catalyst. Combs, G. M. (2003). The duality of race and gender for managerial African American women: Implications of informal social networks on career advancement. Human Resource Development Review, 2(4), 385–405. Connolly, M. L., & Noumair, D. A. (1997). The white girl in me, the colored girl in you, and the lesbian in us: Crossing boundaries. In M. Fine, L. Weis, L. C. Powell, & L. M. Wong (Eds.), Off white: Readings on race, power and society. New York: Routledge. Dumas, R. G. (1985). Dilemmas of black females in leadership. In A. D. Coleman, & M. H. Geller (Eds.), Group Relations Reader 2 (pp 323–334). Jupiter, FL: A. K. Rice Institute. Dunbar, P. L. (1913). We wear the mask. The complete poems of Paul Lawrence Dunbar, New York: Dodd, Mead. Ely, R. J. (1995). The power in demography: Women’s social constructions of gender identity at work. Academy of Management Journal, 38(3), 589–634. Eng, P. (1999). Warrior lessons: An Asian American woman’s journey into power. New York: Pocket Books. Giddings, P. (1984). When and where I enter: The impact of black women on race and sex in America. New York: Bantam. Granger, D. (2002). Friendships between black and white women. American Behavioral Scientist, 45(8), 1208–1213. Holvino, E. (2005). Commentary #5: Women in organizations: Why our differences matter and what to do about it. Boston, MA: Center for Gender in Organizations, Simmons School of Management. hooks, b. (1981). Ain’t I a woman: Black women and feminism. Boston, MA: South End Press. hooks, b. (1989). Talking back: Thinking feminist, thinking black. Boston, MA: South End Press. hooks, b. (1994). Holding my sister’s hand: Feminist solidarity. Teaching to transgress: Education as the practice of freedom. New York: Routledge. Hurtado, A. (1989). Relating to privilege: Seduction and rejection in the subordination of white women and women of color. Signs, 14, 833–855. Hurtado, A. (2003). Voicing chicana feminisms: Young women speak out on sexuality and identity. New York: New York University Press. Kanter, R. M. (1977). Men and women of the corporation. New York: Basic Books. Lorde, A. (1984). Sister outsider. Freedom, CA: The Crossing Press. Moraga, C., & Anzaldua, G. (1983). This bridge called my back: Writings by radical women of color. New York: Kitchen Table/ Women of Color Press. Poe, R., & Courter, C. L. (1994). Women against women. Across the Board, 31(3). Proudford, K. L. (2002). Insights #14: Asking the question: Uncovering the assumptions that undermine conversations across race. Boston, MA: Center for Gender in Organizations, Simmons School of Management. Rindfleish, J. (2000). Senior management women in Australia: Diverse perspectives. Women in Management Review, 15(4), 172–183.

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Segrest, M. (1994). Memoir of a race traitor. Boston, MA: South End Press. Segrest, M. (2002). Born to belonging: Writings on spirit and justice. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press. Thomas, D. A. (1989). Mentoring and irrationality: The role of racial taboos. Human Resource Management, 28, 279–290. Thompson, B. (1996). Time traveling and border crossing: Reflections on white identity. In B. Thompson, & S. Tyagi (Eds.), Names we call home: Autobiography on racial identity (pp 93–109). New York: Routledge. Thompson, B. (2001). A promise and a way of life: White antiracist activism. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. (2003). Occupational employment in private industry by race/ethnic group/sex and by industry, United States. http:// www.eeoc.gov/stats/jobpat/2003/national.html. Wallace, M. (1979). Black macho and the myth of the superwoman. New York: Dial. Wilson, M. & Russell, K. (1996). Divided sisters: Bridging the gap between black women and white women. New York: Anchor Books.

9

Black Women in Management Ancella Livers

Once asked, the question generally hangs in the air, taking on a life of its own, corrupting the relationships of the past and the future by the sheer volume of assumptions, perspectives, and lack of awareness that are embedded in the words. ‘‘So are you a woman first or black first?’’ The assumption is that these aspects of self can be pulled apart, separated as if they have no relationship to each other. Inherent in this question is the belief that one or the other of these characteristics must predominate—race or gender— and the other must necessarily be subsumed. Yet the experiences of women of color belie these assumptions. They are ‘‘both/and,’’ not ‘‘either/or.’’1 The stories of African American women managers are stories that are born in the nexus of race and gender and tempered in the workplace. They are the stories of both/and as women, black women, slowly find a place in the corporate managerial ranks. In a July 2003 report, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission stated that 195,784 or 3.3 percent of African American women employed in the private sector held official or managerial positions. This percentage shows a change in the number of black women managers from 1990, when 111,318 black women were officials and managers, to 2001 when the number grew to 195,784. Although the sheer number of African American women managers is the largest of all of the female minority racial groups recorded in the report, the percentage of other minority women managers is growing at a faster rate.2 Furthermore, though it is difficult to find statistics comparing the pay of black and white women managers and those of black male and female managers, annual earnings comparisons indicate that black women earn less than either their white female or black male counterparts. Statistics compiled by the National Committee on Pay Equity show that in 2003 black men earned an annual average of $32,241 compared to white women, who earned $31,169, and black women, who earned $26,965. All three groups earned less money than white males, who earned an annual average of $41,211.3 This

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pay disparity is clear evidence that the combination of race and gender has a different impact than the experience of race or gender alone. ‘‘I would like to think that my performance plays a larger role than my race and gender,’’ said Deborah Raleigh, a vice president at a major manufacturing conglomerate, ‘‘but I don’t know that for a fact, and I don’t think I will ever know that.’’4 This combination of race and gender, or perhaps the lack of awareness of it, helps create the specific kind of environment, miasma, in which black women managers must work. Miasma is ‘‘the murky atmosphere of misperception and distortion’’ in and through which many nontraditional leaders have to navigate in their work life. Akin to a low-lying fog that makes the environment difficult and at times treacherous for maneuvering, miasma speaks to the stereotypes, perceptions, misinterpretations, and general baggage that people who are different from the mainstream must manage. When nontraditional leaders work in organizations that have a low tolerance for difference, the miasma can become quite dense, as relationships, trust, and communication are degraded. In organizations where tolerance and inclusion flourish, the miasma is generally less problematic and more easily managed.5 The characteristics of miasma for women managers, in general, may include stereotypes about women being emotional or irrational. They may also include concerns about the impact of pregnancy and child care on workplace efficiency and competency and a vague but pervasive question about the appropriateness of women in certain jobs. The aspects of miasma for African American managers also include concerns that others question their competence, goodness of fit, and emotionality. Added to this are lingering beliefs in employers’ minds that blacks may not have a particularly strong work ethic and that they may get unfairly promoted because of affirmative action policies. Black women managers bear the burdens of all of these perceptions with added nuances. ‘‘We’re always challenged around credibility and competency,’’ said Margaret Stone, the director of diversity at a national financial institution. She also believes that co-workers wonder, ‘‘How did they get this information? This job? How much power do they really have?’’ Referring to the miasma each group faces, she said, ‘‘I don’t think it is different for white women or AfricanAmerican males. I think the degree is magnified [for black women].’’ According to a 2004 Catalyst report, African American women believe they face significant barriers to their organizational advancement. The most common barriers the women report are not having mentors or sponsors, poor informal networks, lack of same race/ethnic group role models, and few high-visibility projects. They also say that they must deal with others’ negative stereotypes of black women, endure increased scrutiny, challenges to authority, questioning of their credibility, and continual questions of fit.6 As they tell their own stories, black women managers acknowledge the challenges and tensions that often underlie their work life; yet they also talk about their strength and ability to survive. It is not unusual for these women to

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speak of the lessons learned from their families and the formative experiences that they believe help them succeed. Based on a series of interviews with black women managers, this chapter looks at the way black women see themselves and how they believe others see them. The chapter will also talk about the women’s challenges, fears, and coping mechanisms. Nine women were interviewed. Their names have been changed to give them enough anonymity to speak freely about their work lives. Most are managers, many at the director level and higher. They tend to work for large national and international for-profit corporations, although one works for a big-city hospital and another for a not-for-profit. Almost all have worked for twenty or more years; the youngest is thirty-seven and the oldest is fifty-eight. The women live in numerous communities, large and small, representing the East, South, Midwest, and Southwest. Although their personal life and work experiences are varied, their perceptions of what it is like to be an African American woman manager are parallel and strongly resemble those of black women profiled in other studies. Furthermore, beyond noting how these women see themselves, the chapter will also look at some of the similarities in how others see them. One of the most common comments about black women is that they are often too direct in their dealings at work. In the Center for Creative Leadership’s African American Leadership Program, black women managers regularly report they are perceived as being too straightforward. One woman, Jan Henry, a manager in a chemical corporation said that in her work ‘‘I tend to be very, very direct about how I understand things or questions that I ask.’’ She noted that in her organization there are about fifteen other black professional women, all of whom have very different personalities yet all of whom have been told at some point in their careers that they are too direct.7 Although others may consider this characteristic to be a fault, many black women embrace directness, seeing it as an asset rather than a detriment. Elizabeth Scott, a training manager for an international shipping firm said, ‘‘I am very direct, very competent, and very knowledgeable.’’ She continued. ‘‘I’ve had people who’ve said ‘you can’t say that. They won’t understand.’ But my thing is that’s more on them than on me.’’ Scott also said that she would guess that 99 percent of those who report directly to her love their relationship. ‘‘I allow them to be the people they need to be and to do the job they need to do.’’ Stone also believes that black women are more direct than many of their other female colleagues because they are not accustomed to being taken care of and are willing to confront, ‘‘to have the corporate fight.’’ This willingness to ask the difficult questions is often necessary, she said, because so many corporate cultures ‘‘make nice.’’ ‘‘We do it in a professional way,’’ said Stone, ‘‘We are professional, but we see it as a disservice to not name the issues and have the tough discussions.’’ Julianne Street, who works as a director of human resources in a global information media company, said she is perceived as being a ‘‘very strong, outspoken person,’’ adding, ‘‘One of the things people describe me as is a straight

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talker and being fearless about saying the truth.’’ Though Street said she will confront issues others will not, she has learned through difficult experience that ‘‘most people don’t want to confront issues.’’ Consequently, she now picks her battles more carefully, choosing to be vocal on issues she considers to be critically important to her job or the organization. ‘‘Everything is built on relationships and it’s hard enough to build relationships to just keep my job,’’ she said. Paula McPherson, manager of executive development at a major financial institution, said that because she is a psychologist, her job and education also allow her to say what’s on her mind. ‘‘I can speak the unspoken and have it not be as detrimental to me as it would be to someone else.’’ Grace Evans, vice president of human resources for a national cable organization, said, ‘‘I am willing to speak up and have the unpopular comment. If my heart is right, I’m OK with that.’’ Because they are black and women and somewhat rare in the organizational hierarchy, these managers often feel disconnected from the mainstream. This disconnection, along with cultural influences, allows and sometimes pushes them to question the system in ways others may not feel as comfortable doing. Many of these women have been raised to resist the labels and stereotyping of larger society. As children or young women, they were often taught that those who succeeded in life were responsible to help change the system and to give voice to the voiceless.8 For example, Cayenne Jackson, a senior vice president of diversity for a national firm in the retail industry, said she wanted to make sure to accomplish as much as she could for her organization and community. It is important to her to make a significant contribution to her company, a retail industry firm for which she has worked for several decades. Making systemic changes is also important to her. ‘‘I see the opportunity to help the doors be more readily opened for people who have been disenfranchised in this particular industry,’’ Jackson said, ‘‘coupled with the opportunity to give something back in my community.’’ Frances Montana, an executive director of a private, nonprofit educational job-training center in a small town, said she is a role model. Because she is one of the few black leaders in her community, Montana said black parents ‘‘bring their children through the doors just to see me. That’s still an important thing for them because their children’s teachers are still white; their principal is white; the store managers are still white. Everybody is white.’’ Everybody is white but Montana, and she sees her role as being a mentor and opening doors for those whom others may overlook. Furthermore, as people who are often outside of the power structure, some black women feel that they are already marginalized and have less to lose within the organizational hierarchy than their colleagues. ‘‘We are not intimidated by the system,’’ Stone said. ‘‘I can make a successful living doing many things. I don’t have to work here to live.’’ Because they are so aware of being outsiders, some women feel they have to gird themselves against the racial slights they fear are inevitable. Scott, for

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example, talked of working as a bank manager. At one point one of the tellers had a problem and needed to speak to the manager—Scott. The teller said to one of her co-workers, ‘‘What can that monkey do for me?’’ referring to Scott. The coworker shared the comment with Scott, who went to the original teller, did not confront her on her comment, but helped her work through the problem. In spite of the teller’s racist views, Scott said she was able to handle the situation. Though racial incidents have occurred in her career, Scott said race has never really been a hindrance to it. Yet when she discusses her greatest fear, she said it is that someone, probably a yet unknown white male manager who will be her boss at some future date, will make a problematic racial comment to her. ‘‘I’d probably lose my job, for a minute anyway and then I’d get it back.’’ She added, ‘‘I know it’s going to happen one day,’’ referring to the possible comment and her response. Mercedes Esterhaus, marketing director for a professional services and consulting firm, said she, too, believes the potential for racist comments or attitudes are possible in any situation. ‘‘I always know that they’re there,’’ she said referring to racist attitudes. ‘‘You always know that question [about black competency] is always there. I try not to spend a lot of time focusing on it, but I know as I go about doing my job it could be there.’’ For Esterhaus, the impact of always being prepared for battle is a part of the stress of the corporate workplace. Though she says concerns about race are not in the forefront of her mind, they do have an effect on her ability to trust people, particularly whites. ‘‘I have never been, am not in, and will never be in an environment where I can say ‘I trust you, you have my back.’ You have to always be watchful.’’ Montana said black people have to deal with race as an issue every day of their lives. ‘‘As a black person in America, you’re always confronted with the question ‘is it a matter of race?’ she said, adding, ‘‘when they see you in America, they see black first.’’

WHITE WOMEN Race may come even more to the fore when gender is held constant. Specifically, many black women feel there is significant distrust or tension between black and white women. Often, they say white women neither understand nor try to understand that black women must navigate through a different set of biases and assumptions than do their white female colleagues. Consequently, the natural bond of gender, for many black and white women, may not be so natural.9 Stone said there is tension because white women are often in denial about the treatment they receive compared to the treatment black women receive. She went on saying white women are often ‘‘acknowledged quicker, sooner, and more often than women of color. They are invited to the table sooner. They get more stretch assignments. Women of color more often have to prove their

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credibility.’’ Stone said white women’s denial or unawareness is what causes the tension. ‘‘They actually think they got where they got without special privileges. From a gender perspective they [as women] are treated differently [in the workplace], but from a race perspective, they are treated better.’’ McPherson said she has experienced ‘‘distinct tension’’ with white women since she entered corporate America. ‘‘With white women,’’ she said, ‘‘it’s almost as if we can’t hear each other.’’ She wondered if each group makes assumptions about how the others would behave based on their own understanding of womanhood; beyond womanhood, however, race adds a confounding factor that neither group knows how to interpret appropriately. ‘‘With white men there is no assumption of similarity,’’ added McPherson. ‘‘We’re so different it almost leaves us open to explore.’’ Speaking personally, McPherson said part of the problem with the underlying tension between black and white women is the potentially insidious effect on the rapport with her white female colleagues. If she finds that something is not going well with her female colleagues and if the problem is not discussed, McPherson said her relationships can be undermined. ‘‘In the absence of information, I have noticed an increased tendency in myself to assume malintent.’’ Because she recognizes the behavior, McPherson said she has become proactive in managing it. ‘‘If I find there is less than supportive behavior and I find myself being impacted, I go and talk about it.’’ Esterhaus says she, too, has experienced the tension and suggests that white women ‘‘feel threatened by the way we communicate, come across, and dress.’’ Grace Evans said she thinks the issue is one of distrust, not tension. The distrust, though, is hers, not her white colleagues’. She said her experiences have taught her to be careful and not to believe that white women will help her out of difficult situations. When she was in high school, Evans ran for a student office. As she recalled the event, some white female students had initially supported her; however, the election had ended in a tie and had to be rerun. ‘‘They jumped ship to the other side,’’ she said, ‘‘I knew where they would go when it all came down.’’ For Evans, the incident still feeds her distrust of whites in general and white women in particular. ‘‘They may not be there for me; I need to be aware of that,’’ she said. Street said working with white women can be a ‘‘nightmare.’’ She went on to say, ‘‘They have a constant inability to take directions from somebody who is black.’’ She added that she has several white women who report to her and who have worked actively to undermine her authority. In her experience, she said, it has not been unusual for white women whom she has managed to try to determine if she has organizational support. ‘‘If they perceive any weakness or if you’re not supported at the highest level, they’ll come after you.’’ Street added, though, that white women who are peers are often more collegial. ‘‘That’s because the higher up you go, there are fewer women,’’ she said. She concluded that the impact of hierarchical movement is sometimes to make gender a more salient issue than race.

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Although many black women experience feelings of tension or distrust when dealing with white women, others say their relationships with white women have not been problematic. ‘‘I see it in just women, period,’’ said Kelly Carter about problems between female colleagues, ‘‘it doesn’t have to be white women.’’ Carter, a clinical research coordinator at a large women’s hospital, acknowledged, though, that many black women don’t trust white women. Montana said that she has never experienced any particular difficulties with white women either. ‘‘Most of the women, I would say I’ve met,’’ she said, ‘‘were all struggling to find level ground with the men.’’ The feelings many black women have toward white women often seem to spring from personal experience, vestigial historical recollection, different cultural styles, and racial stereotypes held by both groups. Many black women believe that white women do not acknowledge that their pain of nonacceptance is akin to but different from that of white women and, furthermore, that white women don’t recognize their own complicity in creating some of that pain.10 The relationship between black and white women also speaks to the fragility of trust and the assumption of mal-intent on the parts of both black and white women. Certainly these disconnects are quite present in black women’s retelling of past hurts and possibly in the stories of white women as well. These conditions make it difficult for women to ‘‘hear’’ each other, as McPherson suggested, and may continue to lay the groundwork for further misunderstandings.

ALLIES In spite of the tension some black women feel about white women and often, white men, many of those interviewed also listed representatives from these groups among their closest professional allies. The apparent inconsistency seemingly goes unnoticed as the nuances of racial relationships retreat to the background in the face of personal friendships. Evans said one of her allies is a white woman with whom she has become fairly close. ‘‘She was excluded from the white group for whatever reason,’’ Evans said speaking of her friend. ‘‘She kind of attached herself to me.’’ Evans also noted that because her friend is white, she often hears comments and gathers and shares information to which Evans might not normally be privy. ‘‘I also bring her into projects where I think she would do well. It’s not that she is not good,’’ Evans said reassuringly, ‘‘it’s her personality. She’s a library type, and she makes the guys uncomfortable.’’ Evans said she also has allies among her direct reports, who help keep her informed of events around the office. In addition, she considers her boss, a white male, to be a supporter. I’ve seen him go to bat for something I want to push through the organization,’’ she said. ‘‘I sometimes think ‘why’s he doing this?’ Part of it is just him, and part of it is having a woman of color makes him look good. And I do think that part of my job is to make him look good.’’

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Montana said her mentors have both been white men. She said her first mentor was an older man who said, ‘‘You know, you’re going to be good. Don’t let anybody shake your resolve. If you need anything from me, give me a call.’’ She added, ‘‘I was so hurt that a black man didn’t say anything to me. They wanted to play games.’’ Her other mentor was a minister whom she said has ‘‘always remained faithful to me.’’ Both men were people she could ask for advice and who would speak up for her when she wasn’t in the room to speak up for herself. She said their words and support helped her believe she could be successful in the organizational environment. Others interviewed also talked about the variety of allies and supporters they had. Scott noted that she had four people with whom she could discuss anything. Her support group consisted of three men, two black and one white, and a black female. Stone said she had senior leaders, women of color, gays, and lesbians as allies. ‘‘I have many allies across teams because of the work I do,’’ said the diversity director. Carter said an older white woman in her office saw she was ‘‘sharp, a quick learner, good, and had a good personality’’ and so began sharing experiences to help her acclimate to a new job. Having allies, supporters, mentors, and coaches is particularly important for African Americans who, in general, tend to describe a workplace that is frequented by more hardships and fewer challenging tasks than the workplace described by their white counterparts. Although many studies have suggested that blacks have fewer workplace mentors than their white colleagues, a 2003 report, ‘‘Key Events and Lessons for Managers in a Diverse Workforce,’’ from the Center for Creative Leadership suggests that the internal supportive relationships blacks do have may be of particular significance as they maneuver through the corporate environment. When asked to describe the key or major events in their managerial careers, African Americans were more likely than their white counterparts to mention the impact that mentors and other allies had on their work lives.11 Although it is unlikely that blacks in the center’s study truly had more mentoring experiences than whites, it seems probable that the mentors they did have had a more significant effect on their careers because, in general, their need for an advocate was greater and their chances of getting one lower. Consequently, the study’s black respondents often credited their mentors with opening doors or giving them opportunities when no one else would. The Catalyst study reports that 38 percent of the African American women they surveyed had mentors. In fact, of the three racial groups detailed (Latinas, Asians, and African Americans), black women were more likely than the other groups to have mentors. Those mentors tended to be either black or white with 32 percent being black men, 22 percent black women, and 29 percent white men. Black women reported that white women were least likely (at 16 percent) to be mentors.12 Though many black women report having internal mentors, many also say they get their main support for work outside of the workplace. McPherson said

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she’s always had a good external support system made of other professional women. ‘‘My challenge,’’ she said, ‘‘is that I do not have a good support network internally.’’ Though she said her internal support was not strong, she distinguished that from internal allies that she said she did have. Similar to the experience of others, McPherson had allies who sought her out because they saw she was taking on challenging tasks. McPherson sees both allies and supporters as important in the corporate world. In her view, supporters are people with whom she can discuss problems and concerns, personal or professional. Allies, on the other hand, are people who help push through initiatives or who help create professional opportunities. Street also feels that allies are important, particularly when a situation is difficult to manage. ‘‘I usually have information others don’t have,’’ Street said, ‘‘so I try to share information. That’s my barter. That’s what I have to trade.’’ She called her current environment ‘‘politically treacherous’’ and though she has some allies, she said her support is largely garnered from people outside of the office. ‘‘Here, it’s been hard to find people to trust,’’ Street said. She relies on a friends and former colleagues to help her navigate in the corporate workplace. ‘‘I have support from other people with whom I’ve worked. I have a previous boss and we’ve been friends for fifteen years.’’ ‘‘I think my husband is my biggest ally,’’ said Evans. ‘‘He gives me a man’s perspective.’’ Carter also noted that her husband was one of her strongest supporters. ‘‘You have to have family members who know you completely,’’ she said, ‘‘and when you’re bloody, they clean you up and send you back in there and let you know you’ll be all right.’’ The women interviewed did not take their supporters and allies for granted. In fact, often the women seemed surprised to have them. Always, they were grateful as they described the positive impact these people had on their careers. What might seem a little more unusual considering their descriptions of themselves as proactive is the fact that so many of these women said their mentors and allies had made the initial move. Only a few of the women said they had actively sought allies. Though the data are inconclusive, perhaps the women, who typically see themselves as estranged from the organizational power structure, make no assumptions that those within it will help them. Consequently, when help does come, those who are able to embrace it find the relationships very important to their careers.

MANAGING PERCEPTIONS One of the strongest coping mechanisms black women display is that of managing the perceptions others may have of them. ‘‘You always have to manage perceptions, all of the time,’’ said Carter. As a black woman, Carter said she must always be alert because, ‘‘I am culturally different and visually different and people don’t know how to take that.’’

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McPherson agreed. ‘‘Yes, definitely,’’ she said about managing perceptions. ‘‘That’s not new to this environment. I always have felt this way.’’ As someone who has typically been one of the younger people in her workplace, she said, ‘‘I have to manage how I’m perceived because of age, then race and gender.’’ McPherson said she began working as a psychologist at age twenty-nine, and people always assumed she was too inexperienced. She said her struggles around age were then overlaid with the stereotypes she was facing around race and gender. She remembered one job interview when the hiring manager, a white male, had not read her re´sume´. During the meeting, her interviewer said, ‘‘ ‘We had an elder statesman in mind for the job,’ code, code, code,’’ said McPherson, alluding to her belief that the term ‘‘elder statesman,’’ was really code meaning older white male. ‘‘As we went through the interview,’’ she continued with her story, ‘‘it was interesting to watch him because he became increasingly uncomfortable as I broke his stereotypes.’’ Concerning perceptions, Montana said she absolutely had to manage them. ‘‘You have to be above reproach,’’ she said. ‘‘You have to carry yourself in such a way that they recognize you’re not a joke.’’ She said that it was very difficult having to work daily to gain respect. ‘‘It took years and years,’’ she said, noting that she never had a mentor or anyone who would open doors for her. ‘‘I don’t know if it would have been easier if I had been in a large community. I had trouble with black men, the white community, and females. All of them had these perceived stereotypes that you had to contend with and knock down one by one.’’ As did the others, Street said she has always had to manage perceptions of herself. She noted though that because she is a light-skinned black woman, how she is perceived in New York City is very different than how she is perceived when she is working in the South. ‘‘I’m light-skinned,’’ she said, ‘‘and on the face of it, I could be Cuban, Puerto Rican, or many things. Here, though, I am not white, and that’s what I have to manage.’’ Street said that her work also has her interacting with a lot of people from the South. ‘‘In the South, they know what black people look like. They know the difference between a Mexican, a Puerto Rican, and light-skinned black people.’’ She said that in the South she has many more perceptions to manage and overcome. ‘‘They are much more difficult to deal with. They challenge me a lot more. They go over my head a lot more. It takes me a lot more time to manage my relations with them.’’ In the ‘‘city,’’ she said, the treatment is not as blatant, but it exists. ‘‘There is still a big difference in New York from being white and not white.’’ Street was careful to underscore that her viewpoint stems from her being light-skinned. ‘‘I see blackskinned sisters, and it’s very different for them,’’ she said suggesting that their overt blackness may cause them to be challenged differently and more frequently than she. Except for two of the most senior women in this interview who felt they had earned a respected place in their organizations, the sense that black women had to manage perceptions of themselves regularly was pervasive among those interviewed. Indeed, even the two women who felt they no longer had to maintain

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a vigil over their behaviors admitted that earlier in their careers they also had to pay attention to how they were perceived. Grace Evans said about handling how others see her, ‘‘Yes, all of the time I have to manage that [perceptions]. Part of my job is to be my own PR person.’’ She continued, saying that she has to manage the perceptions that she is competent and that she ‘‘gets it,’’ meaning ‘‘I understand how these things [work issues] connect and impact our customers.’’ She noted that she also had to make sure that the view of herself as a professional aligned with her core values and beliefs. Esterhaus said she, too, has to pay attention to how others see her at work. She is quite aware that she presents one face in the work environment and another when she is in more comfortable social settings. At work, she said, ‘‘they see the serious side of me getting things done. There’s a certain level of comfort I don’t let everyone see because I’m concerned about what they’ll do with that information.’’ Esterhaus went on to tell a story based on the differences between the hair care needs of black and white women and how she believes sharing some personal information eventually hurt her. She began her tale by communicating some basic facts about black female hair care. Black women who wear their hair artificially straightened usually have weekly beauty appointments, she said. Many black women feel wearing their hair in a straightened fashion is important to their acceptance at work. For example, of the women surveyed in the Catalyst 2003 study, 86 percent said they feel they have to ‘‘often or always conform to corporate standards of appearance.’’13 Rather than paying for each beautician visit, Esterhaus pays an annual fee to ensure she always has a weekly appointment, even if that appointment must be juggled because of her busy schedule. ‘‘A year ago at a real busy time with my job, I found a time I could go to see her [the beautician] at 8 a.m. on Wednesday. I got into the office at 10 a.m. My week is a forty-hour week. I got called to task because I had a weekly appointment.’’ Esterhaus said. Although this issue may seem quite shallow, for her it was very important. She did not feel she was short-changing her employer or ignoring her work by keeping an appointment with her hairdresser during working hours. Although her workweek is supposed to be a forty-hour week, Esterhaus said she typically works sixty hours. In addition, while she’s at the hairdresser, she is usually reading materials for work. She is also answering emails on her handheld computer. Yet in spite of her conscientious efforts to manage both her personal and work needs, Esterhaus believes she was inappropriately chastised for her actions. She feels that her white employer does not understand that black women can’t manage their hair as white women do. ‘‘Black hair care is very different. She [Esterhaus’s boss] saw it [the hair appointment] as very fru fru. She made an assumption when she needed to ask for clarification. My experience is that we do have to work harder,’’ she said. ‘‘You have to do more to prove yourself so you’re not perceived as being lazy.’’ Many blacks believe issues of hair—how it is worn—are significant predictors of how they will be perceived and received in the workplace. As one

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woman quoted in the Catalyst report said, ‘‘You’re proud of your black heritage. Anything you do that shows your blackness is something that makes them uncomfortable. Part of the problem whites have with the braids is their perception that you’re radical or too bold. They translate that into your work. Braids mean power to the people.’’14 One reason the women interviewed say they have to work so hard to manage perceptions is because there are so few professional African American women. Esterhaus believes she is one of the first black women at her level with whom many of her colleagues have worked. ‘‘At times, it is tiring,’’ she said, ‘‘when you wish you didn’t have to fight these battles. I’m tired of being the first, tired of fighting these battles. Unfortunately, I’m still educating people.’’ Carter agreed, saying that her white colleagues have most often come in contact with nonprofessional African Americans. These colleagues, therefore, assume that they have little in common with any blacks. ‘‘They may not invite you into conversations about things that are socially enlightening or involved such as plays etc.,’’ she said. ‘‘People don’t know how to place you.’’ Carter said she enters into these conversations and talks about the kinds of activities in which she is involved. ‘‘I want people to know what level I’m operating on,’’ she said. To be seen as a colleague, ‘‘I need them to see me at that level.’’ Like Esterhaus, Carter believes she must be the teacher. McPherson said it is often up to blacks or other people of difference to take the first step in building relationships or in helping others overcome their own stereotypes or biases. She said she has learned ‘‘how to initiate interactions with people and how to make friends.’’ In situations where there are biases, ‘‘I’ve had to learn how to get around them.’’ Though she recognizes that she takes most of the initiative in the early stages of relationship building, she says, ‘‘Culturally, in the United States, that’s just the way it is.’’ Even in diversity workshops, she said, the people of color are often asking questions and leading discussions. ‘‘The people of color are doing the work and telling their stories.’’ For many black women professionals, managing perceptions means paying close attention to the ways that others may interpret their behaviors. These women also manage perceptions by working actively to assuage the concerns about capability that often swirl around them. In fact, each woman seemed to take pride in saying that others saw her as being competent. Beyond their work product, though, these women also take on the role of relationship initiator and teacher as they try to get their colleagues to see beyond race or, more importantly, to see beyond their own assumptions of race.

FAMILY LESSONS Many of the women interviewed discussed the importance of their families and the lessons they learned as children that continue to play out in their lives as adults and managers. Often these lessons were explicit guides on how to

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maneuver in a society in which race could become an issue at any time. Evans said as a black girl growing up in Mississippi, she was taught early on that in the minds of whites, there were acceptable and nonacceptable black people. ‘‘You didn’t want to go in the nonacceptable group,’’ she said. ‘‘You knew if you were going to aspire to anything you had to go through them [whites]. If you weren’t acceptable, you would have a really, really hard time.’’ Evans said if you were acceptable, though, doors opened up for you. Consequently, she learned to be acceptable. ‘‘It’s almost innate,’’ she said. ‘‘Part of that is who I am. It’s part of my upbringing. ‘When you go in there,’ ’’ she said, quoting her mother, ‘‘ ‘you’re going to put on your best face and you’re going to behave.’ ’’ Evans said she carries her mother’s voice with her and she can still hear it. ‘‘ ‘When you go to work,’ the voice will say, ‘you want to go there and you don’t want to be stereotyped.’ ’’ During her childhood years Evans first learned to make cultural adaptations to manage others’ perceptions of her. Today, she says, she thinks about the way that she gives feedback to her employees and the sports analogies she uses to be understood. ‘‘It [the feedback] has to be rooted in good logic, not feeling,’’ said Evans, who works mostly with men. ‘‘Even if I want to use feeling words, I have to use good baseball analogies to make my point even though these are not words I usually use.’’ Scott said she was always taught to be a leader. She told a story of her childhood when her parents received news from her fourth-grade teacher that Scott was bossy. Because her father had more flexible hours than her mother, he went to the school and talked to the teacher who said if Scott didn’t want to do what the other children were doing, she would go off on her own and do something else. Often the other children would decide to come and play her game, abandoning their original one. Scott said her father asked the teacher, ‘‘You’re saying that if she doesn’t like what the other children are doing, she does what she wants? She doesn’t stop them from what they’re doing. She doesn’t take anything from them, and she doesn’t impede what they’re doing in any way?’’ When the teacher said ‘‘yes,’’ Scott’s father responded ‘‘Good, that’s what we’ve taught her.’’ Scott said her family always encouraged her to think and act on her own. She said she was also told to speak her piece. Her father told her to ‘‘say what you think. Say it nicely, and when you walk away it will slap them in the face.’’ Both of these lessons, she says, play out in her work style today. ‘‘Once I take a stance and I think it’s the right stance, you can’t budge me. I tell people very nicely, very professionally that this is what it is.’’ The most pervasive lessons the women reported learning from their families was that of survival. In her own way, each woman talked about tapping a wellspring of strength that helped her endure organizational life. ‘‘My grandmother always repeated the story of the little engine that could,’’ said Jackson. ‘‘‘I think I can, I think I can.’ That’s been somewhat of a life mantra for me.’’ Montana said she came from a family of strong women who always had to ‘‘take care of business.’’ Saying she had been stabbed in the back by her work

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associates more times than she could count, she added defiantly, ‘‘I will take them on in a minute. It’s because of my background. I am a survivor. I have had to survive.’’ In the workplace, she reiterated, ‘‘I’ve survived by saying, ‘You can’t overlook me.’ I’m going to fight my way through until I get recognized.’’ Street was raised to believe she could be just as good as anyone else. ‘‘I have a lot of confidence,’’ she said. ‘‘I’ve never met a black woman who didn’t have confidence. You have to have it just to show up.’’ Because of the difficulties they regularly encounter in the workplace, Street said African American women managers are survivors. ‘‘Being a black woman and facing the regular stuff of being a black woman means you’re not intimidated and you can’t be intimidated. Every black woman in corporate America is strong.’’ ‘‘You have to have a willingness to speak up for yourself,’’ said Stone, ‘‘in a way that can be heard, in a way that isn’t bragging and is not less than positive.’’ She said black women were taught to survive in their childhoods. ‘‘It was the way you were brought up,’’ she said. ‘‘You were taught you could do anything you wanted to do. You have to be attuned, ready for the opportunity when it comes.’’ Esterhaus said her mother, who had been a day worker in the South, jumped at the opportunity to get into a technical training program as a way of bettering her and her family’s lives. Because of her motivation, her mother became one of the first black operating room technicians in her state. ‘‘When the opportunity presented itself,’’ Esterhaus said, ‘‘that’s what she did. That’s the kind of environment I come from. It made me a stronger person. I can overcome anything.’’ Evans agreed with that sentiment, saying her personal life experiences have put her professional challenges into perspective. ‘‘As a black woman, issues come up at work that are very do-able as compared to the issues that come up within our personal lives. This,’’ she said, talking about work, ‘‘is easy.’’

NAVIGATING THE ENVIRONMENT Another of the themes that came through the interviews was these women’s strong awareness of their environment. Perhaps because so many of them found the workplace less than welcoming, they learned to compensate by finding ways to maneuver through the many pitfalls they perceive. ‘‘I’m pretty good at reading the environment,’’ McPherson said, but she added that it was a skill she is constantly trying to improve. She noted that regardless of how good she might be, she has always felt she had to get better. ‘‘Maybe because there are so many extra variables that I have to interpret, I feel this will always be a growth area for me.’’ Evans said she very consciously surveys rooms when she enters them to determine how she should approach the event. ‘‘I scan the room to assess the situation,’’ she said. ‘‘There are certain people in the room that I may want to go over to see. There are others that I don’t want to go over to see.’’

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Saying that she believes being strategic is a pattern for black women, Stone said of herself, ‘‘I am observant. I watch very carefully. I then make a decision on how I will handle a situation. I am very deliberate in reading the workplace.’’ She said by paying attention, black women decide whether they will enter a situation and determine how to pace themselves if they do. She added that part of reading the environment is to help black women be ready to ‘‘pivot’’ or ‘‘move in the ways you want.’’ This means that black women need to see opportunities as they arise and be willing to take advantage of them when they present themselves. Many women did not talk directly about reading their environment. Instead, they discussed readiness and the critical need for black women to push against a system that seeks to cloak them in invisibility. Embedded in this notion, though, is that black women must have a thorough enough understanding of their environment to enable them to know if they are being rendered invisible and to help them determine ways to be seen and respected. Stone spoke to this phenomenon, advocating that black women understand their own worth in the organization. ‘‘I began to measure for myself the value I bring to the company,’’ Stone said, ‘‘I had to always be willing to appropriately insert or acknowledge the work I’ve done.’’ Montana, too, strongly proffered the idea that to advance within the system, black women had to be seen and respected. ‘‘You have to let them know you stand your ground. You can’t let them walk past you and negate your existence,’’ she said. ‘‘You can’t let them shut you out.’’ Many black women have a need to be aware of their environment and to have those in their environment be aware of them. This need is strongly driven by the difficulties created by being at the nexus of race and gender, which often causes their strengths and challenges to become invisible or unimportant. Throughout the interviews, the women’s comments were laced with references around their credibility. Montana, for instance, said earlier in this chapter that black women could not allow others to take them as a joke. Stone repeatedly talked about speaking up so she and other black women could be seen. ‘‘My biggest fear,’’ said Esterhaus, ‘‘is that they will not take me seriously. That they will always see the color of my skin and that will prevent them from seeing me and hearing my message and understanding the value I bring to the organization.’’ Evans echoed a similar statement: ‘‘I want them to know I’m just as competent, just as knowledgeable. That I add value. That I am good.’’

CONCLUSION The African American women interviewed for this chapter echo the experiences of African American women managers around the country. Organizational

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life for many of them is fraught with frustration as they battle invisibility and perceptions of incompetence. They see themselves as capable professionals but are unsure if others do. They recognize themselves as culturally different, yet believe their difference is a double-edged sword. Though many embrace their direct communication style, they have often received feedback that the characteristic is intimidating. And though they love their heritage, they often receive messages that displaying that heritage through behavior, dress, or hairstyle may cause misunderstanding for those around them. In spite of the many challenges they face, the women interviewed believed that being black women is a positive force that informs and improves their ability to navigate the work environment. Often they note that their sensitivity to the pain of others is increased because of the problems they have suffered. ‘‘As I look at my work life as a whole,’’ said Carter, ‘‘and as an African American female, I realize that part of being black is empathy for other people, clients, and partners.’’ Esterhaus noted something similar when she said, ‘‘Because of the adverse situations I’ve encountered, it makes me more sensitive, more sympathetic to see the other sides of things and to get a total picture of something.’’ McPherson said her life experiences help her better manage and unite a team. As individuals, these women do not claim to be without flaws or developmental needs. Like others, they have likes and dislikes, strengths, and imperfect skill sets. Yet as they speak, they do so from a wealth of experiences that is often undermined and underutilized. These are the skills they wish to bring to the workplace. ‘‘We’ve had to be very creative to come through some situations,’’ said Evans. ‘‘Imagine if we could use our creativity, adaptability, and flexibility at work. Imagine how competitive it would make you.’’

NOTES 1. Ella Bell and Stella Nkomo, Our Separate Ways: Black and White Women and the Struggle for Professional Identity (Boston: Harvard University Business School Press, 2001), p. 257. 2. Women of Color: Their Employment in the Private Sector, U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (2003), pp. 8, 12. 3. Information Please Database, # 2005 Pearson Education, Inc. Source: National Committee on Pay Equity. Available online at www.infoplease.clm/ipa/ A0882775.html. 4. Ancella B. Livers and Keith A. Caver, Leading in Black and White: Working across the Racial Divide in Corporate America (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2003), p. 86. 5. Ibid., p. 18. 6. ‘‘Advancing African-American Women in the Workplace: What Managers Need to Know’’ Catalyst (2004): 12. 7. Livers and Caver, Leading in Black and White, p. 79. 8. Bell and Nkomo, Our Separate Lives, pp. 182–84.

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9. Catalyst, p. 16. 10. Bell and Nkomo, Our Separate Lives, pp. 235–37. 11. Christina A. Douglas, Key Events and Lessons for Managers in a Diverse Workforce (Greensboro: Center for Creative Leadership, 2003), pp. 9–10. 12. Catalyst, p. 23. 13. Ibid., 15. 14. Ibid.

10

Latinas at Work: Issues of Gender, Ethnicity, and Class Irene Browne and Rachel Askew

Who are Latinas and how are they faring in the U.S. labor market? Are Latinas plagued by the triple jeopardy of gender, race/ethnic, and class inequality? Are the daughters of migrants from Latin America experiencing upward mobility and approaching the American dream, or are they stuck in the low-wage jobs of the new economy? Are educated Latinas capturing the boost in wages and opportunities generated by the increase in demand for skilled workers? This chapter addresses these questions. We begin our review by considering the term Latina, highlighting the problems and challenges inherent in defining Latinas as an ethnic group. Keeping the definitional limitations in mind, we provide a statistical portrait of subgroups of Latinas in terms of employment, occupations, and wages. We show that Latinas continue to experience disadvantage in the labor market in comparison to white women and coethnic men.1 In the third section of the chapter, we discuss explanations for the labor market disadvantage of Latinas, focusing on debates regarding labor market opportunities, human capital attributes, and systematic gender and ethnic inequalities. We then explore the complex intersections of gender, race/ethnicity, and class in shaping the economic fortunes of Latinas in the United States by highlighting two occupational niches: domestic work and professional employment.

WHO ARE LATINAS? Latinas are usually defined as women whose ethnic origin or heritage includes Mexico, countries in Central and South America, Cuba, Puerto Rico, or the Dominican Republic.2 Women who migrated to the United States from Latin America as children or adults can fall under the category Latinas, as can women born in the United States whose parents or grandparents hail from Latin American countries. Definitions of who is included within the category Latina

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vary over time and across studies. For instance, in 1970, the U.S. Census Bureau defined Spanish ethnicity differently depending on state of residence. Individuals living in New York, New Jersey, or Pennsylvania were counted as ‘‘persons of Spanish heritage’’ if they or one of their parents came from Puerto Rico. Individuals living in California or Southwestern states were classified as ‘‘persons of Spanish heritage’’ if they reported a Spanish surname or their primary language was Spanish. In the 2000 census, official counts for the Hispanic population were based on a self-defined ethnic identity category. Thus, a woman who self-identified as Latina because her maternal grandmother migrated from Mexico to Ohio would be counted as Latina in 2000 but not in 1970. The term Latinas (or Hispanic) encompasses such a diverse group that some scholars argue that any generalization or aggregate picture of Latinas provides vacuous information and promotes a false universalism.3 Despite the vague and shifting boundaries defining Hispanic ethnicity, Latina (and Latino) represents an increasingly salient identity category in the United States that carries political currency. In Los Angeles, where almost half of the population is comprised of Hispanics, the Latino constituency wielded a potent force in the mayoral election of March 8, 2005, helping elect Antonio Villagairosa, the city’s first Latino mayor since 1872.4 Nationally, the Latina population in the United States is growing dramatically, fueled by immigration from Mexico and Central America and relatively high fertility.5 According to recent census figures, the representation of Latinos in the U.S. population exceeds that of African Americans (about 14 percent). Hispanics are now the largest ethnic minority in the United States.6 The majority of Latinas in the United States continue to be of Mexican origin, although the number of women (and men) arriving from Central and South America has expanded rapidly over the past fifteen years. The previous decade also witnessed a growing geographic dispersion of Latinos, with Latino communities burgeoning in traditionally black/white areas of the South as well as in cities, suburbs, and rural areas of the American heartland.7 For example, according to the U.S. census, the number of Hispanics rose almost 400 percent in Atlanta, Georgia, and almost 200 percent in Columbus, Ohio.8 Precise estimates of the number of Latinas and Latinos in the United States are difficult to obtain, however. Unauthorized migrants from Latin America, whose numbers are surging, are often reluctant to identify themselves to census takers or survey researchers.9 In tandem with demographic diversity and geographic dispersion, the Latina population in the United States tends to be characterized by economic disadvantage. The extent and shape of the economic disadvantage of particular groups of Latinas vary considerably depending on nativity and citizenship status, country of ethnic origin, the structure of the local labor market, the opportunities and resources available within the local community, and individual human capital attributes.10 Among those with the same country of origin stand

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important differences based on nativity and time of arrival to the United States. A young woman arriving in Los Angeles from Mexico faced a very different set of job opportunities in 1970 and 2000.11 We now turn to the question of current labor market conditions for Latinas in the United States. HOW ARE LATINAS FARING IN THE LABOR MARKET ? Data To address the question of how Latinas are faring in the labor market, we use data collected in March 2002 from the monthly outgoing rotation group file of the Current Population Survey (CPS), a nationally representative probability sample conducted by the Census Bureau for the Bureau of Labor Statistics.12 We compare subgroups of Latinas in the United States with white women and coethnic men in assessing current patterns of employment, occupational distribution, and wages. We present information on Mexicans, Puerto Ricans, Cubans, Central or South Americans, and ‘‘other Latinas’’ (or those that selfidentify as of Hispanic origin but do not indicate a country of origin) living in the United States. The number of individuals listing their ethnicity as ‘‘other Hispanic’’ rose sharply from the 1990 census to the 2000 census, and researchers are unclear about who makes up the ‘‘other Hispanic’’ category.13 Guzman and McConnell remark that the decision to check the panethnic identity of Hispanic or Latino rather than a particular country of origin might reflect respondents’ selfidentification with more than one ethnicity. For all analyses, we restricted our sample to adults aged sixteen to sixty-five who are not full-time students. We further limited our sample to employed adults who average $1 or more per hour for our analyses of occupational distribution. Finally, for analyses of wages and wages gaps, we restricted the sample even further to consider only full-time workers (those who average thirty-five or more hours per week) because part-time workers often earn lower hourly wages than full-time workers.14 We weighted the data in all analyses to provide a representative picture of the U.S. population in 2002. These limitations allow us to construct only a partial picture of the labor market position of Latinas. For example, many Latinas who are considered out of the labor market or among the part-time employed actually work several jobs, often in the informal sector, which falls outside traditional Bureau of Labor Statistics categories.15 Employment and Unemployment The CPS data count any person who is involved with any part-time, temporary, or full-time work as employed. Persons are classified as unemployed if they do not have a job, have actively looked for work in the four weeks prior to

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data collection, and are currently available for work. Persons are considered not in the labor force if they are neither employed nor looking for work. White, non-Latina women in the United States are more likely to be employed, less likely to be unemployed, and less likely to have opted out of the labor force than are Latinas living in the United States (see Table 10.1). Seventy percent of white non-Latina women are employed, whereas Latinas’ employment rate ranges from a low of 56.3 percent (Puerto Ricans) to a high of 63.8 percent (Central or South Americans). Similarly, Latinas’ unemployment rate ranges from a low of 4.4 percent (Cubans) to a high of 5.1 percent (Puerto Ricans), whereas the rate of unemployment for white non-Latinas is just 3.1 percent. Occupational Distribution For employed Latinas working in the United States, the three highest occupational categories are service (26.0 percent), administrative support (22.2 percent), and managerial or professional occupations (19.5 percent), respectively. Examples of service occupations include child-care workers, housekeepers, waitstaff at restaurants, hairdressers, and nurses’ aides. Receptionists, secretaries, payroll specialists, and bank tellers are examples of administrative support occupations. Professional occupations include teachers, lawyers, physicians, and registered nurses, and examples of managerial occupations include financial managers and public administrators such as government officials.16 A considerably higher percentage of white non-Latinas work in managerial and professional occupations (39.2 percent) compared to the percentages of subgroups of Latinas employed in such occupations (see Table 10.2). The percentages of various subgroups of Latinas working in the better paid, more prestigious managerial and professional occupations ranges from a low of 17.0 percent (Mexicans) to a high of 27.5 percent (other Latinas). Not surprisingly, the type of occupations in which U.S. women work are associated with their level of educational attainment. The top two occupational groups in which white and Latina women with only a high school degree work are administrative support and service occupations, regardless of their ethnicity (see Table 10.3). In contrast, the majority of women (both Latinas and white non-Latinas) in the United States with a college degree work in managerial or professional occupations. Wages and Wage Gaps Table 10.4 presents the average hourly wages of white and Latino men and women employed full-time in the United States in March 2002, disaggregated by gender and Hispanic origin type. Also depicted in Table 10.4 is the gender wage gap between men and women of the same ethnicity (or race, when

TABLE 10.1.

Employment Statusa

Employment Status of U.S. Latinas and White, Non-Latinas Aged 16 through 65

Total

Puerto Rican

Cuban

Other Latina

White, Non-Latina

Number Percent Number Percent Number Percent Number Percent Number Percent Number Percent Number

Not in Labor 29,832 Force In Labor Force Employed 77,677 Unemployed 3,512 Total 111,021 a 2

Mexican

Central and South American

Percent

26.9

2,803

36.9

542

38.7

146

34.0

699

31.8

347

31.9

25,295

26.7

70.0 3.2 100

4,379 370 7,552

58.1 5.0 100

793 70 1,405

56.3 5.1 100

266 19 431

61.6 4.4 100

1,410 108 2,217

63.8 4.5 100

711 50 1,108

63.2 4.9 100

70,118 2,895 98,308

70.2 3.1 100

X ¼ 6432342.1, df ¼ 10, p < 0.001.

TABLE 10.2.

Occupational Groupa

Occupation of Employed U.S. Latinas and White, Non-Latinas Aged 16 through 65

Total

Puerto Rican

Cuban

Other Latina

White, Non-Latina

Number Percent Number Percent Number Percent Number Percent Number Percent Number Percent Number Percent

228

Managerial and Professional 24,467 Technical 2,944 Sales 7,200 Administrative Support 16,331 Service Occupations 9,769 Precision Production/ Craft 1,215 Operators/Laborers/ Transport 4,059 Farming/Forestry/ Fishing 424 Total 66,409 a 2

Mexican

Central and South American

X ¼ 25682839.6, df ¼ 35, p < 0.001.

36.5 4.3 11.2

669 102 412

17.0 2.5 11.1

175 30 72

25.3 3.9 10.0

65 4 32

27.4 2.0 13.9

240 27 130

20.2 2.1 11.0

180 27 62

27.5 4.4 11.2

23,138 2,754 6,492

39.2 4.6 11.2

24.4 14.7

837 1,062

22.6 25.5

202 137

28.5 19.1

62 46

26.5 18.4

190 422

15.6 34.2

151 146

23.6 23.9

14,889 7,956

24.8 12.9

1.8

140

3.5

15

2.0

7

3.2

38

2.5

11

1.5

1,004

1.7

6.4

625

15.3

83

10.5

19

8.5

195

14.2

43

7.3

3,094

5.2

0.7 100

85 3,932

2.5 100

4 718

0.7 100

1 236

0.1 100

4 1,246

0.2 100

4 624

0.6 100

326 59,653

0.5 100

TABLE 10.3.

Occupation of Employed U.S. Latinas and White, Non-Latinas Aged 16 through 65, by Educational Attainment

Total Occupational Group by Educational Attainment

229

High School Graduatesa Managerial and Professional Technical Sales Administrative Support Service Occupations Precision Production/ Craft Operators/Laborers/ Transport Farming/Forestry/ Fishing Total College Graduatesb Managerial and Professional Technical Sales Administrative Support Service Occupations Precision Production/ Craft Operators/Laborers/ Transport Farming/Forestry/ Fishing Total a 2

Number

Percent

3,220 599 3,001 7,023 4,539

15.3 2.9 14.2 33.0 20.7

590

Number

Puerto Rican

Cuban

Other Latina

White, Non-Latina

Percent

Number

Percent

Number

Percent

Number

Percent

Number

Percent

Number

Percent

145 32 190 410 358

10.5 2.4 13.8 29.7 23.8

36 9 30 83 64

14.7 3.3 11.2 30.7 23.5

5 1 12 26 15

7.4 1.9 15.6 36.7 19.9

35 5 57 68 154

8.9 1.3 14.9 17.3 39.2

25 8 28 61 59

11.2 4.2 14.6 28.6 27.4

2,974 544 2,684 6,375 3,889

16.1 3.0 14.3 33.8 19.7

2.8

60

4.2

7

2.2

4

5.9

13

3.3

6

3.2

500

2.6

2,208

10.5

214

14.5

40

13.9

9

12.8

72

15.0

20

9.2

1,853

9.8

158 21,338

0.7 100

14 1,423

1.1 100

1 270

0.5 100

— 72

1 405

0.1 100

3 210

1.6 100

139 18,958

0.7 100

15,015 757 1,414 2,192 724

73.4 3.6 7.1 10.8 3.6

260 12 17 42 30

67.4 3.4 4.6 12.2 7.8

84 7 2 18 8

66.1 5.3 1.4 16.2 7.6

50 2 8 9 6

63.4 3.1 10.5 12.2 6.7

150 9 16 27 44

59.2 2.4 7.1 9.9 18.5

96 10 6 13 4

71.6 7.7 5.4 9.8 3.1

14,375 717 1,365 2,083 632

73.9 3.5 7.2 10.7 3.2

106

0.5

3

0.7

2

1.5

1

1.4

4

0.7

2

0.4

94

0.5

155

0.8

13

3.5

4

2.0

2

2.8

7

2.1

2

1.9

127

0.6

58 20,421

0.3 100

1 378

0.4 100

— 125

57 19,450

0.3 100

X ¼ 2354275.6, df ¼ 35, p < 0.001. X ¼ 2875353.0, df ¼ 35, p < 0.001.

b 2

Mexican

Central and South American

— 100

— 78

— 100

— 100

— 257

— 100

— 133

— 100

230

Management, Gender, and Ethnicity in the United States

comparing white men and women), or women’s average hourly wage to every $1 of coethnic men’s hourly wage. Put simply, both gender and ethnicity matter substantially in terms of wages. In terms of gender, men from every Latino subgroup earn more per hour than do their female counterparts, and white men make over $4 an hour more than white women (see Table 10.4). Whether we compare male and female high school or college graduates (see Table 10.5), or males and females of the same immigration status (refer to Table 10.8), U.S. women are disadvantaged relative to their male peers. Being of Latino ethnicity also proves a substantial disadvantage in the labor market for both men and women. The ethnic wage gap refers to the pay disparity between white non-Latino employees and those (both male and female) of Hispanic origin. The ethnic wage gap is measured as Latinos’ hourly wage for every $1 of whites’ hourly wage. White non-Latino men averaged more per hour than each of the Latino subgroups, and white non-Latina women earned more, on average, than each of the Latina subgroups (see Tables 10.4 and 10.6). White non-Latino men averaged more than $3 an hour above the highestearning Latino subgroup (other Latinos), and white non-Latina women earned more than $2 an hour, on average, above the highest-earning Latina subgroup (Cuban women; see Table 10.4). Latinas working in the U.S. labor market are therefore doubly disadvantaged. They suffer from both gender and ethnic wage inequalities. Some of the ethnic wage inequality that exists between Latinas and nonLatinas can be attributed to differences in educational attainment. A greater percentage of white non-Latinas attended or graduated from college than did

TABLE 10.4. Average Hourly Wages and Gender Wage Gaps of U.S. Full-Time Latino and White, Non-Latino Employees Aged 16 through 65, by Sex

Hispanic-Origin Typea Mexican Puerto Rican Cuban Central or South American Other Latino White, Non-Latino a

Average Hourly Wage (Men)

Average Hourly Wage (Women)

Gender Wage Gap ( Women’s Average Hourly Wage to Every $1 of Co-ethnic Men’s Hourly Wage)

$12.68 (n ¼ 5,678) $16.30 (n ¼ 654) $15.86 (n ¼ 254)

$11.39 (n ¼ 3,135) $13.74 (n ¼ 601) $14.09 (n ¼ 200)

0.90 0.84 0.89

$13.72 (n ¼ 1,430) $17.11 (n ¼ 609) $20.46 (n ¼ 57,672)

$12.32 (n ¼ 989) $13.58 (n ¼ 501) $16.33 (n ¼ 46,359)

0.90 0.79 0.80

F ¼ 900.5, df ¼ 12, p < 0.001.

TABLE 10.5. Average Hourly Wages and Gender Wage Gaps of U.S. Full-Time Latino and White, Non-Latino Employees Aged 16 through 65, by Sex and Educational Attainment

Hispanic-Origin Type by Educational Attainment High School Graduatesa Mexican Puerto Rican Cuban Central or South American Other Latino White, Non-Latino College Graduatesb Mexican Puerto Rican Cuban Central or South American Other Latino White, Non-Latino a

Average Hourly Wage (Men)

Gender Wage Gap ( Women’s Average Hourly Wage to Every $1 of Men’s Hourly Wage)

Average Hourly Wage (Women)

$12.70 $14.95 $12.35 $12.22 $14.72 $16.39

(n ¼ 1,904) (n ¼ 240) (n ¼ 112) (n ¼ 436) (n ¼ 233) (n ¼ 19,239)

$10.77 $11.61 $10.09 $10.15 $11.31 $12.74

(n ¼ 1,153) (n ¼ 227) (n ¼ 65) (n ¼ 318) (n ¼ 169) (n ¼ 14,532)

0.87 0.78 0.82 0.83 0.77 0.78

$21.54 $23.36 $21.77 $21.57 $25.87 $27.03

(n ¼ 402) (n ¼ 92) (n ¼ 69) (n ¼ 220) (n ¼ 119) (n ¼ 19,181)

$18.64 $19.79 $20.00 $18.70 $20.01 $21.51

(n ¼ 324) (n ¼ 118) (n ¼ 66) (n ¼ 218) (n ¼ 106) (n ¼ 15,925)

0.87 0.85 0.92 0.87 0.77 0.80

F ¼ 304.0, df ¼ 12, p < 0.001. F ¼ 198.8, df ¼ 12, p < 0.001.

b

TABLE 10.6. Ethnic Wage Gaps of U.S. Full-Time Latino and White, Non-Latino Employees Aged 16 through 65, by Sex and Educational Attainment

Hispanic-Origin Type by Educational Attainment All Full-Time Employees Mexican Puerto Rican Cuban Central or South American Other Latino High School Graduates Mexican Puerto Rican Cuban Central or South American Other Latino College Graduates Mexican Puerto Rican Cuban Central or South American Other Latino

Ethnic Wage Gap, Men (Latino Hourly Wage to Every $1 of White Men’s Hourly Wage)

Ethnic Wage Gap, Women (Latino Hourly Wage for Every $1 of White Women’s Hourly Wage)

0.62 0.80 0.78 0.67 0.84

0.70 0.84 0.86 0.75 0.83

0.77 0.91 0.75 0.75 0.90

0.85 0.91 0.79 0.80 0.89

0.80 0.86 0.81 0.80 0.96

0.87 0.92 0.93 0.87 0.93

232

Management, Gender, and Ethnicity in the United States

their Latina equivalents (see Table 10.7). For example, 64.0 percent of white women employees attended and/or graduated from college, compared to just 33.0 percent of Mexican women who did so. When comparing average wages of white and Mexican women who completed the same numbers of years of education, the ethnic wage gap is smaller than that between all full-time white women and Mexican women employees. For example, college-educated Mexican women earn 87 cents for each dollar that white women with the same education make. The gap widens to 70 cents on the dollar when comparing all full-time white and Mexican female workers, as Table 10.6 shows. Thus, differences in education levels explain some of the ethnic wage gap. Indeed, additional education is associated with both higher absolute wages for all subgroups of Latinas and smaller ethnic and gender wage gaps. Put another way, more education is linked with lower wage inequity between Latinas and white women and between Latinas and Latinos and is also associated with higher earnings. One final dimension along which Latinas’ and Latinos’ wages vary is that of immigration status. Latinos and Latinas native to the United States earn more than their nonnative counterparts regardless of country of origin (see Table 10.8). Moreover, recent immigrants (those who immigrated between 1998 and 2002—the five years prior to data collection) are at a larger disadvantage relative to Latinas and Latinos born in the United States than nonnatives who immigrated prior to 1998. This is consistent with the findings of previous studies.17

LATINAS IN THE U.S. WORKFORCE BY COUNTRY OF ORIGIN: A SNAPSHOT OF DIFFERENCE AND SIMILARITY Cubans The immigration of Cubans to the United States was spearheaded by the revolution and Castro’s rise to power in 1958. Middle-class and elite Cubans arrived in Miami in the 1960s and received financial assistance from the U.S. Cubans established vibrant enclave economies in Florida, which provided entrepreneurial opportunities and employment for subsequent generations.18 New waves of immigration from Cuba to the United States have brought a more diverse group of workers.19 However, the strong economic base and the economic advantages that Cubans enjoyed following the revolution have translated into a more advantaged labor market status overall relative to other groups of Latinos. Cuban women enjoy the lowest unemployment rate of the Latina subgroups. Their unemployment rate of 4.4 percent is second only to white women’s low unemployment rate (3.1 percent, see Table 10.1). More Cuban women work in managerial and professional occupations (27.4 percent) than in any others (see Table 10.2); the percentage of Cuban women working in

TABLE 10.7.

Educational Attainment of Employed U.S. Latinos and White, Non-Latinos Aged 16 through 65

Educational Attainment a No High School Diploma High School Graduate Some College College Graduate Total a 2

Total

Mexican

Puerto Rican

Central and South American

Cuban

Other Latino

White, Non-Latino

Number Percent Number Percent Number Percent Number Percent Number Percent Number Percent Number Percent 4,256

7.3

1,240

30.7

103

14.7

22

9.6

319

24.7

94

14.9

2,478

4.3

21,338 20,394 20,421 66,409

32.2 30.2 30.3 100

1,423 891 378 3,932

36.3 23.6 9.4 100

270 220 125 718

35.3 31.8 18.2 100

72 64 78 236

31.2 26.7 32.5 100

405 265 257 1,246

32.1 21.8 21.4 100

210 187 133 624

33.0 31.0 21.1 100

18,958 18,767 19,450 59,653

31.7 31.1 32.9 100

X ¼ 51518844.6, df ¼ 15, p < 0.001.

234

Management, Gender, and Ethnicity in the United States

TABLE 10.8. Average Hourly Wages and Gender Wage Gaps of U.S. Full-Time Latino Employees Aged 16 through 65, by Sex and Immigration Status

Hispanic-Origin Type by Immigration Status

Average Hourly Wage (Men)

Native (born in U.S.)a Mexican $15.63 Puerto Rican $17.16 Cuban $18.85 Central or South American $16.38 Other Latino $18.21 Nonnative (1998–2002)b Mexican $8.96 Puerto Rican $12.18 Cuban $9.25 Central or South American $10.84 Other Latino $12.14 Nonnative (Prior to 1998)c Mexican $11.58 Puerto Rican $15.84 Cuban $16.02 Central or South American $14.03 Other Latino $15.81

Average Hourly Wage (Women)

Gender Wage Gap ( Women’s Average Hourly Wage to Every $1 of Co-ethnic Men’s Hourly Wage)

(n ¼ 2,011) $12.88 (n ¼ 1,692) (n ¼ 336) $14.06 (n ¼ 325) (n ¼ 68) $15.95 (n ¼ 60)

0.82 0.82 0.85

(n ¼ 134) (n ¼ 421)

$15.67 (n ¼ 147) $15.27 (n ¼ 342)

0.96 0.94

(n ¼ 835) (n ¼ 39) (n ¼ 35)

$7.81 (n ¼ 228) $11.44 (n ¼ 20) $7.53 (n ¼ 23)

0.87 0.94 0.81

(n ¼ 255) (n ¼ 28)

$10.22 (n ¼ 135) $9.23 (n ¼ 20)

0.94 0.76

(n ¼ 2,832) $9.83 (n ¼ 1,215) (n ¼ 279) $13.47 (n ¼ 256) (n ¼ 151) $14.34 (n ¼ 117)

0.85 0.85 0.90

(n ¼ 1,041) $11.99 (n ¼ 707) (n ¼ 160) $10.86 (n ¼ 139)

0.85 0.69

a

F ¼ 24.1, df ¼ 9 , p < 0.001. F ¼ 8.9, df ¼ 9, p < 0.001. c F ¼ 49.7, df ¼ 9, p < 0.001. b

administrative support jobs (26.5 percent) is nearly as high. Cuban women living in the United States are the best-educated Latinas (see Table 10.7). Approximately two in five Cubans are college educated, which is the same as the percentage of white women who have completed college, and fewer than one in ten Cuban women did not finish high school. Overwhelming majorities (77.8 percent) of Cuban women live and work in the South (see Table 10.9). The top two groups in which Cubans in the South are employed are administrative support (27 percent) and managerial/ professional occupations (23.5 percent). Administrative and managerial/ professional occupations are the most common for Cuban women in other regions as well (see Table 10.10).

Latinas at Work: Issues of Gender, Ethnicity, and Class

235

At $14.09 an hour, Cuban women make the highest average hourly wage of all the Latina subgroups. Nevertheless, Cuban women working in the United States remain considerably disadvantaged compared to whites and Cuban men. Their average hourly wage is 86 percent of their white non-Latina counterparts’, 89 percent of the average wage earned by Cuban men, and 69 percent of the average wage earned by white men. Thus, although compared to other groups of Latinas, Cuban women in general fare better in the labor market, they still encounter ethnic and gender barriers. A wage gap exists between Cuban and white women, and the former experience pay disparities compared to both Cuban and white men. Though the majority of most Latina subgroups were born in the United States, only one-third of Cubans were. Not only did a greater percentage of Cubans immigrate to the United States, a greater percentage than other Latinas immigrated recently, in the five years before data collection in 2002 (see Table 10.11). Cuban women’s slight workforce advantage, on average, over their Latina sisters masks the fact that Cuban women working in the United States are not a homogenous group. To be sure, those native to the United States, those who immigrated prior to 1998, and those with a college degree enjoy a relatively high average wage compared to their Latina counterparts. Nevertheless, Cuban women who recently immigrated (Table 10.8) and those with only a high school degree (Table 10.5) earn the lowest average wage of all the Latina subgroups. Mexican-Origin Women Over two-thirds of the Hispanics living in the United States are of Mexican origin.20 Mexican-origin women include U.S. citizens whose families laid roots in states that were former Mexican territories, such as Texas and California. Joining these longtime residents are older migrants as well as new arrivals from Mexico, who make up the largest share of Latina immigrants to the United States.21 Though the majority of Mexican-origin women still reside in the West and Southwest, a growing number of new immigrants are arriving in the South and Midwest.22 Mexican-origin women are the least well educated of all the Latina subgroups; less than 10 (9.4) percent of Mexican women in the United States earned college degrees, and nearly a third (30.7 percent) did not finish high school (see Table 10.7). Majorities of Mexican-origin women in the U.S. workforce live and work in the West (see Table 10.9), and the top occupational group in which they are employed is service. Only in the Midwest do more Mexican-origin women work in an occupational group other than service. There, 30.2 percent of these women toil in operator, laborer, or transportation positions, and only 18.3 percent work in service jobs (see Table 10.10). Mexican-origin women earn the lowest hourly wage ($11.39 on average) of all the Latina subgroups. Although the majority of full-time female U.S. employees who self-identify as Mexican were born in the United States

TABLE 10.9.

Geographic Distribution of Employed U.S. Latinos and White, Non-Latinos Aged 16 through 65

Total

Mexican

Puerto Rican

Cuban

Central and South American

Other Latino

White, Non-Latino

236

Regiona

Number Percent Number Percent Number Percent Number Percent Number Percent Number Percent Number Percent

Northeast Midwest South West Total

15,688 18,261 16,904 15,556 66,409

a 2

20.5 25.8 32.3 21.3 100

100 546 1,076 2,210 3,932

X ¼ 44869571.5, df ¼ 15, p < 0.001.

2.4 11.2 34.3 52.2 100

416 60 190 52 718

56.0 8.6 30.4 5.1 100

28 8 170 30 236

10.8 3.6 77.8 7.8 100

411 73 386 376 1,246

30.0 4.8 35.8 29.5 100

134 44 133 313 624

25.0 6.9 29.7 38.3 100

14,599 17,530 14,949 12,575 59,653

21.5 28.5 31.8 18.2 100

TABLE 10.10.

Occupation of Employed U.S. Latinos and White, Non-Latinos Aged 16 through 65, by Region

Total Occupation Group by Regiona

237

Northeasta Managerial and Professional Technical Sales Administrative Support Service Occupations Precision Production/Craft Operators/Laborers/Transport Farming/Forestry/Fishing Total Midwestb Managerial and Professional Technical Sales Administrative Support Service Occupations Precision Production/Craft Operators/Laborers/ Transport Farming/Forestry/Fishing Total

Mexican

Puerto Rican

Cuban

Central and South American

Other Latino

White, Non-Latino

Number Percent Number Percent Number Percent Number Percent Number Percent Number Percent Number Percent

6,025 685 1,639 3,790 2,279 263 940 67 15,688

37.9 4.4 10.5 24.5 15.0 1.5 5.7 0.4 100

25 2 5 10 33 5 19 1 100

24.6 1.1 6.8 8.5 32.3 4.8 20.9 1.0 100

93 20 42 111 77 9 60 4 416

24.0 4.3 10.0 27.8 18.0 1.8 12.9 1.2 100

12 — 3 7 5 — 1 — 28

44.0 — 12.1 21.8 18.7 — 3.5 — 100

75 3 38 64 128 14 88 1 411

20.2 0.5 10.3 15.7 33.2 2.3 17.6 0.1 100

32 3 12 23 42 3 19 — 134

21.6 2.1 8.7 19.3 33.4 1.8 13.1 — 100

5,788 657 1,539 3,575 1,994 232 753 61 14,599

39.5 4.7 10.6 24.9 13.7 1.5 4.7 0.4 100

6,509 836 1,891 4,638 2,633 369 1,287 98 18,261

35.2 4.5 10.6 24.9 14.5 2.0 7.7 0.5 100

82 15 46 99 108 28 163 5 546

15.0 2.7 9.0 19.1 18.3 5.1 30.2 0.5 100

11 2 4 24 10 1 8 — 60

18.1 3.2 6.9 39.1 18.2 1.7 12.6 — 100

2 — — 4 1 — 1 — 8

21.3 — — 58.3 9.9 — 10.5 — 100

16 3 3 11 23 3 12 2 73

22.6 3.1 3.9 16.9 33.2 4.4 13.6 2.2 100

17 1 6 7 8 1 3 1 44

39.2 0.5 13.6 16.3 19.0 1.6 8.1 1.7 100

6,381 815 1,832 4,493 2,483 336 1,100 90 17,530

36.2 4.6 10.7 25.0 14.3 1.9 6.8 0.5 100

(continued )

TABLE 10.10.

(Continued)

Occupation Group by Regiona

Total

Mexican

Puerto Rican

Cuban

Central and South American

Other Latino

White, Non-Latino

Number

Percent

Number

Percent

Number

Percent

Number

Percent

Number

Percent

Number

Percent

Number

Percent

6,429 763 1,908 4,142 2,240 320 995 107 16,904

37.2 4.3 11.7 24.5 13.6 1.9 6.1 0.7 100

185 25 119 242 312 42 137 14 1,076

16.7 2.5 11.6 23.0 29.0 3.7 12.4 1.2 100

57 8 18 57 34 4 12 — 190

29.0 4.0 11.0 28.9 18.8 2.5 5.8 — 100

42 4 25 45 30 7 17 — 170

23.5 2.6 14.8 27.0 17.9 4.1 10.0 — 100

87 7 48 51 139 9 45 — 386

21.4 1.6 12.1 14.0 35.4 2.7 12.7 — 100

32 9 24 28 32 — 8 — 133

23.3 7.0 17.2 21.8 25.5 — 5.2 — 100

6,026 710 1,674 3,719 1,639 258 776 93 14,949

40.3 4.6 11.6 25.0 11.1 1.7 5.2 0.6 100

5,504 660 1,762 3,761 2,617 263 837 152 15,556

35.6 3.9 11.7 23.8 16.2 1.8 5.8 1.2 100

377 60 242 486 609 65 306 65 2,210

17.2 2.6 11.5 23.8 24.5 3.0 13.7 3.8 100

14 — 8 10 16 1 3 — 52

29.4 — 10.4 15.8 33.8 1.9 8.9 — 100

9 — 4 6 10 — — 1 30

45.3 — 13.3 13.6 26.7 — — 1.2 100

62 14 41 64 132 12 50 1 376

18.3 4.0 11.5 17.2 33.8 2.2 12.8 0.3 100

99 14 20 93 64 7 13 3 313

32.4 4.7 7.6 29.0 17.3 2.5 5.0 1.4 100

4,943 572 1,447 3,102 1,786 178 465 82 12,575

41.5 4.3 11.9 24.0 12.9 1.5 3.3 0.5 100

c

238

South Managerial and Professional Technical Sales Administrative Support Service Occupations Precision Production/Craft Operators/Laborers/ Transport Farming/Forestry/Fishing Total Westd Managerial and Professional Technical Sales Administrative Support Service Occupations Precision Production/Craft Operators/Laborers/ Transport Farming/Forestry/Fishing Total a 2

X ¼ 4669344.4, df ¼ 35, p < 0.001. X ¼ 4669697.2, df ¼ 35, p < 0.001. c 2 X ¼ 9806083.8, df ¼ 35, p < 0.001. d 2 X ¼ 10953962.3, df ¼ 35, p < 0.001. b 2

TABLE 10.11.

Immigration Status of U.S. Full-Time Latino Employees Aged 16 through 65

Total Immigration Statusa 239

Native (Born in U.S.) Nonnative Immigrated 1998–2002 Immigrated prior to 1998 Total a 2

Mexican

Puerto Rican

Central and South American

Cuban

Other Latino

Number Percent Number Percent Number Percent Number Percent Number Percent Number Percent 2,564

48.2

1,690

55.6

325

56.2

60

31.1

147

15.0

342

62.5

427

7.3

228

6.7

20

2.9

23

11.0

136

13.1

20

3.1

2,441 5,432

44.5 100

1,218 3,136

37.7 100

256 601

40.9 100

117 200

57.9 100

710 993

71.9 100

140 502

34.4 100

X ¼ 5801054.7, df ¼ 8, p < 0.001.

240

Management, Gender, and Ethnicity in the United States

(55.6 percent), that alone does not seem to give them a workplace advantage over other Latinas. Indeed, whereas native women from the other Latina subgroups earn between $14 and $16 an hour on average, the comparable figure for native Mexican women workers is only $12.88 per hour (see Table 10.8). Education certainly matters to Mexican-origin women’s wages in the United States. College-educated Mexican-origin women earn an average wage of $18.64 per hour, compared to just $10.77 an hour for those with only a high school degree. Education seems to matter less to Mexican-origin women than to white women and to other subgroups of Latinas, however. For example, although Mexican-origin women with a high school degree earn slightly more per hour than equally educated Central/South American and Cuban women, among women with a college degree, Mexican-origin women earn the lowest wage of all the Latina subgroups (see Table 10.5). Central/South Americans Women from Central and South America represent the smallest group of Latinas proportionally, but they show some of the largest increases among recent immigrants. Beginning in the 1980s, the number of women (and men) from Central America living in the United States increased rapidly as individuals fled war and political violence in their home countries.23 Although much of the violence has abated, the economic and social disruption in countries such as Guatemala, El Salvador, and Nicaragua has fueled continued migration to the United States.24 Though many Central Americans settled in California in the 1980s, more recent immigrants have located in a diverse range of cities and towns, particularly in the South and the Midwest. With 63.8 percent of Central/South American Latinas participating in the labor force, Central/South American women living in the United States have the highest labor force participation of all the Latina subgroups. A plurality of Central/South American women works in service occupations in all regions of the U.S. (see Table 10.10). Among Central/South American women workers with a high school degree, the percentage employed in service occupations is especially high: 39.2 percent. Among women with a college degree, more than twice as many Central/South American women (18.5 percent) are employed in service occupations as are their Latina and white equivalents (see Table 10.3). Although one in four Central or South American women employees working in the United States did not graduate from high school (24.7 percent), one in five graduated from college (21.4 percent, see Table 10.7). Average wages of high school- versus college-educated Central/South American women differ markedly, but Central/South American workers’ average hourly wage is lower than that of most other Latina subgroups working in the United States regardless of their level of educational attainment (see Table 10.5; the only subgroup whose average wage is lower than that of Central/South American women is Mexican women).

Latinas at Work: Issues of Gender, Ethnicity, and Class

241

Central/South American women employed in the United States are the least likely of all the Latina subgroups to have been born there; only 15 percent are natives. The vast majority immigrated before 1998 (71.9 percent), although an additional 13.1 percent of Central/South American women workers immigrated more recently (see Table 10.11). Unlike self-identified Mexican women who were born in the United States, the small percentage of Central/South American women who are native to the United States earn a relatively high wage compared to other Latinas born in the United States (see Table 10.8). The average of $15.67 an hour that Central or South American women native to the United States earn is second only to that of Cuban women who were born in the States (and earn an average of $15.95 an hour). Central/South American women who immigrated recently also enjoy a relative wage advantage compared to many other subgroups of recent Latina immigrants, but women who immigrated to the United States from Central or South America before 1998 do not enjoy such an advantage (see Table 10.8). Puerto Ricans Puerto Ricans are the second largest group of Latinos in the United States and remain concentrated primarily in New York, Chicago, and Miami.25 Individuals from the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico are U.S. citizens and are therefore not represented among the immigrant population. Economic policies shifting the Puerto Rican economy from agriculture to manufacture in the 1950s and 1960s created high unemployment and poverty among residents of the island. This accelerated Puerto Ricans’ migration to the United States, where they face multiple disadvantages.26 Nearly 39 percent of Puerto Rican women who live in the United States opt out of the labor force voluntarily; thus their participation rate is lower than white women’s and lower than all other Latinas’ rates. Furthermore, their unemployment rate exceeds white women’s (3.1 percent) and is also higher than each of the other Latina groups’ rates (see Table 10.1). The top two groups in which Puerto Rican women are employed are administrative support (28.5 percent) and managerial and professional occupations (25.3 percent). Another 19.3 percent of Puerto Rican women employees work in service occupations. A higher percentage of Puerto Rican women are employed in administrative positions than in any other occupational group in every region of the country except the West, where more Puerto Rican women work in service occupations (33.8 percent) than in either managerial/ professional (29.4 percent) or administrative support categories (15.8 percent, see Table 10.10). Puerto Rican women living in the United States are in a unique position compared to other Latina subgroups in that everyone born in Puerto Rico is a U.S. citizen. Nevertheless, Puerto Ricans’ nativity pattern is closest to that of Mexican women. Fifty-six percent of Puerto Rican women working in the United

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States were born there (just as 55.6 percent of Mexican women workers were born in the States; see Table 10.11). An additional 40.9 percent of Puerto Rican women employed in the United States immigrated prior to 1998; only 2.3 percent immigrated from 1998 to 2002. Unlike their Latina peers who gravitate toward the Southern and Western parts of the country, the majority of Puerto Rican women working in the United States live and work in the Northeast (56.0 percent, see Table 10.9). Puerto Rican women make a relatively high average wage compared to other Latina subgroups working in the United States. They earn $13.74 an hour, on average, which is more than their Mexican ($11.39) and Central or South American peers ($12.32) make. They also have a higher average wage than the heterogeneous group of other Latinas ($13.58). Among Latinas, only Cuban women ($14.09) earn more. Puerto Rican women are the top earners among Latinas with only a high school education (see Table 10.5) and those who recently immigrated to the United States (see Table 10.8).

WHAT EXPLAINS THE CONTINUED DISADVANTAGE OF LATINAS IN THE LABOR MARKET ? The labor market opportunities for Latinas in the United States occur within the context of globalization and the restructuring of the U.S. economy. Industrial restructuring has shifted the economic landscape, expanding opportunities within the service sector, closing or relocating manufacturing jobs, and creating a growing disparity between workers with little schooling and those with college degrees.27 Recent Latina immigrants in particular sit at the vortex of the global economy, where a growing number of professional white women in the United States need the domestic services of low-wage women workers, and some local communities have increased their demand for cheap labor in garment, meatpacking, and canning industries.28 Thus economic opportunities for Latinas and competition for jobs vary greatly across local labor markets. For immigrants and native Latinas alike, the ‘‘first job’’ is important for occupational mobility across the life course.29 Thus, young, unskilled Latinas entering the labor market now face fewer advancement opportunities compared to older cohorts of Latina workers.30 Although economic restructuring makes earning a living difficult for all low-skilled workers, Latina employees in the United States face additional challenges.31 Scholars identify human capital, the gender system, and discrimination as major factors underlying Latinas’ labor market disadvantage relative to non-Hispanic white men and women.32 Though not unique to Latinas, these barriers are at the core of debates regarding race/ethnic and gender stratification in the U.S. labor market more generally.33 Immigration policy is an additional impediment to geographic and economic mobility for many Latinas.34

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Similar to debates regarding the disadvantaged status of African American women in the U.S. labor market, the literature on Latina workers often focuses on the extent to which economic opportunities are distributed unequally based on race/ethnicity and gender. In particular, some scholars argue that low levels of human capital and aggregate labor demand explain almost all gaps in wages and employment between Latinas and non-Hispanic white women.35 Others contend that systematic inequality by gender, race/ethnicity, and their intersections permeate all social institutions, restricting opportunities for Latinas within the labor market both indirectly through access to resources and social capital and directly through discrimination.36 With the exception of Cuban women, Latinas fall substantially behind on human capital attributes compared to non-Hispanic white women. Over 25 percent of Latinas did not graduate from high school, compared to 4 percent of white women (Table 10.7). Recent immigrants from Mexico and Central/South America in particular tend to have very low levels of education.37 Their children have more schooling than they do and therefore experience some intergenerational upwardly mobility.38 However, high school completion rates in the United States are lower among native-born Latinos than among whites, and the former also are less likely to graduate from college than their white counterparts.39 Also, because Latina employees, on average, tend to be younger, they have less employment experience, which also serves to lower human capital.40 Latinas immigrating to the United States often arrive with little or no proficiency in English, which carries an additional human capital deficit. Many are thus reliant on networks of relatives and friends—social capital—to find steady employment. Across all levels of human capital, Latinas enter a labor market that is characterized by occupational segregation by gender. Within gender-segregated occupations, Latinas are further concentrated in a smaller range of jobs (what Catanzarite dubs ‘‘brown-collar jobs’’).41 There is some evidence that the percent female and the percent Latina in a job lowers wages, above and beyond the effects of human capital.42 The gender system that circumscribes the economic fortunes of Latinas extends beyond the labor market. Women’s responsibilities for raising children and tending the house can limit their labor market options. Latinas also must negotiate gender dynamics within the family, which are suffused with ideologies regarding women’s ‘‘role’’ in regard to marriage, motherhood, and work. These ideologies differ depending on social class, nativity, a woman’s country and town of origin, and her birth cohort, so that the gender system intersects with ethnicity, class, and generation.43 The segregation of occupations by gender and race/ethnicity can assume a self-perpetuating character, as jobs become sex- and race-typed. Employers will then associate a particular type of worker with a job.44 Many economists argue that market competition militates against employers selecting workers based on ascribed characteristics, such as gender and ethnicity, rather than hiring the most

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productive worker for a job.45 Yet employers clearly hold stereotypes of their potential workforce based on gender and ethnicity. For example, Latinos are considered to be hard workers, particularly in comparison to African Americans.46 These stereotypes may open doors to low-wage jobs, but they do not necessarily produce opportunities for mobility. Indeed, studies indicate that in some workplaces, native-born Latinas are assumed to be immigrants and are therefore passed over for jobs.47 Nevertheless, evidence documenting the prevalence of discrimination is difficult to obtain; employers are often unaware that their perceptions are based on stereotypes or biases, and employer attitudes are not closely coupled with their actions.48 We draw on the examples of domestic work and Latinas in the professions to illustrate the complexity of these issues.

DOMESTIC WORK In all regions except the Midwest, over one-fourth of Latina workers are employed in the service sector (Table 10.10). Many labor as maids or cleaning staff in hotels and restaurants.49 A sizable number of Latinas toil in private houses as domestic workers, tending children and cleaning. Employment in private households is plentiful for Latinas, particularly if they are undocumented. However, the conditions of domestic employment that create ample opportunities for work simultaneously produce fertile ground for exploitation. Indeed, as Glenn and others have argued, domestic work is based on and reproduces social hierarchies of gender, race/ethnicity, and class.50 Raising children and cleaning house are considered women’s work. Thus, rather than sharing parental and housecleaning responsibilities with their husbands, many middle-class (predominantly white) women hire women of color to perform the ‘‘duties of motherhood.’’51 Rollins argues that racial/ethnic and class hierarchies are reinforced as white female employers feel a sense of racial superiority over their domestic workers, treating them as ‘‘unfortunate others’’ or rendering them invisible. Although racial and class domination were perpetuated through the employers’ ‘‘maternalistic’’ behavior in Rollins’s study, Pierrette Hondagneu-Sotelo found a different dynamic that was no less alienating. Many of the live-in domestic workers interviewed reported insufficient personal contact and communication between themselves and their employers. They felt dehumanized at work, because they were treated as ‘‘servants’’ or ‘‘employees.’’52 In addition to the perpetuation of racial/ethnic hierarchies, class hierarchies between live-in domestic workers and their employers are literally reproduced, as live-ins are often paid extremely low wages and expected to work long hours. ‘‘Room and board’’ is usually considered part of the live-in’s compensation, justifying wages far below the minimum. Often, the hours and conditions of work are not clearly specified, so the domestic may be always on call. For instance, some domestics in Hondagneu-Sotelo’s study were required to sleep near the bedroom of their employer’s children, in case a child awakened

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in the night and needed care. For those live-in domestics who had left their own children to the care of others in her country of origin, the conditions of work extracted a high emotional cost.53 As Hondagneu-Sotelo emphasizes, labor laws regulate the work conditions of domestic employees, but they are often ignored. Negotiating for better working conditions can prove difficult, particularly for Latinas who are undocumented or native-born women with few other options and an absolute need for a paycheck. Domestic workers who live outside their employers’ homes exercise greater control and autonomy and receive higher wages and better working conditions than live-in domestics.54 Latinas who are self-employed cleaning houses are in the most advantageous position, particularly compared to live-in or liveout domestics who both tend children and clean house for their employer. Selfemployed Latinas are not dependent on any one employer; they can determine their own hours and wage rates (within the limits of the market). They can leave situations they find unpleasant or unjust. Furthermore, cleaning does not require the additional emotional labor of meeting children’s demands. Research on Latina domestic employees also reveals how their type of work can reinforce or challenge gender inequalities in the labor market and the family. For instance, in her study of Mayan immigrants in Texas, Hagan found that the gendered division of labor and conditions of domestic work served to disadvantage women and advantage men.55 Domestic work was the predominant form of employment among the Mayan women in the sample, whereas the Mayan men worked on maintenance teams in a large company. The geographic and social isolation of domestic work severely restricted women’s access to employment contacts and information that could lead to better jobs, particularly among those who were live-ins. In contrast, the men had access to information through other men on their teams; their jobs were attached to mobility ladders; and they acquired new skills on the job. Furthermore, the men participated in recreational activities such as soccer teams on the weekends, which expanded their contacts with weak social ties and thus elevated their social capital. In contrast, the women worked six days per week and had limited chances to socialize on Sundays (their day off ).56 The differences in access to social capital provided to the men and women in the study also led to disparities in their ability to acquire legal status in the United States. When the Immigration Reform and Control Act passed in 1986 allowing undocumented workers to apply for legal residency in the United States, obtaining documentation of residency (such as rent receipts and utility bills) and employment (pay stubs), and a letter of verification from a U.S. citizen was easier for the men. The women in the study who were working as live-in domestics did not have documentation of residency because they had been compensated with room and board and cash payments. Employers of domestics were reluctant to sign affidavits of employment and residence for their employees, fearing that the Internal Revenue Service would be notified.

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According to Hagan,57 this gender disparity in mobility opportunities, access to social resources, and legal status increased men’s power relative to women in the community and the family. Menjı´var’s research reveals that domestic employment and the gender division of labor can also influence gender marital dynamics through challenging or affirming gender ideologies. In her study of women who had migrated to California from El Salvador and Guatemala,58 Menjı´var found that the women who worked as domestics were exposed to new ideas of gender roles in the homes of their white North American employers. Their husbands, on the other hand, worked among other men from Central America, who reinforced their traditional ideas about gender. The men often resisted their wives’ attempts to change power relations in their marriage. Menjı´var also found that the ways that a woman’s employment influenced power and gender relations in the family depended on the gender ideologies and work histories that they brought from their home countries.59 The women could easily find domestic work in the United States, whereas men were more likely to be unemployed. The indigenous Guatemalan men viewed their wives’ employment opportunities and wages as an opportunity for the couple to get ahead. The Latino Guatemalan men and the Salvadoran men saw their wives’ paid work as a threat to their sense of masculinity. The tension between these latter two groups was particularly acute within couples where the husband was unemployed.

LATINAS IN THE PROFESSIONS The literature on Latinas in low-wage jobs continues to burgeon, informing debates over the overall status of low-wage workers in the United States and enriching feminist theories of the intersections of gender, race/ethnicity, and class.60 In contrast, much less is known about the experiences of Latinas in the professions. Indeed, Latinas are severely underrepresented in managerial and professional occupations, many of which require a college diploma or an advanced degree (Table 10.2). For example, only 9 percent of Mexican-origin women, 18 percent of Puerto Rican women, and 21 percent of Central/South American women have college diplomas, compared to 33 percent of white women (Table 10.7). The educational gap grows even wider with more years of schooling. In 2001, Latinas accounted for only 2 percent of all doctorates earned in the sciences and engineering, and not quite 5 percent of all the science and engineering doctorates that were awarded to women (sciences include the social sciences).61 In contrast, white women earned 32 percent of all science and engineering doctorates awarded in 2001, and black women earned slightly more than 2 percent. Why do Latinas lag so far behind non-Hispanic white women in obtaining the postsecondary schooling necessary to enter the professions? A recent study by the Pew Hispanic Center finds that part of the Hispanic-white disparity arises from the ‘‘selective pathways’’ that Latinos take into higher education.62 Compared to white students, even the academically best-prepared Latinos are more

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likely to attend two-year colleges and nonselective four-year colleges.63 Graduation rates for all groups tend to be lower at these colleges. In addition, Latinos graduate at lower rates than whites within all types of institutions, with one exception. The best-prepared Latino students at the most selective colleges and universities, who are a very small group, have graduation rates on par with whites. The large numbers of working-class and poor Latino families and relatively few elite Latinos also contribute to disadvantage in attaining the education that can lead to professional careers. Latinas from working-class or poor backgrounds who aspire to attend college cannot rely on their parents for the advice and financial assistance that is often available to their white middle-class peers.64 Even when they do achieve academic success and progress into graduate programs and academic positions, Latinas often encounter a ‘‘hidden curriculum’’ that tends to highlight the accomplishments of white men and favors a conservative, ‘‘male, Euro-centric epistemology.’’65 For instance, in her study of Chicana (Mexican-origin) professors, Denise Segura finds that the academy represents a distinct world that Chicana academics must learn to navigate.66 Because there are so few Latina academics, their efforts are often quite visible to their colleagues, and their workload is increased. Similar to African American women in the academy, Latina professors face pressures to serve on multiple committees and to advise and mentor large numbers of students of color.67 Studies of Latinas in nonacademic professions also describe the difficulties they face as racial/ethnic minorities and women in fields that are predominantly Anglo and male. As tokens in their workplaces, Latinas can find themselves subject to negative stereotyping by employers and co-workers. Latinas working in professional or white-collar jobs report that Anglo co-workers question their abilities and competence. To counter these doubts, Latinas must ‘‘prove themselves more’’ than their Anglo colleagues.68

CONCLUSION Latinas’ experiences in graduate programs and the professions suggest that the overall picture of labor market disadvantage found among Mexican-origin, Puerto Rican, and Central/South American women is not simply due to the large numbers of recent immigrants and low-wage workers in their ranks. Instead, Latinas appear to be caught in intersecting and multiple disadvantages of gender, ethnicity, race, and social class. The ways in which these multiple dimensions of disadvantage play out to determine economic fortunes vary considerably between and within different subgroups of Latinas, however. Understanding the position of different groups of Latinas requires analyses at multiple levels of social, political, and economic life. At the macro level, the global economy is key in determining employment opportunities and barriers for all groups of workers.69 On the national level, the enactment and enforcement of immigration laws and economic policies are particularly salient for Latina im-

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migrants.70 Local labor markets, community resources, and political mobilization also create constellations of inequality and opportunity for native-born and immigrant Latinas.71 Even at the micro level, the household is a key economic unit that must be considered.72 At all these levels, race/ethnicity, gender, and class combine to shape the economic fortunes of Latinas and their families. NOTES 1. Throughout this chapter, ‘‘white’’ refers to non-Hispanic white individuals. 2. Roberto de la Cruz Ramirez and Patricia de la Cruz Ramirez, The Hispanic Population in the United States: March 2002 (Washington, DC: U.S. Census Bureau, 2003). 3. Heather Antecol, ‘‘Why Is There Interethnic Variation in the Gender Wage Gap? The Role of Cultural Factors,’’ Journal of Human Resources 36(1) (2001). 4. Patrick McGreevy, ‘‘Latinos, Flexing Political Muscle, Come of Age in L.A.; a New Generation of Leaders Now Debates How to Use Its Power to Shape Public Policy,’’ Los Angeles Times, June 27, 2005. Scholars note that nationwide, the political participation of Latinos falls far behind their representation in the population (Nicole Gaouette, ‘‘The Nation: Latino Clout at Polls Lagging, Study Says,’’ Los Angeles Times, June 28, 2005). 5. Betsy Guzman and Eileen Diaz McConnell, ‘‘The Hispanic Population: 1990– 2000 Growth and Change,’’ Population Research and Policy Review 21(1–2) (2002); Sonia M. Perez and Cecilia Munoz, ‘‘Latino Low-Wage Workers: A Look at Immigrant Workers,’’ in Richard Kazis and Marc S. Miller, eds., Low-Wage Workers in the New Economy (Washington, DC: Urban Institute Press, 2001). 6. Pew Hispanic Center, Hispanic Trends: A People in Motion (Washington, DC: Pew Hispanic Center, 2005). 7. Guzman and McConnell, ‘‘The Hispanic Population’’; Rakesh Kochhar, Roberto Suro, and Sonya Tafoya, The New Latino South: The Context and Consequences of Rapid Population Growth (Washington, DC: Pew Hispanic Center, 2005). 8. Roberto Suro and Audrey Singer, ‘‘Latino Growth in Metropolitan America: Changing Patterns, New Locations,’’ in Brookings Institution Survey Series (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution, 2002). 9. Jeffrey S. Passel, ‘‘Estimates of the Size and Characteristics of the Undocumented Population,’’ in Pew Hispanic Center Report ( Washington, DC: Pew Hispanic Center, 2005). 10. Frank Bean and Marta Tienda Bean, The Hispanic Population of the United States (New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 1987); Alejandro Portes and Ruben G. Rumbaut, Immigrant America: A Portrait, 2nd ed. (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996); Alejandro Portes, ‘‘Immigration Theory for a New Century: Some Problems and Opportunities,’’ International Migration Review 31(4) (1997): 120. 11. Marta Lopez-Garza and David R. Diaz, eds., Asian and Latino Immigrants in a Restructuring Economy: The Metamorphosis of Southern California (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2001). 12. Bureau of Labor Statistics, U.S. Department of Labor, Handbook of Methods (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 2003).

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13. Guzman and McConnell, ‘‘The Hispanic Population.’’ 14. Marlene Kim, ‘‘Women Paid Low Wages: Who They Are and Where They Work,’’ Monthly Labor Review 123(9) (2000). 15. Marta Tienda and Rebecca Raijman, ‘‘Immigrants’ Income Packaging and Invisible Labor Force Activity,’’ Social Science Quarterly 81(1) (2000). 16. U.S. Census Bureau, 1980 Census of Population Classified Index of Industries and Occupations (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1980). 17. Dowell Myers and Cynthia J. Cranford, ‘‘Temporal Differentiation in the Occupational Mobility of Immigrant and Native-Born Latina Workers,’’ American Sociological Review 63(1) (1998); Roger Waldinger and Cynthia Feliciano, ‘‘Will the New Second Generation Experience ‘Downward Assimilation?’ Segmented Assimilation ReAssessed,’’ Ethnic and Racial Studies 27(3) (2004). 18. Alejandro Portes and Robert L. Bach, Latin Journey: Cuban and Mexican Immigrants in the United States (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985). 19. Sylvia Pedraza and Ruben Rumbaut Pedraza, Origins and Destinies: Immigration, Race, and Ethnicity in America (Belmont, CA: Wadsworth, 1996). 20. Ramirez, ‘‘The Hispanic Population.’’ 21. Jeffrey S. Passel, Jennifer Van Hook, and Frank D. Bean, Estimates of Legal and Unauthorized Foreign Born Population for the United States and Selected States, Based on Census 2000 (Washington, DC: Urban Institute, 2004; available online at www .sabresys.com/i_whitepapers.asp). 22. Kochhar, Suro, and Tafoya, The New Latino South. 23. Julie Shayne, The Revolution Question in Feminism (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2004). 24. Cecilia Menjı´var, ‘‘The Intersection of Work and Gender: Central American Immigrant Women and Employment in California,’’ American Behavioral Scientist 42(4) (1999). 25. Bean and Bean, The Hispanic Population of the United States. 26. Ibid. 27. Leslie McCall, Complex Inequality: Gender, Class and Race in the New Economy (New York: Routledge, 2001). 28. Sandra Charvat Burke and Willis J. Goudy, ‘‘Immigration and Community in Iowa: How Many Have Come and What Is the Impact?’’ Conference paper delivered at the Annual Meeting of the American Sociological Association, Chicago, IL, 1999; Denise Segura, ‘‘Walking on Eggshells: Chicanas in the Labor Force,’’ in Stephen Knouse, Paul Rosenfeld, and Amy L. Culbertson, eds., Hispanics in the Workplace (Newbury Park, CA: Sage, 1992). 29. Myers and Cranford, ‘‘Temporal Differentiation.’’ 30. Vilma Ortiz, ‘‘The Mexican Origin Population,’’ in Roger Waldinger and Mehdi Bozorgmehr, eds., Ethnic Los Angeles (New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 1996). 31. Perez and Munoz, ‘‘Latino Low-Wage Workers.’’ 32. Ibid. 33. Delores Aldridge, ‘‘African American Women since the Second World War: Perspectives on Gender and Race,’’ in Alton Hornsby Jr., ed., A Companion to African American History (Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2005); Irene Browne, Leann Tigges, and Julie Press, ‘‘Inequality through Labor Markets, Firms, and Families: The Intersection of Gender and Race-Ethnicity across Three Cities,’’ in Chris Tilly, Alice O’Connor, and

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Larry Bobo, eds., Urban Inequality: Evidence from Four Cities (New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 2001). 34. Cynthia Bansak and Steven Raphael, ‘‘Immigration Reform and the Earnings of Latino Workers: Do Employer Sanctions Cause Discrimination?’’ Industrial and Labor Relations Review 54(2) (2001); Pierrette Hondagneu-Sotelo, Domestica: Immigrant Workers Cleaning and Caring in the Shadows of America (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001); Perez and Munoz, ‘‘Latino Low-Wage Workers.’’ 35. Claudia Alejandra Gonzalez, ‘‘Cost of Labor Force Participation and Racial Discrimination’’ (Ph.D. diss., University of Wisconsin, 2003). 36. Pierrette Hondagneu-Sotelo, Gendered Transitions: Mexican Experiences of Immigration (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994); Denise Segura, ‘‘Navigating between Two Worlds: The Labyrinth of Chicana Intellectual Production in the Academy,’’ Journal of Black Studies 34(1) (2003); Maria Angelina Soldatenko, ‘‘Made in the USA: Latinas/Os? Garment Work and Ethnic Conflict in Los Angeles’ Sweatshops,’’ Cultural Studies 13(2) (1999). 37. Myers and Cranford, ‘‘Temporal Differentiation.’’ 38. Ibid.; Waldinger and Feliciano, ‘‘Will the New Second Generation Experience ‘Downward Assimilation?’ ’’ 39. Pew Hispanic Center, ‘‘Educational Attainment: Better than Meets the Eye, but Large Challenges Remain,’’ in Fact Sheet (Washington, DC: Pew Hispanic Center, 2002). 40. U.S. Census Bureau, ‘‘Race and Hispanic or Latino Origin by Age and Sex for the United States: 2000.’’ Report PHC-T08 (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 2000). 41. Browne et al., ‘‘Inequality through Labor Markets’’; Lisa Catanzarite and Michael Bernabe Aguilera, ‘‘Working with Co-Ethnics: Earnings Penalties for Latino Immigrants at Latino Jobsites,’’ Social Problems 49(1) (2002). 42. Browne et al., ‘‘Inequality through Labor Markets’’; Catanzarite and Aguilera, ‘‘Working with Co-Ethnics’’; Carolyn Aman Karlin, Paula England, and Mary Richardson, ‘‘Why Do ‘Women’s Jobs’ Have Low Pay for Their Educational Level?’’ Gender Issues 20(4) (2002). 43. Irene Browne and Joya Misra, ‘‘The Intersection of Gender and Race in the Labor Market,’’ Annual Review of Sociology 29 (2003); Jennifer S. Hirsch, ‘‘En El Norte La Mujer Manda: Gender, Generation, and Geography in a Mexican Transnational Community,’’ American Behavioral Scientist 42(9) (1999); Menjı´var, ‘‘The Intersection of Work and Gender.’’ 44. Lisa Catanzarite, ‘‘Brown-Collar Jobs: Occupational Segregation and Earnings of Recent-Immigrant Latino Workers,’’ Sociological Perspectives 43(1) (2000). 45. See Paula England, Comparable Worth: Theories and Evidence (New York: Aldine de Gruyter, 1992) for a review of the economic theory underlying the debates on discrimination. 46. Philip I. Moss and Chris Tilly, Stories Employers Tell: Race, Skill, and Hiring in America (New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 2001). 47. Richard Wright, Adrian Bailey, Ines Miyares, and Alison Mountz, ‘‘Legal Status, Gender and Employment among Salvadorans in the U.S.,’’ International Journal of Population Geography 6 (2000). 48. Devah Pager and Lincoln Quillian, ‘‘Walking the Talk? What Employers Say Versus What They Do,’’ American Sociological Review 70(3) (2005).

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49. Alan B. Krueger and Jonathan M. Orszag, ‘‘Hispanics and the Current Economic Downturn: Will the Receding Tide Sink Hispanics?’’ in Pew Hispanic Center Study (Washington, DC: Pew Hispanic Center, 2002). 50. Evelyn Nakano Glenn, ‘‘From Servitude to Service Work: Historical Continuities in the Racial Division of Paid Reproductive Labor,’’ Signs 18(1) (1992); Mary Romero, Maid in the USA (New York: Routledge, 1992). 51. Mary Romero and Phyllis Palmer, ‘‘Domesticity and Dirt: Housewives and Domestic Servants in the United States, 1920–1945,’’ NWSA Journal 3(1) (1991). 52. Pierrette Hondagneu-Sotelo, Domestica, 2001. 53. Pierrette Hondagneu-Sotelo and Ernestine Avila, ‘‘ ‘I’m Here, but I’m There’: The Meanings of Latina Transnational Motherhood,’’ Gender and Society 11(5) (1997). 54. Ibid. 55. Jacqueline Maria Hagan, ‘‘Social Networks, Gender, and Immigrant Incorporation: Resources and Constraints,’’ American Sociological Review 63(1) (1998). 56. Weak ties are social connections to acquaintances and ‘‘friends of friends.’’ Strong ties are social connections to family members and close friends. In his classic paper, Granovetter argues that the information about labor market opportunities provided by weak ties is more diverse and far-ranging than the information provided by strong ties. Weak ties have access to social networks and information about opportunities that are unknown to a job seeker. Strong ties, on the other hand, tend to be connected to the same networks of individuals as the job seeker, and thus provide a smaller range of information and contacts. See Mark S. Granovetter, ‘‘The Strength of Weak Ties,’’ American Journal of Sociology 78(6) (1973). 57. Hagan, ‘‘Social Networks.’’ 58. Menjı´var, ‘‘The Intersection of Work and Gender.’’ 59. Ibid. 60. Browne and Misra, ‘‘The Intersection of Gender and Race.’’ 61. National Science Foundation, Division of Science Resources Statistics, Survey of Earned Doctorates, 1994–2001. 62. Richard Fry, ‘‘Latino Youth Finishing College: The Role of Selective Pathways,’’ in Pew Hispanic Center Report (Washington, DC: Pew Hispanic Center, 2004). 63. Ibid. 64. Segura, ‘‘Navigating between Two Worlds.’’ 65. Eric Margolis and Mary Romero, ‘‘ ‘The Department Is Very Male, Very White, Very Old, and Very Conservative’: The Functioning of the Hidden Curriculum in Graduate School Departments,’’ Harvard Educational Review 68(1) (1998); Segura, ‘‘Navigating between Two Worlds.’’ 66. Segura, ‘‘Navigating between Two Worlds.’’ 67. Ibid. 68. Denise A. Segura, ‘‘Chicanas in White-Collar Jobs: ‘You Have to Prove Yourself More,’ ’’ Sociological Perspectives 35(1) (1992). 69. Saskia Sassen, Globalization and Its Discontents: Essays on the New Mobility of People and Money (New York: New Press, 1998). 70. Portes and Rumbaut, Immigrant America. 71. McCall, Complex Inequality. 72. Tienda and Raijman, ‘‘Immigrants’ Income Packaging.’’

11

Unearned Privilege: Issues of Race, Gender, and Social Inequality in U.S. Organizations Ashleigh Shelby Rosette

Management textbooks and business trade journals usually do not have the words ‘‘unearned privileges’’ printed in their index or glossaries, but many organizational actors will report that they exist and admit that organizations need to take heed of operating systems of privilege. Although most organizations are based on merit and performance, non–merit-based social structures work in tandem with traditional performance-based establishments. Specifically, social systems in organizations that give opportunity and advantage to people based on their ability and talents coexist with social systems that bestow advantage based on nonmeritorious characteristics such as class, race, gender, religion, and a host of additional categorical variables. When demographics and related categorical distinctions are considered in organizational settings, the attention is frequently given to disadvantaged groups rather than to those who are advantaged or privileged because of social inequalities. This disregarded side of organizations warrants attention because to only consider social inequalities from the perspective of disadvantaged groups captures a mere portion of organizational experiences. When unearned privileges are ignored, organizational settings may be breeding grounds for skewed understandings of social inequalities. Accordingly, the goal of this chapter is to examine unearned privileges in organizations as related to race, gender, and social inequality. First, distinctions between unearned and earned privileges are made, and potential explanations for the focus on unfair disadvantage as opposed to unearned privilege when studying social inequality in organizations are considered. Second, the principal tenets of unearned privileges are described. Specifically, unearned privilege is often invisible to its holder and is frequently considered a social norm. Next, examples of white privilege and male privilege are given, and empirical evidence that substantiates these types of unearned privileges is provided. Finally, attribution theory is offered as a theoretical frame for the study of unearned privilege.

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UNEARNED PRIVILEGE DEFINED A privilege is an advantage, benefit, or reward that is not available to everyone.1 Privileges accrue to particular people and are withheld from others. In an organizational context, privileges are sometimes earned. They are based on achieved status, which is a social position that reflects a significant measure of personal ability and competence.2 Earned privileges accrue to people with achieved status. For example, when a computer salesperson sells more laptops than any of her colleagues, she may be rewarded with a reserved parking spot or a monetary token of appreciation. Her rewards, the parking spot and bonus, are based on her achievement, namely, selling the most computers. Accordingly, her privilege is earned because it is based on her performance. This type of privilege is expected in U.S. organizations because most are presumed to be meritocracies whereby advancements and rewards are perceived to be based on individual merit and accomplishment.3 Not all privileges in the workplace, however, are earned. Many are bestowed on organization members because of ascribed status.4 Ascribed status is a social position attained by categorical distinctions or demographics.5 Unearned privileges accrue to members with ascribed status because of groupings such as race, gender, sexual orientation, religion, class, and physical ability. These distinctions are not merit-based but are haphazardly determined by external factors mostly beyond the individual’s immediate control. They are established outside of the organization but have substantial impact on the individual’s experience within the organization. Consequently, the privileges that people accumulate due to these categorical distinctions are unearned. Although a host of unearned privileges could be considered when examining organizational experiences, the categorical distinctions of interest in this chapter are race and gender. This chosen emphasis does not reflect a biased or slanted perception of social inequality in organizations, nor does it maintain that certain demographics are more important than others. It does, however, reflect the emphasis in social inequality research. A wealth of empirical and theoretical literature exists regarding the attitudes and behaviors between underrepresented minorities and whites and between men and women in organizational contexts. In addition, the political and social milieu of the United States is such that the relationships between underrepresented minorities and whites and between men and women have played a major role in shaping organizational interactions as evidenced by public policy and legislation (e.g., the Civil Rights Act of 1964, affirmative action, Brown v. Board of Education). Also, the majority of complaints filed with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), the federal agency responsible for complaints of inequality in the workplace, reference race and gender.6 Therefore, understanding the relationship between race and gender, on one hand, and corresponding unearned privileges, on the other hand, is the primary focus of this chapter.

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Organizational Framing of Social Inequity Unearned privileges are not frequently considered under the broad category of racial and gender inequality in organizations and accordingly are not often reported in organizational research. Impressive sets of literature in sociology, psychology, and organizational studies examine these organizational inequalities;7 however, the focus is generally on the disadvantaged and not the privileged. For example, when proportional representation of the diverse workforce is considered, the emphasis is mainly on the increase of underrepresented minorities and women as opposed to a decrease in the number of whites and men. In addition, results of inequality studies are most commonly presented as how underrepresented minorities and women experience difficulty as they attempt to progress up the corporate ladder as opposed to the simplicity and ease that may be more familiar to whites and men. For example, when reporting existing wage disparities, the phrase ‘‘minority workers are underpaid relative to their white counterparts’’ is more likely to be used than the phrase ‘‘white workers are overpaid relative to minorities.’’ Similarly when reporting statistics, it is far more common to see the phrase ‘‘women’s salaries are only 76 percent of men’s salaries’’ than it is to see the report that ‘‘men earn $1.32 for each dollar that women earn.’’ These differences are not mere semantics; they direct the way racial and gender inequality is examined in organizational settings. When topics of race and gender inequalities arise in organizations, they generally fall under the umbrella of diversity issues. It is usually presumed that racial issues encompass concerns of African Americans, Hispanics, Asians, Native Americans, or other racial minorities. Far less frequently are the concerns of whites included as a subcategory within the context of diversity issues in organizations. A similar classification concern occurs when gender-based issues are considered in organizations. It is presumed that gender issues are relegated only to the problems and concerns of women. Male issues, concerns, and perspectives are not frequently considered except as an implied reference category. Accordingly, when considering racial and gender inequality in an organizational setting, focus and attention remain on the concerns and issues of the subordinated group as opposed to considering the role played by those with advantage. This does not presume that in all organizations women and minorities are subordinated, nor does it presume that racial and gender inequalities are analogous. It does presuppose that this type of social hierarchy is more likely than not. However, focusing on only one side of the inequality equation prevents the complete understanding of organizational hierarchies and their related social systems. Specifically, if it is agreed that at times one group is unfairly disadvantaged, then by all calculations, it follows that another group is unfairly advantaged. The two groups are parallel, and one does not exist without the other. One reason that social inequality is viewed through a lens of disadvantage as opposed to advantage is probably because of the legal doctrines that govern organizations.

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Legal Depiction of Discrimination Racial and gender inequality in organizations is most frequently governed by the legal depiction of discrimination. This legal definition implies negative behavior, which may indirectly preclude the consideration of unearned advantage in an organizational context. When referencing society at large, absent the boundaries imposed by organizational form, discrimination is defined as classifying people into different groups and according the members of each group distinct and typically unequal treatments, rights, and obligations.8 Thus discrimination in its most simplistic form is differentiation among persons. When considered from this communal perspective, valence is not assigned to the act of discriminating. Accordingly, discrimination in society at large can connote a positive or negative distinction. When considering discrimination within the confines of organizations, a narrower legal definition is usually applied. This definition is the most widely used conceptualization of discrimination because of the laws that govern many organizations’ continuation and livelihood (i.e., organizations with more than fifteen employees).9 Discrimination in federal civil rights laws is considered to be unfavorable or unfair treatment of a person or class of persons in comparison to others because of specific categorical or demographic distinctions, such as race and gender. Accordingly, the 80,000 complaints received annually by the EEOC were not submitted by complainants who benefited from unequal treatment. Instead, they were tendered due to unfair, negative, or unfavorable behavior. The legal conceptualization of racial and gender inequality as negative treatment is likely a principle driver of the frame in which inequality is viewed in organizations. Consequently, undeserved disadvantage receives substantial attention and unearned advantage is often ignored. Understanding the conceptualization of discrimination in organizations allows for better appreciation of the reasons why those who study organizations have rarely examined unearned privileges. Unearned privileges are by-products of deliberate negative actions, which are infrequently addressed in the legal conceptualization of employment discrimination and, consequently, rarely considered in any social study of organizational experiences. This is not to say that the concept of unearned advantage has not been broached when studying and examining societal experiences at large, but far less frequently is the concept considered or studied empirically within an organizational context.

Individual Motivations In addition to the organizational and legal justifications for not frequently examining unearned privileges in an organizational context, individual motivations also exist. Thinking about unearned privilege from the perspective of those who are advantaged in organizations requires the contemplation of

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sensitive topics because specific categories of unearned privilege must be considered. When unearned privileges are attached to specific categories such as race and gender, the resulting terms are white privilege and male privilege. When these terms are used to describe existing social inequalities, they are frequently associated with prejudice or animosity against others that is connoted by racism or sexism. For example, the term white privilege conjures up images of white supremacy, an ideology which holds that the white race is superior to others, and the term is most often thought of in connection with anti–African American racism and anti-Semitism. The association of privilege with superiority and racism and sexism precludes an in-depth understanding of unearned privilege in organizations because subsequent discussion could lead to the application of the dreaded racist or sexist label. One need only look in the popular press to see the adverse consequences of making disparaging remarks based on race or gender.10 Thus, discussions of unearned privileges may prove to be risky due to resulting discomfort and even fear because people may not know how to talk about unearned privilege and may feel vulnerable to culpability. Accordingly, individual motivations in a society that is charged by political correctness may preclude a frank consideration of unearned privileges. The key to reducing the risk is a better understanding of differences. The discussion of unearned privilege is risky not only for those who benefit from the privilege but also for those who may find it to be detrimental. In U.S. organizations, individual accomplishments and autonomy are highly valued;11 hence, it may be very difficult to avoid the negative judgments attached to undeserved disadvantage. In particular, because individual accomplishments are so highly valued and rewarded, ‘‘just world beliefs’’ often follow. Living in a just world means that those who work hard professionally and personally will succeed in life.12 Alternatively, those who are lazy and work poorly will fail. This notion assumes that people are motivated to believe that they live in a just world where each person gets what he or she deserves.13 Any evidence that this is not the case threatens the underlying mindset of a just or fair world and elicits efforts to eliminate that threat. A psychological defense to the threat is reinterpretation of the cause, which means rationalizing that the victim caused the suffering and was deserving of the consequence. Derogation of those who are undeservedly disadvantaged may occur, making their shortcomings appear as if they were deserved. Hence, people who are unfairly disadvantaged may be quite comfortable talking about unearned privilege among others who are similar to them, but less likely to initiate such discussions in more heterogeneous groups because of the negative judgments that may follow.14

INVISIBILITY OF UNEARNED PRIVILEGE Because unearned privilege is not often considered in organizational contexts, it sometimes remains invisible to its holders. The invisibility of unearned

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privilege was made famous in Peggy McIntosh’s seminal essay, ‘‘Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack.’’15 According to McIntosh, invisibility implies that people with unearned privilege are unable or unwilling to acknowledge that they receive benefits because of their privileged group membership. Thus, these unearned benefits remain unseen by those who hold the privileged category distinction. In U.S. society, many with unearned privilege go through life wearing blinders and do not recognize how their privileged distinction is accompanied by advantage. This invisibility is mimicked in U.S. organizations, most of which are meritocracies where unearned privileges have a negative meaning. Thus, it is counter to many organizational values, which presume a meritocracy, for employees to admit that one group of workers may have an unearned advantage over another due to race or gender. People resist acknowledging that they may be benefactors of unearned privilege because doing so may cause others to view their work performance less favorably. Thus, unearned privilege becomes normalized. Unearned privilege allows those who hold it to experience their customary routines as the social norm.16 Holders of privilege may not perceive it as something bestowed on them. Instead it appears simply as the way things are. The privileged group receives unearned benefits because of its categorical distinction and may be oblivious to its groups’ advantages and benefits that simply seem normal or customary. Alternatively, others who are not privileged have a lack, an absence, a distinction. Kimmel and Ferber used e-mail addresses to provide a poignant example of the normalization of privilege.17 Many people in the United States have an e-mail address and many send e-mails to friends and colleagues in the United States and abroad. A distinction exists between the e-mails sent to friends within versus outside of the United States. Domestic e-mail addresses generally end with ‘‘.edu’’ for an educational institution or ‘‘.gov’’ for a governmental organization. However, e-mails going to other nations end in a country code such as ‘‘.nl’’ for The Netherlands or ‘‘.uk’’ for the United Kingdom. Most e-mails going to and from the United States, however, do not reference a country code. The use of country codes as a distinction for other nations is a social norm to which most U.S. citizens are accustomed. Just as the United States is the normative reference category to which all other countries are compared, whites and men are the implied referent to which minorities and women, respectively, are compared in U.S. organizations. The invisibility of unearned privilege often depends on the demographics of the perceiver. Underrepresented minorities typically agree that white people enjoy white privilege, but whites often deny they have it and disagree about the concept’s existence.18 Women generally acknowledge that men have certain advantages, but men do not see how women’s disadvantage is directly or indirectly related to their gains.19 Even if whites and men acknowledge their unearned privilege, it may be compared to unearned privilege granted to minorities and women through affirmative action programs, although these types

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of unearned privileges are rarely invisible. These reactions are defensive mechanisms because acknowledging unearned privilege can be threatening to the selfesteem and self-efficacy of its beneficiaries. Alternatively, underrepresented minorities and women are more likely to recognize the benefits that they see granted to whites and men because doing so provides a potential explanation for subpar performance and failures. Just like those who benefit from unearned privileges, those who do not are motivated to view themselves and their capabilities in the most positive light, and pointing out unearned privileges allows them to maintain a positive self-concept.

WHITE PRIVILEGE AND MALE PRIVILEGE Whether acknowledged or denied, the most apparent race-based privilege in most organizations is white privilege, because whites are the most advantaged labor market.20 White privilege is an advantage or immunity granted to or enjoyed by white persons beyond the common advantage of others.21 McIntosh listed forty-six examples of white privilege that occurred at work, including (a) being able to associate with people of her own race most of the time; (b) performing well in challenging situations without being called a credit to her own race; (c) being able to go home from most organizational meetings feeling somewhat tied in, rather than isolated and out of place; (d) thinking about social or professional options without having to ask whether a person of her race would be accepted or allowed to do it; (e) never being asked to speak for all people that make up her racial group; and (f) not needing to ask if a negative occurrence or situation at work has racial overtones.22 Maier and Johnson separately composed similar lists with regard to male privilege, which results from a gender-based hierarchy.23 Examples from their lists include (a) not being mistaken as ‘‘just a spouse’’ at social functions, (b) not having limited social networking opportunities because of gender, (c) being held to a lower standard than women in professional and upper-level occupations, (d) controlling conversations and being allowed to get away with it, (e) not being slotted into a narrow range of lower-tiered occupations identified with their gender, (f) expecting that representation in government and ruling circles of corporation will share their gender, and (g) expecting that their gender will not be used to determine if they fit in at work. From reading the examples of unearned privileges, three points should be clear. First, unearned privileges do not have to come about because of a deliberate or conscious set of decisions or actions. However, they likely evolve from the continuation of social norms and are not likely to cease unless the norms are challenged. Organizational members may not give very much thought to these unearned advantages, nonetheless, they continuously accrue and manifest such that organizational level impact is profound and racial and genderbased inequality thrives. People in organizational settings are drawn to people

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who look like themselves;24 thus, women and minorities may be undeservedly disadvantaged (i.e., not promoted up the organizational ladder or included in important social networks) simply because they are dissimilar to the decision makers or do not fit an expected prototype.25 Hence, deliberate choice may not lead to the perpetuation of unearned privileges in organizational settings; instead it may be a function of social categorization that lays out a path of least resistance and allows people to function in their own comfort zone.26 For example, the top-ranked barrier among many persisting racial and gender obstacles reported by 72 percent of human resource managers at 304 organizations responding to a survey was that ‘‘traditional managers (white males) are already in place, limiting access to women and people of color because they have greater comfort with their own kind.’’27 The second point that should be clear about the examples of unearned white and male privileges is that they are more likely to occur in core as opposed to peripheral organizations. In particular, one can think of organizations where white privilege and male privilege are not very salient, such as minority-owned or women-owned businesses. Organizations whose owners and managers are African American disproportionately employ African American workers.28 Similarly, women-owned businesses are more likely than male-owned businesses to employ women.29 In these types of organizations, being a minority or a woman may be advantageous. However, these firms make up only a small percentage of all U.S. organizations and do not represent the social structure of most; thus they are peripheral. According to the Survey of Minority-Owned Businesses, a study that the U.S. Census Bureau conducted for the five-year period from 1992 to 1997, approximately 85 percent of all U.S. businesses were owned by whites, and these companies collected approximately 97 percent of all gross receipts.30 Similarly, according to the Survey of Women-Owned Businesses, approximately 74 percent of all U.S. firms were not solely owned by women; of those owned by women, approximately half had receipts of less than $10,000.31 Thus, white privilege and male privilege are more likely to be the norm as opposed to the exception in many core U.S. organizations. Even in U.S. organizations that are white- or male-owned and -operated and employ large numbers of minorities and women, whites and males are more likely than not to be concentrated in upper management jobs where unearned privileges continue to accrue, and minorities and women will be more strongly represented in lowertier jobs.32 The third point that should be clear is that unearned privileges can lead to superior performance, exclusive networks, and advancement opportunities. This can be demonstrated by reviewing studies that match whites and African Americans and women and men on similar characteristics. Sufficient empirical studies exist that compare the experience of African Americans to whites and women to men and suggest that whites and males benefit from unearned privileges. Much of this research demonstrates that when African Americans and whites and women and men are matched on similar characteristics and

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qualifications, a bias exists that favors whites and men and disadvantages African Americans and women. The focus on African Americans as opposed to other minorities does not reflect that one minority group is more important than the other; however, much of the research on racial inequality in U.S. organizations examines the social, political, and historical relationship between whites and African Americans. An audit study using African American and white job seekers with matched qualifications (fields of study, degrees, schools attended, and grade point averages) found that white applicants progressed better than African American applicants about 20 percent of the time.33 In another study using matched fictitious re´sume´s, job applicants with names that are common to whites, such as Emily and Greg, were 50 percent more likely to receive calls for interviews than were applicants with names that are common to African Americans, such as Lakisha and Jamal.34 Unearned privileges not only limit access to organizations but also affect the organizational experience. Utilizing a meta-analysis consisting of 74 studies and over 17,000 participants, Kraiger and Ford examined race effects in performance evaluations.35 The findings showed that same-race supervisor/subordinate relationships resulted in a more positive evaluation of the subordinate. Because an overwhelming majority of the executives and managers in the U.S. workforce is white,36 this biased effect is likely to advantage white workers more than African American workers. In addition, Thomas showed that same-race mentoring relationships provided more social-psychological support than did cross-race mentoring relationships.37 Because white mentees were frequently paired with white mentors, they did not have to seek support from outside of their departments, whereas African American mentees did. Maume used the term glass ceiling to reference the experience of African American men in corporate settings and the term glass escalator to describe the experience of white men in corporate settings.38 Using a comprehensive longitudinal data set, Maume showed that when personal and job-related factors were controlled, white men were 52 percent more likely to attain a managerial position than were African American men. In addition, Maume found evidence that supported earlier assertions that African Americans are often concentrated in jobs such as community relations, public relations, and personnel, which are not considered preparatory roles for chief leadership positions.39 Another study showed that the difference between African American and white men was not limited to access to managerial positions but also substantially affected their wages and employment rate. Wage discrimination increased the employment rate of white men to 122 percent of African American men’s employment rate.40 Although not in an organizational setting, perhaps the most compelling evidence supporting the unearned privilege that accrues to whites is provided by the Implicit Association Test (IAT). In the IAT, participants classify stimuli representing racial groups (i.e., African American and white faces) and evaluate attributes (e.g., pleasant and unpleasant words) using two separate response

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keys. Participants typically perform the task more quickly and easily when pleasant attributes share the same response key with white than African American faces and unpleasant attributes share the same key with African American than white faces.41 These experiments have demonstrated a strong positive evaluation of whites and a relatively negative evaluation of African Americans. Although researchers have not yet administered the IAT in organizational settings, given the preponderance of empirical organizational evidence that already exists exhibiting a bias in favor of whites, it is likely that the IAT findings are likely to be applicable to an organizational context as well. Studies matching women and men on comparable characteristics and experiences show a similar pattern to the empirical evidence on race. Greenhaus and Parasuraman examined how biased performance evaluations negatively influence women.42 They surveyed more than 700 managers and found that among highly accomplished employees, men’s successful job performance was more likely to be attributed to ability than women’s. When Lyness and Thompson matched women and men in the financial services industry on their organizational position, performance ratings, and pay level, they found that although compensation was comparable, men had more authority, received more stock options, and were more satisfied with their future career opportunities than women.43 In a follow-up study that matched comparable men and women executives, Lyness and Thompson found that women were more likely to emphasize the importance of successful and distinguishing accomplishments, such as turning a troubled business around or managing downsizing, than were men executives.44 This emphasis suggests that the women executives had to accomplish major business feats to be successful. In addition, they found that men executives did not have to circumvent barriers to career advancement that were erected for women. Men did not report that they experienced negative consequences, such as exclusion from informal networks and lack of culture fit, to the extent that women did. In an interview study, Davies-Netzley interviewed corporate presidents and chief officers and found that men leaders did not report barriers such as being excluded from important social networks.45 Women interviewed in the study noted that opportunities are often blocked for women and that external barriers exist, whereas the men attributed their accomplishments to hard work and personal abilities. Ibarra showed that in four Fortune 500 firms, when controlling for occupation and hierarchical rank, men had more same-gender business relationships than women, and fast-track or high-potential men did not rely on relationships outside of their subunits. Fast-track or high-potential women, on the other hand, had to go outside of their immediate subgroups and establish relationships for career advancement.46 Roach matched women and men in-house attorneys in the financial services and manufacturing industries.47 She found that men were located in large legal departments that offered career advancement and high-paying salaries, whereas women were concentrated in medium-sized legal departments with

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fewer opportunities to move up the corporate ladder. In addition, she attributes this disparity to the company’s hiring practices and job assignments and not to the attorneys’ individual choices. The studies reviewed here are a very small subset of those that have examined racial and gender inequality in organizations. Some show that racial and gender parity exist in organizational settings, and others indicate that under certain circumstances, a bias may exist that favors women and minorities.48 However, the studies are likely to be representative of the experiences that occur in core organizations and could very easily directly or indirectly map on to the sample list of unearned advantages described by McIntosh, Maier, and Johnson. Accordingly, unearned advantages can shape the experience of organization members. The existence of unearned privilege does not mean that those who possess it do not work hard or that credit and accolades are not deserved. However, it implies that an additional asset is possessed that makes it more likely that whatever talent and skills they have will be showcased, recognized appropriately, and rewarded; however, the same may not be true with regard to those people without it. For example, consider that whites and males are nearly the only ones who have been able to penetrate the persistent barrier to top management. According to the Glass Ceiling Commission Report, 97 percent of the senior managers of Fortune 500 companies are white, and 95 percent are male.49 Statistics for the Fortune 2000 industrial and service companies are comparable. Whites and males represent 95 percent and 96 percent, respectively, of the senior-level management positions. In contrast, women and minorities represent approximately 60 percent of the working population.

THEORETICAL FOUNDATION OF UNEARNED PRIVILEGE Attribution theory, one of the most significant theories in social research, can provide a solid theoretical frame for analyzing white privilege, male privilege, and the principal tenet of invisibility. In its simplest form, the theory seeks to explain the way people make inferences about themselves and others. Attribution theory looks at how people make sense of their environment by ascribing cause and effect to personal dispositions or situational characteristics of the environment.50 A main finding related to attribution theory is that people tend to take more credit than is deserved for success and less than is warranted for failure.51 Accordingly, when a reward is bestowed or success is achieved, people are less likely to attribute it to an external cause and more likely to attribute it an internal cause (i.e., their own ability, talent, or merit).52 This occurs because success can potentially enhance the self-concept. People desire specific explanations for success and are sufficiently motivated to create the necessary attributional conditions to be able to come to desired conclusions.53 Motives can bias reasoning, and in an organizational setting that values meritocracy and

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individual accomplishment, personal responsibility for successful performance may provide sufficient motivation for positive attributions.54 However, race and gender often serve as proxies for ability, and competence and should not be so easily discarded in favor of positive personal attributions. Certain demographics, specifically being male and white, are loaded with performance undertones or expectations, and unearned privileges are awarded because of them.55 Specifically, when people make distinctions based on race and gender, these differences will be used when developing performance expectations. Regardless of whether the distinctions are relevant to the task or job assigned, they will be used when assessing performance effectiveness; advantages will accrue accordingly. These benefits are initially unearned because they are based on demographics, not the individual’s demonstrated merit or ability. Unearned privileges based on categorical distinctions may include opportunity, favorable appraisals, high regard, and even power.56 This pattern of positive internal attributions made for the performance of whites and males may then lead to negative internal attributions made for underrepresented minorities and women. Accordingly, unearned privileges emerge because people suspect positive causes for the performance of whites and men, and negative causes for the performance of underrepresented minorities and women. Negative causes attributed then lead to negative evaluations which support inequality. When whites and males acknowledge their privileged position and recognize that benefits accruing to them in their organization result from both earned and unearned advantages, privilege awareness may occur. Getting people to acknowledge that they benefit from unearned privileges is likely to be quite difficult. However, if mechanisms that may overcome self-serving biases to facilitate privilege awareness are identified, changes in attributions toward themselves and those without unearned privilege may occur. Perhaps an intersection of unearned privilege from the viewpoints of the advantaged and disadvantaged may serve as an impetus because social hierarchies are interlocking; no group is privileged or disadvantaged on every continuum of unearned privilege. In the late 1980s, when McIntosh sought to examine male and white privilege in her women’s studies academic curriculum, she noticed that her male colleagues often willingly acknowledged the women’s disadvantage but seldom recognized their own privilege.57 As she pondered what seemed to be a blatant injustice, she realized that because hierarchies in society are interlinked, there must also be a phenomenon of white privilege as well. The intersection of her disadvantage as a woman in her women’s studies curriculum helped reveal her unearned privileges as a white person. In a counseling psychology study, Ancis and Szymanski noted the influence of the intersection of privileged and nonprivileged state on counseling trainees.58 They read McIntosh’s article listing forty-six advantages available to her as a white person that were unavailable to her African American co-workers, friends, and acquaintances. The trainees were instructed to select one or more

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of these advantages and provide a written reaction. Excerpts from some of their responses indicate that the overlap of unearned privilege with disadvantaged categories may facilitate privilege awareness. One female student wrote, ‘‘I feel that there are a great many barriers to success for me because of my gender. What I had neglected to consider was the experiences of women of color, the effect of being doubly discriminated against. How I could have missed this, I don’t know.’’59 A second female student wrote, ‘‘Although I cannot know whether options will be open to me as a woman, I do know that women of color must consider many more barriers and prejudice than I do when looking for a job, getting promoted, and being seen as worthy in general.’’60 The excerpts indicate that people are embedded within myriad categories and no group or individual is completely privileged or nonprivileged in most social settings. The experience of nonprivilege in one setting, however, may help reveal unearned privilege in another. Observations of students who examined the privileges associated with their multiple socio-identities with respect to gender and race and articulated an understanding of unearned privilege and its impact on others suggest that an intersection of unearned privilege and disadvantage may assist in making unearned privileges visible.

CONCLUSION The role of unearned privilege in organizational contexts should not remain in the background when examining racial and gender inequalities because its consideration may potentially contribute much to our understanding of organizational experiences. Unearned privileges should be moved to the forefront to gain a more comprehensive understanding of the considerable fissures that exist because of race and gender. These gaps will not be bridged by only considering a portion of the disparity equation. The ideas proposed with regard to privilege awareness are in their infancy, and just as an intersection of privilege may serve to increase privilege awareness, under certain conditions it may also decrease such awareness. A better understanding of what motivates acknowledgment of unearned privileges versus denial is needed, and other antecedents, such as individual ideologies, beliefs, and personal experiences, should be considered. Awareness of unearned privileges will not solve the problem of racial and gender inequality in U.S. organizations; however, it may be an innovative step toward a better understanding of difference and warrants attention in organizational research.

NOTES 1. S. M. Wildman, ‘‘Privilege in the Workplace: The Missing Element in Antidiscrimination Law,’’ in S. M. Wildman, ed., Privilege Revealed: How Invisible Preference Undermines America (New York: New York University Press, 1996).

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2. R. Linton, The Study of Man (New York: D. Appleton-Century, 1936). 3. L. J. Griffin and A. L. Kalleberg, ‘‘Stratification and Meritocracy in the United States: Class and Occupational Recruitment Patterns,’’ British Journal of Sociology 32(1) (1981): 1–38. 4. A. S. Rosette and Leigh L. Thompson, ‘‘The Camouflage Effect: Separating Achieved Status and Unearned Privilege in Organizations,’’ in Margaret A. Neale, Elizabeth A. Mannix, and Melissa Thomas-Hunt, eds., Research on Managing Teams and Groups (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2005), pp. 259–81. 5. Linton, The Study of Man. 6. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission Report, Charge statistics: FY 1992 through FY 2004. Available online at www.eeoc.gov/stats/charges.html. 7. See B. Reskin and P. Roos, Job Queues, Gender Queues (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1990); Robert L. Dipboye and Adrienne Colella, Discrimination at Work: The Psychological and Organizational Bases (Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 2005); P. M. Blau, Inequality and Heterogeneity (New York: Free Press, 1977); R. M. Kanter, Men and Women of the Organization (New York: Basic Books, 1977). 8. J. Jones, Prejudice and Racism (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1997). 9. Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act. 10. See examples in Sam Dillon, ‘‘Harvard Chief Defends His Talk on Women,’’ New York Times, January 18, 2005, p. 16; Brian Davis, ‘‘OU Coach Resigns,’’ DallasNews .com, May 2, 2005. Available online at www.dallasnews.com/s/dws/spt/colleges/oklahoma/ stories/050205dnspooucoach.2326e5010.html. 11. G. Hofstede, Culture’s Consequences: International Differences in Work-Related Values (Beverly Hills, CA: Sage, 1980). 12. M. J. Lerner, The Belief in a Just World: A Fundamental Delusion (New York: Plenum, 1980). 13. M. J. Lerner, D. T. Miller, and J. G. Holmes, ‘‘Deserving and the Emergence of Forms of Justice,’’ in L. Berkowitz and E. Walster, eds., Advances in Experimental Social Psychology: Equity Theory, Toward a General Theory of Social Interaction (New York: Academic Press, 1976). 14. B. D. Tatum, Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria? (New York: Basic Books, 1999). 15. P. McIntosh, ‘‘White Privilege and Male Privilege: A Personal Account of Coming to See Correspondences through Work in Women’s Studies,’’ Working paper no. 189, Wellesley College Center for Research on Women (1988). 16. S. M. Wildman and A. D. Davis, ‘‘Making Systems of Privilege Visible,’’ in S. Wildman, ed., Privilege Revealed: How Invisible Preference Undermines America (New York: New York University Press, 1996). 17. M. Kimmel and Abby Ferber, Privilege (Cambridge, MA: Westview Press, 2003). 18. B. Lowery, Eric David Knowles, and Miguel M. Unzueta, ‘‘Framing Inequality Safely: The Motivated Denial of White Privilege,’’ in Academy of Management Annual Meetings (Honolulu: Academy of Management, 2005). 19. McIntosh, ‘‘White Privilege and Male Privilege.’’ 20. P. Dressel, ‘‘Patriarchy and Social Welfare Work,’’ Social Problems 34 (1987): 294–309. 21. P. S. Rothenberg, White Privilege: Essential Readings on the Other Side of Racism (New York: Worth Publishers, 2002).

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22. McIntosh, ‘‘White Privilege and Male Privilege.’’ 23. M. Maier, ‘‘Invisible Privilege,’’ Diversity Factor Summer (1997): 28–33; A. G. Johnson, Privilege, Power, and Difference (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1997). 24. P. Tharenou. ‘‘Going Up? Do Traits and Informal Social Processes Predict Advancing in Management?’’ Academy of Management Journal 44(5) (2001): 1005–17; David A. Thomas, ‘‘The Impact of Race on Managers’ Experiences of Developmental Relationships,’’ Journal of Organizational Behavior 11(6) (1990): 479–92. 25. R. M. Kanter, Men and Women of the Organization (New York: Basic Books, 1977); James D. Westphal and Laurie Milton, ‘‘How Experience and Network Ties Affect the Influence of Demographic Minorities on Corporate Boards,’’ Administrative Science Quarterly 45(2) (2000): 366–98. 26. Johnson, Privilege, Power, and Difference. 27. A. M. Morrison, C. T. Schreiber, and K. T. Price, A Glass Ceiling Survey: Benchmarking Barriers and Practices (Greensboro, NC: Center for Creative Leadership, 1995), p. 42. 28. W. J. Carrington and K. R. Troske, ‘‘Interfirm Segregation and the Black/White Wage Gap,’’ Journal of Labor Economics 16 (1998): 231–60. 29. W. J. Carrington and K. R. Troske, ‘‘Gender Segregation in Small Firms,’’ Journal of Human Resources 30 (1994): 503–33. 30. ‘‘Survey of Minority-Owned Business Enterprises,’’ U.S. Department of Commerce, Census Bureau, 2001. Available online at www.census.gov/csd/mwb. 31. ‘‘Survey of Women-Owned Business Enterprises,’’ U.S. Department of Commerce, Census Bureau, 2001. Available online at http://www.census.gov/csd/mwb. 32. E. W. Jones, ‘‘Black Managers: The Dream Deferred,’’ Harvard Business Review 64 (1986): 84–93; Reskin and Roos, Job Queues, Gender Queues. 33. M. Bendick, C. Jackson, and V. Reinsoso, ‘‘Measuring Employment Discrimination through Controlled Experiments,’’ Review of Black Political Economy 23 (1994): 25–48. 34. M. Bertrand and S. Mullainathan, ‘‘Are Emily and Greg More Employable Than Lakisha and Jamal? A Field Experiment on Labor Market Discrimination,’’ University of Chicago Graduate School of Business Working Paper (2003). 35. K. Kraiger and J. K. Ford, ‘‘A Meta-Analysis of Ratee Race Effects in Performance Ratings,’’ Journal of Applied Psychology 70(1) (1985): 56–65. 36. U.S. Department of Labor, 2000. Statistics report available at www.bls.gov. 37. D. A. Thomas, ‘‘The Impact of Race on Managers’ Experiences of Developmental Relationships,’’ Journal of Organizational Behavior 11(6) (1990): 479–92. 38. D. J. Maume, ‘‘Glass Ceilings and Glass Escalators,’’ Work and Occupations 26(4) (1999): 483–509. 39. Jones, ‘‘Black Managers.’’ 40. M. L. Baldwin and W. G. Johnson, ‘‘The Employment Effects of Wage Discrimination against Black Men,’’ Industrial and Labor Relations Review 49(2) (1996): 302–16. 41. N. Dasgupta, D. E. McGhee, A. G. Greenwald, and M. R. Banaji, ‘‘Automatic Preference for White Americans: Eliminating the Familiarity Explanation,’’ Journal of Experimental Social Psychology 36 (2000): 316–28; A. G. Greenwald, D. E. McGhee, and J. L. Schwartz, ‘‘Measuring Individual Differences in Implicit Cognition: The Implicit Association Task,’’ Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 74 (1998): 1464–80.

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42. J. Greenhaus and S. Parasuraman, ‘‘Job Performance Attributions and Career Advancement Prospects: An Examination of Gender and Race Effects,’’ Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Making Processes 55(2) (1993): 273–97. 43. K. S. Lyness and D. E. Thompson, ‘‘Above the Glass Ceiling? A Comparison of Matched Samples of Female and Male Executives,’’ Journal of Applied Psychology 82 (1997): 359–75. 44. K. S. Lyness and D. E. Thompson, ‘‘Climbing the Corporate Ladder: Do Female and Male Executives Follow the Same Route?’’ Journal of Applied Psychology 85(1) (2000): 86–101. 45. S. A. Davies-Netzley, ‘‘Women above the Glass Ceiling: Perceptions on Corporate Mobility and Strategies for Success,’’ Gender and Society 12(3) (1998): 339–55. 46. H. Ibarra, ‘‘Paving an Alternative Route: Gender Differences in Managerial Networks,’’ Social Psychology Quarterly 60(1) (1997): 91–102. 47. S. L. Roach, ‘‘Men and Women Lawyers in in-House Legal Departments: Recruitment and Career Patterns,’’ Gender and Society 4(2) (1990): 207–19. 48. See C. L. Aberson and T. E. Ettlin, ‘‘The Aversive Racism Paradigm and Responses Favoring African-Americans: Meta-Analytic Evidence of Two Types of Favoritism,’’ Social Justice Research 17(1) (2004): 25–46; A. S. Tsui and B. A. Gutek, ‘‘A Role Set Analysis of Gender Differences in Performance, Affective Relationships, and Career Success of Industrial Middle Managers,’’ Academy of Management Journal 27(3) (1984): 619–35. 49. U.S. Glass Ceiling Commission, Good for Business: Making Full Use of the Nation’s Human Capital (Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1995). 50. F. Heider, The Psychology of Interpersonal Relations (New York: Wiley, 1958). 51. M. Zuckerman, ‘‘Attribution of Success and Failure Revisited, or the Motivational Bias Is Alive and Well in Attribution Theory,’’ Journal of Personality 47 (1979): 245–85. 52. L. Ross, ‘‘The Intuitive Psychologist and His Shortcomings: Distortions in the Attribution Process,’’ in L. Berkowitz, ed., Advances in Experimental Social Psychology (New York: Academic Press, 1977), pp. 174–221. 53. J. M. Riggs, ‘‘Self-Handicapping and Achievement,’’ in A. K. Boggiano and T. S. Pittman, eds., Achievement and Motivation: A Social-Developmental Perspective (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1992). 54. Z. Kunda, ‘‘The Case for Motivated Reasoning,’’ Psychological Bulletin 108 (1990): 480–98. 55. D. G. Wagner and Joseph Berger, ‘‘Status Characteristics Theory: The Growth of a Program,’’ in J. Berger and M. Zelditch, eds., Theoretical Research Programs, (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1993), pp. 23–63; J. Berger, B. P. Cohen, and M. Zelditch, ‘‘Status Characteristics and Social Interaction,’’ American Sociological Review 37(3) (1972): 241–55. 56. M. Webster and J. E. Driskell, ‘‘Status Generalization: A Review and Some New Data,’’ American Sociological Review 43 (1978): 220–36. 57. McIntosh, ‘‘White Privilege and Male Privilege.’’ 58. J. R. Ancis and D. M. Szymanski, ‘‘Awareness of White Privilege among White Counseling Trainees,’’ Counseling Psychologist 29(4) (2001): 548–69. 59. Ibid., p. 559. 60. Ibid.

12

Gender Inequality in the U.S. Labor Market: Evidence from the 2000 Census Jongsung Kim

Working women have been an important component of the U.S. society, becoming more essential to our economy’s advancement. Women composed 30 percent of the U.S. workforce in 1950; fifty years later, they made up 47 percent of the labor force.1 During this time, women’s labor market status has greatly improved due to changes in the social climate and passage of laws such as Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.2 Over the past fifty years, women’s labor force participation rate has steadily increased from 33.9 percent in 1950 to 59.2 percent in 2004, whereas that of men has declined from 86.4 percent to 73.3 percent during the same period. This leads to a remarkable lessening of the gender gap in labor force participation rates from 52.5 percentage points in 1950 to 14.1 percentage points in 2004.3 Due to the substantial rise in women’s gainful employment since the 1950s, the average contemporary young woman expects to work after completing formal schooling, a belief shared by many women at all educational levels and racial and ethnic groups. An increase in women’s educational attainment, the lower fertility rates, the availability of new household technologies and the emergence of flexible work schedules have encouraged women to enter the labor market.4 Women have made tremendous strides in all occupations, and notables such as former Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, Secretary of Sate Condoleezza Rice, and former Hewlett-Packard CEO Carly Fiorina epitomize the advancement and success of women in U.S. society.5 Though some women have made progress on their own merits, gender equality in the U.S. labor market has not been achieved despite the Title VII’s impact in providing employment opportunities for women. Many employed women still encounter disadvantages; they earn less and work in lower-status occupations than male peers with comparable credentials. Although educational attainments are believed to enhance workers’ productivity and status in the labor market, gender inequality persists even among

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college-educated workers.6 Given the importance of women and the rapidly changing demographic characteristics in the U.S. labor market, this chapter investigates the current labor market status of women in earnings and occupations across four major ethnic groups: white and black women born in the United States and Hispanic and Asian immigrant women.7 Consideration of foreign-born population in this chapter mirrors the growing importance of immigrants in all aspects of U.S. society. In particular, race and ethnicity have long played an important role in shaping employment opportunities and labor market outcomes.8 Data used in this chapter are drawn from the 2000 Census 5 percent Public Use Microdata Sample (PUMS). The sample includes civilians who were sixteen to sixty-five years old, participated in the labor force, and did not reside in group quarters in 1999.9 To obtain accurate estimates, using a large representative sample with detailed individual background information on variables such as education, occupation, geographic location, age, hours worked per week, weeks worked per year, and salary earnings is necessary. Census PUMS satisfies all these criteria and provides a large number of observations, essential for the analyses of ethnic minorities. Sample descriptive statistics for socioeconomic variables are listed in Tables 12.1 and 12.2. Due to the large number of observations, a 20 percent random sample was used for white workers, and 100 percent samples were used for black, Hispanic, and Asian workers. Because men tend to work more weeks per year and more hours per week than women, an annual salary comparison between males and females is misleading. This chapter uses the hourly wage, obtained by dividing the annual salary income by the product of weeks worked per year and hours worked per week. Observations with missing values of hourly wage were dropped. The top and bottom 1 percent of the hourly wage were excluded to minimize the bias that could occur if the outliers were included. Among those participating in the labor force with imputed hourly wage, white workers are slightly older than the rest of the sample. White men are the oldest, with a mean age of 39.2 years, and Hispanic men, with a mean age of 35.3 years, are the youngest. Across all racial and ethnic groups, men are found to work longer hours per week and more weeks per year. Consequently, men earn higher annual income. Men also earn higher hourly wages when controlling for hours worked per week and weeks worked per year. White and Asian workers report higher educational attainments than black and Hispanic workers in terms of number of years in schooling and the proportion with college and graduate degrees. Women report slightly higher number of years in school than men, except among Asian workers. Although no particular gender differences exist in the location of residence, black workers are heavily concentrated in the South (i.e., over 60 percent for both men and women), and Asian workers in the West. The percentage of men in management equals or exceeds that of women for all racial and ethnic groups.

TABLE 12.1.

Characteristics of Native-born Workers (Standard Deviation in Parentheses) White

Age Married Annual salary income Hourly wage Hours worked a week Weeks worked a year

Female*

White

Male*

Black

Female

Black

Male

39.05 0.612 24,578 13.73 36.98 45.99

(12.27) (0.482) (19,175) (8.81) (11.28) (11.32)

39.22 0.634 41,122 18.83 43.39 47.75

(12.22) (0.481) (39,749) (14.99) (11.52) (9.95)

37.35 0.374 22,207 12.92 37.88 44.33

(11.80) (0.484) (17,146) (9.06) (10.16) (13.06)

37.59 0.472 27,457 14.50 40.74 45.02

(11.98) (0.499) (21,640) (10.19) (11.15) (12.81)

13.75 0.092 0.290 0.265 0.090 0.182 0.071 0.014 0.006

(2.31) (0.289) (0.449) (0.441) (0.286) (0.386) (0.257) (0.117) (0.077)

13.61 0.123 0.298 0.241 0.069 0.177 0.059 0.021 0.011

(2.51) (0.328) (0.457) (0.428) (0.254) (0.382) (0.237) (0.142) (0.106)

13.24 0.156 0.295 0.301 0.072 0.120 0.045 0.008 0.003

(2.22) (0.363) (0.456) (0.459) (0.258) (0.325) (0.206) (0.086) (0.058)

12.82 0.207 0.344 0.257 0.056 0.098 0.028 0.007 0.004

(2.33) (0.405) (0.475) (0.437) (0.229) (0.297) (0.164) (0.083) (0.061)

Managerial** Professional Technical Service Farming Manual Moving

0.075 0.107 0.198 0.536 0.003 0.061 0.021

(0.263) (0.309) (0.398) (0.499) (0.051) (0.239) (0.142)

0.112 0.132 0.067 0.281 0.011 0.298 0.099

(0.315) (0.338) (0.251) (0.449) (0.102) (0.457) (0.299)

0.049 0.099 0.134 0.581 0.002 0.100 0.032

(0.218) (0.299) (0.341) (0.493) (0.044) (0.301) (0.177)

0.049 0.081 0.045 0.373 0.009 0.275 0.166

(0.217) (0.273) (0.208) (0.484) (0.093) (0.447) (0.372)

Northeast Midwest South West

0.205 0.283 0.327 0.185

(0.404) (0.450) (0.469) (0.389)

0.198 0.282 0.332 0.188

(0.399) (0.449) (0.471) (0.391)

0.131 0.175 0.610 0.084

(0.337) (0.379) (0.488) (0.278)

0.125 0.171 0.606 0.097

(0.331) (0.377) (0.489) (0.296)

Years of education Less than high school High school Some college (no degree) Associate degree Bachelor’s degree Master’s degree Professional degree Doctorate degree

Number of observations

409,184

457,327

Source: 2000 Census 5 percent Public Use Microdata Sample. *20 percent random sample. **Broadly defined occupational categories are based on 471 occupations used in the 2000 Census PUMS.

285,086

228,845

TABLE 12.2.

Characteristics of Foreign-born Workers (Standard Deviation in Parentheses) Hispanic

Age Married Annual salary income Hourly wage Hours worked a week Weeks worked a year

Female

Hispanic

Male

Asian

Female

Asian

Male

37.01 0.587 16,985 10.58 37.59 43.18

(11.23) (0.492) (14,231) (7.87) (10.46) (13.52)

35.31 0.614 22,193 11.84 42.01 45.26

(11.27) (0.487) (17,883) (8.74) (10.32) (11.71)

38.97 0.689 28,256 15.96 38.42 45.29

(11.24) (0.463) (23,753) (11.73) (11.78) (12.05)

38.91 0.697 42,997 21.15 42.35 46.64

(11.31) (0.459) (45,536) (18.74) (12.11) (10.92)

11.11 0.413 0.210 0.169 0.062 0.101 0.028 0.014 0.004

(4.33) (0.492) (0.408) (0.375) (0.240) (0.301) (0.165) (0.117) (0.065)

9.92 0.556 0.201 0.121 0.033 0.056 0.016 0.013 0.004

(4.46) (0.497) (0.400) (0.326) (0.179) (0.231) (0.126) (0.112) (0.061)

13.91 0.159 0.159 0.166 0.077 0.295 0.093 0.032 0.018

(3.71) (0.366) (0.366) (0.372) (0.266) (0.456) (0.291) (0.176) (0.134)

14.54 0.140 0.140 0.160 0.059 0.263 0.143 0.041 0.052

(3.79) (0.347) (0.347) (0.367) (0.236) (0.440) (0.349) (0.199) (0.222)

Managerial Professional Technical Service Farming Manual Moving

0.039 0.061 0.096 0.548 0.034 0.179 0.043

(0.194) (0.239) (0.295) (0.498) (0.181) (0.383) (0.203)

0.039 0.044 0.027 0.309 0.062 0.398 0.119

(0.196) (0.205) (0.161) (0.462) (0.242) (0.489) (0.324)

0.059 0.170 0.174 0.446 0.004 0.134 0.014

(0.235) (0.376) (0.379) (0.497) (0.061) (0.341) (0.116)

0.099 0.266 0.098 0.306 0.004 0.179 0.049

(0.298) (0.442) (0.297) (0.461) (0.064) (0.383) (0.216)

Northeast Midwest South West

0.168 0.065 0.278 0.488

(0.374) (0.247) (0.448) (0.499)

0.132 0.078 0.301 0.489

(0.338) (0.268) (0.459) (0.499)

0.207 0.106 0.200 0.487

(0.405) (0.308) (0.400) (0.499)

0.231 0.110 0.208 0.450

(0.421) (0.313) (0.406) (0.498)

Years of education Less than high school High school Some college (no degree) Associate degree Bachelor’s degree Master’s degree Professional degree Doctorate degree

Number of observations

138,154

Source: 2000 Census 5 percent Public Use Microdata Sample.

232,659

82,632

93,280

Gender Inequality in the U.S. Labor Market

273

Another notable pattern in the occupational distribution is the heavy representation of women in the service occupation categories. Approximately 55 percent of women in the white, black, and Hispanic samples report that their occupations are service-related. Asian women are most highly represented in professional occupation categories with 45 percent reporting their occupations as service-related. The proportion of males employed full-time (at least thirty-five hours per week and forty weeks per year) is the highest for white men at 82.3 percent. The lowest is for black men at 74.3 percent, whereas Asian and Hispanic men rank 79.5 percent and 76.6 percent, respectively. Women work fewer hours than men in paid employment. The proportion of full-time female workers is the highest for Asian women at 69.5 percent and lowest for Hispanic women at 63.2 percent. Black and white women come in at 68.2 percent and 65.8 percent, respectively. Blacks are less likely to be married than workers in other groups. Only 37.4 percent of black women are married, which is the lowest proportion for any group. Black females may be more likely to head single-parent households than those in other ethnic or racial groups.10 Two notable patterns emerge in terms of number of observations in the sample. Hispanic men are substantially overrepresented, with 68.5 percent more Hispanic males than females, and black men are underrepresented, with 19.7 percent fewer black males than females.11 Black men’s underrepresentation is interesting, given that men in general tend to participate and work more actively in the labor market. Among blacks, women tend to be overrepresented in the labor force; one important reason for this is that black women traditionally have been more committed to the labor force than white women.12

EARNINGS Although recent years have seen some narrowing of the long-standing gender earnings gap, women still receive substantially less than men. Women’s median income was 60.5 percent of that of men in 1980 and rose to 76.3 percent in 2003.13 If this pattern of narrowing gender earnings gap continues, it will still take another forty to fifty years for women to attain earnings equality with men. At this rate, even young women just starting their careers may not be able to see the earnings parity while they remain in the labor market.14 What are the sources of the gender earnings gap in the U.S. labor market? Much research has been and continues to be conducted to answer this question. Predominant theories about the gender earnings gap pertain to human capital and labor market discrimination. Human capital theory postulates that differences in relative levels of human capital such as education and work experience are responsible for the gender earnings gap and other gender-related labor market inequalities, such as occupational segregation. However, a significant

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portion of gender earnings gap cannot be explained by the human capital theory.15 This remaining portion is generally attributed to varying degrees of discrimination against women. Though overt and blatant discrimination stemming from prejudice now occur less frequently due to social climate changes and the enforcement of antidiscrimination laws, statistical discrimination or subtle discrimination are still common in the U.S. labor market. Statistical discrimination against women occurs when employers have limited information about their skills and other labor market–related characteristics, such as turnover propensity. In this situation, employers have an incentive to use easily observable characteristics such as gender to discriminate against women. 2000 Census PUMS Evidence of Gender and Racial Earnings Gap Race and ethnicity have long played an important role in shaping employment opportunities and labor market outcomes. Table 12.3 presents the pattern of hourly wage for white, black, Hispanic, and Asian workers. White and Asian women (men) earn relatively higher average hourly wages of $13.73 ($18.83) and $15.96 ($21.15) respectively, whereas black and Hispanic women (men) earn relatively lower hourly wages of $12.92 ($14.50) and $10.58 ($11.84), respectively. Table 12.3 presents the gender and racial earnings gap. For both men and women, white and Asian workers earn more than black and Hispanic workers. However, the gender wage ratio is higher for black and Hispanic workers. Although this finding may prima facie appear to reflect the better position of black and Hispanic women, a more accurate interpretation can be found in the lower hourly wages of black and Hispanic men. In other words, though black and Hispanic workers of both sexes earn less than white and Asian workers, the wage gaps are bigger for men. Table 12.3 shows that black and Hispanic men earn 77 percent and 63 percent, respectively, of what white men earn, whereas black and Hispanic women earn 94 percent and 77 percent of white women’s wages, respectively.

TABLE 12.3.

Hourly Wage, Gender Wage Ratio, and Racial Wage Ratio

Hourly wage for women Hourly wage for men Gender wage ratio Racial and ethnic wage ratio Women Men

White

Black

$13.73 $18.83 0.729

$12.92 $14.50 0.891

$10.58 $11.84 0.894

$15.96 $21.15 0.755

0.941 0.770

0.771 0.629

1.162 1.123

1* 1

Source: 2000 Census 5 percent PUMS. *White is the base group for racial and ethnic wage ratio.

Hispanic

Asian

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275

Age is an important factor in determining workers’ earnings and wages. As workers age, they accumulate more job market experiences, which should be reflected in higher wages. However, men’s and women’s wages may not increase in the same manner as this occurs. Table 12.4, which lists the gender wage ratio across five equally divided age cohorts, depicts the effects of age on the gender wage ratio.16 In most cases, except for black men and Asian women, workers’ hourly wages reaches a peak when they are between forty-six and fifty-five years old. Black men earn the highest wage between ages fifty-six and sixty-five, and Asian women between thirty-six and forty-five. For native-born citizens, white men at ages forty-six to fifty-five earn the highest hourly wage at $23.13; black women at ages sixteen to twenty-five earn the lowest hourly wage at $8.75. Among immigrants, Asian men at ages forty-six to fifty-five earn the highest hourly wage at $23.26 and Hispanic women at ages sixteen to twenty-five earn the lowest at $8.32, which is the lowest hourly wage for all groups. Although workers earn more as they age, the wage gaps between age groups sixteen to twenty-five and twenty-six to thirty-five is the largest for all racial and ethnic groups. One reason is because some workers in the sixteen to twenty-five years age group have not completed high school. The lack of a high school diploma and lack of job experiences due to their youth may lead workers in this age cohort into working in occupations that command low wages. How are gender wage ratio and age related? Figure 12.1 shows the patterns of gender wage ratios of all racial and ethnic groups across five age cohorts. Across all age cohorts and racial and ethnic groups, women earn less than men. Another noteworthy pattern is the relationship between age and wage. As workers age, the gender wage ratios become lower in all cases, except for black TABLE 12.4. Hourly Wage and Gender Wage Ratio across Age Cohorts 16–25

26–35

36–45

46–55

56–65

White women White men Wage ratio

$8.67 9.78 0.887

13.77 16.81 0.819

15 21.05 0.713

15.69 23.13 0.678

14.45 22.28 0.649

Black women Black men Wage ratio

$8.75 9.3 0.941

12.42 13.8 0.900

13.94 15.73 0.886

15.67 17.5 0.895

14.67 17.65 0.831

Hispanic women Hispanic men Wage ratio

$8.32 8.72 0.954

10.41 11.42 0.912

11.29 13.42 0.841

11.74 14.16 0.829

11.38 13.82 0.823

$11.41 12.92 0.883

16.87 20.81 0.811

17.12 22.99 0.745

16.11 23.26 0.693

15.54 22.77 0.682

Asian women Asian men Wage ratio

Source: 2000 Census 5 percent PUMS.

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Management, Gender, and Ethnicity in the United States

FIGURE 12.1. Gender wage ratio by age cohort. Source: 2000 Census 5 percent PUMS.

workers ages forty-six to fifty-five, suggesting that the gender wage gap widens for older workers. Thus, older women seem doubly disadvantaged. As Gregory succinctly states, ‘‘women get old at a younger age than men.’’17 White and Asian workers have similar gender wage ratios with respect to age cohorts; so do black and Hispanic workers. Again gender wage gaps are smaller for black and Hispanic workers than for white and Asian workers for all age cohorts. Education and Earnings Education is one of the most important factors in enhancing employees’ productivity at work and marketability in the labor market. A Census Bureau report shows that in 2003, for the second year in a row, women had a higher rate of high school completion (85 percent) than men (84 percent). Over the past decade, women also made greater strides in college education. Women experienced an increase of nearly 7 percentage points in the proportion with a bachelor’s degree in the past decade, reaching 26 percent, whereas men experienced an increase of about 4 percentage points, reaching 29 percent. The proportions having completed some college (or more education) were more similar—52 percent of women and 53 percent of men.18 In U.S. society, where individual ability is the most valuable criterion, education has been regarded as the key to opportunity and success. In particular, obtaining a college education is considered crucial in determining an individual’s eventual location in the social class system and therefore has even

Gender Inequality in the U.S. Labor Market

277

more important implications for intergenerational mobility.19 Because no convincing evidence shows that intergenerational mobility has improved over time, children of low-wage workers without a college education also may lack an undergraduate degree and therefore also earn low wages.20 Tables 12.1 and 12.2 list detailed information about the educational attainments of racial and ethnic groups. For both men and women, white and Asian workers’ educational attainments are higher than those of black and Hispanic workers. Hispanic workers’ educational levels are the lowest for both men and women at ten and eleven years, respectively, which are insufficient for high school diplomas. Table 12.5 and Figure 12.2 show the gender wage gap by eight detailed education categories across racial and ethnic groups. Although women’s progress in educational attainment in recent decades partly explains the narrowing gender wage gap, at every education level, however, women continue to earn less than similarly educated men. Educational gains have not yet translated into full equity for women in the labor market. Among women, whites and Asians are more likely to have a college degree than blacks and Hispanics. In all race categories except Hispanic, the percentage having a college degree, excluding graduate degrees, is slightly higher TABLE 12.5.

Gender Wage Gap by Educational Categories Edu1

Edu2

White women White men Wage ratio

$8.66 11.82 0.732

10.98 12.37 14.53 17.91 21.91 22.72 23.92 15.26 17.19 18.78 25.04 29.38 40.37 32.34 0.720 0.720 0.774 0.715 0.746 0.563 0.740

Black women Black men Wage ratio Hispanic women Hispanic men Wage ratio

9.39 11.12 0.844

10.87 12.5 14.31 17.96 23.23 23.23 25.1 13.01 14.89 16.71 20.32 24.47 27.74 27.01 0.836 0.839 0.856 0.884 0.949 0.837 0.929

8.62 10.24 0.842

9.86 11.29 12.04 14.39 19.22 16.43 21.94 11.48 13.59 14.44 17.97 22.16 19.8 24.98 0.859 0.831 0.834 0.801 0.867 0.829 0.878

Asian women Asian men Wage ratio

9.98 11.82 0.844

11.44 12.98 15.66 19.31 23.26 27.08 24.58 13.41 15.54 17.92 23.84 31.04 39.87 32.47 0.853 0.835 0.874 0.810 0.749 0.679 0.757

Source: 2000 Census 5 percent PUMS. Edu1: Less than high school. Edu2: High school. Edu3: Some college (no degree). Edu4: Associate degree. Edu5: Bachelor’s degree. Edu6: Master’s degree. Edu7: Professional degree. Edu8: Doctorate degree.

Edu3

Edu4

Edu5

Edu6

Edu7

Edu8

278

Management, Gender, and Ethnicity in the United States

FIGURE 12.2. Gender wage gap by education. Source: 2000 Census 5 percent PUMS.

for women than for men. The gender gap in college education is significant for the Hispanic sample, 10.5 percent for women versus 5.6 percent for men. As expected, women with college degrees earn more than those without. For example, on an hourly wage basis in the 2000 Census PUMS data, white women with four-year college degrees (Edu5) earn approximately 65 percent more than the hourly wage of white women with high school education (Edu2), $17.91 versus $10.98. The college premium of approximately 65 percent higher hourly wage also applies to black ($17.96) and Asian women ($19.31). For Hispanic women, the college premium is much smaller at 45 percent, mainly because the college-educated Hispanic educated women earn at least 25 percent less, at $14.39, than comparably educated women in other races. Figure 12.2 shows downward spikes in the gender wage ratio for the professional degree category that includes some of the most lucrative occupations.21 This suggests the presence of a glass ceiling, in which women with relatively high earnings and positions still cannot reach the top due to remaining barriers. Inspection of the 2000 Census PUMS data reveals that for all age cohorts and across all racial and ethnic groups, educational attainments in the form of number of years in school and the proportion of college degree are the highest for age cohort twenty-six to thirty-five. The details are listed in Table 12.6. Interestingly, women surpass men in college education at the age cohort twenty-five to thirty-six for all racial and ethnic groups. Black and Hispanic workers are found to be less likely to have college degrees. Given the importance of a college education, it is almost certain that racial earnings gap will persist into the future. Workers in the age cohort twenty-six to thirty-five will most likely remain in the labor market for another twenty to thirty years, or longer as life expectancies

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TABLE 12.6. Educational Attainment and Proportion of College Graduates for Age Cohort 26–35 Years of Education White women White men Black women Black men Hispanic women Hispanic men Asian women Asian men

14.2 14.1 13.5 13.1 11.5 10.1 14.7 15.1

Proportion of College Graduates 0.26 0.23 0.15 0.12 0.12 0.06 0.34 0.31

Source: 2000 Census 5 percent PUMS.

improve and more people continue to work into their seventies. When this happens, questions to be answered include: How large will the gender wage gap be for these young workers? Will women’s greater educational attainment relative to men in the age twenty-six to thirty-five cohort help narrow the gender wage gap in the future? Will women’s educational advantage cancel out the widening of the gender wage gap that typically occurs as workers get older? The prognosis here is still uncertain because more factors must be considered to properly answer such questions. If a greater proportion of women than men earn college degrees, other things equal, women’s earnings should increase. However, this may not happen because what women study in college22 and what they do in the labor market may be more important than how long they stay in school.23 Women’s statistical dominance among college students is expected to continue. According to a report by American Association of University Women, 56 percent of undergraduates in the United States were women in 2000, up from 42 percent in 1970. The proportion of women graduate students grew from 39 to 58 percent during this period. The most dramatic change occurred in professional programs such as medicine, law, and business, where the proportion of women shot up from 9 percent in 1970 to 47 percent in 2000.24 Although Asian workers report more years of education and a higher proportion of college degree than the rest of workers, some may have attended college outside the United States. Foreign college degrees may not necessarily translate into higher earning in the U.S. labor market. Approximately 28 percent of Asian women and 37.3 percent of Asian men of age cohort twenty-six to thirty-five are believed to have received their college education outside the United States.25 Regardless of gender, those with college degrees enjoyed a real increase in purchasing power between 1973 and 2001. Women without these credentials saw little or no improvement, and men with a high school education or less saw

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a decline in the purchasing power of their earnings. Nevertheless, though women with a college degree earn considerably more than those without it, females still earn less than males with similar educational backgrounds. In fact, in the data used for this chapter, men are found to earn more than women in all categories of educational attainment across all racial and ethnic groups. Besides increasing earnings power in the current generation, having a college degree has long-term implications. High school graduates whose parents have no post–high school education are three times less likely to enroll in a four-year college than their counterparts with a parent who graduated from college.26 Because Hispanic workers are less likely to earn a college degree than any other group, their income potential and opportunities are severely curtailed. Moreover, their communities and the nation lose the benefit of their full participation. Because power and success are so closely linked to educational attainment, our notion of U.S. society as an equitable place is severely challenged when a significant population group has an obviously limited educational achievement.27 To the extent that Hispanic workers are least likely to have obtained a college education, their low wages will most likely persist in the future. The percent of black women who are single heads of households may be another concern. Earning less than all male workers and all other female workers except Hispanic women, black women comprise 31.6 percent of singlemother households. The economic hardship they experience may adversely affect their children’s educational attainment, thereby perpetuating low economic status in the future.

OCCUPATIONS A survey by Catalyst, an organization to promote women in upper-level jobs, shows that although women made up 47 percent of the U.S. workforce in 2000, they held only 11.7 percent of board of director positions in Fortune 500 companies. Furthermore, only 12.5 percent of the corporate officers of those firms were women. According to a projection based on the average rate of increase in appointments of women to corporate offices, more women than men will be employed in the workforce in 2020. But even then, men will still hold nearly 75 percent of such positions in Fortune 500 companies.28 Barriers to women’s advancement are not restricted to the corporate hierarchies in the U.S. labor market. Even at the United Nations, which advocates issues of international peace and justice, including gender equality, women still face obstacles in reaching senior management and professional positions. In 2004, women formed 83.3 percent of staff at the lowest professional level, P-1, but 16.7 percent of the highest staff level, the Under-Secretaries-General.29 Gender occupational segregation is another important factor at the heart of debates about gender inequality in the U.S. labor market.30 Women are often

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segregated into a small number of female-dominated occupations, thereby making their proportion in those occupations much higher than the ratio of women in the entire labor market. A side effect of occupational segregation is that most of those predominantly female occupations, labeled as women’s jobs, pay low wages, even controlling for measured personal characteristics of workers and a variety of characteristics of occupations.31 Gender occupational segregation has been considered to be responsible for the gender earnings gap. Persistent occupational segregation may lead women entering the job market or in early career stages to wrongly conclude that women’s lower position in the occupational distribution is legitimate. Occupational choice is often the product of tradition and culture. Because tradition dies hard, the persistence of gender occupational segregation may discourage young women from developing their full potential in terms of education and job training even before they enter the labor market. This may perpetuate gender inequalities in the future by positioning many women only at lower levels of the career ladder. From the demand perspective, taste-based discrimination against women has been blamed as a causal factor in gender occupational segregation. Even without this type of blatant discrimination, statistical discrimination, which was defined earlier, also may have contributed to occupational segregation. An argument often made from the supply side is that women generally anticipate shorter, less continuous careers and are forced to choose jobs that are compatible with household and family duties perceived to be theirs. This type of situation, described as societal discrimination by Blau and colleagues, leads women to take occupations that require smaller human capital investment and have lower penalties for breaks in the careers.32 As Table 12.7 shows, the gender wage gap is prevalent in every occupational category across all racial and ethnic groups, ranging from a 3.1 percent gap for Hispanic women in the farming category, to 32.5 percent for white women in managerial occupations. Gender wage gaps generally seem less severe in such labor-intensive categories as farming and moving and also are less pronounced for black and Hispanic than for white and Asian women. This does not mean that black and Hispanic women’s labor market positions are better than those of white and Asian counterparts because black and Hispanic men fare less well than white and Asian men. Though black and Hispanic women earn 94 and 77 percent of what white women earn, the pay gap by race is wider for male workers. Black and Hispanic men earn only 76 and 57 percent, respectively, of white men’s pay. Most of the top fifteen female-dominated occupations, in which at least 500,000 workers are employed, are secondary, meaning that they assist other workers in higher positions.33 Also many, except for nursing, neither pay well nor lead workers into a promotion track. Two of the most highly female-dominated occupations are secretaries and administrative assistants and receptions and information clerks. Employers routinely engage in ageism, favoring younger women for positions in these occupations.34

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TABLE 12.7. Gender Wage Ratio across Racial and Ethnic Groups and Occupational Categories Managerial Professional Technical

Service

Farming

Manual

Moving

White women White men Wage ratio

$18.88 27.95 0.675

17.98 24.93 0.721

17.45 24.13 0.723

11.21 15.92 0.704

8.35 10.51 0.794

11.24 16.09 0.699

10.76 14.19 0.758

Black women Black men Wage ratio

18.56 21.38 0.868

17.42 19.94 0.874

16.88 19.27 0.876

11.12 12.58 0.884

8.76 9.2 0.952

11.35 14.39 0.789

11.39 13.25 0.860

Hispanic women Hispanic men Wage ratio

15.87 18.64 0.851

15.87 18.84 0.842

14.72 18.43 0.799

9.74 10.74 0.907

8.03 8.29 0.969

8.92 11.54 0.773

8.75 11.24 0.778

Asian women Asian men Wage ratio

20.86 30 0.695

22.04 28.03 0.786

22.39 29.64 0.755

12.22 14.46 0.845

9.07 11.75 0.772

10.84 15.05 0.720

10.94 13.74 0.796

Source: 2000 Census 5 percent PUMS.

Nursing, though a female-dominated occupation, does not have the same disadvantages in earnings and opportunity associated with other such occupations. The nursing profession requires special training and pays higher wages than nearly all top fifteen female-dominated occupations. However, even within nursing, the 2000 Census PUMS revealed that men earn more than women across all racial and ethnic groups.35 For preschool teachers, another occupation in which women predominate, females earn less than males; the earnings gap ranges from 2 percent for Hispanics to 37 percent for whites. Although gender occupational segregation has been believed to be a major source of gender earnings inequality, women who work in occupations where segregation is not particularly severe still encounter a gender wage gap. Two of the most prestigious occupations in terms of social status are lawyers and medical doctors (physician and surgeon); women represented 29.4 of job holders in both in 2004.36 Even in these relatively integrated, elite occupations for which a professional graduate degree is a prerequisite, women still earn less than men across all racial and ethnic groups according to 2000 Census PUMS. This is partly because white male medical doctors and lawyers earn the highest wages in comparison with white women and all other racial and ethnic groups; thus the gender wage gaps are the largest for white workers in these occupations. For lawyers, gender wage ratios are 68 percent for whites, 92.4 percent for blacks, 90.2 percent for Hispanics, and 89.2 percent for Asians. For physicians and surgeons, gender wage ratios are 50.6 percent for whites, 81.1 percent for blacks, 84.4 percent for Hispanics, and 66.4 percent for Asians. The different impact of education on men’s and women’s earnings has been neglected in the debate about the effects of educational attainment on the

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gender earnings gap and occupational segregation. Women’s presence in professional programs, such as business, law, and medical schools, is rising. However, even when a woman has equivalent qualifications as her male peers, her advancement in narrowly defined occupational categories where old boy networks flourish is, unfortunately, not ensured. Therefore, physicians who are female still earn less than their comparably trained male peers. The findings from the data that indicate that even the most highly educated and trained women still encounter a gender wage gap have the following implications. First, although educational attainment enhances a worker’s wage, the pattern differs between the sexes and is skewed in men’s favor. Second, the findings may be due to the presence of internal segregation within such broadly defined occupations as lawyers and medical doctors, where many specialties and subspecialties exist. The percentage of women partners at America’s largest law firms slightly increased from 15.7 percent in 1998 to 17.1 percent in 2004. However, these numbers may equalize in the future because 48 percent of JD enrollment in 2004 were women, and the proportion of female associates at large law firms grew from 39 percent in 1998 to 47.8 percent in 2004.37 The gender gap persists, however. The typical female physician received $55,000 less in total compensation than her male counterpart. One reason typically cited is that women are more likely to choose lower-paying specialties or those in less demanding fields.38 For example, few women are invasive cardiologists or orthopedic or thoracic surgeons. Women physicians also tend to work fewer hours than their male colleagues.39 Women medical doctors earn less than male doctors based on a survey for ten categories. Gender earnings gaps are larger for specialties with higher earnings. Two specialties with the highest earnings are invasive cardiology and orthopedic surgery, where gender earnings ratios based on median earnings in 2001 were 79.2 and 66.3 percent, respectively. Two specialties with the lowest earnings are family practice without obstetrics and internal medicine, where gender earnings ratio are 83.4 and 84.3 percent, respectively.40 One factor contributing to disparity is that female doctors may prefer not to be self-employed.41 Many believe that hospitals offer greater job security and recognize that at most urban hospitals, there is no need to be on call twenty-four hours a day as in private practice. Thus, physicians who avoid self-employment would have more flexibility to attend to family or other concerns. The lower wages of women lawyers and physicians are due to vertical segregation, which refers to the distribution of men and women within the same occupation when one sex is more likely to be at a higher grade or level. As women’s educational attainment rises, so do their earnings. A recent report shows that approximately half of the incoming students in medical schools and law schools are women. After graduation, with proper training and licenses, they surely will earn more than men without such qualifications. Female lawyers will make more than male paralegals; female physicians will be paid more than

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male nurses. This implies that education and training may reduce horizontal gender occupational segregation, which exists across occupations but will not necessarily lessen vertical segregation. Although the negative impact of gender occupational segregation on the wage gap is well established, these two aspects of gender inequalities are related in a more complex manner than normally assumed. In some male-dominated occupations, women may earn as much as men due to the skill-based nature of compensation. However, even in nursing, one of the most female-dominated occupations, a gender wage gap favoring men still exists. In the relatively integrated occupations such as lawyer and physician, women are paid less than men despite their professional degrees and training. These findings suggest that more factors must be considered to understand the relationship between gender occupational segregation and the gender earnings gap. Despite the changes in the notion of women’s role at home and in society, many women still ponder over noneconomic factors, such as raising children, dealing with family concerns, deciding whether to work, and choosing occupations. To identify sources of occupational segregation and wage gap, more efforts should be focused on analyzing the sociological and psychological aspects of the decision-making process of women in the labor market. Perception of gender roles, which is important in determining the women’s future career path, develops in the very early stages of work. Consequently employees encounter gender inequality in the labor market as early as in their teens. Based on a Dutch data set, boys and girls with almost identical backgrounds seem to accumulate different human capital in the earliest stage of their labor market careers. Even within the highly homogenous groups, boys earn substantially more than girls. Furthermore, the earnings gap cannot be explained by differences in participation rates and hours of work or by gender wage gaps within job types. Rather, it occurs because girls work more in job types with relatively low wages, in particular, baby-sitting.42 Though these findings are based on Dutch data, similar anecdotal evidence supports the existence of gender differences in teens’ compensation in the United States.

CONCLUSION Title VII has had an enormous impact in providing employment opportunities for women and allowing them to advance. Now, four decades after Title VII, gender inequality in the U.S. labor market persists across racial and ethnic groups, raising the question of whether true gender-based workplace equality is possible. Amartya Sen, a Nobel Prize laureate in economics, believes that ‘‘gender inequality can take many different forms, not being a homogeneous phenomenon, but a collection of disparate and interlinked problems.’’ He argues that ‘‘informed and critical agency’’ is important in combating gender inequality of every kind.43

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Due to the changes in the social climate and the enforcement of antidiscrimination laws, identifying and addressing the blatantly overt discrimination against women in the labor market is less problematic. The covert and subtle discrimination, however, remains difficult to prove. Because much gender discrimination emanates from a false presumption about women’s ability and work ethic, reducing it will be possible only after ascertaining accurate data about women’s qualifications and the changing views of women in the labor market. Public education beginning at a young age may positively affect the latter, but early socialization experiences, which parents and other caregivers strongly influence, are also important. Despite the fact that occupational segregation and gender earnings gap still persist even among highly educated women, the progress of women depends heavily on educational attainment. College and higher education are increasingly important to women’s success in the labor market. Policy attention should be focused not only on encouraging female students, especially young minority women, to attend and graduate from college but also on urging them to study subjects that are traditionally known as male fields (such as engineering) that are associated with higher pay, while noting that educational parity alone does not ensure the elimination of gender gap. With the foreign-born population steadily rising, discussion of the gender and race inequality issues is incomplete without considering immigrant workers. Between 2000 and 2100, the non-Hispanic white percentage of the U.S. population is expected to drop from 72 to 40 percent and will continue to fall after 2100. In contrast, the Hispanic share will jump from 12 to 32 percent and will continue to rise. Although the Asian population is expected to grow from 4 to 13 percent, non-Hispanic blacks will grow marginally from 13 to 15 percent.44 Mainly due to the lower educational attainment, Hispanic workers, Mexican immigrants in particular, report low economic status in the U.S. labor market.45 Issues surrounding gender inequality are very complex, especially in the era of racial and ethnic diversity. To address labor market inequalities across gender, race, and ethnic groups, policy should focus on problems that differ across racial and ethnic groups. Although all groups of women suffer from horizontal and vertical segregation, the latter is a more prevalent problem for white and Asian women than for black and Hispanic women. Though gender wage gaps are smaller for black and Hispanic workers, this is due to the lower economic performance of black and Hispanic men. For Hispanic workers, the ethnic wage gap seems more common than the gender wage gap. Due to much economic hardship among Hispanic workers without high school diplomas, returning to school is almost impossible for them. An alternative to the regular day school is the community-based night school where English language education can be offered to improve workers’ communication skills. This will in turn enhance their marketability and may eliminate their current status as the lowest socioeconomic group.

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Many women’s educational achievements and occupational choices reflect influences of the culture in which they were raised. Therefore, understanding and projecting gender inequalities in Hispanic and Asian communities require a thorough knowledge about male-dominated Asian and Hispanic culture. Although some women may voluntarily choose to work in low-paying, lowstatus positions in return for a more flexible work schedule to fulfill family and other obligations, society has not pressured men to make such decisions.46 Many women are literally forced into accepting their ‘‘choices’’ due to lack of better alternatives. Strong public commitment to parental leave for men and women, removal of the stigma associated with using it, and reliable child care policies may address some of these concerns. In addition to being a form of social injustice, gender occupational segregation reflects inefficient use of human resources and rigidities in the labor market and society.47 Meritocracy is highly valued in the United States and has been a basis for fulfillment of the American dream. What workers know and can do in the labor market should take precedence over their gender, race, and ethnicity.

NOTES 1. ‘‘Gender Inequality at Work,’’ UWA Research Bulletin, Summer 2003. Available online at www.uaw.org/publications/jobs_pay/index2003.cfm. 2. Title VII is the short name given to various provisions contained in the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and later amended by the Equal Employment Act of 1972. It is the broadest-based and most comprehensive legislation in the area of antidiscrimination. Title VII makes it unlawful for an employer to fail to hire, refuse to hire, to discharge, to classify, to segregate, to deprive of employment opportunities, or otherwise discriminate or adversely effect the status of the employee or the compensations, terms, conditions or privileges of the employee on the basis of the employee’s race, color, religion, gender, or national origin. Raymond F. Gregory, Women and Workplace Discrimination: Overcoming Barriers to Gender Equality (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2003). 3. For 1950 data, see Economic Report of the President 2000, Table B-37. For 2004 data, see Economic Report of the President 2005, Table B-39. 4. Francine D. Blau, Patricia Simpson, and Deborah Anderson, ‘‘Continuing Progress? Trends in Occupational Segregation in the United States over the 1970s and 1980s,’’ NBER Working Paper no. 6716, 1998. 5. In 1952, after Sandra Day O’Connor graduated third in her class from Stanford Law School—a year early—she could not even find work in private practice as a female attorney. Three decades later, Justice O’Connor began her journey to be the first woman appointed to the U.S. Supreme Court in 1981, serving in that position until 2005. 6. Whether education enhances worker’s productivities or is just a sheepskin has been a hot topic of many debates. Even if education does not make workers more productive, many employers still consider education a strong signal of worker’s productivity because it takes dedication, perseverance, and intelligence to complete school

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successfully, especially four-year college. College-educated workers are also believed to be more adaptable and quick to respond to the always changing high-technology work environments. Paul G. Keat and Philip Young, Managerial Economics, 5th ed. (New York: Prentice Hall, 2006). 7. An immigrant is defined to be a person who was born outside the United States. 8. Over the past three decades, the proportion of foreign-born population, or immigrants, in the United States increased from 4.7 percent in 1970 to 11.1 percent in 2000. This is the highest record since 1930, when 11.6 percent of the population was foreign-born. The 31.1 million immigrants reported in Census 2000 represent a 57 percent increase over the 1990s, which exceeds 40 percent in 1980s and 47 percent in 1970s. Profile of the Foreign-Born Population in the United Sates: 2000, P23–206, December 2001, U.S. Census Bureau. 9. Workers who are older than sixty-five are excluded because there is a risk that nonrandom mortality would bias the sample of older workers in favor of the more healthy. 10. In March 2000, there were 9,681,000 total single mothers. The proportions of white, black, and Hispanics were 49.2 percent, 31.6 percent, 16.2 percent, respectively ( Jason Fields and Lynne Casper, Current Population Report P20–537: America’s Families and Living Arrangements, 2001, Table 4). The remaining 3.1 percent is assumed to apply for Asian and other omitted groups. According to a census report, the racial and ethnic composition of the United States in 2000 was as follows: 75.1 percent white, 12.3 percent black, 12.5 percent Hispanics, and 3.6 percent Asian. The reason that the sum of the proportions exceed 100 percent is some individuals were counted in more than one category (Elizabeth Grieco and Rachel Cassidy, Overview of Race and Hispanic Origin 2000, Census 2000 Brief, March 2001, C2KBR/01-1, Table 1). The comparison between the racial/ethnic composition of the U.S. population and the proportion of single mothers implies that black women may be more likely to head single-parent households than those in other ethnic or racial groups. 11. For white and Asians groups, there are more men than women at 11.7 percent and 12.9 percent, respectively. 12. Mary Corcoran, ‘‘The Economic Progress of African American Women,’’ in Irene Browne, ed., Latinas and African American Women at Work (New York: Russell Sage, 1999). For the most part, black women throughout history have been forced to work outside their homes—forced first by slave holders and then by the threat of poverty that plagued their families after emancipation ( Jacqueline Jones, Labor of Love, Labor of Sorrow: Black Women, Work, and the Family from Slavery to the Present [New York: Basic Books, 1985], p. 323). 13. The figures are based on money income of year-round full-time workers. For 1980 data, see Economic Report of the President 2000, Table B-31. For 2003 data, see Economic Report of the President 2005, Table B-33. 14. The gender wage ratio varies significantly by demographic group. The ratio was about 88 percent for both blacks and Hispanics in 2003; for whites it was 79 percent; and for Asians it was 78 percent. Highlights of Women’s Earnings, Report no. 978, U.S. Department of Labor Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2004. 15. Francine Blau argues that human capital variables (actual labor market experience, education in years, whether the person has a college diploma, whether the person has an advanced degree) explain 32 percent of gender wage gap in 1988 data. On

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the other hand, Solomon Polachek argues that depending on methods, the proportion of gender wage gap explained by human capital varies from less than 7 percent to anywhere between 85 and 95 percent. (‘‘Why Is There a Gender Wage Gap and Why Is It Shrinking?’’ Debate between Solomon Polachek and Francine Blau at the Center for the Study of Inequality, Cornell University on March 2003); Available online at www .inequality.com/events/papers/Contorversies%20About%20Inequality% 20Debate%20 Series/CAIDebate2.PDF. 16. Because the data used here are cross-sectional, the results in Table 10.4 fail to show the dynamics between age and gender wage ratio. In other words, the gender wage ratio of white workers age sixteen to twenty-five will not necessarily be 0.713, which is the gender wage ratio of white workers in age cohort thirty-six to forty-five, after they spend another twenty years in the labor market. 17. Gregory, Women and Workplace Discrimination. 18. ‘‘Some college’’ includes respondents who have completed some college but have no degree and those who have completed an associate’s degree; Nicole Stoops, Educational Attainment in the United States: 2003, Current Population Reports, P20–550, 2004. 19. Sharlene Nagy Hesse-Biber and Gregg Lee Carter, Working Women in America: Split Dreams, 2nd ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), p. 137. 20. Gottschalk used Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID) to find that of those who were in the lowest quintile of incomes in 1974, 42.1 percent were still in the same position in 1991. Of those individuals who managed to escape the lowest quintile, most did not make a significant progress, with the largest group moving to the next quintile. Only 7.8 percent were able to move up to the top quintile. Peter Gottschalk, ‘‘Inequality, Income Growth, and Mobility: The Basic Facts,’’ Journal of Economic Perspectives 11 (1997): 21–40. 21. Examples of professional degree are MD, DDS, DVM, and JD. MBA is included in graduate degree. Census 2000 Summary File 3 Technical Documentation, SF3/ 15 (RV), March 2005. 22. According to Lois Joy, ‘‘Encouraging women to complete college and major in traditionally male-dominated fields has, in the past, contributed to the closing of the wage gap, but the evidence suggests that educational parity alone does not ensure labor market parity.’’ Lois Joy, ‘‘Salaries of Recent Male and Female College Graduates: Educational and Labor Market Effects,’’ Industrial and Labor Relations Review 56(4) (2003): 606–21. 23. Changes in labor market experiences have been more important than changes in education in closing the gender wage gap. Blau and Kahn indicate that changes in accumulated experience have been far larger and explain a much larger share of the increase in female/male wages than do changes in education; Francine D. Blau and Lawrence M. Kahn, ‘‘Swimming Upstream: Trends in the Gender Wage Differential in the 1980s,’’ Journal of Labor Economics 15(1) (1997): 1–42. 24. National Center for Education Statistics, Digest of Education Statistics (Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Education, 2002). 25. Census PUMS does not provide information about the place of college education. I used the available information on age and years of entry to the United States to impute the number of individual who were believed to receive their college education outside the United States, assuming that college education was received by age twenty-four. 26. The Condition of Education 2002, NCES 2002–25 (Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 2002).

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27. Alana M. Zambone and Margarita Alicea-Sa´ez, ‘‘Latino Students in Pursuit of Higher Education: What Helps or Hinders Their Success?’’ in Valentina Kloosterman, ed., Latino Students in American Schools: Historical and Contemporary Views (Westport, CT: Praeger, 2003). 28. ‘‘2000 Catalyst Census of Women Corporate Officers and Top Earners,’’ Catalyst Fact Sheet, available online at www.catalystwomen.org. 29. Global Policy Forum 2004, available online at www.globalpolicy.org/soceecon/ inequal/gender/2004. 30. Gender occupational segregation refers to the tendency for men and women to be employed in different occupations. 31. Francine C. Blau and Lawrence M. Kahn, ‘‘Gender Difference in Pay,’’ Journal of Economic Perspectives 4(4) (2000): 75–99. 32. Francine D. Blau, Patricia Simpson, and Deborah Anderson, ‘‘Continuing Progress? Trends in Occupational Segregation in the United States over the 1970s and 1980s,’’ NBER Working Paper no. 6716, 1998. Some evidence exists to counter this notion. Women spend more time in the workforce than ever before. Sixty-one percent of women with children under the age of two and 78 percent of mothers with school-age children remain in the workforce (Pay Equity, American Association of University Women; available online at www.aauw.org/issue_advocacy/actionpages/positionpapers/PDFs/payequity .pdf ). 33. Table 11, Employed persons by detailed occupation, sex, race, and Hispanic or Latino ethnicity, available online at www.bls.gov/cps/cpsaat11.pdf. 34. Gregory, Women and Workplace Discrimination, p. 50. 35. 77.8 percent for white, 87 percent for black, 90.1 percent for Hispanic, and 86 percent for Asian. 36. Table 11, Employed persons by detailed occupation, sex, race, and Hispanic or Latino ethnicity; available online at http://www.bls.gov/cps/cpsaat11.pdf. 37. See www.emplawyernet.com/jobfront/jf1200.cfm. For 2004 law school enrollment statistics, see www.abanet.org/legaled/statistics/fall2004enrollment.pdf. See Women and Attorneys of Color at Law Firms—2004, by Association for Legal Career Professionals, available online at www.nalp.org/content/index.php?pid¼253. 38. Wayne J. Guglielmo, ‘‘Physicians’ Earnings: Our Exclusive Survey.’’ Medical Economics (September 19, 2003): 80.71; available online at www.memag.com/memag/ article/articleDetail.jsp?id¼112482. 39. David J. Bashaw and John S. Heywood, ‘‘The Gender Earnings Gap for U.S. Physicians: Has Equality Been Achieved?’’ Labour 15(3) (2001): Table 1. Alicia Sasser also wrote that ‘‘women physicians sharply reduced their hours of work after marrying/ having children’’ (Alicia C. Sasser, ‘‘Gender Differences in Physician Pay: Tradeoffs between Career and Family,’’ Journal of Human Resources 40[2] [2005]: 477–504). 40. Male doctors’ median earnings are $371,655 for invasive cardiology, $356,225 for orthopedic surgery, $157,412 for internal medicine, and $153,282 for family practice without obstetrics; Robert Lowes, ‘‘Earnings Survey: More Hours, More Patients, No Raise?’’ Medical Economics 22 (2002): 76; available online at www.memag.com/memag/ article/articleDetail.jsp?id¼116509. 41. Sharmistah Dev, ‘‘Income Disparities between Male and Female Physicians,’’ Journal of Pre-Health Affiliated Students 4(1) (2005); available online at www2.uic.edu/ orgs/jphas/journal/vol4/issue1/research_sd.shtml.

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42. Peter Kooperman, ‘‘The Persistent Segregation of Girls into Lower-Paying Jobs while in School,’’ IZA Discussion Paper no. 1535, 2005. 43. Amartya Sen, ‘‘Many Faces of Gender Inequality,’’ 2005; available online at www.nu.or.cr/pnud/docs/Sen-man.pdf. 44. Leon Kolankiewicz, Immigration, Population, and the New Census Bureau Projections, Backgrounder,Center for Immigration Studies, 2000. 45. In 2000, people of Mexican origin were the largest Hispanic group in the United States, representing 59.3 percent of the country’s total Hispanic population and 7.4 percent of the overall U.S. population. Sixty-four percent of Mexican Americans are immigrants. Approximately 46 percent of foreign-born Hispanics entered the United States between 1990 and 2000. About 29 percent arrived between 1980 and 1990. The proportion of those who have attained at least a bachelor’s degree is the lowest for Mexicans. Roberto R. Ramirez, We the People: Hispanics in the United States: Census 2000 Special Reports, CENSR-17 (Washington, DC: U.S. Census Bureau, 2004). 46. The notion of a trade-off between home and work and a need to balance the two applies less to black women. Shortly after emancipation, black women were expected to be employed. In addition to their works, black women have been responsible for household work and child care. Sharon Harley, Francille Rusan Wilson, and Shirley Wilson Logan, ‘‘Historical Overview of Black Women and Work,’’ in Sharon Harley, ed., Sister Circle: Black Women and Work (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2002), pp. 1–10. 47. Richard Anker, ‘‘Theories of Occupational Segregation by Sex: An Overview,’’ International Labour Review 136(3) (1997); available online at www.ilo.org/public/english/ support/publ/revue/articles/ank97-3.htm.

Index

Page numbers followed by f or t indicate figures or tables. acquired immune deficiency syndrome (AIDS), 6–7 administrative ladders, 90–92 affirmative action, 167 AFL-CIO, 7, 8, 24–25. See also unions, labor African Americans. See black people; black women; black women entrepreneurs age: in hiring practices, 281; pay equity and, 275–76, 275t, 276f; promotion and, 91–92; science professions and, 90n26 AIDS (acquired immune deficiency syndrome), 6–7 AIM (American Indian Movement), 118n19 Albright, Madeleine, 14 Alder, Nancy J., 65–67, 68–69, 75–76 Alfred, Gerald Taiaiake, 121, 126 Allen, Paula Gunn, 117–18 All Our Relations (LaDuke), 118 Almanac of the Dead (Silko), 118 American Indian Movement (AIM), 118n19 American Indians: elders, 122–23, 124; geography relationship of, 119; Lakota tribe gender traditions, 117; leadership models of, 114, 119–27, 121f, 123f; native ways of knowing, 113, 114, 119; pay equity and, xiv; school leadership study, 116; self-identity of, 119; term defined, 113n1; tribes, statistics of, 114–15; UNPAC reports and, 117; women as leaders, 114–18, 124–26 American Management Association, 132 Anzaldu´a, Gloria, 194

Apelbaum, Phyllis, 5, 9, 16, 17, 21 appearance, corporate standards of, 215–16 The Apprentice (television show), 137–38 Archiworks, 5 Arrow Messenger Service, 5, 9, 16 Arthur Andersen, 25–26 artistic processes in leadership, 75–76 Arvia, Anne, 3, 13–14, 19–20 ascribed status. See unearned privilege Asian American Employee Association, 84 Asian American Government Executives Network, 105 Asian Americans: cultural characteristics of, 85–87; expectations of, 104; glass ceilings and, 80, 83, 105; management representation of, 83; managerial traits of, 87–89, 103; misperceptions of, 97–98; occupational categories, 280–84, 282t; pay equity, 273–80, 274t, 275t; as single mothers, 287 attribution theory, 263–65 ‘‘Authentic Research: Interview on the Way to the Ponderosa’’ (Swisher), 120 authoritarian management styles, 85, 97, 136. See also traditional authority autonomy, 49, 169–70 Baker, Josephine, 149 barriers, promotional. See also glass ceilings: age, 91–92; of black women, 179, 206; coaching to overcome, 98; men and, 262; real vs. artificial, 106–7; top ranking, 260

292 Barsh, Russell, 121, 126 Bass, Bernard, 18 Bath & Body Works, 23 Berman, Richard, 81 Bhutto, Benazir, 71–72 Black Elk, 120 black people. See also black women; black women entrepreneurs: community tradition of, 148; education and, 145–47; hiring practices of, 260; invisibility issues of, 137; mentoring and, 208, 212; occupational categories and, 280–84, 282t; pay equity and, 205–6, 273–80, 274t, 275t; silence and, 142; traditional themes of, 145, 149; unearned privilege and, 260–61 Blackshere, Margaret, 5, 7, 13, 15, 24 black women: alliances and supporters of, 194–95, 210, 211–13; appearance, corporate standards of, and, 215; childhood lessons of, 216–18; communication styles of, 200, 207–8; competition between, 190; cross-race relationships and, 180–86, 188–91, 194–98, 200–202, 209–11; education and, 246; employment commitment of, 273, 273n12; family roles and, 273, 273n10, 286n46; fear and, 192, 193, 197–98; as Kraft executives, 6; leadership styles of, 46–52; management statistics of, 205; mutual connections between, 187; pay equity and, 205–6, 273–80, 274t, 275t; perception management, 137, 213–16, 217; promotional barriers and, 206; racism confrontation of, 208–9; silence and, 142; sisterhood of, 145, 149, 150–51, 190; term defined, 134; work environments of, 206, 218–19 black women entrepreneurs: business growth and, 134–35; capital accumulations and successful strategies, 145–52, 146t, 152f, 155t; challenges of, 138; dual discrimination experiences of, 138–39; education and, 145–48; elements of success, 149–50, 155; entrepreneurial history of, 133–34, 139–43; female advantage vision excluding, 38; historical documentation of, 139; research on, 134–36; study overview on, 144; themes and traditional elements of, 144–45, 149–50; time management of, 152–54 Blake-Beard, Stacy, 136–37, 182, 197, 200 blue-collar metaphors, 125, 135, 136, 137, 160 blue-collar occupations: barriers in, 160, 164–70; discrimination endurance in, 170; hiring practices in, 165–67, 169; informal

Index barriers in, 164–68; management professions compared to, 164; organizational barriers in, 168–70; pay equity in, 162; promotion qualifications for women, 166; women represented in, 161 blue management, 136, 137 Borderlands, 194 boundary spanning, 49 braids, hair, 216 Brayboy, Brian, 120 Breedlove, Sarah, 142–43 brown-collar workers, 243 Brundtland, Gro Harlem, 71 Building ShoreBank Advantage, 19–20 Burbridge, Lynn, 135, 151–54 Bureau of Labor Statistics (U.S. Department of Labor), 225 Burns, James MacGregor, 17 buy-in, employee, 19 Cadence Network, 22 Calhoun, Cathy, 8, 13, 15, 27 capital accumulations, 145–52, 146t, 152f career paths, 71 Carnahan, Ellen, 15 Carter, Kelly, 211, 212, 213, 216, 220 Case, Donni, 7, 11–12, 14–15, 19, 27, 28 The Catalyst reports, xii, 196, 206, 212, 215 Census Bureau, U.S., 224, 225, 260, 276 Center for Women’s Business Research (formerly National Foundation of Women Business Owners), 20–21, 134, 145 Central American Latinas, 240–41, 243 change management, 19–20 Change Monster, 20 charismatic authority, 80 Cheap, Margaret, 13–14 Chicago Network, 1 Ciller, Tansu, 71 Cinergy, 22 Civil Rights Acts, 164, 269, 269n1 coaching, executive, 98, 100–101, 102–3, 105–6 Cole, Nat King, 149 Coleman, Bessie, 149 collaborative debate, 49 Collins, Jim, 28 command-and-control model, 82 Committee 200, xii Commonwealth Edison (ComEd), 12–13 communication: black women and, 200, 207–8; directness in, 48, 207–8; feminist leadership

Index approaches to, 36–38; as leadership success trait, 3; masculine models of, 35–36; race differences in, 200 competitiveness, 85–87, 138, 188, 190, 194–95 condoms, female, 6–7, 24 confidence, 3, 4, 218 conflict, interpersonal, 21 Consolidated Bank and Trust Company, 143 conspicuous expertise, 86 contingent leaders, 7 contrabureaucratic organization structures, 42 contrainstrumental relationship approaches, 42 control, redefinition of, 49–51 Convocation of Scholars, 124–25 Cook, Katsi, 118 Cooper, Cynthia, 25–26 cooperative learning, 145–48 courage, 72, 73, 74 cross-race relationships, 180–86, 188–91, 194–98, 200–202, 209–11 Crozier, Caroline Sanchez, 5, 8, 19, 24 CS&C, 19, 24 Cuban Latinas, 232, 234–35, 243 cultural modesty, 87 culture, defined, 40 culture, organizational, 17, 40, 80, 83 Current Population Survey (CPS), 225–26 Davidmann, Manfred, 136 decentralized models, 82 decision making, 48–49, 49 Deer, Ada, 126 DeHaas, Deborah, 7, 10, 14, 26–27 Deloitte Touche, 7, 10 directive management styles, 103 directness, 48, 207–8 discrimination. See also barriers, promotional; glass ceilings (artificial barriers); racism: dual, 113, 113n3, 138–39; employment, 160, 163; endurance of, 170; legal depictions of, 256; sex-based, 14–15, 81–82, 113, 113n3, 164–68; white and male privilege, 259–65; women expatriate managers and host-country, 69–70; work environments created by, 206 dissonance avoidance, 115 Diversity Leadership Consortium, 91 diversity programs, xii, 82 domestic workers, 244–46 double bind: of cross-race relationship risks, 197–98; of race and sex discrimination, 113, 113n3

293 double jeopardy, 113n3 dual ladders, 90–92 EAP (Entrepreneurial Assistance Program), 144 earned privileges (meritocracy), 70, 85, 254, 258. See also unearned privilege earnings. See pay equity economic inequity, 162 education: accomplishment vs., 5; black women and, 145–48, 246; entrepreneurial, 132; gender gap and, 285; Latinas and, 234, 240, 243, 246–47, 276–80, 277t, 279t; occupations and, 226, 229t, 280–84; pay equity and, 231t, 232, 240, 276–80, 277t, 278f, 279t; productivity and, 270n6; white women and, 226, 229t, 246; women (as gender) and, 179, 269–70, 276–80 EEOC. See Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) Elder, Judy, 75 Eldridge, Elleanor, 140–41 e-mail analogy of normalization, 258 employment collars: blue, 125, 135, 136, 137, 160; brown, 243; gold, 125; pink, 125, 161; white, 125, 161 empowerment, 18, 48 Enron, 25 Entrepreneurial Assistance Program (EAP), 144 entrepreneurial education, 132 entrepreneurial leadership, 21–23, 133, 260. See also black women entrepreneurs environments, work, 206, 218–19 Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC): African American women managers, statistics of, 205; complaint statistics, 256; race and gender complaints, 254; racial harassment cases filed, xi; sex-based occupational representation, 161–62, 163t; sex discrimination settlements, 81 equal employment policies, 162 Esterhaus, Mercedes, 209, 210, 215, 216, 218, 219, 220 ethical leadership, 4, 25–26 evaluations, performance, 82, 97, 261, 262 Eva Maddox Associates, 5 Evans, Grace, 208, 210, 211, 213, 215, 217, 218, 219, 220 Exelon, 12 expatriate managers, women, 69–71 experience (persuasion mode), 121f, 122

294 Fanning, Kelly, 183, 199 FAZ case study, 98–99, 103–4 fear, 4, 192, 193, 197–98 female advantage model, 37–40 female economies in history, 140–41, 142 Female Health Company, 6–7, 24 The Feminine Advantage (Helgesen), 38 feminine leadership, 31, 36–38, 46 feminist movement, 180–81 feminists, 37, 166, 169 Festinger, Leon, 115 financial capital, 150–51, 152f Financial Relations Board (FRB), 7 Fiorina, Carly, 71, 72, 82, 269 Food and Drug Administration, U.S., 6 Fortune 500 and 1000, 1, 11, 15, 98, 179, 262, 263, 280 FRB (Financial Relations Board), 7 Freeman, Charles, 16 Gardener, Howard, 3, 4 gender occupational segregation, 280–84 gender organization theory, 31 gender-specific management, 36, 38, 82, 136 ‘‘George Patton’’ leadership style, 12 Glass Ceiling Act, 159 Glass Ceiling Commission, 106, 159–60, 164 glass ceilings (artificial barriers). See also barriers, promotional: Asian Americans, 80, 83, 105; blue-collar professions and, 160, 164–70; definitions of, 83, 106; in federal government, 105; Fiorina on, 82; lateral transfers and, 71; legislation and, 106, 159–60; levels of, 164; performance evaluations and, 82; real barriers vs., 106–7; of top management positions, 179; in traditional leadership, 80 glass escalator, 261 globalization and global leadership, 40, 68, 69–71, 73, 242 gold-collar workers, 125 Green, Rayna, 124 Greenleaf, R. K., 9 Gross, Elizabeth, 81 Guatemalans, 246 hair care, and appearance, 215–16 Hale, Clara ‘‘Mother,’’ 149 Harley-Davidson Financial Services (HDFS), 15 Hatshepsut, 140 Healy, Sondra, 6, 7, 8 hegemony, 32

Index Helgesen, S., 38 Henry, Jan, 207 Herskovits, Melville, 139 Hessel, Lasse, 6 Hesselbein, Frances, 73 Hewlett-Packard (HP), 71, 82 hierarchical organizations, 3, 71, 208, 210, 255 hierarchies, social, 244 hiring practices: age issues in, 281; in blue-collar occupations, 165–67, 169; of minority-owned and women-owned businesses, 260; selection criteria and glass ceilings, 107; of successful leaders, 5, 18–19; traditional authority subjectivity in, 104 Hispanics (Latinas and Latinos). See also Latinas: definitions of, 223–24; immigration of (see immigrants); occupational categories, 280–84, 282t; pay equity, 226, 230–31t, 232, 234t, 273–80, 274t, 275t; U.S. population of, 224–25 HIV (human immunodeficiency virus), 6–7 Holvino, E., 186, 200 Hondagneu-Sotelo, Pierrette, 244–45 hooks, bell, 192, 194 host countries, 69–70 Howard-Bobiwash, Heather, 114 Howe, Louise Kapp, 125 Hsia, Jayjia, 91 Hudson, Lynn, 141–42 human capital: of black women entrepreneurs, 145–50, 146t; definitions of, 131, 145; of Latinas, 242–43; pay equity and, 273–74 human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), 6–7 Hunt, Laurie, 183, 188, 189, 196, 199 Hurston, Zora Neale, 149 Hyde, Janet, xiii hypervisibility, 137 IAT (Implicit Association Test), 261–62 identities, multiple, 201 ideology, 32 immigrants: Central/South American Latinas, 240, 241; Cuban Latinas, 235; definition of, 270n7; domestic work and, 245; increases of, 270, 270n8, 285, 285n45; Latinas, 232, 242, 243, 244; Mexican-origin Latinas, 235, 236–39t, 240, 243; pay equity and, 232; Puerto Rican Latinas, 242 Immigration Reform and Control Act, 245 Implementation Oversight Committee (IOC), 19–20 Implicit Association Test (IAT), 261–62

Index imposter syndrome, 98 income disparity. See pay equity income patching, 144 Indigenous American Women: Decolonization, Empowerment, Activism (Mihesuah), 118 indigenous leadership, 114, 119–27, 121t, 123t Indigenous Manifesto (Alfred), 126 individualistic management, 34–35 Indvik, Julie, 11 informal barriers, 164–68, 179 information gathering, 49 Institute of American Indian Arts, 124 instrumentality, 31, 46, 50 intelligence, 4–5, 18–19 interactive communication themes, 47–48 interactive leadership, 82 intergenerational mobility, 277 intergroup dynamics, 188–89, 191, 194–98 international management, 40, 68, 73, 242 Interpublic Group, 8 intersectionality, 31 intragroup dynamics, 186–88 invisibility, 137, 257–59 IOC (Implementation Oversight Committee), 19–20 Jackson, Cayenne, 208, 217 Jackson, Kwame, 137, 138 Johnson Wax, 14, 23 Judy Project, 75, 75n22 ‘‘just world beliefs,’’ 257 Kanter, Rosabeth Moss, 70, 97 ‘‘Keeping the Campfires Going: Urban American Indian Women’s Community Work and Activism’’ (Krouse and Howard-Bobiwash), 114 Kenny, Carolyn, 120 Khoo, Gillian, 98–107 King, Martin Luther, Jr., 80 Kraft Foods, 5–6 Krouse, Susan Applegate, 114 Kwolek-Folland, Angel, 140 labor market, U.S. (study): age and earnings, 275–76, 275t, 276f; assessment of, 284–86; characteristics of, 270–73, 271–72t; earning gaps, 274–76, 274t; education and earnings, 276–80, 277t, 278f, 279t; occupations and earnings, 280–84, 282t; study sample overview, 270 labor unions, 7–8, 24–25, 161, 169

295 LaDuke, Winona, 118 LaFromboise, Theresa D., 126 Lakota, 117 language skills, 243, 285 LaRoche, Gina, 184, 196, 200 Last Standing Woman (LaDuke), 118 lateral transfers, 71 Latinas: Central/South Americans, 240–41, 243; challenges of, 242–43; Cubans, 232, 234–35; domestic work and, 244–46; education and, 234, 240, 243, 246–47, 276–80, 277t, 279t; husbands’ masculinity and, 246; labor market data limitations, 225–26; Mexican-origin, 235, 236–39t, 240, 243; occupational distribution, 226, 227–29t, 280–84, 282t; pay equity, 226, 230–31t, 232, 233–34t; as single mothers, 273n10; stereotypes, 244, 247 lawyers and law firms, 283–84 leadership. See also black women entrepreneurs; management: in American Indian communities, 116, 117–18, 127; as artistic expression, 75–76; authoritarian (see traditional authority); black women and, 46–52; definitions of, 43–44, 45; dominant cultures and, 32–33; entrepreneurial, 21–23, 133, 260; ethical, 4, 25–26; feminine, 31, 36–38, 46; hope in, 67, 72; indigenous, 114, 119–27, 121f, 123t; level five, 28; masculine, 31, 35–36, 46; mentoring and, 3, 11–14, 107; mythological vision of, 33; patriarchal (see traditional authority); pre-1980s theories of, 83; rural small business styles, 21; servant, 9–10, 36; situational, 7; socialized, 37; successful, 3–4, 7, 11, 16–17, 44–45; traditional (see traditional authority); transactional, 9; transformational, 18, 44–45; transforming, 17; values-based, 23–25, 26 leadership-as-good-management model, 38–40 Leading Minds (Gardner), 3, 4 Leeper, Mary Ann, 6–7, 24 legal/rational authority, 80, 103 level five leadership, 28 Lichtenberg, Ronna, 136 Linquist-Mala, Cynthia, 126 Lorde, Audre, 179, 180, 191–92, 202 Ludlow, Madeleine, 22 Ludlow Ward Capital Partners, 22 Maddox, Eva, 5, 27 male-dominant environments, 14–16, 189, 260. See also blue-collar occupations

296 male privilege, 257, 259–60, 262–63 management. See also black women entrepreneurs; leadership: blue, 136, 137; change, 19–20; charismatic authority, 80; Cuban Latinas, statistics of, 232; definitions of, 132; directive, 103; expatriate, 69–71; gender-specific, 36, 38, 82, 136; individualistic, 34–35; interdisciplinary roots of, 132–33; international, 40, 68, 73, 242; Latinas and, 226, 228–29t, 246; leadership-as-good-management model, 38–40; marginalized groups and styles of, 133; micro-, 47, 97; participative, 136; perception, 213–16, 217; pink, 136, 138; power, 9; television as influence of, 136–37; white-collar, 125, 161; women in, statistics of, 1, 179, 280; women-owned businesses, 21–23, 133, 260 Manigault-Stallworth, Omarosa, 137 Mankiller, Wilma, 118 manstories, 36 Market Women: Black Women Entrepreneurs Past, Present and Future (Smith), 138, 139 masculine leadership, 31, 35–36, 46 masculine values, 51, 86 masks of fear, 192 mathematics, indigenous, 119 McDaniel, Hattie, 149 McDonough, William, 73–74 McIntosh, Peggy, 258, 259, 264 McPherson, Paula, 208, 210, 211, 212–13, 214, 216, 218, 220 meaning-centered approaches, 31, 42–43 Medicine, Beatrice, 117 The Memoirs of Elleanor Eldridge (Eldridge), 141 mentoring. See also relationship building; role models: black people and, 208, 212; cross-race vs. same-race, 261; defined, 11; leadership success and, 3, 11–14, 107; race comparison statistics, 212; support amount vs. gender, studies on, 11; at XYZ Aerospace, 89 meritocracy, 70, 85, 254, 258. See also unearned privilege Mexican-origin Latinas, 235, 236–39t, 240, 243 miasma, 206 micromanagement, 47, 97 Mihesuah, Devon Abbott, 118 Mineta, Norm, 85 Minority-Owned Businesses, Survey of, 260 mobility, intergenerational, 277

Index modesty, cultural, 87 Molansky, Barbara, 13 Montana, Frances, 208, 211, 212, 214, 217–18, 219 morality, 25–28, 73 Morgan Stanley Dean Witter, 80–82 Mother Hale, 149 motherhood penalties, xi motivation, 8 multinational companies, 69–71 music for leadership, 77n25 The Myth of the Negro Past (Herskovits), 139 narration (persuasion mode), 121f, 122 National Committee on Pay Equity, 205 National Foundation of Women Business Owners (currently Center for Women’s Business Research), 20–21, 134, 145 Native Americans. See American Indians; American Indian women native ways of knowing, 113, 114, 119 ‘‘Nature and Spirit of North American Political Systems’’ (Barsh), 126 networking. See relationship building NF Computer Sales and Leasing Co. (NFC), 12 non-merit based social structures. See unearned privilege norms, social, 258, 259–60 noticers, 4 nursing, 281–82 observation (persuasion mode), 121f, 122 occupational representation, 161–62, 163t O’Connor, Sandra Day, 269, 269n5 organizational barriers, 168–70 organizational culture, 17, 40, 80, 83 organizations, U.S., social structure statistics of, 260 OrganizedLiving, 23 Otte, Jean, 98, 100 participative management, 136 patriarchal authority. See traditional authority patriarchy, 114, 115 pay equity: age and, 275–76, 275t, 276f; American Indians and, xiv; in blue-collar occupations, 162; education and, 231t, 232, 240; gap closure of, 279n22–23, 283, 285; gender, 1, 273–74; gender and race comparisons of, 205–6, 273–80, 274t, 275t, 282t; Hispanics, 226, 230–31t, 232, 234t; human capital and, 273–74; impact of, 162;

Index labor unions addressing, 25; occupations and, 280–84; white privilege and, 261 Peace, Power, Righteousness: An Indigenous Manifesto (Alfred), 121 Pease Windy Boy, Janine, 124 perception management, 213–16, 217 perfectionism, 106 performance evaluations, 82, 97, 261, 262 persuasion, modes of, 121–25, 121f, 124 Pew Hispanic Center, 246 physicians, 283, 283n40 pink-collar workers, 125, 161 pink management, 136, 138 pipeline myth, 71 Platt, Lew, 72 Pleasant, Mary Ellen ‘‘Mammy,’’ 141–42 Pogacik, Miha, 76, 76n25 political offices, women in, 71–72 Porter, Jessica, 184, 190, 202 Powell, Adam Clayton, 149 power, 32, 74–75 power management, 9 Prichard, Beth, 14, 17, 18, 23 privileged groups. See unearned privilege promotions. See also barriers, promotional; glass ceilings: blue-collar occupations and, 161, 166–69; relationship building for, 99–100, 101–3; selection criteria, 107; union representation and, 161, 169; white privilege and, 261; of women, in hierarchical organizations, 71 protection hesitation, 193 Proudford, Karen, 183, 191 Provus, Barbara, 16, 22 Public Use Microdata Sample (PUMS), 270 Puerto Ricans, 241–42 Purcell, Philip J., 81 queen bee syndrome, 190 Quinn, Mary, 13 race-neutral descriptions, 39 racism. See also discrimination: in American society, 41; black women managers and, 208–9; cross-race relationship building and, 190, 194, 196; hidden vs. egregious, xi; subtle gendered, 41 Raleigh, Deborah, 206 rational/legal authority, 80, 103 relationship building (networking). See also mentoring; role models: cross-race, 180–86, 188–91, 194–98, 200–202, 209–11; as

297 leadership quality, 16–17; for promotions, 99–103, 166–67; as social capital, 145–50, 152f; workplace alliances and, 194–95, 210, 211–13 re´sume´ qualifications, 104 Rice, Condoleezza, 269 Roberts, Laura Morgan, 136–37 Robinson, Mary, 71–72 Roddick, Anita, 73 role models. See also mentoring; relationship building (networking): American Indians and, 116, 123; black women and, 139–43, 147–49, 149, 208; for leadership development, 11; visual aids of, 149 Rosener, Judith, 18 Rwanda, 72–73 ‘‘The Sacred Hoop Perspective’’ (Allen), 117–18 Salvadorans, 246 Schieffelin, Allison, 81 Schumpterian model, 132 science, indigenous, 119 Scott, Elizabeth, 207, 208–9, 217 Scully, Maureen, 182, 188, 189, 192, 195, 197 Segura, Denise, 247 self-confidence, 3, 4, 218 self-protection, 193 Sen, Amartya, 284 senior executive services (SES), 82 servant leadership, 9–10, 36 sex-based discrimination, 14–15, 81–82, 113, 113n3, 164–68 Shepherd Bueschel and Provus, 16, 22 ShoreBank, 19–20, 24 silence, 142, 192, 193–94 Silko, Leslie Marmon, 118 simultaneity, 201 single mothers, 273, 273n10, 287 sisterhood, 145, 149, 150–51, 190 Sister Outsider (Lorde), 191 situational leaders, 7 skill trade professions. See blue-collar occupations small business managers, 133. See also black women entrepreneurs; women-owned businesses Sneed, Paula, 6, 10, 16–17 social capital, 145–50, 152f. See also mentoring; relationship building; role models social hierarchies, 244 social inequity, 162, 255–57

298 socialized leadership, 37 South Americans, 240–41, 243 Spanish ethnicity, definitions of, 224. See also Hispanics (Latinas and Latinos); Latinas spirituality, in entrepreneurship, 149–50, 150f St. Luke’s Penny Savings Bank, 143 stereotyping: American Indian studies on, 115; of Asian American employees, 91; of black women, 137, 214; of feminine leadership, 37, 38; gender-related, xii; of Latinas, 244, 247; power without, 74 ‘‘Stereotyping and Job Satisfaction among American Indian Female Supervisors’’ (study), 115 Stone, Margaret, 206, 209–10, 212, 218, 219 strategic alignment, 99–100, 101–3. See also mentoring; relationship building; role models strategic thinking, 99, 100–101 Street, Julianne, 207–8, 210, 213, 214, 218 Strobel, Pamela, 12–13, 18–19 ‘‘A Study of American Indian Females in Higher Education Administration’’ (study), 116 suffrage movement, 180–81 Sullivan, Scott, 26 survival, 5, 142, 218 Swisher, Karen Gayton, 120 teachers, preschool, 282 teachers’ unions, 7–8 technical ladders, 90–92 Tekwanipapu, 119 television, 136–37 tempered visibility, 138 time poverty, 151–54 Title VII, 164, 174, 175, 176, 177, 266n9, 269, 284, 286n2 token status, 187, 189 traditional authority (authoritarian, patriarchal): defined, 97; disadvantages of, 103; glass ceiling limitations, 80; hiring practices of, 104; legal/rational style and, 85, 97, 103; outdating of, 97; Purcell and, 81; status and, 79–80 tradition (persuasion mode), 121f, 122 transactional leadership, 9 transformational leadership, 2, 18, 44–45 transforming leadership, 17 transparency, 3–4, 17 Trump, Donald, 137 trust: circles of, 199–200, 199f; cross-race relationships and, 188, 190–91, 195, 209–11

Index Turnbull, Suzzette, 182 Turtle Wax, 6 Tyner-Dawson, Eugenia, 126 unearned privilege. See also meritocracy: attribution theory and, 263–65; definitions of, 254; examples of, 259–65; invisibility of, 257–59; normalization of, 258; as unexamined inequity issue, 255–57 unemployment, 232, 246 unions, labor, 7–8, 24–25, 161, 169 United Nations, 280 United Nations Platform for Action Committee’s (UNPAC), 117 universalism, 42 ‘‘Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack’’ (McIntosh), 258 U.S. Census Bureau, 224, 225, 260, 276 U.S. Food and Drug Administration, 6 Uwilingiyimana, Agatha, 72–73 value-rational (ideological) focused approaches, 42 values, personal, 25–28, 73 values-based leadership, 23–25, 26 Vasquez, Victoria, 126 Vienna, Austria, 65–66 Villagairosa, Antonio, 224 visual imagery exercises, 74–75 wage gaps. See pay equity Walker, Juliet E. K., 143 Walker, Madame C. J., 142–43 Walker, Maggie Lena, 142–43 Warner/Tahdooahnippah Leadership Model (WTLM), 119–25, 121f, 123t Warrior, Della, 124 Watkins, Sherron, 25 ‘‘Ways Women Lead’’ (Rosener), 18 Weber, Max, 79, 80, 97 Weber Shandwick, 8 ‘‘What Managers Do’’ (American Management Association), 136 whistle blowers, 25–26 white-collar management, 125, 161 white males: management representation of, 83; pay equity and, 205, 273–80, 274t, 275t; white and male privilege, 259–65 Whiteman, Henrietta V., 124 white privilege, 257, 259–63 whitewash dilemma, 196

Index white women: college-educated, 234; communication styles of, 200; cross-race relationships and, 180–86, 188–91, 194–98, 200–202, 209–11; distancing between, 187–88; education and, 226, 229t, 234, 246; fear and, 192, 193, 197–98; historical race relations, 180–81; intergroup dynamics and, 188–89; occupational distribution of, 226, 227–28t, 280–84, 282t; pay equity and, 205, 231t, 232, 273–80; as single mothers, 273n10; workplace alliances of, 194–95 ‘‘Why Indian People Should Be the Ones to Write about Indian Education’’ (Swisher), 120 Whyte, David, 68 Wiesel, Elie, 67 Wilson, Woodrow, 65, 67 winners, defined, 138 women. See also specific ethnicities and topics about women: employment collar ambiguity and, 161; family roles of, 169, 281, 284, 286; gender-related behaviors of, 98n33, 104; male privilege and, 259–60, 262–63; management issues of, 98; networking and, 180; occupation categories, 161, 280–84, 282t; pay equity and, 273–80, 274t, 275t, 277t, 279t;

299 science college degrees and, 246; social changes encouraging employment, 269; workforce statistics, 269, 271–72t ‘‘Women Business Owners of Color’’ conferences, 134 women-owned businesses, 21–23, 133, 260 women’s work, 244, 281 WorldCom, 25 WTLM (Warner/Tahdooahnippah Leadership Model), 119–25, 121f, 123f XYZ Aerospace case study: age barriers at, 91–92; Asian American managerial traits and, 87–89, 103; chaotic management structure of, 89; double standards at, 92–96; dual ladders at, 90–92; ethnic representation at, 84, 105; FAZ compared to, 103–4; glass ceiling factors and, 84–87; managerial representation studies, 84; merit-based advancement criteria, 85; organizational overview, 83–85; racial discrimination at, 85; sponsorship of Asian Americans, 89–90; stereotypical perceptions at, 91 Zander, Ben, 75 Zarcone, Donna, 8–9, 12, 18, 27

About the Editor and Contributors

Margaret Foegen Karsten is Professor in the Department of Business and Accounting and Coordinator of the Print Business Administration Distance Program at the University of Wisconsin-Platteville, where she teaches management and human resource management courses. She developed a Management, Gender, and Race course and has taught it for many years. Her books include Management, Gender, and Race in the 21st Century (2005) and Management and Gender: Issues and Attitudes (1994), in addition to over twenty other professional publications. She has presented at many national and regional conferences, has received several grants, and has held various administrative positions. Her current research interests include career paths of executive women and the impact of intellectual distance between students and professors on learning. Nancy J. Adler is Professor of International Management at McGill University in Montreal, Canada, and has consulted and conducted extensive research on global leadership and cross-cultural management. She is the author of more than 100 articles as well as the books International Dimensions of Organizational Behavior, Women in Management Worldwide, Competitive Frontiers: Women Managers in a Global Economy, Women Managing Worldwide, and From Boston to Beijing: Managing with a Worldview. Nancy is also an established artist whose paintings increasingly enrich her work as a global business consultant and leadership expert. Rachel Askew is a doctoral candidate in sociology at Emory University and received a master’s in sociology from Rutgers University. Her research interests focus on women’s and children’s well-being. Recent publications include ‘‘Race, Ethnicity, and Wage Inequality among Women: What Happened in the 1990s and Early 21st Century?’’ in American Behavioral Scientist with Irene Browne, and ‘‘Stress and Somatization: A Sociocultural Perspective’’ from Psychology of

302

About the Editor and Contributors

Stress with Corey L. M. Keyes. Her current research emphasis is on diagnosis and treatment within healthcare systems. Stacy Blake-Beard is Associate Professor of Management at the Simmons College School of Management, where she teaches organizational behavior. She is also part of the research faculty in the Center for Gender in Organizations at Simmons. Prior to joining Simmons, Blake-Beard was a faculty member at the Harvard University Graduate School of Education. She also has worked in sales and marketing at Procter & Gamble and in the corporate human resources department at Xerox. Her research focuses on the challenges and opportunities offered by mentoring relationships, with a focus on how they may be changing as a result of increasing workforce diversity. Blake-Beard has published research on gender, diversity, and mentoring in several publications, including the Journal of Career Development, the Academy of Management Executive, the Journal of Management Development, and the Journal of Business Ethics. Irene Browne is Associate Professor of Sociology and Women’s Studies at Emory University. Her research interests focus primarily on economic inequality by race and gender, particularly in the labor market. In this work, she investigates theories of intersections of gender, race, and class. She is editor of Latinas and African American Women at Work: Race, Gender and Economic Inequality, and her work is published in a range of journals and edited volumes, including the American Sociological Review, Social Forces, and Sociological Quarterly. Jane Carlson grew up in the north of England and, after fifteen years in the British Civil Service, started her own business consulting for a variety of organizations, including the British Potato Council. On her emigration to the United States, she founded a second business specializing in editing and writing documents for professionals in business, academia, and medicine. Her current projects include research and writing for books on hurricanes and coastal erosion and on transportation engineering. Kelly Fanning is Internal Consultant at Blue Cross Blue Shield of Massachusetts. Before joining the Business Consulting Group in September 2005, Fanning worked within the nonprofit sector. As an Education and Program Coordinator for SmithBucklin, she developed and managed the program content for four national associations and strategically managed and implemented educational programs, including regional seminars, online Web-casts, and annual national conferences. As Program Manager for the Congressional Award Foundation in Washington, D.C., Fanning worked with members of Congress to direct national ceremonies honoring over 100 youth and led the public relations and marketing of the program across the Eastern United States. She cofounded the Net Impact Chapter while earning her MBA from Simmons School of Management.

About the Editor and Contributors

303

Jeanie Ahearn Greene is founder and sole proprietor of Ahearn Greene Associates, a social science research and consulting firm dedicated to research-based writing and publication as a way to advocate for and support the rights and needs of discriminated-against adults, children, and their families. She focuses her work on giving voice to the disenfranchised, un(der)served, and unheard, particularly women and children, and lives in metropolitan Washington, D.C. She is the author of Blue-Collar Women at Work with Men: Negotiating the Hostile Environment (Praeger 2006). Lisa Gundry is Professor of Management and Director of the Leo V. Ryan Center for Creativity and Innovation at DePaul University. Her work focuses on innovative processes in organizations and entrepreneurial growth strategies. Laurie Hunt is a management consultant specializing in mentoring, diversity, and leadership communication with over twenty years of international marketing, communications, and human resources experience. She designs, develops, and implements formal mentoring programs for organizations and has a special interest in supporting the advancement of women and people of color. Hunt is a consulting affiliate with the Center for Gender in Organizations at Simmons College and is also is a professional coach, assisting clients with leadership development, career change, and transitions. At Nortel Networks she held positions in new product introduction, marketing communications, sales, diversity, and employee relations. At the Humphrey Group Hunt was responsible for business development, working with companies to design custom leadership development and communications programs. Gillian P. S. Khoo is a certified Professional Integral Coach through New Ventures West and is President of Windom International, an executive coaching firm with offices in San Francisco and Washington, D.C. A seasoned executive coach with over fourteen years of domestic and international coaching experience, Khoo has assessed and coached hundreds of senior executives and is intimately familiar with the barriers and critical success factors to building effective leadership. Jongsung Kim is Associate Professor of Economics at Bryant University in Rhode Island. In addition to gender earnings gap and occupational segregation, his research interests include various labor market issues about inequalities and the foreign-born workers in the U.S. labor market. He is the author of Labor Supply and Occupational Structure of Asian Immigrants in the U.S. Labor Market (2000). Gina LaRoche is the Managing Director of INSPIRITAS, a consulting and training firm advancing leadership practice with executive programs that challenge leadership teams to accelerate results using vision, strategy, and accountability.

304

About the Editor and Contributors

Her recent clients include Miller Brewing, Harvard University, American Student Assistance, and Stamford Hospital. She has eighteen years of experience in sales, marketing, and training at high-tech and emerging growth companies. Currently a visiting professor in Simmons School of Management’s executive education program, LaRoche has worked with many organizations as a consultant, coach, and trainer to develop strategic business and marketing plans and execute on them to achieve breakthrough results. Gina began her career as a sales professional at IBM, where she received numerous excellence awards. Ancella Livers is Group Manager in Open Enrollment for the Center for Creative Leadership in Greensboro, NC, and is global manager of the Center’s flagship offering, the Leadership Development Program. She also oversees the African American Leadership, Coaching for Development and Women’s Leadership Programs and delivers custom programs tailored to public, private, and nonprofit sector clients’ needs. Livers is a certified feedback coach providing assessment, feedback, and coaching to senior-level executives in various organizations. Before joining CCL, she was Assistant Professor in the School of Journalism at West Virginia University. Earlier, she was acting business editor and Capitol Hill reporter for the Gannett News Service and a regular guest on the Baltimore public affairs television show Urban Scene. She is coauthor of Leading in Black and White: Working across the Racial Divide in Corporate America (2003) and the 2002 Harvard Business Review article ‘‘Dear White Boss,’’ and author of ‘‘Coaching Leaders of Color,’’ a chapter in the center’s Handbook of Leadership Coaching. Laurel Ofstein is Assistant Director of the Ryan Center for Creativity and Innovation at DePaul University. She has contributed to textbooks on entrepreneurship and created cases for student use. Patricia S. Parker is Associate Professor of Communication Studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where she is a Burress fellow at the Institute for the Arts and Humanities, a research fellow at the Institute of African American Research, and a 2005 scholar in residence at the Center for Urban and Regional Studies. Her research and teaching focus on critical and feminist studies of race, gender, class, and culture in organizational processes and emphasize career socialization, leadership, and empowerment for women and girls. Recent publications include Race, Gender, and Leadership: Re-envisioning Organizational Leadership from the Perspectives of African American Women Executives (2005) and several articles and book chapters on race, gender, and organizational communication. Her current work focuses on leadership development and empowerment for African American teen girls in low-income neighborhoods. Jessica L. Porter is Research Associate at Harvard Business School. She is currently working on a study examining the microdynamics of work in the

About the Editor and Contributors

305

professional services industry. Prior to earning her MBA from Simmons School of Management, Porter founded the Association of Labor Assistants and Childbirth Educators, a nonprofit organization that supported childbearing women by training independent doulas and educators across North America. Margaret Posig is Associate Professor and Director of the Leadership and Change Management concentration in the Charles H. Kellstadt Graduate School of Business at DePaul University. Her major research interests are in the areas of organizational leadership and workplace stress, and she has published articles on women in leadership, leadership trust, servant leadership, and empowerment. Elizabeth Powell is Assistant Professor in Management Communication at the Darden Graduate School of Business, University of Virginia. She is currently working on projects related to leadership, reputation, and professional identity formation. Karen L. Proudford is Associate Professor of Management at the Graves School of Business and Management, Morgan State University, and is an affiliated faculty member at the Center for Gender in Organizations, Simmons School of Management. Her research, writing, and consulting interests include group and intergroup dynamics, leadership, diversity, and conflict. Prior to beginning her career in academia, she held positions at Honeywell and IBM. Her work has appeared in such publications as Group and Organization Management, Journal of Labor and Employment Law, Diversity Factor, and International Review of Women and Leadership; the volume Addressing Cultural Issues in Organizations: Beyond the Corporate Context; and most recently, the Handbook of Workplace Diversity. Ashleigh Shelby Rosette is Assistant Professor at the Fuqua School of Business at Duke University, where she teaches courses in managerial effectiveness and negotiations. A Certified Public Accountant in Texas, she previously was a consultant with Arthur Andersen in its Houston and Atlanta offices. Her research on organizational diversity focuses on systems of privilege and workplace discrimination, and recent work on negotiation deals with the influence of intercultural differences and the strategic use of emotion on negotiated outcomes. Rosette has conducted and presented research in the United States, France, Spain, Portugal, Hong Kong, South Africa, and Canada and has published book chapters and research articles in journals such as Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes. Her many awards and grants include the Academy of Management’s Best Paper Based on a Dissertation and State Farm Insurance’s Education Grant. She also has provided consulting services for various groups across the United States. Maureen A. Scully is a faculty member at the College of Management at the University of Massachusetts, Boston, and an affiliated faculty member at the

306

About the Editor and Contributors

Center for Gender in Organizations at the Simmons School of Management. Her research investigates how inequality in the workplace is sometimes legitimated by the idea of meritocracy but sometimes contested by grassroots employee groups that see departures from meritocracy. She has studied a variety of corporate change efforts regarding diversity, ethics, teamwork, and reward systems Her work has appeared in Journal of Applied Behavioral Science, Journal of Management Inquiry, and Organization Science and has been funded by the Ford Foundation and the National Science Foundation. Cheryl A. Smith is Associate Professor in the Adult Learning Division of Lesley University and a member of the university’s Undergraduate Curriculum Committee, Academic Technology and Center for Academic Technology’s Grants and Advisory committees. In addition, she is a member of the Advanced Graduate Council, which oversees the doctoral program in Educational Studies and the Women’s Studies Task Force of the Women’s Resource Group. She is the author of Market Women: Black Women Entrepreneurs: Past, Present, and Future (Praeger 2005). Suzzette Turnbull is Associate Director of the MBA Program at Simmons College School of Management (SOM). Within the SOM community, she is an Assurance of Learning/AACSB Accreditation committee member, advisor to the Women of Color and International Student Clubs, and a member of the newly launched Entrepreneurship Certificate Program Taskforce. She is an alumna of the Partnership and a board member for New England Citybridge. Her expertise lies in staff and volunteer management, fundraising, and program administration. Turnbull earned her B.S. in business management from Florida Atlantic University and her MBA from Simmons College School of Management. Linda Sue Warner is currently Associate Vice-Chancellor for Academic Affairs at the Tennessee Board of Regents in Nashville. She is a member of the Comanche Tribe of Oklahoma and has over thirty-five years of experience as an educator working in public schools in Missouri and Bureau of Indian Affairs schools in Alaska, New Mexico, Kansas, and Arizona. Her research at the graduate level centers on educational policy and leadership, and her teaching areas deal with the principalship and education law. Warner has had teaching and research appointments at the University of Kansas, Pennsylvania State University, and the Harry S Truman Center for Public Policy at the University of Missouri-Columbia. She currently serves on President Bush’s National Advisory Council for Indian Education. Patricia H. Werhane is Wicklander Professor of Business Ethics and Executive Director of the Institute for Business and Professional Ethics at DePaul University with a joint appointment at the Graduate School of Business, University of Virginia. She is a member of the Academic Advisory Committee for the

About the Editor and Contributors

307

Business Roundtable for Corporate Ethics. Werhane has written extensively on business ethics and organizational ethical issues in health care. Deborah A. Woo, a sociologist, has been Professor in Community Studies at the University of California, Santa Cruz, since 1984. Awarded a grant by the federal Glass Ceiling Commission to explore the glass ceiling among Asian Americans, she is author of The Glass Ceiling and Asian Americans: The New Face of Workplace Barriers. Although her primary research interest deals with workplace inequities, Woo has also written more broadly about the politics of culture as it has shaped policies or practices toward Asian Americans in higher education, health, law, and the workplace. More recent publications include writings on the cultural defense, corporate culture and leadership, and cultural issues in the delivery of health services.

Gender, Race, and Ethnicity in the Workplace

Gender, Race, and Ethnicity in the Workplace Issues and Challenges for Today’s Organizations

VOLUME 2

Legal, Psychological, and Power Issues Affecting Women and Minorities in Business

EDITED BY

Margaret Foegen Karsten

PRAEGER PERSPECTIVES

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Gender, race, and ethnicity in the workplace: issues and challenges for today’s organizations / edited by Margaret Foegen Karsten. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-275-98802-3 (set: alk. paper)—ISBN 0-275-98803-1 (v. 1: alk. paper)— ISBN 0-275-98804-X (v. 2: alk. paper)—ISBN 0-275-98805-8 (v. 3: alk. paper) 1. Diversity in the workplace—United States. I. Karsten, Margaret Foegen HF5549.5.M5G46 2006 658.3008—dc22 2006010950 British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data is available. Copyright # 2006 by Margaret Foegen Karsten All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced, by any process or technique, without the express written consent of the publisher. This book is included in the African American Experience database from Greenwood Electronic Media. For more information, visit www.africanamericanexperience.com. Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 2006010950 ISBN: 0-275-98802-3 (set) 0-275-98803-1 (vol. 1) 0-275-98804-X (vol. 2) 0-275-98805-8 (vol. 3) First published in 2006 Praeger Publishers, 88 Post Road West, Westport, CT 06881 An imprint of Greenwood Publishing Group, Inc. www.praeger.com Printed in the United States of America

The paper used in this book complies with the Permanent Paper Standard issued by the National Information Standards Organization (Z39.48-1984). 10 9 8

7 6 5 4 3 2

1

Ideas and opinions expressed in the chapters of volumes 1, 2, and 3 of Gender, Race, and Ethnicity in the Workplace are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect views of the set editor or the publisher.

In gratitude to all the women of strength—colleagues, relatives, and friends both living and deceased—who have influenced my life.

Contents

Acknowledgments

ix

Introduction

xi

Margaret Foegen Karsten

1. Affirmative Action: Unintended Adverse Effects

1

Madeline E. Heilman and Michelle C. Haynes

2. Racial and Ethnic Harassment in the Workplace

25

Tamara A. Bruce

3. Incivility, Sexual Harassment, and Violence in the Workplace

51

Rudy Nydegger, Michele Paludi, Eros R. DeSouza, and Carmen A. Paludi Jr.

4. Romantic Relationships in the Workplace

83

Donna Castan˜eda

5. Pregnancy Discrimination: Laboring under Assumptions in the Workplace

101

Julie Manning Magid

6. The Family and Medical Leave Act: Lost in Translation

119

Joan E. Gale

7. Gender and Managerial Stereotypes: Have the Times Changed?

143

Gary N. Powell, D. Anthony Butterfield, and Jane D. Parent

8. Gender and Race-Related Stereotypes in Management Joan E. Riedle

163

viii

9.

Contents

Impact of Gender on Leadership

183

Shelly Grabe and Janet Shibley Hyde

10.

Tokenism Theory: What Happens When Few Women Work with Many Men

199

Mary B. Hogue and Janice D. Yoder

11.

Power, Control, and Gender: Training as Catalyst for Dysfunctional Behavior at the U.S. Air Force Academy

217

Jamie L. Callahan

12.

Gendered Ethics and Law in Cases of Corporate Executive Crimes and Punishments

229

Mary Lenzi

Index

251

About the Editor and Contributors

257

Acknowledgments

I gratefully acknowledge the University of Wisconsin-Platteville for granting a sabbatical leave that ultimately led to this project and Nicholas Philipson, senior editor, Business and Economics at Praeger, for all his assistance. Furthermore, I thank the contributors for the ideas and insights they shared in their chapters. Dealing with them to complete this set has been a pleasure. Finally, I want to express appreciation to Mary Christoph Foegen for her counsel; J. H. Foegen for instilling in me the desire to write; and my immediate family: children in their birth order, John, Kathryn, and Amy, and my husband, Randy, for their support as I completed two major writing projects in eighteen months. Margaret Foegen Karsten March 2006

Introduction

Two generations have grown to adulthood since sweeping federal laws were passed to end employment discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex, and national origin and to ensure that women and men were paid equally for doing the same or substantially similar jobs. Why, then, is it still necessary—even compelling—to have a diverse group of practitioners, academics, and theorists in business, psychology, and related disciplines address issues related to gender, race, and ethnicity in the workplace? Three reasons, not in order of importance, are money, power, and ethics. Women in management and the professions supposedly experience a $2 million lifetime income disparity vis-a`-vis their male counterparts.1 Economists indicate that white women experience a 7 percent wage penalty for each child they have.2 Though no wage penalty is attached to motherhood for black women, they unfortunately tend to be paid significantly less than whites. Though the sexes have reached numerical parity in management overall, scarcely more than a handful of women lead the powerful Fortune 500 firms in the United States. As of this writing, only one is a woman of color. And 95 percent of top executives in U.S. corporations are white males, though no appreciable difference exists in the percent of women and men who aspire to become chief executives.3 If those facts are not persuasive enough, consider that from 2000 through the first half of 2001, twenty-five cases filed with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission involved egregious racial harassment—the use of nooses reminiscent of lynching.4 Not in out-of-the way rural areas, the sites of such despicable incidents were cities such as San Francisco and Detroit. Those are only the overt acts; columnist Leonard Pitts commenting on the death of civil rights advocate Rosa Parks in 2005 said, ‘‘Racism that was once brazen enough to demand a black woman’s bus seat is covert now, a throw-the-rock-and-hide-your-hand charade, its effects as visible as ever, its workings mostly hidden.’’5

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Introduction

How long will it take before repugnant incidents and effects—blatant and subtle—are abolished? When will future U.S. citizens wonder why publications in the early twenty-first century found it necessary to create lists of the top fifty women or blacks in major firms? Those from cultures characterized by extreme time consciousness, a strong streak of individualism, and a desire to pursue promotions into the pinnacles of power have become impatient with the slow pace of change. Incrementalists might urge them to learn from those of other cultural traditions that social change occurs slowly and that forty to fifty years, though a large portion of any person’s life, is very little time in the context of social institutions that have existed for centuries. Others are not convinced that change must be slow. They argue that any additional time is too long to wait for those who have been deprived of full participation in and equal benefits of their work in this society. Corporate downsizing notwithstanding, the United States may again face a shortage of highly skilled professionals. Baby Boomers, born between 1946 and 1964, are starting to retire in record numbers and will be replaced by the much smaller Baby Bust and Generations X and Y. Record numbers of women are in the labor force already, so they will not be a ready supply of additional labor, but women and people of color who are currently marginalized and underutilized may be.6 Twenty-five percent of U.S. firms do not have diversity programs.7 Of those that do, only about one-third succeed; 20 percent fail.8 This abysmal track record does not promote positive relations among people of various races and ethnicities. The road to a multicultural workplace is uneven and full of potholes; temporary spikes in dysfunctional conflict are to be expected. Miscommunication and misunderstanding even among people of similar backgrounds can result in serious organizational problems. Without honest, open face-to-face dialogue, which presupposes self knowledge such that people can explain who they are, their worldviews, and the factors, including ethnicity and race, that have shaped them, U.S. firms face trying times. Progressing from different starting points on the continuum ranging from monolithic to pluralistic to multicultural organizations will be challenging. Stereotypes and the debate over the extent to which gender differences in behavior exist and their causes affect the enthusiasm with which workplace diversity is embraced. A 2005 Catalyst study showed that although few managerially relevant behavioral differences exist between the sexes, men are still viewed as more likely to ‘‘take charge’’ and women to ‘‘take care’’ of situations and people.9 The consequences of such deeply embedded false mindsets are horrendous for women pursuing upward mobility, yet they are as likely to believe the stereotypes as men. A steady stream of contrary information must be presented to root out stereotypes if gender parity is to be a reality by 2019, as the optimistic Committee of 200, an elite group of powerful U.S. women, forecasts.10 Otherwise, predictions of those who say gender equity will not occur for another 475 years may prove more accurate.11

Introduction

xiii

Equity may not be achieved quickly if behavioral variations are primarily attributed to innate sex-based differences. Despite profuse apologies, former Harvard president Lawrence Summers, who resigned from that position on June 30, 2006, unleashed a controversy the previous spring by suggesting that the shortage of female science professors may be due to such distinctions. This rationale alarmed people who believe that nurture or socialization has far more to do with occupational choice than any internal differences, which they maintain are insignificant. Baron-Cohen, who studies differences in empathizing and systematizing human brains that he believes are hard-wired but that appear in both women and men thinks the situation of those studying biological differences has improved since the 1960s and 1970s. In those days, serious researchers who recognized the role of socialization but wanted to study the impact of biology on sex differences in behaviors were ‘‘accused of oppression and of defending an essentialism that perpetuated inequalities between the sexes.’’ Baron-Cohen argues that now the ‘‘pendulum has settled sensibly in the middle of the nature-nurture debate.’’12 His assessment is disputed by other researchers, notably Janet Hyde. Her meta-analysis revealed that gender-related behavioral differences long assumed to exist may not or may be highly exaggerated. She found few differences between the sexes and still fewer that were relevant to leadership or management in her studies of gender similarities.13 False assumptions nonetheless persist and harm both sexes. Women who are not perceived as nice may be penalized in important selection and evaluation decisions; men may be perceived incorrectly and may see themselves as incapable of nurturing.14 Implications of many other factors based on which humans experience different workplace opportunity and treatment could have been explored; these volumes address only gender, race, and ethnicity for reasons of relative brevity. The socially constructed term race is used reluctantly, recognizing that it is not synonymous with skin color, differs from ethnicity, and may be unrelated to objective reality. The human race truly is the only one that exists. Over the past two generations, much progress has been made. Things have changed, yet some issues in vogue today—such as ‘‘on-’’ and ‘‘off-ramps’’ for those who wish to step out of the fast track to provide care or get more education15—are essentially concerns from a quarter century ago that have been repackaged significantly. A shortage of ideas for creating harmonious diverse workplaces in which all employees flourish is not the problem. We know what to do; now we must figure out how to do it. Ways to implement greater organizational equity must be considered carefully after they have been interiorized and are given high priority. Evaluation, accountability, and follow-up also are crucial to long-term success of equal opportunity efforts. Consequences of failing in this endeavor could be dire. Some believe corporations are immune from the short-lived social disintegration and racial tension following Hurricane Katrina in 2005, but they may be deluded. Growing gaps between haves and have-nots in the United States, if not remedied, could

xiv

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result in chaos affecting all institutions, including businesses. Though many blacks have increased their incomes, their wealth trails that of the majority group.16 Native Americans are virtually off the radar in terms of management of major firms, but the underlying leadership principles of some tribal nations are consistent with contemporary management theories, such as stewardship and servant leadership. Continuing to marginalize these and other racial and ethnic minorities is costly and must end. This comprehensive set examines the status of women and racial/ethnic minorities and discusses challenges they face and the psychological, sociological, and legal contexts in which change must occur. It then suggests actions that organizations and individuals can take to deal with such challenges.

VOLUME 1 Volume 1 sets the stage for in-depth treatment of causes and consequences of workplace and leadership inequity. Perspectives of those who feel disconnected from or outside of the Eurocentric corporate mainstream in the United States, such as Asian Americans, Native American women, and black and white women are explored. Employment statistics pertaining to a spectrum of racial and ethnic minorities and to women are analyzed, as are those focused more narrowly on subgroups of Latinas. Disaffection is expressed poignantly in the stories of those whose backgrounds would uniquely qualify them to make culturally rich, if thus far unrecognized and unrewarded, contributions to workplace management but for artificial barriers. This illustrates the amount of progress that must be made before those with different but equally valid and valuable perspectives become full partners in societal and business leadership. Chapters in Volume 1 range from theoretical reflections on leadership to pragmatic analyses of employment statistics. The volume begins with conceptual discussions of leadership that draw on but go beyond experiences of diverse groups, including African American executives and entrepreneurs, skilled tradeswomen who perform managerial functions daily, Asian Americans, and Native American women. Advocated are flexible, holistic, situational leadership approaches that ‘‘give voice’’ to the marginalized, ‘‘give back’’ to the community, add value to society, and distance themselves from either/or dichotomies. As a group, contributors largely reject hierarchical leadership but reach no consensus about what must replace it. Such agreement may be impossible if leadership depends on the circumstances. Leader effectiveness may demand both meticulous preparation through the study of related disciplines and a simultaneous willingness to ‘‘let go’’ and creatively combine a kaleidoscope of possibilities in new, different ways. The most fitting leadership analogy may be that of the artist whose painting-in-process evolves on an ever-changing canvas, suggested by Adler.

Introduction

xv

Though technically not managers, skilled craftswomen who eschew the title fulfill leadership roles and engage in traditional management functions of planning, organizing, directing, and controlling. The lack of attractiveness of management as an occupation is not an obstacle that the Glass Ceiling Commission of the 1990s envisioned but is nonetheless problematic. For most skilled tradeswomen, promotions to management would entail less flexible schedules, relative job insecurity associated with nonunionized supervisory positions, and short-term pay cuts due to necessary but unpaid overtime. Thus the short-run lack of incentives for tradeswomen to cross over to management may perpetuate occupational segregation at higher levels. Such occupational segregation is the topic of later chapters in Volume 1. Contributors differ markedly in their views of this problem and related concepts. For example, Kim decries occupational segregation for its inefficiency in the use of human resources in a meritocracy where rewards are to be based on performance rather than on uncontrollable factors. Rosette, on the other hand, questions the existence of meritocracy due to unearned privilege, which gives advantages to some based on race, ethnicity, or gender.

VOLUME 2 Many legal, judicial, psychological, and sociological forces affect the treatment and advancement prospects of employees and executives based on their gender, race, and ethnicity. This volume discusses selected laws related to equal employment opportunity, affirmative action programs, and the relationship of the relatively neglected topics of racial and ethnic harassment to the more widely researched issue of sexual harassment and of the latter to workplace incivility (rudeness) and violence. The impact of stereotypes, socialization, and power-related concerns on the disenfranchised also are presented. Twenty-five percent of human resource managers surveyed attribute sexual harassment lawsuits to failed romantic relationships in the workplace.17 This worries some employers enough to ask the parties to sign so-called love contracts to release their firms from liability for harassment when or if the relationship ends. Unlike harassment, incivility, or violence, however, workplace romances may have a positive side, improving morale and satisfaction of the participants, possible charges of favoritism from co-workers notwithstanding. Romantic workplace relationships are addressed in Volume 2. Though office romance may have unanticipated favorable effects on those directly involved, many laws and programs designed to rectify employment inequity have unintended harmful effects. For example, affirmative action has been wildly successful at opening previously closed doors for women and minorities— particularly white women—but also has led to consequences that some fear have hampered additional progress.

xvi

Introduction

Furthermore, other equal employment opportunity–related programs focus on superficial problems and fail to discern (let alone address) their root causes. For example, Nydegger and coauthors point out in Volume 2 that workplace incivility and sexual harassment sometimes occur together. Rudeness at work, however, has been virtually ignored. Later, Callahan indicates that sexual harassment training implemented to deal with sexual assault by males in one branch of the military disregards the fact that its higher incidence and an increase in eating disorders among females in the same branch could be caused by perceived loss of personal control due to institutionalized resocialization practices. In the first chapter of Volume 2, Heilman and Haynes argue that affirmative action may have unintended consequences that should be dealt with. The effects of the Pregnancy Discrimination Act of 1978 (PDA), intended or otherwise, could not be adequately assessed or addressed for many years due to different judicial interpretations. Not until enactment of the Family and Medical Leave Act in 1993 (FMLA) did the debate subside. At issue was whether the PDA required employers to provide minimum jobprotected leave when a woman was physically incapacitated during childbirth and recovery. In some jurisdictions, women could be fired for absenteeism associated with complications of pregnancy or time off for childbirth if their employers lacked temporary disability insurance. Those interpreting the PDA narrowly argued that pregnant women had to be treated only as well or as poorly as ‘‘nonpregnant persons’’ who were disabled for a time, assuming that their employers offered insurance or had other temporary disability policies. Even then, the controversy was resolved only for employees who met eligibility standards and worked for firms covered by the FMLA. Those employed by organizations not required to comply with the FMLA still may have to contend with such interpretations if their state laws provide no additional protection. The FMLA allows all eligible employees, regardless of sex, unpaid, jobprotected leave in an attempt to dispel gender stereotypes about responsibilities for caregiving. Some employees, however, fear their career commitment will be questioned if they take FMLA leave; others cannot afford to do so. Ironically, the FMLA, which was to protect employees’ job rights when they needed time off work for caregiving, may deter employees—particularly women wishing to bear children—from job changes needed to advance in their careers because of its restrictive eligibility requirements. Stereotypes about the career commitment of pregnant women harm all employed women. Such mindsets, though incorrect, readily extend to all in the same general category when they are grouped together based on one uncontrollable factor instead of viewed as individuals. More than forty years after the Harvard Business Review published ‘‘Are Women Executives People?’’18 and over twenty-five years after ‘‘Women and Men as Managers: A Significant Case of No Significant Difference’’ appeared in Organizational Dynamics,19 the perception (though not the reality) of a link

Introduction

xvii

between management and masculinity persists. Several contributors deal with these stereotypes and the difficulty in eradicating them despite evidence that any true gender differences in leadership are small and situational.20 Such stereotypes may be all but intractable until women, who now represent half of all managers, professionals, and administrators, are no longer numerical tokens in the executive suite. Tokenism is another subject examined in this volume. Though much empirical evidence describes the organizational consequences of tokenism for women, the few existing studies on the impact of racial and ethnic minorities are narrow. More should be conducted. Those researching women who are tokens believe the same concepts may apply to minorities and have seen positive results among token women in powerful positions when the organization employing them purposely legitimated their authority. Any token group has far less power than the dominant class, but power can also be systematically taken from the numerical majority as is done in the military to resocialize recruits. Callahan’s previously mentioned chapter illustrates how power and control of one’s own life are systematically removed from both male and female air force cadets, resulting in dysfunctional consequences as both strive to regain it. An important distinction is that the women cadets seem to bear the brunt of the negative impact; not only do they experience eating disorders at a higher rate than other female college freshmen as they seek to control their bodies, but they also are targets of sexual assault by men cadets who react to being stripped of power by asserting control over women. Whether they are military recruits or powerful corporate CEOs, women and men still seem to be evaluated differently. This occurs despite the notion that U.S. institutions including the judiciary are gender-neutral and fair. Those who do not conform to intensified gender-related prescriptions for behavior, which are especially strong stereotypical expectations based on gender, are punished harshly.21 On the other hand, infractions of those violating relaxed gender-based proscriptions, or behaviors considered inappropriate for any U.S. adult but less so for males, may be dealt with less severely.22 Though the final verdict is still out at this writing, these findings may be relevant in the respective cases of Martha Stewart and Ken Lay of Enron, discussed in the last chapter of Volume 2.

VOLUME 3 Organizational and individual strategies for dealing with challenges faced by people of color and women based on case studies, personal reflections, and research are presented in Volume 3. Face-to-face interpersonal communication is proposed as the new frontier in which the promised benefits of diversity management will be delivered as individuals begin to know and trust one another. Other chapters dealing with diversity focus on the path Shell Oil U.S. took to become a model firm in terms of not only cultivating a heterogeneous

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workforce but also using each employee’s unique talents fully and best practices in diversity management, which include built-in accountability, top executive support, and aggressive promotion of diversity during recruitment. Today’s diverse workforce consists of about equal percentages of women and men. As the percent of sexual harassment cases filed by men increases, some might think harassment policies should be gender-neutral, but the authors of ‘‘Dirty Business,’’ a chapter in Volume 3, disagree. They discuss why sexual objectification of women—even if it occurs off the job—has devastating effects on the workplace, what can be done to change the culture that perpetuates objectification, and who should be involved in effecting such widespread organizational change. Another change in the workforce with implications for women and minorities involves career planning models. Vestiges from a bygone era that assume uninterrupted vertical movement within one company must be replaced by models with multiple career paths featuring flexible on- and off-ramps, lateral moves, and continuous learning. Crucial to career advancement of women and racial/ethnic minorities is the cultivation of social capital through developmental opportunities. Those who have lower positions or have been historically underrepresented may need to temporarily gain legitimacy by reflecting that of more powerful organizational members. Role modeling, another avenue for development, deserves more study. Being perceived as and serving as role models also may affect women and minorities positively. New forms of developmental relationships, such as a network of mentors, may be appropriate for a workplace in which demands for knowledge quickly outpace capabilities of any human, regardless of gender, race, or intellectual endowment. Other alternatives to the master-apprentice model are needed to ease the burden on executive women and minorities who are expected to help others advance but whose ability to sponsor prote´ge´s is limited due what has been dubbed a time famine.23 Some options are virtual-, peer-, and co-mentoring, and mentors-for-hire. If research supports the importance of developmental relationships for women and people of color, so does the life experience of contributors to this volume. Evans advocates greater use of peer mentoring and coaching and defines networking as ‘‘putting people together’’ for business reasons. Gee lists networking along with self-knowledge and reflection as strategies for dealing with gendered racism. Though the business literature focuses on developmental relationships and activities occurring at work, one’s personal life also can enhance leadership. Too often, personal life is assumed to detract from work, but that occurs only if resources are assumed to be limited. To the extent that multiple roles are energizing,24 the net result of personal experiences that teach skills transferable to the workplace may be positive, especially for those who have lacked equal access to company-sponsored development programs historically.

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Equal access and treatment are necessary but insufficient to create employment equity if certain groups face unequal limitations.25 All organizations, including those in higher education, must seriously consider personal and professional needs and realities of the employees they seek to attract and retain when formulating work-life policies and programs to minimize disparities in constraints. Perceived inequities may create stress. Thus, people of color and women are more likely than white male counterparts to encounter gender- and racerelated stressors. Glass and concrete ceilings, manifestations of individual and institutional racism, and historical traumas deep enough to wound the soul represent unequal constraints. The resilience some people of color and women exhibit in coping successfully with profound challenges or stressors is remarkable. It may lead to unparalleled gains in hardiness, self-efficacy, self-esteem, and empathy, qualities that can only help in future personal and professional endeavors. However, not all those in the workplace who have been harmed by ‘‘isms’’ related to gender, race, or ethnicity are gifted with such resilience. They must not be abandoned, nor must their possible future contributions as employees or executives be dismissed. Rather, organizations must fully commit not only to stress-reduction strategies but also to creation of an environment that optimizes the talents of all. NOTES 1. E. Murphy, Getting Even: Why Women Don’t Get Paid Like Men—And What to Do about It (New York: Touchstone, 2005). 2. S. A. Hewlett, ‘‘Executive Women and the Myth of Having it All,’’ Harvard Business Review 80 (2002): 66–74. 3. J. S. Lublin, ‘‘Women Aspire to Be Chief as Much as Men Do,’’ Wall Street Journal (2004, June 23): D2. 4. A. Bernstein, ‘‘Racism in the Workplace: In an Increasingly Multicultural U.S., Harassment of Minorities Is on the Rise,’’ Business Week (2001, July 30): 37–43, 64–67. 5. L. Pitts, ‘‘Rosa Parks: She Taught Us the Power of One,’’ Wisconsin State Journal (2005, Oct. 31): A6. 6. S. A. Hewlett and C. B. Luce, ‘‘Off-Ramps and On-Ramps: Keeping Talented Women on the Road to Success,’’ Harvard Business Review (March 2005): 43–46, 48, 50–54. 7. T. Joyner, ‘‘Ethnicity, Gender Bias Remain Common at Work,’’ Wisconsin State Journal (2005, April 15): C9. 8. S. Rynes and B. Rosen, ‘‘A Field Survey of Factors Affecting the Adoption and Perceived Success of Diversity Training,’’ Personnel Psychology 48 (1995): 247–71. 9. Catalyst, Women ‘‘Take Care,’’ Men ‘‘Take Charge’’: Stereotyping of U.S. Business Leaders Exposed (New York: Catalyst, 2005). 10. M. Llewellyn-Williams, The C200 Business Leadership Index 2004: Annual Report on Women’s Clout in Business (Chicago: Committee of 200, 2001–2004).

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11. D. L. Corsun and W. M. Costen, ‘‘Is the Glass Ceiling Unbreakable? Habitus, Fields, and the Stalling of Women and Minorities in Management,’’ Journal of Management Inquiry 10 (March 2001): 16–25. 12. S. Baron-Cohen, ‘‘The Essential Difference: The Male and Female Brain,’’ Phi Kappa Phi Forum 85(1) (2005): 23. 13. J. S. Hyde, ‘‘The Gender Similarities Hypothesis,’’ American Psychologist 60 (2005): 581–92. 14. Ibid. 15. Hewlett and Luce, ‘‘Off-Ramps and On-Ramps: Keeping Talented Women on the Road to Success,’’ 43–46, 48, 50–54. 16. D. Hajela, ‘‘The Color of Money Still Divides Blacks and Whites,’’ Wisconsin State Journal (2005, January 18): D1, D9. 17. Society for Human Resource Management, ‘‘Workplace Romance Survey (item no. 62.17014),’’ Alexandria, VA: SHRM Public Affairs Department. 18. G. Bowman, N. Worthy, and S. Greyser, ‘‘Are Women Executives People?’’ Harvard Business Review ( July–August 1965): 15–28, 164–78. 19. S. M. Donnell and J. Hall, ‘‘Men and Women as Managers: A Significant Case of No Significant Difference,’’ Organizational Dynamics (Spring 1980): 71. 20. Hyde, ‘‘The Gender Similarities Hypothesis.’’ 21. D. A. Prentice and E. Carranza, ‘‘What Women and Men Should Be, Shouldn’t Be, Are Allowed to Be, and Don’t Have to Be: The Contents of Prescriptive Gender Stereotypes,’’ Psychology of Women Quarterly 26 (2002): 269–81. 22. Ibid. 23. L. A. Perlow, ‘‘The Time Famine: Toward a Sociology of Work Time,’’ Administrative Science Quarterly 44 (1999): 57–81. 24. R. Barnett and G. Baruch, ‘‘Social Roles, Gender, and Psychological Distress,’’ in R. Barnett, L. Biener, and G. Baruch, eds., Gender and Stress (New York: Free Press, 1987), pp. 122–41. 25. L. Bailyn, Breaking the Mold: Women, Men, and Time in the New Corporate World. (New York: Free Press, 1993).

1

Affirmative Action: Unintended Adverse Effects Madeline E. Heilman and Michelle C. Haynes

Since its inception in the 1960s, affirmative action has provoked intense debate. Originally implemented to rectify past discrimination and prevent it in the future, affirmative action often receives credit for the decided increase in the numbers of women and racial minority members in today’s important organizational positions. However, claims have been made that affirmative action and the procedures used to implement it have subtly deleterious consequences. This chapter presents research examining claims of hidden potential costs of affirmative action for organizations and the people who work in them—costs that may work against its intended objectives.

WHAT IS AFFIRMATIVE ACTION? Affirmative action was instituted as a policy in 1964 when President Lyndon Johnson issued Executive Order 11246. It required organizations with more than fifty employees that wished to enter contracts with federal agencies to take ‘‘affirmative action’’ to ensure that all current and future employees were employed in fair numbers and treated fairly on the job. In addition, regulations set forth by the Secretary of Labor required organizations to develop internal monitoring to identify problem areas and, should underutilization be discovered, required organizations to create goals and timetables to correct these problems. Examples of such affirmative action might entail targeted recruitment, career advancement training, and validation of selection tests.1 Although affirmative action originally was designed to overcome discrimination and barriers to equal employment opportunity, more recently it has also been legitimated by the U.S. Supreme Court as a means of realizing diversity goals.2 Thus, it is used not only to rectify and avert discrimination but also to increase the representation of designated disadvantaged groups, namely, women

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and ethnic minorities who are underrepresented in the workforce, for example, African Americans and Latinos. Yet affirmative action goes beyond the adoption of equal opportunity practices in which gender and race are to be disregarded when employment decisions are made. Rather, it implies that nondiscrimination is insufficient to combat prejudice; instead, active efforts—explicitly taking group membership into account when making employment decisions—must be made to overcome discrimination. The Practice of Affirmative Action Affirmative action has been implemented by a broad range of policies, both mandated and voluntary.3 Various typologies have been developed as means of classifying the many implementations of affirmative action. For example, Oppenheimer proposed a program model typology.4 Specifically, Oppenheimer suggested that affirmative action takes form as one of five program models: targeted hiring, in which a position is designated a priori, to be filled by a member of a designated group; quotas, in which specific numerical requirements are set for hiring members of designated groups; plus factor programs, in which applicants are assigned additional points, based on their group membership, that are used to tally total scores that are compared for selection purposes; self-examination programs, which involve monitoring the current status of minorities and women and implementing goals and timetables should underrepresentation exist; and outreach programs, in which efforts are made to expand the applicant pool to recruit women and minorities to positions in which they are underrepresented. Alternatively, following Seligman,5 a number of researchers have classified the various implementations of affirmative action using a more theoretical typology, conceiving of them as falling along a ‘‘hard–soft’’ continuum. Implementations for which group membership is the primary criterion in decision making are considered to be on the hard end of the continuum, and implementations for which merit is the primary criterion in decision making are on the soft end. Implementations involving a mixture of group membership and merit criteria fall in between. Despite their repeated inclusion in the various typologies of affirmative action, a review of relevant legislation and case law makes clear that the extremely hard forms of affirmative action—those in which group membership is the exclusive criterion used—are illegal (e.g., federal regulations 41 CFR 60-2(e), 60-2.15, and 60-2.30 explicitly prohibit quotas in employment decisions and the preferential selection of unqualified minority group members over qualified nonminority group members). Nonetheless, the distinction between practices in which merit is central in decision making and those in which group membership plays the major role seems psychologically meaningful both to those targeted by affirmative action efforts and those who are onlookers to these processes.

Affirmative Action: Unintended Adverse Effects

3

The Perception of Affirmative Action Despite the many variations of affirmative action programs, the perception of affirmative action remains largely undifferentiated. Both anecdotal and empirical evidence indicates that people generally assume affirmative action to be little more than preferential selection based on demographic group membership and that they persist in associating affirmative action programs with particularly hard forms of affirmative action based solely on group membership, such as quota systems and set-aside programs,6 despite the fact that they are illegal. Quotas, in particular, seem to resonate with people’s understanding of the implementation of affirmative action. One study conducted by Crosby and colleagues surveying adults in the metropolitan Chicago area found that approximately 40 percent of the respondents understood affirmative action to be a quota system.7 Moreover, there is evidence that the public believes that with affirmative action, demography trumps merit; results from the General Social Survey report 70 percent of whites think that it is at least somewhat likely that whites lose jobs or promotions to less qualified blacks in today’s job market.8 The widespread assumption that affirmative action is little more than preferential selection based on demographic group membership has important implications. This assumption about what affirmative action entails, even if it is inconsistent with fact, provides the impetus for reactions to it. The negative effects of affirmative action, when they occur, are not the result of what a particular affirmative action program actually is but the result of what it is perceived to be. Research indicates that when individuals discount the role of merit criteria in selection, and people are believed to have benefited not because of what they merit but because of the demographic group to which they belong, (1) the selected others can become tainted with a stigma of incompetence, (2) the beneficiaries themselves can suffer in their self-evaluations and work attitudes and behavior, and (3) the nonbeneficiaries can feel cheated and become resentful and demotivated. Each of these potential consequences is discussed in turn in the following sections.

THE STIGMA OF INCOMPETENCE Several vocal opponents of affirmative action are members of groups targeted to benefit from it.9 These individuals argue that affirmative action stigmatizes its intended beneficiaries by causing inferences of substandard competence. Thus, Shelby Steele, a prominent black professor, wrote in the New York Times Magazine, ‘‘the quality that earns us preferential treatment is implied inferiority’’—the implication is that special treatment is needed.10 More recently, Justice Clarence Thomas, in his dissenting opinion to the case upholding the affirmative action policy at the University of Michigan Law School,

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indicated that students who are associated with affirmative action are ‘‘tarred as undeserving.’’11 Some research results are consistent with the claim that affirmative action taints its recipients with a stigma of incompetence, although none test it directly. For example, Garcia and colleagues found that qualifications of minority graduate student applicants were rated less favorably when the university’s affirmative action plan was highlighted than when it was not mentioned.12 Another study reported negative effects on evaluations of female managers when an organization was portrayed as being committed to an affirmative action policy.13 Northcraft and Martin found that when a black investment banker was reported to be an affirmative action hire, respondents were more likely to pair him, as compared with whites or blacks not associated with affirmative action, with a poor re´sume´.14 Finally, Jacobson and Koch found that when selected because of their sex, not merit or chance, female managers were more likely to be seen as the cause of a team’s failure and less likely to be given credit for its success.15 Why would association with affirmative action result in inferences of incompetence? A consideration of attribution theory and the processes by which we come to understand the cause of events is instructive. Particularly relevant is the discounting principle, which is used to understand the cause for an effect when several causes are possible.16 Affirmative action, because it is presumed to entail preferential selection based on demographic group membership, provides an alternative, salient, and plausible reason for a person’s selection independent of his or her qualifications. Consequently, the importance of the role of the individual’s qualifications for the position—his or her skills, abilities, and relevant experience—is likely to be ‘‘discounted’’ and the individual thought to be selected only because of gender or minority status, with qualifications irrelevant in decision making. But because qualifications are typically considered critical to personnel decision making, the assumption that they did not play a role is likely to lead to another assumption—that the person did not ‘‘have what it takes’’ to do the job well and would not have been selected without help from affirmative action. Thus the assumed disregard of ordinary and expected selection criteria, a consequence of perceptions of what affirmative action really entails, provides impetus for the inference of incompetence. Empirical Evidence of the Stigma of Incompetence We conducted a series of studies to directly examine the proposition that a stigma of incompetence arises from affirmative action initiatives and to examine the role of the discounting process in bringing this about. In the first study,17 we sought to determine whether association with affirmative action would affect the perceived competence of its beneficiaries. Specifically we expected that women associated with affirmative action would be evaluated less favorably than men and other women not associated with affirmative action. Moreover, we

Affirmative Action: Unintended Adverse Effects

5

reasoned that if discounting were truly the underlying process, then perceptions of a woman’s lesser competence should not be limited only to jobs for which women typically would be considered poorly qualified. In other words, we expected association with affirmative action to create an unfavorable evaluation of a woman’s competence, even in instances when it would not have otherwise occurred. We used a laboratory experiment to test these ideas. In what was described as research to help understand selection decisions, male and female college students reviewed the application materials of someone said to be recently hired for a job, and then both described what they thought the individual was like and made prognoses about his or her work effectiveness. Research participants received a job description in the form of a recruitment bulletin indicating job requirements and work responsibilities and employment application materials containing information about educational background, work experience, and general demographic information. The job either was strongly male sex-typed (electrician) or more neutral in sex-type (lab technician), with only 8 percent women said to currently populate the former and 41 percent the latter. In all cases the information provided about the hiree was identical except for his or her sex, which was made evident by the name on the application materials and a photograph (which always depicted a white man or woman). Furthermore, when the person hired was a woman, she either was or was not linked to an affirmative action initiative via handwritten comments written on the application materials. We were interested in ratings of competence. Results indicated that whatever the degree of sex typing of the job, when there was an association with affirmative action, women were rated not only less competent than men but also less competent than women not associated with affirmative action. In fact, the affirmative action label created problems for women even when their sex by itself did not result in more negative characterizations (neutral sex-typed job), and it clearly worsened problems for women when simply being a woman already was problematic for competence evaluations (male sex-typed job). These data therefore verify the existence of stigma of incompetence for beneficiaries of affirmative action initiatives and indicate the depth of its negative impact. Moreover, consistent with the discounting idea, respondents believed qualifications were far less important when affirmative action was involved in the selection of employees. There were no differences in the responses of male and female respondents. These results support the idea that affirmative action can give rise to negativity directed at those purported to be its beneficiaries. But they do not make clear how pervasive this effect is. In the workplace, individuals often have more information about others than they did in our study, and this additional information may supersede association with affirmative action as an indicator of an individual’s competence. Accordingly, we conducted another study to capture the attitudes of people actually in organizational settings and asked them to draw on their own personal experiences in providing research data.18 The

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specific objective was to examine how beliefs about the role that affirmative action played in an individual’s career progress relates to competence evaluations of women and minority group members employed in nontraditional positions in actual organizations. Respondents were white males, ranging in age from twenty-five to fortyseven years (mean age was thirty-four), all of whom were currently employed in a broad range of industries. They were approached in airports, train stations, and outdoor sitting areas near places of employment in Chicago and New York City and asked to complete a brief questionnaire. The questionnaire’s cover page described the purpose of the research as the study of working people’s impressions of the changing composition of the American workforce. It instructed respondents to think of a specific co-worker, one who had joined their unit in recent years and who is a member of a group that in the past typically did not hold this type of position, and to answer the questionnaire with that individual in mind. No names of respondents were obtained; any respondent who could not think of a co-worker who fit these criteria returned the questionnaire. The questionnaire was designed to assess both the presumed role of affirmative action in the decision to hire the co-worker (embedded among questions about other possible reasons for the hiring decision) and the perception of the co-worker’s competence. The resulting data demonstrated a strong negative correlation; the greater the role affirmative action was believed to have played in a co-worker’s hiring, the less competent that co-worker was thought to be. This correlation remained statistically significant regardless of the length of time the respondent had worked with the co-worker; whether the co-worker was the respondent’s peer, superior, or subordinate; or whether the co-worker described was a white woman, a black woman, or a black man. Moreover, the greater the presumed role of affirmative action in the hiring decision, the less were qualifications seen as playing a major role in the co-worker’s selection and, even more importantly, the less likely the co-worker was viewed as having been qualified to do the job at the time he or she was hired. The findings of these two studies strongly support the idea that a stigma of incompetence is associated with affirmative action and demonstrate that inferences of incompetence are made whether affirmative action beneficiaries are women or members of racial minorities and whether the evaluators are students, employees, men, or women. But they do not provide evidence of the ultimate impact of these inferences. They do not tell us whether inferences of incompetence persist when information about actual performance, especially that which is inconsistent with the inferences, becomes available. This question led us to another set of studies.19 Persistence of the Incompetence Stigma We expected that information about on-the-job performance effectiveness would only sometimes override the inferences of incompetence arising from

Affirmative Action: Unintended Adverse Effects

7

association with affirmative action. In particular, we thought this would only occur when the performance information was unambiguous and not amenable to distortion—a not so common occurrence in work organizations in which performance information often lacks precision, is arrived at subjectively, or is unclear with regard to the party responsible for it. Accordingly, we varied the level of ambiguity associated with the performance information provided. In the first study, the level of ambiguity was varied by the degree of precision of the performance information. Managers from a large insurance company, approximately half male and half female, and ranging in age from twenty-five to fifty-four years old, reviewed materials very much like those in the laboratory experiment described previously. However, in this study, only one job was used, the neutrally sex-typed job of computer programmer. As in the earlier study, participants received packets containing a job description and an employment application containing information about an employee’s education and work experience. However, in this study, participants also were given a six-month job activity summary, supposedly written by the employee’s supervisor. Following these materials was a questionnaire asking for reactions to the employee, including an assessment of his or her competence. Using the same procedures as in the earlier study, the employee was depicted as either a man or woman and, when a woman, either associated with affirmative action or not. Performance information was conveyed on the sixmonth summary by the supervisor’s overall rating of the employee’s performance, which followed a description of the employee’s work activities. The actual response and the response format together were used to vary information ambiguity. In the success conditions, the employee was always rated in the highest category, but the range of categories differed. In the clear success conditions, there were five category ratings: top 5 percent, top 10 percent, top 25 percent, top 50 percent, or bottom 50 percent. In the ambiguous success conditions, there were only two categories: top 50 percent and bottom 50 percent. In addition, there was a condition with no information about success and a condition in which the employee evidently had not been successful and was rated in the bottom 50 percent. Results indicated, as would be expected based on the earlier studies, that with no information about success, affirmative action women were rated as less competent than both the women not associated with affirmative action and the men. This data pattern persisted when the information provided about success was ambiguous (rated as being in the top 50 percent rather than the bottom 50 percent). Only when the information about success was clear and unequivocal (rated as being in the top 5 percent rather than the other four categories) was there no difference in ratings of the competence of the affirmative action woman and the other employees. Thus, without clear information of success, ratings of the affirmative action woman were as negative as when no information had been provided and, surprisingly, not even any better than when failure information had been provided. The pattern of ratings of proposed salary

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increases, also obtained in the study, was identical to that of the competence ratings. A follow-up study was conducted, using managers from the same insurance company as research participants.20 Similar research materials were used, but in this case, the clarity of success was varied by the source ambiguity of the success information. That is, although all research participants reviewed employees who were depicted as having been highly successful (the supervisor indicated that they had ‘‘far exceeded expectations’’), additional information provided to them allowed for different interpretations of how the success had been achieved. Specifically, a report that there had been coaching by a senior co-worker who could be used as a consultant whenever needed (in the ambiguous success conditions) was designed to raise questions about the degree to which the target employee was the unique source of his or her success. Results showed that despite strong indications of success, female affirmative action beneficiaries and male and female nonbeneficiaries were rated equally competent only when information conveyed about those responsible for female beneficiaries’ success was unambiguous. When ambiguity existed about responsibility for the success (when there had been a coach involved), competence ratings of affirmative action women differed decidedly from the ratings of the others. Recommendations for a salary increase followed the identical pattern—when the employees were thought to have used coaches, those associated with affirmative action were treated more harshly. Findings from these two studies suggest that success information does not always dispel the negative competence perceptions that accompany the affirmative action label. Only success that is irrefutable in its implications for an individual’s competence—success that cannot be ignored or dismissed either because of its magnitude or because it is absolutely clear who is responsible for it—counteracts the stigma of incompetence. Evidently, lack of clarity can nullify the disconfirming potential of successful performance information. People seem to resist giving up a negative view of those associated with affirmative action; they continue to be viewed as lacking in competence unless they are proved to be otherwise. This point is particularly important because ambiguity about performance is pervasive in organizations where the nature of work products often makes objective evaluation challenging. In addition, work often is performed interdependently in teams and project groups, making individual contribution difficult to determine. Because ambiguity about performance is inherent in so many work settings, this research suggests that the affirmative action stigma is likely to persist despite performance success. Inferring the Affirmative Action Stigma Although the role affirmative action has played in a selection decision typically is not explicitly stated, it is nonetheless likely that association with affirmative action often is inferred. Whether association with affirmative action

Affirmative Action: Unintended Adverse Effects

9

is explicitly stated or inferred should make no difference in its consequences— the stigma of incompetence is likely to predominate in impression formation regardless. But when is affirmative action inferred? When is an individual assumed to have been hired preferentially because of his or her demographic group? The context in which the selection occurs influences inferences about why a person has been chosen for a position. If a hire is out of the ordinary, it is likely to raise attention and provoke efforts to explain its occurrence. Such cues may be the hiring of one black employee into an all-white work group, or the hiring of a woman into a position that up until then was held only by men. Although many possible explanations exist for either occurrence, the recent visibility of affirmative action policies and the widespread belief that affirmative action is a major factor in personnel decision making makes it a salient and highly plausible explanation for the unexpected newcomers.21 To demonstrate the proclivity to attribute the selection of those from socially targeted groups when their presence is unusual in the setting, we conducted a study in which student participants reviewed the application materials of a female student who was recently admitted to a doctoral program at their university.22 This doctoral student was either the only woman among the eight students admitted to the program that year (the other seven were men) or was one of four women (out of eight) accepted for admission. The admissions decision process was said to be one involving preferential selection based on demographic group (affirmative action), individual qualifications as the sole criterion (merit), or no information about the decision process (ambiguous). Results illustrated that when the admissions process was left ambiguous and only one female was admitted, gender was seen as having played as great a role in selection, and the woman student was seen as having been as poorly qualified, as when an affirmative action policy was explicitly stated. So even without direct information about affirmative action, when selection of a particular student seemed unusual or surprising, respondents (both male and female) behaved as if affirmative action had been taken, in the form of preferential selection, in each case rating the woman far more negatively than when the process had been specified as merit-based. The fact that this result occurred only when the woman chosen was the solo female selected (not when four women were admitted), supports the idea that the out-of-the-ordinary nature of the event triggers the affirmative action inference. This study’s results demonstrate that even in the absence of an explicitly stated selection policy, there is a tendency to assume that an affirmative action policy is being implemented and that demographically based preferential selection has occurred. Thus the problems created by the affirmative action stigma are not confined to those who are officially designated as the program’s beneficiaries. Until the concept of affirmative action and its powerful influence in selection processes changes, women and members of minority groups whose success is totally unrelated to affirmative action or preferential selection may be stigmatized by inferred association.

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BENEFICIARIES’ VIEWS OF SELF-COMPETENCE Another negative consequence of affirmative action is that it may directly damage those it was designed to benefit by creating feelings of inferiority and by undermining self-esteem. In fact, some have argued that affirmative action feeds the suspicion of those who benefit from it that they are not worthy of the positions they attain or the honors they are awarded. They furthermore contend that these threats to self-esteem can plague those in targeted groups who would have obtained their positions and honors without the help of affirmative action.23 In analyzing why affirmative action and the preferential selection processes it is assumed to entail may damage the self-esteem of its intended beneficiaries, considering the differences in the information that a preferential and a merit-based selection procedure provides, in particular the message conveyed about work competence, is instructive. Preferential selection based on one’s demographic group implies that a work-irrelevant characteristic had special weight in the decision process, whereas merit-based selection implies that skill and ability were key factors. Consequently, those selected based on merit have received a vote of confidence—they feel they have earned their positions because of their qualifications, and this belief affirms their sense of competence. However, this external verification of competence, which is a natural consequence of merit-based selection, is absent in preferential selection situations. Rather than their competence being affirmed, it is left open to question, and those assumed to have been selected preferentially are therefore vulnerable to feelings of being unqualified for the job in which they are placed. Just as help is sometimes interpreted to indicate that the recipient is not competent enough to help him- or herself,24 preferential selection may be interpreted to mean that the recipient is not competent enough to be selected on his or her own merits.25 But not having verification about one’s qualifications for a job does not necessarily have adverse effects on feelings about competence; it is only likely to have this effect if people are unsure of themselves. If an individual feels highly capable of handling a job effectively, then verification of his or her skills and abilities is superfluous; a sense of competence already prevails. If, however, an individual is filled with self-doubt or negative performance expectations, the absence of such verification can feed these insecurities. Thus the ambiguity about competence inherent in preferential selection processes is likely to more detrimentally affect those lacking confidence in their ability to perform the job well. Performance expectancies are determined not only by individual proclivities but also by group membership. Stereotypes, which are widely shared and often self-defining, exist about characteristics of those who are members of particular ethnic and gender groups. Stereotypes of groups that typically are targets of affirmative action depict their members as having fewer achievement

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and leadership qualities and skills, deemed essential for high level, prestigious jobs in U.S. culture, than do white men. Consequently, these individuals are more likely than others to approach jobs that are nontraditional for them and thought to require characteristics lacking in members of their groups with a lack of confidence and a low expectation of success.26 Moreover, because affirmative action focuses on the very reason for beneficiaries’ lack of confidence—their group membership—preferential selection based on demographic group should be particularly disturbing for members of targeted groups, adding to their selfdoubts. One would therefore expect that whether or not selection was based on merit would have a negligible effect on white men but a strong effect on women and minority group members: Merit-based selection should calm anxieties about their competence; preferential selection procedures should exacerbate them. Empirical Evidence of Beneficiaries’ Negative Self-View of Competence To directly test these ideas, we conducted a series of studies using the psychology laboratory to create a situation in which preferential selection could occur. Male and female students were chosen for a male sex-typed leadership role either due to their sex (preferentially) or due to merit. Our interest was in the views of self-competence and the consequent self-evaluation of performance and attitudes toward the leadership role that arise from the two different selection procedures. Because of the sex-typed nature of the task, we expected women (but not men) to be insecure about their task-related abilities and therefore negatively affected by the preferential selection procedure. Research participants were paired with an opposite-sex participant (actually a confederate) and were told that one would be the leader and the other the follower on a spatial communications task in which the leader would teach the follower how to draw geometric figures. Participants then completed a brief test said to reliably assess their task-related spatial communication skills. The test was collected, and in the merit conditions it was scored, but in the preferential treatment conditions it was conspicuously set aside. The task was then described and the leader and follower roles assigned. All participants were told that leaders for the study typically were selected based on their skill and ability as indicated by the test, which they were told provided a highly reliable measure of communication skills. Accordingly, in the merit conditions the participant was informed that he or she was chosen as leader because of his or her score, which was higher than that of the other member of the pair. But in the preferential selection conditions, the participants were told that things had to happen differently today because of a shortage of male (female) participants for the study. The participant was told that regardless of test performance, ‘‘because you are a man [woman], you will get to be leader for the task.’’ The twosome then worked on the task and completed a brief questionnaire.

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Results of the first study in this series indicated that as we had anticipated, when participants were male, method of selection made no difference.27 Results for the women, however, indicated that preferential selection can trigger negative self-regard. Compared to those chosen on a merit basis, women who were preferentially selected rated their performance more negatively, viewed themselves as more deficient in leadership ability, and were more eager to relinquish their leadership role. A subsequent study delved further into the differences found in men’s and women’s reactions to the method of selection, by directly verifying self-confidence level as the factor determining whether preferential selection based on group membership adversely affects self perceptions and evaluations.28 These studies starkly illustrate how the lack of competence affirmation inherent in preferential selection can, if one has questions about one’s task competence, lead to diminished views of self. Effects on Work Behavior If the perception of having been selected preferentially based on one’s demographic group leads people to view their competence more negatively than when they are selected on a merit basis, then their approach to work also should differ. Self-view of competence influences expectations of performance success, and as a result motivation and actual performance also are likely to be affected. Indeed, in his extensive review of research exploring the relationship between judgments of personal capability, or self-efficacy judgments, and performance-relevant activities, Bandura found repeated evidence that expectations of task competence have a profound effect on work behavior.29 A study designed to test the notion that preferential selection rather than merit-based selection of those in targeted groups would have detrimental consequences for their actual work behavior validated these ideas.30 One of the consequences of negative self-view of competence is reluctance to assume demanding tasks.31 This consequence is extremely important because seeking and accepting demanding assignments early in one’s career affects others’ impressions of one’s commitment and can therefore affect the nature of subsequent job assignments and the way one’s career advances. So if preferentially selected employees tend to avoid taking on the tough jobs, opting instead for those that are safe and easy to accomplish, then their career progress may be hindered. The study used a similar procedure to the one just described except that the roles assigned were financial services manager and subordinate. All participants were made the manager, and assignment to role was made based either on gender (preferentially) or on diagnostic test results (merit). Participants were subsequently given a choice between two work tasks, both said to be part of the managerial job. One, which involved verifying the subordinate’s work, was designed to be far less demanding than the other, which was to make loan decisions.

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Results were dramatic. Men overwhelmingly chose the demanding task, regardless of how they were selected for the managerial role. Women selected on the basis of merit also overwhelmingly chose the demanding task—in fact, the frequencies of their choices and those of the men did not differ. But the choices of women who were preferentially selected on the basis of their sex were very different; they chose the undemanding and the demanding task equally often and much more often than women selected on a merit basis. The preferentially selected women also rated their work-related ability and task effectiveness more unfavorably than did women selected on a merit basis; selection method had no effect on men’s self-ratings. A second study using the same general procedure verified that it was the negative self-perception of competence that was prompted by preferential selection that was responsible for these timid task choices and negative work-related evaluations.32 When women were given reason to feel confident about their ability to do the task—and therefore whatever uncertainties they had about their ability were quelled— preferential selection had no adverse effects on task choice or self-evaluations. The findings of these studies demonstrate that the negative consequences of preferential selection can extend beyond self perceptions and evaluations and affect actual work-related behavior. Apparently, such selection can lead to selflimiting actions by those designated to benefit from it. Because of the extensive literature on the effects of lowered self-efficacy judgments, the findings also suggest other likely consequences of preferential selection for work behavior, including declines in motivation, perseverance, and even performance itself. Recent research in fact documents the negative relationship between preferential selection and performance on a problem-solving task.33

REACTIONS OF THOSE WHO FEEL UNFAIRLY BYPASSED There has long been evidence in the literature,34 as well as reports in the public press,35 that many think they have been unfairly bypassed due to affirmative action. In fact, affirmative action has been criticized as constituting reverse discrimination. Complaints by white male managers who feel they have been victimized by preferential selection procedures have become increasingly common; clearly, many believe that affirmative action has thwarted their career advancement. Together with the reduction in high-level managerial jobs due to widespread downsizing and efforts to streamline management levels, affirmative action policies often are viewed as major obstacles to getting ahead.36 Underlying the feeling of having been harmed by affirmative action, as with other reactions identified in this chapter, is the belief that it is little more than preferential selection on the basis of demographic group without regard to merit. Preferential selection signals unfair treatment, and, in fact, studies of responses to affirmative action have identified the perception of unfairness as a critical determining factor.37 The perception of unfairness is likely to affect

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reactions to affirmative action generally, but it is likely to be particularly salient and to take on special significance for those who see themselves as its victims. The perception of fairness has two components that are relevant to this issue: fairness in the allocation of organizational outcomes, such as selection and promotion decisions (distributive justice), and the fairness of the process used to allocate these outcomes (procedural justice). Because affirmative action and the preferential selection that it is thought to involve results in the discounting of beneficiaries’ qualifications, it is likely they will be seen as less competent.38 For that reason, those bypassed in these selection decisions may assume beneficiaries have lesser competence and therefore see them as less deserving of the better outcome as compared to themselves; this leads to a feeling of having been cheated out of one’s just desserts. Also, because preferential selection processes are thought to advantage individuals based on an ascribed attribute—race, ethnicity, or gender—over which people have no control, they are likely to be seen as unfair procedurally as well. The consequences of feeling unfairly treated, whether distributively or procedurally, have been repeatedly illustrated.39 Job satisfaction, organizational commitment, turnover intention, as well as general satisfaction, all have been shown to be affected negatively. Therefore, preferential selection on the basis of demographic group membership is likely to have negative consequences for the work attitudes and behavior of nonbeneficiaries. Furthermore, the intensity of these negative reactions should be related to the perceived degree of unfairness. Empirical Evidence of Nonbeneficiaries’ Negative Reactions We conducted a study to test the idea that the nonbeneficiaries of affirmative action–based preferential selection have negative reactions to the work setting.40 The study incorporated both procedural and distributive justice elements. The method of selection and also the perception of deservedness as compared with the other were varied. We used an experimental procedure very similar to that used in earlier studies and described in the last section.41 In this case, however, participants, all of whom were men paired with female confederates, were assigned to the role of subordinate (as opposed to the more desirable role of leader) for a two-person communication task. They were bypassed for the role of leader either on the basis of their skills and abilities (as measured by a test) or on the basis of their sex. In addition, when bypassed on the basis of sex, they either were left uninformed about their task-related ability compared with their female mate who was assigned the leadership role, or were informed that they were inferior, superior, or equal in ability to her. Last, a justification for the preferential procedure on the basis of compensation for past ills either was or was not included. We measured the male participants’ feelings about the task, their ratings of the woman leader, and their intentions to engage in prosocial citizenship behavior.

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Results indicated that sex-based preferential selection has negative consequences for nonbeneficiaries. Unless there was clear evidence to the contrary (the woman beneficiary was reported to be better equipped to handle the position), or very special circumstances (the woman beneficiary was reported to be equally equipped and justification for the selection procedure was explicitly provided), male nonbeneficiaries reacted more negatively to the work task than when merit-based selection had occurred. Importantly, when male nonbeneficiaries were left uninformed about their ability vis-a`-vis the woman selected to be leader (the situation most common in organizational settings), they responded as negatively in terms of motivation, affect, and task attitudes as male beneficiaries who had been explicitly informed that they were superior in ability, and they also characterized the female leader as equally incompetent. This indicates that the prevailing assumption among those bypassed by demographically targeted preferential selection is that they have been denied a deserved outcome. Furthermore, neither variations in the beliefs about relative ability nor variations in the presence or absence of justification for the preferential selection procedure affected citizenship intentions; all of those bypassed because of preferential selection procedures demonstrated a greater reluctance to engage in helping behavior than those not selected for the position because of merit. Only judgments about the beneficiary’s likeability were spared negativity, suggesting that hostility may not necessarily be directed at the perceived beneficiaries of affirmative action despite obvious discontent and disaffection on the part of nonbeneficiaries. These findings suggest that distributive and procedural justice are both critical in understanding nonbeneficiaries’ negative reactions to preferential selection, but that they each have consequences in different reaction domains. Specifically, they suggest that distributive justice concerns, and the feeling of being cheated, influence job-related reactions, whereas procedural justice concerns influence the general orientation toward the work setting. But most important, these findings indicate that the preferential selection process that is thought to characterize affirmative action can inflame perceptions of unfair treatment and provoke negative and resentful feelings, attitudes, and behavior in nonbeneficiaries.

THE EFFECT OF AFFIRMATIVE ACTION POLICY TYPE Throughout this chapter we have argued that without information to the contrary, people generally assume that affirmative action is little more than preferential selection of women and minorities without regard to merit or qualifications, and this assumption is at the heart of many problems we have identified. But as pointed out earlier, affirmative action in reality is not one policy. Affirmative action policies, procedures, and practices have many variations.42 Indeed, scholars in fields including law, political science, sociology, and

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psychology have recognized the distinctions in the practice of affirmative action. Research we have thus far presented tended either to leave the precise nature of the affirmative action policy ambiguous, allowing participants’ assumptions about what affirmative action is to have free reign, or to deliberately specify the policy in a way that is consistent with the assumption—as a hard affirmative action policy in which merit criteria for selection were inconsequential. This means that a question can be raised about whether the adverse reactions we identified would ensue when the softer nature of an affirmative action policy is made explicit and preference given for gender or minority group membership is believed to be only a part, not the whole, of the decision process. This question is important for both theoretical and policy reasons. A series of three studies,43 each corresponding to the particular set of unintended consequences of affirmative action that have been identified in this chapter, were conducted to shed light on this issue. One focused on others’ views of beneficiaries’ competence, a second on beneficiaries’ self-evaluations and performance assessments, and the third on work-related reactions of nonbeneficiaries. In each study, we expected that policies specifying the consideration of merit along with demographic group membership would produce fewer negative reactions than policies in which merit was not believed to be a major factor in selection decision making. The greater the weight reportedly given to merit in decision making, the less negative we expected the reactions to be. The studies, all of which focused on gender-based preferential selection, closely followed the investigations conducted earlier.44 However, they each included variations of the specific policy guiding the selection decisions. Five selection policies were presented. One was totally merit-based, indicating that skill level and ability were the main considerations in making the selection decision. The other four policies were variations of affirmative action: group membership used exclusively, minimum qualifications used as a screen before consideration of group membership, equal qualifications required for group membership to be considered in selection, and an ambiguous policy that indicated only that group membership would be taken into account when decisions were made. Research participants were male and female students from undergraduate and MBA programs. Results indicated that type of policy indeed matters. Although women were found to be regarded as less competent by others whenever they were thought to have been selected on a preferential as opposed to a merit basis, the reported weighting of the merit criterion used made a difference in how they were viewed. When it was made clear that equivalent qualifications were required before their sex was taken into consideration in decision making, the women selectees were rated as more competent than in all other instances in which preferential selection was thought to have occurred.45 The effect of an equivalent qualifications policy was even more pronounced in self-evaluations.46 Although beneficiaries’ desire to retain a leadership role

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was uniformly and negatively affected by preferential selection procedures, when it was clear that equivalent qualifications were required before gender was given preference in decision making, women’s assessment of their own performance and leadership ability did not differ from those of women selected on the basis of merit; they also were decidedly more favorable than the selfviews reported by preferentially selected women for whom qualifications were only a perfunctory consideration (minimum standards) or no consideration at all. A similar pattern of results occurred in the reactions of nonbeneficiaries.47 When the equivalence of qualifications was a prerequisite for preferential selection on the basis of gender, in contrast to the other preferential selection policies, differences from a merit-based selection procedure were not evident in nonbeneficiaries’ affective, motivational, and attitudinal reactions to the task or in evaluations of the leader’s competence. However, anyone involved in a preferential selection situation, whatever the qualifications criterion, was less prone to be willing to engage in citizenship behavior. Thus there appear to be very different reactions to affirmative action policies and preferential selection practices depending on the role merit is thought to play in the decision-making process. In others’ perceptions of the competence of beneficiaries, in beneficiaries’ own self-views and self-assessments, and in work-related reactions of nonbeneficiaries, when merit considerations were said to take priority in selection decisions with equivalent qualifications being necessary for preferential selection to occur, many (but not all) negative reactions abated. However, inclusion of a merit criterion did not always do the trick; in none of the three studies was the minimum requirement policy—in which qualifications were taken into account but were not heavily weighted in decision making—at all successful in mitigating the negativity produced by preferential selection processes. Finally, it is very important to note the results when the affirmative action policy was left ambiguous and a vague reference was made to ‘‘group membership being taken into account’’ in decision making. In this situation, research participants consistently reacted in the same way as did those who were explicitly informed of a policy in which decision makers had totally disregarded merit criteria. This result, repeated across each of the three studies, lends strong support to the idea that affirmative action is typically assumed to be nothing more than preferential selection based on demographic group membership and that without information to the contrary, people act on this assumption. On a brighter note, these findings demonstrating the importance of the nature of the affirmative action policy in determining reactions to it suggest that the adverse effects of affirmative action are not inevitable or unavoidable. How it is implemented, and even more crucial, what is believed about how it is implemented, are of paramount importance.

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IMPLICATIONS FOR WORK SETTINGS The research we have presented has important implications for the way affirmative action initiatives are managed in the workplace. First and foremost, care should be taken in formulating policies and implementing procedures concerning affirmative action. The role that merit plays in selection and the weight that it carries are critical factors in determining reactions. Our findings strongly suggest that organizations should embrace policies and procedures allowing traditional merit criteria, such as skill qualifications and past experience, to play a significant role in the selection process. However, the actual formulation of policies and procedures is not the end of the issue. Because the perception of affirmative action (not the reality of it) provokes the unintended negative reactions that we have identified, conveying the affirmative action policy to members of the organization is very important. Selection procedures and underlying policies usually are invisible to those not directly involved, so the often erroneous assumptions that people hold about affirmative action are not challenged, much less disconfirmed. The nature of affirmative action policy must be publicized to all affected by it to avoid its harmful consequences. In addition, recognition of the potentially debilitating effects of affirmative action on its beneficiaries can lead to constructive organizational efforts to avert them. The importance of providing competence information to qualified women and minorities is a case in point, because it seems to ward off the negative selfregard and its subsequent effects on work behavior that can ensue from the belief that one has been preferentially selected based on one’s gender or minority status. Also, programs and practices that boost confidence in capability, such as social support networks, should help preclude the negative self-regard that can result from an individual’s belief that he or she has benefited from demographically based preferential selection. Recognition of the stigma of incompetence that often burdens those associated with affirmative action efforts also has action implications. Although clear information about the affirmative action policy and its inclusion of merit criteria should help undermine the discounting process that produces the stigma, affirmative action policies probably will remain suspect and assumptions about any one co-worker’s competence still will be tinged with negativity. Thus, validating that co-worker’s competence by providing information about qualifications that uniquely equip him or her for the position and about his or her performance successes is critical. Organizations must also recognize the feelings of victimization experienced by nonbeneficiaries who believe that they have been sacrificed in the effort to enhance others’ careers. Although such individuals often do not articulate these feelings because of concerns about political correctness, their disillusionment and disenchantment with the organization can have destructive consequences, leading to nonproductive work behaviors and low motivation and commitment.

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For these individuals, knowing that the person they believe to be a beneficiary of affirmative action is truly deserving of the position is critical. Last, our findings indicate that the designation of an individual as an affirmative action beneficiary can be totally arbitrary. Explanations about how people who typically have not held particular roles and positions have attained them often include inferences about affirmative action and preferential selection. These inferences are a product of today’s cultural milieu and widespread assumptions about the reach of affirmative action and its general incursion into selection processes. Combating these inferences by being explicit about that organization’s selection processes is about the best that can be done; with repeated exposure, such communication can perhaps help reshape the image of affirmative action more generally.

CONCLUSIONS The research presented throughout this chapter supports the idea that affirmative action can inadvertently have detrimental consequences in work settings. These consequences are at odds with affirmative action’s objectives and may undermine its success at reducing discrimination and advancing workplace equality. Being associated with affirmative action can create problems for those it was designed to help, tainting them with a stigma of incompetence, burdening them with negative self-views, and creating an unpleasant work environment in which others around them are disgruntled and resentful. Although the investigations reported here focus primarily on women as beneficiaries of affirmative action, they are relevant to those in other groups who also are the targets of affirmative action efforts. The psychological processes that lead to affirmative action’s unintended consequences operate identically whether gender, race, or ethnicity is the basis of the presumed preferential selection. Also, recent research demonstrates that the findings reported here are not confined to policies labeled as affirmative action. When said to be selected as part of a diversity initiative, women and blacks were viewed as more deficient in competence than when said to be selected on the basis of merit.48 It appears that whether called affirmative action, managing diversity, or even minority outreach, programs that highlight demographic group membership as a critical feature in decision making risk creating problems for those targeted for benefit. Although we have focused on the generally accepted assumptions about affirmative action, differences exist in the degree to which people hold negative attitudes toward it as a policy. Thus research has indicated that attitudes toward affirmative action programs are affected not only by the structure of the plan itself,49 but also by individual differences in race, gender, political ideology, and prejudice, all of which have been found to be related to endorsement of affirmative action policies.50 Whether these differences in attitudes toward affirmative

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action affect the perceptions or self-perceptions of purported beneficiaries or attitudes of nonbeneficiaries has yet to be investigated. In summary, our research suggests that as currently construed, affirmative action policies can have unintended deleterious consequences. Denying individuals the satisfaction of knowing they have attained a position on their own merits can lower their self-efficacy and foster feelings of inadequacy. The stigma associated with affirmative action can feed stereotypic thinking and prejudiced attitudes. The bitterness of feeling victimized and cheated can aggravate workplace alienation and tensions. In fact, as long as affirmative action is associated with an absence of quality standards, it seems as likely to create problems as it is to solve them. This does not imply that affirmative action is necessarily a bad policy or that we would recommend its abandonment. Its resounding success at increasing the representation of formerly underrepresented groups at all levels of the organizational hierarchy and in society more generally is to be applauded. It does imply, however, that we should work to uncover and address affirmative action’s unintended by-products. The research presented throughout this chapter attests to the fact that paradoxically, the aims of affirmative action may be subtly thwarted by the policy itself. Although it provides organizational access to those who may otherwise have been denied entry, affirmative action may produce reactions that ultimately block these same individuals from the opportunity to advance in their careers and reach their full potential. NOTES 1. K. Green, Affirmative Action and Principles of Justice (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1989). 2. Grutter v. Bollinger, 539 U.S. 306 (2003), No. 02-241. 3. S. D. Clayton and F. J. Crosby, Justice, Gender, and Affirmative Action (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1992); F. Crosby, Affirmative Action Is Dead; Long Live Affirmative Action (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2004); N. Glazer, ‘‘The Future of Preferential Affirmative Action,’’ in P. A. Katz and D. A. Taylor, eds., Elimination Racism: Profiles in Controversy (New York: Plenum Press, 1988), p. 329. 4. Cited in R. F. Tomasson, F. J. Crosby, and S. D. Herzberger, Affirmative Action: The Pros and Cons of Policy and Practice (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 1996). 5. D. Seligman, ‘‘How ‘Equal Opportunity’ Turned into Employment Quotas,’’ Fortune (March 1973): 158–68. 6. Clayton and Crosby, Justice, Gender, and Affirmative Action; F. J. Crosby and D. I. Cordova, ‘‘Words Worth of Wisdom: Toward an Understanding of Affirmative Action,’’ Journal of Social Issues 52 (1996): 33–49; M. C. Haynes and M. E. Heilman, ‘‘Perceptions of Affirmative Action Programs: What Are They Anyway?,’’ paper presented at the Academy of Management, New Orleans, LA, August 2004; F. Holloway, ‘‘What Is Affirmative Action?’’ in F. Blanchard and F. Crosby, eds., Affirmative Action in Perspective (New York: Springer-Verlag, 1989), pp. 9–19; D. A. Kravitz, ‘‘Attitudes toward

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Affirmative Action Plans Directed at Blacks: Effects of Plan and Individual Differences,’’ Journal of Applied Social Psychology 25 (1995): 2192–220. 7. H. Golden, S. Hinkle, and F. J. Crosby, ‘‘Reactions to Affirmative Action: Substance and Semantics,’’ Journal of Applied Social Psychology 31 (2001). 8. See M. A. Taylor Carter, D. Doverspike, and K. D. Cook, ‘‘The Effects of Affirmative Action on the Female Beneficiary,’’ Human Resource Development Quarterly 7 (1996): 31–54. 9. G. Himmelfarb, ‘‘Universities Creating Second-Class Faculties: Letter to the Editor,’’ New York Times, May 15, 1988; S. Steele, The Content of Our Character: A New Vision of Race in America (New York: Morrow, 1990); I. Wilkerson, ‘‘Remedy for Racism of Past Has New Kind of Shackles,’’ New York Times, September 15, 1991, p. 11; D. Wycliff, ‘‘Blacks Debate the Costs of Affirmative Action,’’ New York Times, June 10, 1990, p. 3. 10. S. Steele, ‘‘A Negative Vote on Affirmative Action,’’ New York Times Magazine, May 1990, p. 46. 11. Grutter v. Bollinger. 12. L. T. Garcia, N. Erskine, K. Hawn, and S. R. Casmay, ‘‘The Effect of Affirmative Action on Attributions about Minority Groups Members,’’ Journal of Personality 49 (1981): 427–37. 13. R. J. Summers, ‘‘The Influence of Affirmative Action of Perceptions of a Beneficiary’s Qualifications,’’ Journal of Applied Social Psychology 21 (1991): 1265–76. 14. G. B. Northcraft and J. Martin, ‘‘Double Jeopardy: Resistance to Affirmative Action from Potential Beneficiaries,’’ in B. A. Gutek, ed., Sex Role Stereotyping and Affirmative Action Policy (Los Angeles: University of California, Institute of Industrial Relations, 1982), pp. 81–130. 15. M. B. Jacobson and W. Koch, ‘‘Women as Leaders: Performance Evaluation as a Function of Methods of Leader Selection,’’ Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes 20 (1977): 149–57. 16. H. H. Kelley, ‘‘The Processes of Causal Attribution,’’ American Psychologist 28(2) (1973): 107–28; H. H. Kelley, ‘‘Attribution in Social Interaction,’’ in E. E. Jones and D. E. Kanouse, eds., Attribution: Perceiving the Causes of Behavior (Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 1987), pp. 1–26. 17. M. E. Heilman, C. J. Block, and J. A. Lucas, ‘‘Presumed Incompetent? Stigmatization and Affirmative Action Efforts,’’ Journal of Applied Psychology 86 (1992): 536–44. 18. Ibid., study 2. 19. M. E. Heilman, C. J. Block, and P. Stathatos, ‘‘The Affirmative Action Stigma of Incompetence: Effects of Performance Information Ambiguity,’’ Academy of Management Journal 40 (1997): 603–25. 20. Ibid., study 2. 21. M. C. Haynes and M. E. Heilman, ‘‘Perceptions of Affirmative Action Programs’’; D. A. Kravitz and J. Platania, ‘‘Attitudes and Beliefs about Affirmative Action: Effects of Target and of Respondent Sex and Ethnicity,’’ Journal of Applied Psychology 78 (1993): 928–38. 22. M. E. Heilman and S. L. Blader, ‘‘Assuming Preferential Selection when the Admissions Policy Is Unknown: The Effects of Gender Rarity,’’ Journal of Applied Psychology 86 (2001): 188–93.

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23. B. Blaine, J. Crocker, and B. Major, ‘‘The Unintended Negative Consequences of Sympathy for the Stigmatized,’’ Journal of Applied Social Psychology 25 (1995): 889–905; G. Himmelfarb, ‘‘Universities Creating Second-Class Faculties: Letter to the Editor,’’ New York Times, May 15, 1988; C. Murray, ‘‘Affirmative Racism: How Preferential Treatment Works against Blacks,’’ New Republic, December 1984, 18–23; Steele, The Content of Our Character. 24. A. Nadler and J. D. Fisher, ‘‘The Role of Threat to Self-Esteem and Perceived Control in Recipient Reaction to Help: Theory Development and Empirical Validation,’’ in L. Berkowitz, ed., Advances in Experimental Social Psychology (Orlando, FL: Academic Press, 1986), pp. 81–112. 25. M. E. Turner, and A. R. Pratkanis, ‘‘Affirmative Action as Help: A Review of Recipient Reactions to Preferential Selection and Affirmative Action,’’ Basic and Applied Social Psychology: Special Social Psychological Perspectives on Affirmative Action 15 (1994): 43–69. 26. M. E. Heilman, ‘‘Sex Bias in Work Settings: The Lack of Fit Model,’’ Research in Organizational Behavior 5 (1983): 269–98. 27. M. E. Heilman, M. C. Simon, and D. P. Repper, ‘‘Intentionally Favored, Unintentionally Harmed? Impact of Sex-Based Preferential Selection on Self-Perceptions and Self-Evaluations,’’ Journal of Applied Psychology 72 (1987): 62–68. 28. M. E. Heilman, J. A. Lucas, and S. R. Kaplow, ‘‘Self-Derogating Consequences of Sex-Based Preferential Selection: The Moderating Role of Initial Self-Confidence,’’ Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes 46 (1990): 202–16. 29. A. Bandura, ‘‘The Psychology of Chance Encounters and Life Paths,’’ American Psychologist 37 (1982): 747–55; A. Bandura, Social Foundations of Thought and Action (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1986). 30. M. E. Heilman, J. C. Rivero, and J. F. Brett, ‘‘Skirting the Competence Issue: Effects of Sex-Based Preferential Selection on Task Choices of Women and Men,’’ Journal of Applied Psychology 76 (1991): 99–105. 31. Bandura, Social Foundations of Thought and Action; C. S. Dweck, ‘‘Motivational Processes Affecting Learning,’’ American Psychologist: Special Psychological Science and Education 41(1986): 1040–48. 32. Heilman et al., ‘‘Skirting the Competence Issue.’’ 33. R. P. Brown, T. Charnsangavej, K. A. Keough, M. L. Newman, and P. J. Rentfrow, ‘‘Putting the ‘Affirm’ into Affirmative Action: Preferential Selection and Academic Performance,’’ Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 79(2000): 736–47. 34. J. R. Kluegel and E. R. Smith, ‘‘Affirmative Action Attitudes: Effects of SelfInterest, Racial Affect, and Stratification Beliefs on Whites’ Views,’’ Social Forces 61 (1983): 797–824; R. W. Nacoste, ‘‘But Do They Care about Fairness? The Dynamics of Preferential Treatment and Minority Interest,’’ Basic and Applied Social Psychology 8 (1987): 177–91; R. W. Nacoste, ‘‘Sources of Stigma: Analyzing the Psychology of Affirmative Action,’’ Law and Policy 12 (1990): 175–95. 35. D. Feiden, ‘‘Firms Fed up with Affirmative Action,’’ Crain’s New York Business 1(2) (1992); W. A. I. Henry, ‘‘Time,’’ What Price Preference? September 1991, 30–31; F. R. Lynch, Invisible Victims: White Males and the Crisis of Affirmative Action (New York: Praeger, 1992). 36. M. Scofield, ‘‘Off the Ladder,’’ New York Times Magazine, June 1993, p. 22. 37. Nacoste, ‘‘Sources of Stigma.’’

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38. Heilman et al., ‘‘Presumed Incompetent?’’ 39. T. R. Tyler, R. J. Boeckmann, H. J. Smith, and Y. J. Huo, Social Justice in a Diverse Society (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1997). 40. M. E. Heilman, W. F. McCullough, and D. Gilbert, ‘‘The Other Side of Affirmative Action: Reactions of Nonbeneficiaries to Sex-Based Preferential Selection,’’ Journal of Applied Psychology 81 (1996): 346–57. 41. Heilman et al. ‘‘Self-Derogating Consequences of Sex-Based Preferential Selection’’; M.E. Heilman et al., ‘‘Intentionally Favored, Unintentionally Harmed?’’ 42. D. C. Evans, ‘‘A Comparison of the Other-Directed Stigmatization Produced by Legal and Illegal Forms of Affirmative Action,’’ Journal of Applied Psychology 88 (2003): 121–30; R. W. Nacoste, ‘‘How Affirmative Action Can Pass Constitutional and Social Psychological Muster,’’ Journal of Social Issues 52 (1996): 133–44; Taylor Carter et al., ‘‘The Effects of Affirmative Action on the Female Beneficiary.’’ 43. M. E. Heilman, W. S. Battle, C. E. Keller, and R. A. Lee, ‘‘Type of Affirmative Action Policy: A Determinant of Reaction to Sex-Based Preferential Selection?’’ Journal of Applied Psychology 83 (1998): 190–205. 44. Heilman et al., ‘‘Presumed Incompetent?’’; Heilman et al., ‘‘The Affirmative Action Stigma of Incompetence’’; Heilman et al., ‘‘Self-Derogating Consequences’’; Heilman et al., ‘‘Intentionally Favored, Unintentionally Harmed?’’ 45. Heilman et al., ‘‘Type of Affirmative Action Policy.’’ 46. Ibid., study 1. 47. Ibid., study 3. 48. M. E. Heilman and B. Welle, ‘‘Disadvantaged by Diversity? The Effects of Diversity Goals on Competence Perceptions,’’ Journal of Applied Social Psychology 36 (2006): 1–29. 49. Kravitz, ‘‘Attitudes toward Affirmative Action Plans Directed at Blacks’’; D. A. Kravitz, and S. L. Klineberg, ‘‘Reactions to Two Versions of Affirmative Action among Whites, Blacks, and Hispanics,’’ Journal of Applied Psychology 85 (2000): 597–611. 50. D. A. Kravitz, D. A. Harrison, M. E. Turner, E. L. Levine, W. Chaves, M. T. Brannick et al., Affirmative Action: A Review of Psychological and Behavioral Research (Bowling Green, OH: Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology, 1997).

2

Racial and Ethnic Harassment in the Workplace Tamara A. Bruce

White women continually ask me, ‘‘how often do black women wash their hair?’’ and so I said, ‘‘you know this is like the third time you asked me how many times black women wash their hair, you already know the answer.’’1

The incident depicted in the epigraph is a prime example of the unique form that harassing comments may take when directed toward racial and ethnic minorities. Such behaviors, which are often influenced by racial and ethnic stereotypes, characterize an understudied form of workplace discrimination: racial/ ethnic harassment. Racial/ethnic harassment in the workplace is a crucial area of research given the current trends in workforce demographic composition. U.S. census data from the past decade (1990–2000) report that every racial minority group has increased its rate of entering the workforce, and the Caucasian group has decreased its rate (Table 2.1).2 This shift in the composition of the American workforce is best illuminated by estimates that less than 40 percent of it is comprised of Caucasian men.3 With this backdrop I begin to discuss the history and background of workplace discrimination.

BACKGROUND Workplace discrimination has received increasing attention both in research and public realms since the late 1970s. Most notably, the introduction of the term sexual harassment as a specific form of discrimination has opened the floodgates for researchers and nonresearchers alike to explore the complexities of workplace harassment. Racial and ethnic harassment, however, has not experienced the proliferation of research and attention that its older sibling sexual harassment has

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TABLE 2.1.

Legal, Psychological, and Power Issues

U.S. Civilian Employed Workforce 1990–2000

Black American Indian, Eskimo, or Aleut Asian or Pacific Islander Other race White Entire workforce change

1990

2000

Change

9.9% 0.6% 2.9% 3.4% 16.8% 83.2%

10.1% 0.7% 3.8% 6.7% 21.3% 78.7%

2.7% 12.8% 29.0% 98.8% 26.9%
5.4% 2.8%

received.4 Harassment and stress research has often overlooked ethnic minority employees, and that which has been performed has often used convenience samples (e.g., professional society members) unlikely to generalize to the entire worker population.5 Racial and ethnic harassment has only relatively recently become the primary focus of empirical studies and begun to distinguish itself as a unique form of workplace discrimination. This chapter explores racial and ethnic harassment in the workplace by detailing primarily empirical research that has been conducted on both racial and ethnic harassment and its related constructs. First, racial and ethnic harassment will be defined to help distinguish it from similar phenomena. Second, the research on racial and ethnic discrimination and the sexual harassment of ethnic and racial minorities will be discussed as a foundation for understanding racial and ethnic harassment. Third, the nature of racial and ethnic harassment and its relationship with other forms of discrimination will be delineated. Finally, I will conclude with a discussion of the challenges faced by racial and ethnic harassment researchers and directions for future study. Due to the many chapters, articles, and books reviewing the historical and legal background of sexual harassment and well-documented information on racial discrimination, this chapter will only touch on those areas briefly as they apply to racial and ethnic harassment.6 In addition, this chapter will only focus on U.S.-based experiences, because other countries have different laws and racial/ethnic compositions.7

SEMANTIC DISTINCTIONS To discuss racial and ethnic harassment and its related constructs, a few semantic issues must be addressed initially. Sometimes publications on racial and ethnic harassment and discrimination define race or ethnicity, describe differences between the two constructs, and justify the term chosen for the dialogue. Some key distinctions that are usually mentioned include the difference between a biologically determined framework of race and a socially

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constructed framework of ethnicity. However, many people today (researchers and nonresearchers alike) use these terms interchangeably and even view the constructs as equivalent. Nonetheless, race and ethnicity are different by definition, and with the growing Hispanic population in the United States, one of the most common trends is to distinguish between Caucasian Hispanic and Caucasian non-Hispanic ethnicities.8 Although a person of German descent and one of Latin American descent may both be classified as Caucasian in terms of race, their ethnic classification would be different. Thus, a practical distinction between race and ethnicity is the visibility level of the characteristics. Although an individual’s race may not always be easy to determine by observation, it is usually more visible than a person’s ethnicity. To establish ethnicity, observers rely more heavily on inferences and other characteristics (e.g., manner of speech).9 Given that ethnicity is generally a less visible characteristic than race, managing their minority group identity may be easier for ethnic than racial minorities. Stigmatized individuals who have been able to cross group boundaries may enjoy the benefits of majority group membership and feel significantly less stigmatized or not stigmatized at all compared to those who cannot or do not cross such boundaries.10 Therefore, the nature of ethnic harassment may be qualitatively different from racial harassment because of the increased potential for identity management strategies. Thus arguments can be made for and against the separation of the ethnic and racial harassment constructs. Some distinguish between the two, whereas others do not; still others simply confuse them.11 The matter is further complicated by the intimate relationship between the two constructs. Victims of racial or ethnic harassment are likely to be unable to distinguish whether they were targets of harassment because of their race or ethnicity. Finally, these forms of research suffer from a lack of empirical investigations examining the differences between ethnic and racial harassment. Therefore, for the purposes of this review, the term racial/ethnic harassment (REH) will be adopted in most of the discussion in an attempt to use research on both forms to create on overarching framework for the study of either. Alternatively, the terms racial harassment (RH) and ethnic harassment (EH) will be used only when differences between the two constructs are being directly compared. This approach is not intended to discount the differences between the two constructs but to allow for a more coherent review of the relevant literature. However, I contend that because research about racial and ethnic harassment is still in its infancy, a strategy of integration as opposed to segregation will best serve the advancement of understanding the two phenomena. Similarly, a variety of terms, such as Caucasian, white, and Anglo American or black, people of color, and African American, are often used to describe like groups of people. Again, to reduce the already present fragmentation in this research resulting from the multiple disciplines and approaches used to study it, certain descriptors will be considered to encompass or be synonymous with

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other similar ones (e.g., a statement about African Americans should be regarded as generalizable to blacks and people of color).

DEFINITION OF RACIAL/ETHNIC HARASSMENT Racial/ethnic harassment has typically been conceptualized as threatening or verbal conduct or exclusionary behavior with a racial/ethnic component and is directed at targets due to their race or ethnicity.12 Comparatively, racial/ ethnic discrimination (RED) involves behaviors or practices that impede career opportunities or earning potential due to race or ethnicity.13 These definitions are parallel to those of sexual harassment (SH) and sexual discrimination (SD). Like SH and SD, REH and RED are illegal under federal law. Part of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 made employment discrimination illegal. Specifically, Title VII made it unlawful to discriminate against individuals in an employment setting based on their race, sex, color, religion, or national origin.14 Since 1964, additional federal legislation has expanded the list of protected classes to include age, disability, and familial and veteran status. In both the empirical and legislative realms, REH, like SH, is considered a specific type of discrimination. Discrimination occurs when a person or group of people is treated differently than another person or group. Although all harassment is considered discrimination, many forms of discrimination would not be defined as harassment. Two major criteria must be met to label a behavior as a type of harassment as opposed to the more general category of discrimination. First, in harassment, people typically go out of their way to bother others by behaving in a manner that is unrelated to appropriate work conduct (e.g., teasing, fondling, etc.). Harassment therefore consists of behavior outside the scope of necessary job performance presumably engaged in for personal gratification, because of other personal motives, or due to meanness or bigotry. Discrimination claims, by contrast, involve perceptions of unfair outcomes of necessary human resource management processes. The second distinction is that harassment is usually a continual pattern of behaviors, whereas discrimination can be a one-time event (e.g., firing or hiring). As previously mentioned, although the means by which individuals determine another’s race or ethnicity may differ, the forms of behavior that constitute RH and EH appear to be relatively similar. REH behaviors have been categorized into two types, verbal behaviors such as comments, jokes, slurs, and so on related to one’s ethnicity or race, and exclusionary behaviors such as being excluded from a social event, not being given necessary information due to one’s ethnicity or race, or being pressured to ‘‘give up’’ one’s ethnic/racial identity to fit in.15 Some have suggested the exclusionary behaviors component of REH as unique to harassment based on ethnicity/race, because previous SH research has not explicitly focused on such behaviors. However, SH inventories may

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capture some if not all types of exclusionary behaviors based on gender with items asking whether someone has ‘‘treated you differently because of your sex (for example, mistreated, slighted, or ignored you).’’16 The focus on exclusionary behaviors in REH but not in SH measures appears to be motivated by their frequency within each harassment type. Thus, research and practice suggest that individuals may encounter exclusionary behaviors based on gender or ethnicity/race, but that those experiencing REH are far more likely to encounter exclusionary behaviors than those facing SH.17 In discussions of sexual harassment, many authors have cited the grounding of violence against women in the sociocultural roots of gender and power.18 Moreover, researchers suggest that any key dimension of social stratification (e.g., race, ethnicity, or gender) is strongly linked to discrimination and harassment and argue that the marginalized status of women and racial/ethnic minorities in our society makes them more susceptible to becoming victims of harassment in general.19

RACIAL /ETHNIC DISCRIMINATION Given that harassment is a specific form of discrimination, much relevant research on REH has actually been performed in the area of RED. Many studies over the years have shown that race, as expected, is an important factor to consider when investigating racial discrimination.20 RED has been shown to be related to a host of negative outcomes, including lowered co-worker satisfaction and job satisfaction, poorer mental health and emotional well-being, and poorer physical well-being.21 Separation of Harassment and Discrimination A major problem in investigating REH is that harassment as a form of discrimination is rarely distinguished from its larger parent construct in studies of discrimination, despite evidence showing that the two phenomena result in different workplace outcomes, therefore suggesting that they operate in separate psychological domains within the workplace.22 Moreover, the ability to distinguish the two constructs is rarely present because many measures of RED (also often called racist events or perceived racism) assess an array of somewhat generic experiences. For example, Landrine and Klonoff found striking results during their validation of an 18-item measure of racial discrimination on a sample of 153 university-affiliated African American students, faculty, and staff.23 Nearly all participants reported experiencing some type of racist discrimination in the past year (98.1 percent), and all had encountered it in their lifetime (100 percent). Additionally, 99.4 percent of the sample indicated that such racist events created stress in their lives.

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Given these findings, discerning the number of these events that would be classified as REH and RED would be interesting. But further investigation of the measurement items reveals that such distinctions are rather difficult. Some items, such as number fifteen, ‘‘How many times have you been called a racist ?’’ may be relatively easily categorized as racial harassment. name like However, many others, such as number three, ‘‘How many times have you been treated unfairly by your co-workers, fellow students, and colleagues because you are black?’’ is too broad to determine if respondents are recalling specifically harassing or generally discriminatory events. Such items should not be discounted as potentially reliable and valid measures of racial discrimination, but they impede our ability to measure the unique effects of REH. Similar difficulties arise with other instruments.24 Reporting frequencies of individual items that clearly fit into one category or another is possible using such scales. This practice, however, may lead to a distortion and deficiency in measurement of the two constructs. Without racial discrimination surveys that include clear harassment subscales or entire racial harassment instruments themselves, the field will constantly suffer from an inability to determine the true impact of the phenomenon.

ETHNIC/RACIAL MINORITY EXPERIENCES OF SEXUAL HARASSMENT Interestingly, REH research has been more heavily based on studies dealing with sexual harassment than on those of racial discrimination or racism. In fact, REH research may be seen as the most recent construct development in a progression of research based on SH experiences but departing from the traditional Caucasian female as the victim. To better understand the theoretical and methodological roots of REH, examining the first step in that progression, research on the SH experiences of racial/ethnic minorities, is important. This area of research may be considered as having bridged the gap between studies of SH and REH and, more importantly, introduced the use of SH paradigms when examining harassment experiences affected by racial/ethnic variables. Since the late 1970s when Catherine MacKinnon published her seminal work on sexual harassment, ethnic or racial minority women have been considered more likely to experience sexual harassment than nonminority women.25 However, such research is comparatively scarce within the arena of sexual harassment. This is mainly because research on SH has typically relied on samples of Caucasian females.26 Practically, this has occurred because field studies usually have too few women of color to analyze racial differences, and lab studies rarely specify the race of either the harasser or victim.27 Additionally, potentially useful data often cannot be utilized by other researchers because information on the racial/ethnic demography of the sample is not included in publications.28

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Despite these obstacles, usable findings exist. Some claim that experiences of sexual harassment do not differ significantly between racial/ethnic minorities and nonminorities.29 Others report mixed findings or find that theoretical models of sexual harassment are similar for different ethnic groups.30 However, a much larger proportion of studies report that differences between racial/ethnic minorities and nonminorities exist in the severity and amount of the SH, coping strategies, incidence rates, work outcomes, status level and race of perpetrators, and type of harassment.31 In fact, some researchers have even adapted existing SH measures for use with a specific ethnic population.32 In cases comparing multiple racial/ethnic minority groups, some research has found that African American women report the highest incidence of SH (62 percent), followed closely by Latinas (60 percent), European American women (56 percent), and Asian/East Indian American women (46 percent).33

INCIDENCE, CORRELATES, AND CURRENT MEASURES OF REH Contrary to what the empirical literature on sexual harassment suggests, one dominant measure of REH does not seem to exist. Within the past decade, though, researchers have used several approaches to try to assess this elusive construct. Although the relatively recent development of these measures as compared to other workplace discrimination surveys is not surprising given the history of the evolution of REH research, it nonetheless suggests that further empirical exploration and validation of the instruments are important. Moreover, the nuances of the construct of REH and the way each scale captures them can be determined only after each has been used repeatedly in samples with diverse occupational, socioeconomic, and racial/ethnic characteristics. The purpose of this review of current measures is not to compare or evaluate their validity or utility but to showcase each plan of research to observe the direction current REH research is following. Many other measures not mentioned in this chapter also contain questions and subscales that assess REH (e.g., the Perceived Ethnic Discrimination Questionnaire).34 However, the focus of these omitted measures is on RED rather than REH specifically, and for that reason they are not discussed. The first measure is labeled the Ethnic Harassment Experiences scale.35 It contains seven items ( ¼ 0.79) and assesses exposure to threatening behavior in the form of ethnic derogation and social exclusion during the previous twentyfour months. The development of the measure was informed by analysis of employed students’ descriptions of ethnic harassment incidents. Sample items include evaluating how often someone in the participant’s institution ‘‘called [the person] by a racial/ethnic slur,’’ or ‘‘excluded [him or her] from social interactions because of . . . race/ethnicity.’’ Related to this measure, Radhakrishnan and Schneider also developed a Bystander Ethnic Harassment scale,36 which includes seven items ( ¼ 0.84)

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assessing bystander harassment that occurs when the person reporting the incident witnesses the harassment of another individual during the previous two years.37 It was modeled on a measure of bystander sexual harassment. Sample items include determining how often someone in the participant’s institution ‘‘watched [their] colleagues be the target of racist comments,’’ or ‘‘supported a colleague who talked with [them] about being the target of racial harassment.’’ The Racial Acts, Crimes, and Experiences Survey also evaluates REH.38 This scale includes 24 items ( ¼ 0.90) assessing personal experiences with racism during employment at one’s most recent job. Sample items include asking participants if they were ever in a situation in which managers, supervisors, co-workers, or employees ‘‘made condescending remarks to [them] about [their] race,’’ or ‘‘excluded people of a particular race from organized social activities.’’ Yet another measure is the Racial Ethnic Harassment Scale, which includes fifteen items evaluating individual exposure to racial/ethnic harassment during the previous twelve months.39 Respondents are asked to separately indicate their experiences with respect to military and civilian harassers. This scale was modeled on the structure of the Sexual Experiences Questionnaire, Department of Defense (SEQ-DoD) sexual harassment measure.40 Sample items include asking how often individuals were in circumstances where they thought that someone ‘‘made unwelcome attempts to draw [them] into an offensive discussion of racial/ethnic manners’’ or ‘‘made remarks suggesting that people of [their] race/ethnicity are not suited for the kind of work that [they] do.’’ Finally, the Racialized Sexual Harassment Scale is a seven-item ( ¼ 0.86) measure of incidents of racialized sexual harassment during a person’s employment at his or her most recent job.41 Sample items assess participants’ experiences with situations in which their managers, supervisors, co-workers, or employees ‘‘told jokes or stories that described people of [their] gender and ethnicity negatively,’’ or ‘‘said they expected [the participants] to behave certain ways because of your gender and ethnicity.’’ It is interesting that the underlying construct dimensions of REH seem similar across the five measures just described. However, researchers developing these scales have used not only different approaches but also varying semantic choices. Two focus exclusively on ethnicity, one exclusively on race, and the remaining three include both constructs. Four of the five deal with direct harassment, whereas one focuses on bystander harassment. Some incorporate significant sexual harassment content in the measure, and others use sexual harassment models to inform the development of the measure. An important consideration when reviewing the current REH assessment efforts is that all of these measures were either indirectly or directly influenced by sexual harassment measurement approaches. Although these influences are not only expected and justified, their presence nonetheless has dictated that REH has developed similarly to SH. One wonders what a REH measure would look like if it were developed independently from SH models based on racism

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33

frameworks and literature. Have SH influences limited the progress of REH measurement efforts? Answering this question is difficult given the youth of the REH research field and the lack of a parallel workplace harassment construct that has not been heavily based on SH theory. In time, however, any disadvantages of this approach may become evident. Setting aside potential limitations of the validity of these REH measures, studies using them have reported REH incidence rates of 40–67 percent among employed individuals.42 These rates have been shown to be affected by the victim’s race/ethnicity, religious affiliation, age, country of origin, organizational ethnic/racial composition, and work experience as well as the harasser’s employment status.43 No consistent pattern seems to appear across racial/ethnic groups regarding how most of these variables affect the percentage of individuals who experience REH, most likely due to differing research methodologies of each study. A theme that does emerge is that ethnic/racial minorities experience proportionally more REH than their nonminority counterparts. Factor analysis suggests that REH consists of two underlying factors, one including nonphysical verbal, symbolic, and exclusionary behaviors, and the other including threatening or harmful behaviors.44 Additionally, REH experiences have been conceptualized as being more subtle and indirect in form and content.45 This finding parallels racial and ethnic bias research findings that most such behaviors are subtle, with only a small percentage of the population exhibiting overt behaviors.46 REH also appears to lead to lower health satisfaction, lower well-being scores, higher general work stress levels, decreased job satisfaction, negative psychological and physical outcomes, increased substance abuse, and greater negative affectivity.47 REH is related to worker dissatisfaction, which in turn affects turnover intentions.48 In the legal realm, a review of 131 civil cases of racial harassment found claimants most likely to be black (63 percent), work in the private sector (76 percent), and be employed in unskilled or semiskilled occupations (59 percent). The employer is also likely to win in court 66 percent of the time.49 These findings suggest not only that REH is a unique form of workplace discrimination but that its correlates and outcomes are both significant and important to consider when investigating workplace harassment and its impact on individuals.

MULTIPLE FORMS OF HARASSMENT Given the theoretical similarity of the constructs of racial, ethnic, and sexual harassment, one may wonder if the predictors and outcomes of one form can be explained by that construct’s correlation to the others. Fortunately, a few studies have attempted to investigate such relationships. Findings include significant correlations between racial/ethnic and sexual harassment that have ranged from 0.39 to 0.62.50 Factor analysis also has demonstrated strong associations

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between racial and sexual harassment variables in the workplace.51 Though these correlations between constructs are high, they are not perfect, suggesting that the constructs differ on some level. These potential construct distinctions should be established by additional factor analytic work. Employees subjected to multiple types of harassment have reported worse outcomes than those exposed to fewer forms.52 When considered simultaneously, SH and REH have been shown to be significantly associated with different outcomes, with SH causally related to self-esteem and depression and REH linked to job and work outcomes, life satisfaction, and posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) symptomatology.53 REH also has been shown to have unique predictive ability beyond the effects of SH in the areas of work withdrawal, somatization, health satisfaction, and PTSD symptomatology.54 Additionally, bystander REH has been shown to be related to direct ethnic harassment and discrimination.55 These findings suggest that a climate where harassment of any kind is prevalent and tolerated leads to negative outcomes for employees. Moreover, the unique combined effects of these constructs provide further evidence supporting their differentiation. As previously suggested, it is likely that many individuals are subjected to multiple forms of workplace harassment as determined by their individual characteristics. Examples of this phenomenon include findings that African American women are more likely to experience multiple forms of harassment and that minority women were significantly more harassed than minority men or majority men or women when looking at an overall combined measure of REH and SH.56 Recent research also has posited that various forms of harassment may coexist within individual behavioral incidents. Buchanan and Ormerod propose that the harassment of African American women is likely to be unique both in its perception as well as its form.57 Specifically, the nature of such sexual harassment is likely to draw on aspects of race, whether subtle or overt, when directed toward women of color. For example, although white women may be referred to as ‘‘sluts’’ or ‘‘whores,’’ an African American woman is more likely to be called a ‘‘black whore,’’ creating an experience that combines aspects of both gender and race. Women in the Buchanan study reported common experiences of racialized sexual harassment (harassment with both racial and sexual overtones) ranging from racial/sexual comments to assumptions about competence, personal hygiene, and typical style of dress. Similarly, Mansfield and colleagues found that African American tradeswomen had extensive gender-based and race-based harassment, suggesting that to some extent the two experiences co-occur among women of color.58 In their studies of African American women firefighters, Yoder and Aniakudo found that respondents refused to define their experiences as solely racial or sexual, asserting instead that they reflected both forms of harassment simultaneously.59 In their study of black college students, Mecca and Rubin found that many African American women described the issue of sexual harassment as

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35

inextricably intertwined with racism.60 In addition, Mecca and Rubin found that a unique category of harassment emerged in which sexual attention was based on racial stereotypes of African American women’s sexuality or on physical features thought to vary by race (e.g., that black women have large behinds). Texeira provided an analysis of the experiences of sixty-five African American women in the law enforcement profession and described their experiences as having components of both sexual harassment and racial overtones, thus labeling such events racialized sexual harassment.61 Factors such as job tenure, marital status, and race of the harassers also played a role in the experiences. These studies demonstrate that sexual harassment, when directed toward women of color, often fuses racial and gender domination and may be better defined as racialized sexual harassment (RSH).62 RSH seems to be a construct that is distinct from either sexual or racial/ethnic harassment.63 The existence of racialized sexual harassment has begun to be mentioned in the literature and is supported by previous and current research on multiple minority status.64 Those having this status may experience a situation of multiple advantage or jeopardy.65 Multiple characteristics can interact to create a unique result that is more than the additive effects of the separate status characteristics.66 Harassment combining significant aspects of both SH and REH is an interesting notion. To date, the work on what has been labeled RSH has not thoroughly investigated the proportion of harassment content that may be attributed to sexual overtones, racial influences, or both. Therefore, determining whether such behaviors should be labeled racialized sexual harassment and considered a distinct subtype of SH or sexualized racial harassment and viewed as a specific subtype of REH is difficult. This clouding of constructs has implications for REH research in general. If RSH were to be considered a form of SH, then perhaps any form of harassment with racial content that also has the potential for sexual overtones would be considered a form of SH rather than a separate form of harassment. Because many REH behaviors may incorporate sexual influences simultaneously, REH researchers are left with a difficult situation. If REH continues to distinguish itself through empirical work as a distinct form of workplace discrimination, how should it be conceptualized—as a racially or ethnically based or a sexually based phenomenon? Researchers must seek to answer these questions with future studies. Climate Given evidence that multiple forms of harassment (and discrimination) are likely to coexist in the same environment and findings that harassment experiences are related to organizational variables (e.g., work satisfaction), one must question the role of organizational climate in the perpetuation of REH. The organizational model of sexual harassment posits that it is encouraged by organizational structures creating power differentials that harassers can take

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advantage of. This model also can be applied to REH, as can similar research that has found that harassment is facilitated by the aforementioned power differentials and other organizational characteristics such as male-female ratios, amount of contact between employees, occupational norms, job functions and alternatives, and harassment policies and procedures.67 These findings suggest that organizational climate variables are likely to be associated with the incidence and outcomes of REH. Again, borrowing from the sexual harassment literature, we find that the proportion of women experiencing sexual harassment has been correlated with a number of different constructs. These include organizational practices and cultures that do not promote equal treatment for men and women68 and related factors, such as social norms of the organization, the presence and effectiveness of policies prohibiting harassment, and the general sexual ambience of a workplace and its masculine job gender context.69 Finally, the percentage of women experiencing harassment has been linked to work groups’ perceptions of organizational tolerance for harassment and work climate, acceptance of superior–subordinate dating, and the differences in organizational power and gender between the harasser and victim.70 Additionally, meta-analytic findings indicate that SH is more prevalent in organizations in which large power differentials are likely to exist between organizational levels.71 In sum, these studies on sexual harassment depict the relationship between gender-based harassment and organizational variables that stratify individuals along gender dimensions. Similar relationships are expected to exist for REH, such that variables placing people in the workplace into different tiers according to racial/ethnic dimensions are likely to be associated with REH incidence and outcomes. In fact, recent work has found that an organization’s ethnic composition is an antecedent of REH.72 Therefore, future studies of REH should investigate climate and structural variables as potential antecedents of the phenomenon.

CURRENT ISSUES AND FUTURE DIRECTIONS So far in this chapter I have outlined the definitions, correlates, and outcomes of REH and its related constructs. At this point, I will discuss ongoing challenges researchers studying these phenomena face, highlight a number of promising plans of research, and finally make suggestions for future endeavors in this arena. Challenges Because REH research is similar to SH in its form and structure, many difficulties faced by SH researchers also plague the REH arena. Specifically, one problem that has hindered SH researchers’ ability to accurately determine

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37

prevalence rates of harassment has been differences in reporting practices. Looking beyond the mere presence of individual personality differences as influences in harassment experiences, SH research has suggested the importance of examining individual variables, such as the nature and frequency of the harassment, organizational status of the harasser, and characteristics of the victim (e.g., age, organizational status, gender, ethnicity, marital status), as important influences on the judgment process victims go through when interpreting potentially harassing events.73 Perceptions of an organization’s climate for sexual harassment have been shown to influence the interpretation of potentially harassing events and to affect perceptions and attitudes toward the organization (e.g., work satisfaction) directly.74 How victims interpret an event (i.e., determine it as harassing or not) is directly related to whether they choose to report the harassment and to whom they describe it. Type and severity of experienced harassment seems to affect reporting patterns, and cognitive appraisal of a situation appears to be a significant mediator of the relationship between sexual harassment experiences and reporting behaviors.75 In addition to the judgment of whether a particular behavior constitutes harassment, other factors might influence if and to whom a victim’s decides to provide details of a harassment experience. When leaders do not support harassment policies and procedures, victims are less likely to report the incident.76 As a corollary, leaders at multiple organizational levels who make an honest, concerted effort at prevention have been shown to have significant impact on how comfortable subordinates feel coming forward about a sexually harassing encounter.77 These leadership efforts have an impact that goes beyond implementation of policies and procedures discouraging harassment.78 Victims also must consider stigmatization and other negative consequences of reporting the harassment. In many cases, doing so leads to more negative outcomes than not.79 Thus, fear of being blamed by the harasser and others are deterrents to reporting sexual harassment.80 Targets’ perceptions of whether the organization possesses policies and procedures for effective punishment of harassment are positively correlated to both victim reporting and their likelihood and method of seeking social support.81 A similar pattern exists for support of such policies and procedures by organizational leaders.82 Individual differences in witnesses or perpetrators of harassment also may play a role, because sexist attitudes and gender strongly predict the tendency to blame targets of harassment.83 Given these findings related to organizational climate and perception differences, the finding that Caucasians are more likely to indicate workplace SH perpetrated by male superiors and African American victims have a tendency to describe harassment by peers or subordinates is not surprising.84 In a related vein, the occupational status of harassment victims has been shown to be correlated with likelihood of reporting harassment incidents. Those of higher occupational

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status report harassment more often than those of lower status. This relationship is explained by beliefs held by higher status persons who are less likely to fear retaliation and possess stronger beliefs about their abilities to create social change.85 Finally, less sociocultural and organizational power is associated with an increased likelihood of experiencing harassment.86 Because the majority of victims of REH are racial/ethnic minorities, incidence rate accuracy problems due to reporting practices are further aggravated. The findings suggest that in general, REH is likely to be underreported, that reported accounts are likely to be heavily influenced by occupational selfpreservation concerns, and that REH experiences are likely to be qualitatively different than other forms of harassment. This triple threat translates into a host of difficulties facing current REH researchers. Cortina and colleagues suggest that sexual harassment incidence rate differences between various ethnic/racial groups could be due to the tendency of some female ethnic/racial groups to underreport incidents involving sexual abuse.87 This suggestion seems plausible considering that ethnic and racial minority individuals often have relatively low occupational status within an organization either due to their social status or job title. However, it is unclear exactly how such status differences influence harassment incidence rates. Workplace status differentials could either cause minorities’ experiences to vary or make minorities more likely to report incidents differently. Alternatively, such status differences could exert both effects simultaneously. Nonetheless, the disparate impact of reporting practices on incidence rates for REH should be investigated further, with special attention paid to intragroup differences by gender and race/ ethnicity. Another difficulty that sexual harassment researchers encounter involves determining the best method for measuring harassment experiences, particularly when using self-reporting instruments.88 Meta-analytic findings from sexual harassment research demonstrate that more general, behaviorally anchored items that do not force participants to label behaviors as harassment yield higher incidence rates.89 However, because REH behaviors tend to be more subtle and indirect in form and content, measures of REH require more descriptive information to determine if the behavior is indeed REH. Put simply, more general abstract items, for instance, ‘‘someone said something that bothered you,’’ are more likely to yield higher incidence rates. However the same items are unable to tap into specific REH behaviors and therefore distinguish between REH and other forms of harassment. To fully assess REH, such an item would require additional descriptive information, such as ‘‘someone said something involving racial or ethnic stereotypes that bothered you.’’ The latter example, though, would be more likely to yield lower, presumably more inaccurate incidence rates. This trade-off is a common concern for REH researchers, who must settle for a relatively narrow set of responses to measure REH precisely. Such limitations on the breadth of responses add to the previously mentioned measurement challenges.

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Future Directions As previously stated, much REH literature has been informed by research on sexual harassment. However, unlike SH, which has historically focused on women’s experiences, REH has the potential to affect both minority women and men at relatively similar rates. This fact is important when considering the current shift in racial and ethnic diversity among workers. This demographic change emphasizes that future research must focus on the specific nature of workplace REH using full-time employees rather than school-based REH relying on employed students’ experiences. As with any research on workplace phenomena, using student samples is often convenient but frequently fails to provide important information about the nuances of workplace environments. In addition to increased use of occupational samples, the nature of REH dictates that effects must be examined with respect to both multiple racial/ ethnic groups and multiple status dimensions. Such social status stratification characteristics as gender, race, ethnicity, socioeconomic status, and sexual orientation may interact in unique ways such that workplace REH may vary in severity, prevalence, and quality depending on the characteristics one possesses. Furthermore, studying differences between Caucasians and non-Caucasians may dilute the true nature of REH. An example of how complex differences may manifest themselves can be observed in a recent study investigating both REH and SH experiences among different racial/ethnic groups. Results showed that Caucasians reported a higher incidence of SH as compared to REH, whereas all other groups had higher rates of REH as compared to SH. However, a particularly interesting point was that of these other minority groups, the multiracial group had the highest incidence and frequency of both RH and SH.90 This finding suggests that differences may be found not only between various ethnic/racial groups but also when more than one such race or ethnicity is present in the same person, as in the case of multiracial individuals. Another aspect of REH that deserves increased attention is impact of the harasser’s race on the harassment experience. In a lab study, Shelton and Chavous found that college students rated sexual behavior as more appropriate and humorous depending on the race of the harasser and victim.91 When the victim was a black woman, the interaction was viewed as less appropriate when the harasser was a white as opposed to a black male. Replication of this finding in a field sample would clarify the mechanism of REH in the workplace. Additionally, if such replication were achieved, the demographic composition of various organizations and occupations may dictate that REH experiences vary as a function of job type or organization. This variation points to another area of much-needed focus with respect to workplace REH, organizational climate. Organizational climate, as discussed, has been shown to influence the nature of workplace SH and REH in a parallel manner. Variables such as worker composition, embedded organizational status differentials, and formal and informal discrimination and harassment policies may influence REH experiences

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similarly. Therefore, future studies should fully explore both the effect of workplace climate on REH and the impact of the prevalence and nature of REH in the workplace on the organization’s climate. Another interesting future direction of REH research involves the impact of group and dominant culture identification in the mediation of harassment experiences. Studies have shown that common group identity can be a protective factor against discrimination, although the protective qualities may differ at various levels of discrimination, such that the pride in one’s ethnic identity may have little buffer quality at very high levels of discrimination.92 Similarly, sexual harassment incidence among Hispanic women has been shown to be related to victims’ affiliation to the mainstream non-Hispanic white U.S. culture (acculturation), such that Hispanic women with the least affiliation reported the lowest rates of SH experiences, followed by moderately affiliated Hispanic women and non-Hispanic white women.93 These findings suggest that women with less affiliation with majority cultural norms, though reporting lower rates of SH than those with more affiliation, nonetheless experience worse effects of harassment (in terms of factors such as work and co-worker satisfaction) than peers with greater connection to the mainstream culture. These findings from racial discrimination and sexual harassment suggest that one’s acculturation and affiliation level may cause seemingly similar subjects (e.g., alike in ethnic/racial background and gender) to report qualitatively different experiences or exposure to REH. Investigation of these influences is another topic of study for future researchers. Finally, one of the most difficult aspects of REH research is that many measurement attempts require participants to make inferences about the motivation underlying the harassment and whether it was driven by racial/ethnic influences. Such inferences are especially central to nonverbal conduct, such as social exclusionary behaviors. The importance of determining the impact of assumptions and inferences in workplace REH is underscored by laws dictating that workers are protected against only forms of harassment related to specific characteristics, such as race, ethnicity, and gender. However if a harasser chooses his or her victim based on an unprotected category, such as sexual orientation, personality, or another arbitrary reason, the behavior is legal. Therefore, examining the possibility of developing measures that do not rely as heavily on inferential items to determine the existence of REH in the workplace is important. Respondents could be reporting false positives by viewing harassment based on unprotected categories the same as that based on protected categories, thereby diluting REH measurement efforts. REH researchers are likely to struggle with this dilemma for years to come, particularly because the same issue has not been completely resolved in the SH arena. However, comparisons of different measurement approaches, with some using more behaviorally based items and others using more inferential items, would help inform the measurement process. In sum, workplace REH is a burgeoning area of research that is increasingly important, but it also is plagued by the complicated nature of the construct. As discussed, this chapter has approached REH as a union of research between

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racial and ethnic harassment investigators. In reality, as research in EH and RH continues, significant distinctions between those two constructs may dictate the need for separation and comparison. Currently, however, the lack of empirical examinations directly comparing RH to EH allows conclusions to be drawn from combined RH and EH research. Among these is the fact that REH is a common occurrence in the workplace that has detrimental effects on its victims. With this thought in mind, occupational researchers and practitioners alike must look toward their future endeavors and consider the impact of this new phenomenon. NOTES 1. N. T. Buchanan, ‘‘The Nexus of Race and Gender Domination: The Racialized Sexual Harassment of African American Women,’’ in P. Morgan and J. Gruber, eds., In the Company of Men: Re-Discovering the Links between Sexual Harassment and Male Domination (Boston: Northeastern University Press, 2004), pp. 294–320. 2. S. L. Clark and M. Weismantle, ‘‘Employment Status: 2000,’’ Census 2000 Brief (U.S. Department of Commerce, 2003); available online at www.census.gov/prod/2003 pubs/c2kbr-18.pdf. 3. M. Inman, P. Radhackrishnan, and E. Koster, ‘‘The Differential Effects of Ethnic Harassment and Discrimination at Work: Support for the Domain-Specific Model,’’ manuscript in preparation. 4. N. T. Buchanan and A. J. Ormerod, ‘‘Racialized Sexual Harassment in the Lives of African American Women,’’ Women and Therapy 25 (2002): 107–24. 5. K. T. Schneider, R. T. Hitlan, A. X. Estrada, D. Anaya, and M. Delgado, ‘‘Bystander Harassment: Attributions Regarding a Climate Tolerant of Harassment,’’ in T. M. Glomb (Chair), How Detrimental Is Sexual Harassment? Broadening the Boundaries of Research (Symposium conducted at the 15th Annual Conference of the Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology, New Orleans, LA, April 2000). 6. For example, see A. Levy and M. Paludi, Workplace Sexual Harassment, 2nd ed. (Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall, 2002); C. M. Steele, ‘‘A Threat Is in the Air: How Stereotypes Shape Intellectual Identity and Performance,’’ American Psychologist 52 (1997): 613–29; and J. P. Harrell, S. Hall, and J. Taliaferro, ‘‘Physiological Responses to Racism and Discrimination: An Assessment of the Evidence,’’ American Journal of Public Health 93(2) (2003): 243–48. 7. For a review of potential cross-cultural differences, especially because researchers and practitioners alike are becoming increasingly interested in the globalization of workforces, see P. Roberts and L. Vickers, ‘‘Harassment at Work as Discrimination: The Current Debate in England and Wales,’’ International Journal of Discrimination and the Law 3 (1998): 91–114. 8. Clarke and Weismantle, ‘‘Employment Status: 2000.’’ 9. K. T. Schneider, R. T. Hitlan, and P. Radhakrishnan, ‘‘An Examination of the Nature and Correlates of Ethnic Harassment Experiences in Multiple Contexts,’’ Journal of Applied Psychology 85 (2000): 3–12. 10. R. D. Harvey, ‘‘Individual Differences in the Phenomenological Impact of Social Stigma,’’ Journal of Social Psychology 141(2) (2001): 174–89.

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11. For a discussion of the use of race versus ethnicity in ethnic/racial harassment research, see D. S. Blumenthal, ‘‘Race versus Ethnicity,’’ Academic Medicine 74(12) (1999): 1259. 12. Schneider et al., ‘‘An Examination.’’ 13. R. T. Hitlan and P. Radhakrishnan, ‘‘The Validity of a Context-Specific Scale of Racial Discrimination,’’ paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the Western Psychological Association, Irvine, CA, April 1999. 14. See E. J. Harrick and G. M. Sullivan, ‘‘Racial Harassment: Case Characteristics and Employer Responsibilities,’’ Employee Responsibilities and Rights Journal 8 (1995): 81–95, for a review of legal issues and regulations on racial harassment. 15. Schneider et al., ‘‘An Examination.’’ 16. L. F. Fitzgerald, S. L. Shullman, N. Bailey, M. Richards, J. Swecker, Y. Gold, A. J. Ormerod, and L. Weitzman, ‘‘The Dimensions and Extent of Sexual Harassment in Higher Education and the Workplace,’’ Journal of Vocational Behavior 32 (1988): 152–75. 17. Schneider et al., ‘‘An Examination.’’ 18. L. M. Cortina, L. F. Fitzgerald, and F. Drasgow, ‘‘Contextualizing Latina Experiences of Sexual Harassment: Preliminary Tests of a Structural Model,’’ Basic and Applied Social Psychology 24 (2002): 295–311. 19. L. Kalof, K. K. Eby, J. L. Matheson, and R. J. Kroska, ‘‘The Influence of Race and Gender on Student Self-Reports of Sexual Harassment by College Professors,’’ Gender and Society 15(2) (2001): 282–302; A. J. Murrell, ‘‘Sexual Harassment and Women of Color: Issues, Challenges, and Future Directions,’’ in M. S. Stockdale, ed., Sexual Harassment in the Workplace: Perspectives, Frontiers, and Response Strategies (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 1996), pp. 51–66. 20. For example, see P. K. Mansfield, P. B. Koch, J. Henderson, J. R. Vicary, M. Cohn, and E. W. Young, ‘‘The Job Climate for Women in Traditionally Male BlueCollar Occupations,’’ Sex Roles 25(1–2) (1991): 63–79; S. Valentine, L. Silver, and N. Twigg, ‘‘Locus of Control, Job Satisfaction, and Job Complexity: The Role of Perceived Race Discrimination,’’ Psychological Reports 84 (1999): 1267–74; Inman et al., ‘‘The Differential Effects’’; V. M. Mays, L. M. Coleman, and. J. S. Jackson, ‘‘Perceived Race-Based Discrimination, Employment Status, and Job Stress in a National Sample of Black Women: Implications for Health Outcomes,’’ Journal of Occupational Health Psychology 1(3) (1996): 319–29; J. F. Dovidio, S. L. Gaertner, Y. F. Niemann, and K. Snider, ‘‘Racial, Ethnic, and Cultural Differences in Responding to Distinctiveness and Discrimination on Campus: Stigma and Common Group Identity,’’ Journal of Social Issues 57(1) (2001): 167–88. 21. P. Radhakrishnan, ‘‘Ethnic Harassment and Discrimination,’’ paper presented at the Department of Psychology, Penn State University, University Park, January 1999; E. A. Dietch, A. Barsky, R. M. Butz, S. Chan, A. P. Brief, and J. C. Bradley, ‘‘Subtle yet Significant: The Existence and Impact of Everyday Racial Discrimination in the Workplace,’’ Human Relations 56(11) (2003): 1299–324; E. Klonoff, H. Landrine, and J. B. Ullman, ‘‘Racial Discrimination and Psychiatric Symptoms among Blacks,’’ Cultural Diversity and Ethnic Minority Psychology 5(4) (1999): 329–39; see D. R. Williams, H. W. Neighbors, and J. S. Jackson, ‘‘Racial/Ethnic Discrimination and Health: Findings from Community Studies,’’ American Journal of Public Health 93 (2003): 200–208 for a review of negative mental and physical health outcomes of ethnic/racial discrimination.

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22. Schneider et al., ‘‘An Examination’’; for example, Inman et al., ‘‘The Differential Effects.’’ 23. H. Landrine and E. A. Klonoff, ‘‘The Schedule of Racist Events: A Measure of Racial Discrimination and a Study of Its Negative Physical and Mental Health Consequences,’’ Journal of Black Psychology 22 (1996): 144–68. 24. For example, see Mays et al., ‘‘Perceived Race-Based Discrimination’’; J. I. Sanchez and P. Brock, ‘‘Outcomes of Perceived Discrimination among Hispanic Employees: Is Diversity Management a Luxury or a Necessity?’’ Academy of Management Journal 39 (1996): 704–19; R. J. Contrada, R. D. Ashmore, M. L. Gary, E. Coups, J. D. Egeth, A. Sewell, K. Ewell, and T. M. Goyal, ‘‘Measures of Ethnicity-Related Stress: Psychometric Properties, Ethnic Group Differences, and Associations with Well-Being,’’ Journal of Applied Social Psychology 31(9) (2001): 1775–820. 25. C. A. MacKinnon, Sexual Harassment of Working Women: A Case of Sex Discrimination (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1979); J. E. Gruber and L. Bjorn, ‘‘Women’s Responses to Sexual Harassment: An Analysis of Sociocultural, Organizational, and Personal Resource Models,’’ Social Science Quarterly 67 (1986): 814–26; D. Defour, ‘‘The Interface of Racism and Sexism on College Campuses,’’ in Michele Paludi, ed., The Ivory Tower: Sexual Harassment on Campus (Albany: University of New York Press, 1990), pp. 45–52; M. F. Karsten, Management and Gender: Issues and Attitudes (Westport, CT: Quorum Books, 1994); Murrell, ‘‘Sexual Harassment and Women of Color.’’ 26. Cortina et al., ‘‘Contextualizing Latina Experiences’’; M. E. Bergman and F. Drasgow, ‘‘Race as a Moderator in a Model of Sexual Harassment: An Empirical Test,’’ Journal of Occupational Health Psychology 8(2) (2003): 131–45; L. M. Cortina, ‘‘Assessing Sexual Harassment among Latinas: Development of an Instrument,’’ Cultural Diversity and Ethnic Minority Psychology 7(2) (2001): 164–81; S. J. Mecca and L. J. Rubin, ‘‘Definitional Research on African American Women and Social/Sexual Interactions in Academia,’’ Psychology of Women Quarterly 23 (1999): 813–17; Buchanan, ‘‘The Nexus of Race and Gender Domination.’’ 27. J. N. Shelton and T. M. Chavous, ‘‘Black and White College Women’s Perceptions of Sexual Harassment,’’ Sex Roles 40(7/8) (1999): 593–615. 28. Murrell, ‘‘Sexual Harassment and Women of Color.’’ 29. For example, Kalof et al., ‘‘The Influence of Race and Gender’’; C. S. Piotrkowski, ‘‘Gender Harassment, Job Satisfaction, and Distress among Employed White and Minority Women,’’ Journal of Occupational Health Psychology 3(1) (1998): 33–43; B. A. Gutek, Sex and the Workplace (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1985); U.S. Merit Systems Protection Board, ‘‘Sexual Harassment in the Federal Government: An Update,’’ Office of Merit Systems Review and Studies/Government Printing Office, Washington, DC, 1988; P. V. DiVasto, A. Kaufman, L. Rosner, R. Jackson, J. Christy, S. Pearson, and T. Burgett, ‘‘The Prevalence of Sexually Stressful Events among Females in the General Population,’’ Archives of Sexual Behavior 13(1) (1984): 59–67. 30. For example, M. Cortina, E. Shupe, A. Ramos, N. T. Buchanan, and L. F. Fitzgerald, ‘‘Effects of Sexual Harassment across Cultures: A Comparison of Hispanic and Non-Hispanic White Women,’’ in L. Fitzgerald (Chair), Innovations in Sexual Harassment Research and Theory (Symposium conducted at the 12th Annual Conference of the Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology, St. Louis, MO, April 1997); E. Shupe, L. M. Cortina, A. Ramos, L. F. Fitzgerald, and J. Salisbury, ‘‘The Incidence

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and Outcomes of Sexual Harassment among Hispanic and Non-Hispanic White Women: A Comparison across Levels of Cultural Affiliation,’’ Psychology of Women Quarterly 26(4) (2002): 298–308; Bergman and Drasgow, ‘‘Race as a Moderator.’’ 31. J. E. Gruber and L. Bjorn, ‘‘Blue-Collar Blues: The Sexual Harassment of Women Autoworkers,’’ Work and Occupations 9 (1982): 271–98; Gruber and Bjorn, ‘‘Women’s Responses to Sexual Harassment’’; Bergman and Drasgow, ‘‘Race as a Moderator’’; R. R. Cox, P. W. Dorfman, and W. Stephan, ‘‘Determinants of Sexual Harassment Coping Strategies in Mexican American and Anglo Women,’’ in K. L. Middleton (Chair), Sexual Harassment 25 Years After the EEOC Guidelines (Symposium conducted at the Academy of Management Conference, Honolulu, Hawaii, August 2005); S. A. Wasti and L. M. Cortina, ‘‘Coping in Context: Sociocultural Determinants of Responses to Sexual Harassment,’’ Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 83 (2002): 394–405; L. M. Cortina and S. A. Wasti, ‘‘Profiles in Coping: Responses to Sexual Harassment across Persons, Organizations, and Cultures,’’ Journal of Applied Psychology 90(1) (2005): 182–92; Mansfield et al., ‘‘The Job Climate for Women’’; A. Morris, ‘‘Gender and Ethnic Differences in Social Constraints among a Sample of New York City Police Officers,’’ Journal of Occupational Health Psychology 1(2) (1996): 224–35; M. A. Paludi, Sexual Harassment on College Campuses: Abusing the Ivory Power (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1996); L. D. Bastian, A. R. Lancaster, and H. E. Reyst, ‘‘Department of Defense 1995 Sexual Harassment Survey,’’ Report No. 96-014, Defense Manpower Data Center, Arlington, VA, 1996; G. E. Wyatt and M. Riederle, ‘‘The Prevalence and Context of Sexual Harassment among African American and White American Women,’’ Journal of Interpersonal Violence 10(3) (1995): 309–21; G. E. Wyatt and M. Riederle, ‘‘Sexual Harassment and Prior Sexual Trauma among African-American and White American Women,’’ Violence and Victims 9(3) (1994): 233–47; Cortina et al., ‘‘Effects of Sexual Harassment across Cultures’’; A. Culbertson and P. Rosenfeld, ‘‘Assessment of Sexual Harassment in the Active-Duty Navy,’’ Military Psychology 6 (1994): 69–93. 32. For example, the SEQ-L: Cortina, ‘‘Assessing Sexual Harassment among Latinas.’’ 33. L. M. Cortina, S. Swan, L. F. Fitzgerald, and C. Waldo, ‘‘Sexual Harassment and Assault: Chilling the Climate for Women in Academia,’’ Psychology of Women Quarterly 22 (1998): 419–41. 34. Contrada et al., ‘‘Measures of Ethnicity-Related Stress.’’ 35. Schneider et al., ‘‘An Examination.’’ 36. K.S.D. Low, P. Radhakrishnan, K. T. Schneider, and J. Rounds, ‘‘The Experiences of Bystanders of Ethnic Harassment’’ (manuscript under review). 37. T. M. Glomb, W. L. Richman, C. L. Hulin, F. Drasgow, K. T. Schneider, and L. F. Fitzgerald, ‘‘Ambient Sexual Harassment: An Integrated Model of Antecedents and Consequences,’’ Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes 71 (1997): 309–28; K. T. Schneider ‘‘Bystander Stress: Effects of Sexual Harassment on Victims’ Co-Workers,’’ in J. Schmidtke (Chair), Responses to Sexual Harassment (Symposium conducted at the annual convention of the American Psychological Association, Toronto, Canada, August 1996). 38. M. E. Bergman and N. T. Buchanan, ‘‘Development of the Racial Acts, Crimes, and Experiences Survey’’ (manuscript in preparation). 39. J. Scarville, S. B. Button, J. E. Edwards, A. R. Lancaster, and T. W. Elig, ‘‘Armed Forces Equal Opportunity Survey,’’ Report no. 97-027, Defense Manpower Data Center, Arlington, VA, 1999.

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40. L. F. Fitzgerald, V. J. Magley, F. Drasgow, and C. R. Waldo, ‘‘Measuring Sexual Harassment in the Military: The SEQ-DoD,’’ Military Psychology 11 (1999): 243–63. 41. N. T. Buchanan, ‘‘Incorporating Race and Gender in Sexual Harassment Research: The Racialized Sexual Harassment Scale (RSHS),’’ in N. T. Buchanan (Chair), Expanding Sexual Harassment Research to Include Diverse Populations and Intersecting Forms of Harassment (Symposium conducted at the meeting of the International Coalition Against Sexual Harassment, Philadelphia, PA, August 2005). 42. Schneider et al., ‘‘An Examination’’; Scarville et al., ‘‘Armed Forces Equal Opportunity Survey.’’ 43. G. Corbie-Smith, E. Frank, H. W. Nickens, and L. Elon, ‘‘Prevalences and Correlates of Ethnic Harassment in the U.S. Women Physicians’ Health Study,’’ Academic Medicine 74(6) (1999): 695–701; Inman et al., ‘‘The Differential Effects’’; Scarville et al., ‘‘Armed Forces Equal Opportunity Survey.’’ 44. Scarville et al., ‘‘Armed Forces Equal Opportunity Survey.’’ 45. Buchanan, ‘‘The Nexus of Race and Gender Domination.’’ 46. J. F. Dovidio, ‘‘The Subtlety of Racism,’’ Training and Development 47 (1993): 51–57; J. F. Dovidio and S. L. Gaertner, ‘‘On the Nature of Contemporary Prejudice: The Causes, Consequences, and Challenges of Aversive Racism,’’ in J. L. Eberhardt and S. T. Fiske, eds., Confronting Racism: The Problem and the Response (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 1998), pp. 3–32. 47. Radhakrishnan, ‘‘Ethnic Harassment’’; K. T. Schneider, R. T. Hitlan, M. Delgado, D. Anaya, and A. X. Estrada, ‘‘Hostile Climates: The Impact of Multiple Types of Harassment on Targets,’’ in T. M. Glomb (Chair), How Detrimental Is Sexual Harassment? Broadening the Boundaries of Research (Symposium conducted at the 15th Annual Conference of the Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology, New Orleans, LA, April 2000); Corbie-Smith et al., ‘‘Prevalences and Correlates’’; D. Hughes and M. A. Dodge, ‘‘African American Women in the Workplace: Relationships Between Job Conditions, Racial Bias at Work, and Perceived Job Quality,’’ American Journal of Community Psychology 25(5) (1997): 581–99; H. J. Erlich and B.E.K. Larcom, ‘‘The Effects of Prejudice and Ethnoviolence on Workers’ Health,’’ paper presented at the 2nd American Psychological Association and National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health Conference on Work Stress and Health, Washington, DC, November 1992; G. G. Bennett, K. Y. Wolin, E. L. Robinson, S. Fowler, and C. L. Edwards, ‘‘Perceived Racial/Ethnic Harassment and Tobacco Use among African American Young Adults,’’ American Journal of Public Health 95(2) (2005): 238–40; G. G. Bennett, M. M. Merritt, C. L. Edwards, and J. J. Sollers, ‘‘Perceived Racism and Affective Responses to Ambiguous Interpersonal Interactions among African American Men,’’ American Behavioral Scientist 47(7) (2004): 963–76. 48. Inman et al., ‘‘The Differential Effects.’’ 49. Harrick and Sullivan, ‘‘Racial Harassment.’’ 50. Cortina et al., ‘‘Contextualizing Latina Experiences’’; Buchanan, ‘‘The Nexus of Race and Gender Domination’’; Schneider et al., ‘‘Hostile Climates’’; T. A. Bruce and N. T. Buchanan, ‘‘Group Differences in the Relationship between Racial and Sexual Harassment and Academic and Health-Related Outcomes,’’ in J. M. Konik and L. M. Cortina (Chairs), Diversity and Antisocial Behavior in Organizations: New Contributions from Multi-level Research (Symposium conducted at the Academy of Management Conference, New Orleans, LA, August 2004).

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51. Cortina et al., ‘‘Contextualizing Latina Experiences.’’ 52. Schneider et al., ‘‘Hostile Climates’’; Cortina et al., ‘‘Contextualizing Latina Experiences.’’ 53. N. T. Buchanan and L. F. Fitzgerald, ‘‘The Effects of Racial Harassment, Sexual Harassment, and Appraisals of Harassment Severity on the Psychological WellBeing of African American Women’’ (manuscript under review); Bruce and Buchanan, ‘‘Group Differences.’’ 54. Bruce and Buchanan, ‘‘Group Differences.’’ 55. Radhakrishnan, ‘‘Ethnic Harassment.’’ 56. Buchanan and Fitzgerald, ‘‘The Effects of Racial Harassment’’; J. L. Berdahl and C. Moore, ‘‘Workplace Harassment: Double Jeopardy for Minority Women,’’ Journal of Applied Psychology (in press). 57. Buchanan and Ormerod, ‘‘Racialized Sexual Harassment.’’ 58. Mansfield et al., ‘‘The Job Climate for Women.’’ 59. J. D. Yoder and P. Aniakudo, ‘‘The Response of African-American Women Firelighters to Gender Harassment at Work,’’ Sex Roles 32 (1995): 125–37; J. D. Yoder and P. Aniakudo, ‘‘When Pranks Become Harassment: The Case of African American Women Firefighters,’’ Sex Roles 35 (1996): 253–70; J. D. Yoder and P. Aniakudo, ‘‘ ‘Outsider Within’ the Firehouse: Subordination and Difference in the Social Interactions of African-American Women,’’ Gender and Society 11 (1997): 324–41. 60. Mecca and Rubin, ‘‘Definitional Research on African American Women.’’ 61. M. T. Texeira, ‘‘ ‘Who Protects and Serves Me?’ A Case Study of Sexual Harassment of African American Women in One U.S. Law Enforcement Agency,’’ Gender and Society 16 (2002): 524–45. 62. Buchanan and Ormerod, ‘‘Racialized Sexual Harassment’’; S. E. Martin, ‘‘ ‘Outsider Within’ the Station House: The Impact of Race and Gender on Black Women Police,’’ Social Problems 41 (1994): 383–400; Texeira, ‘‘Who Protects and Serves Me?’’ 63. Buchanan and Ormerod, ‘‘Racialized Sexual Harassment.’’ 64. N. T. Buchanan, ‘‘Sexual Harassment and the African American Woman: A Historical Analysis of a Contemporary Phenomena,’’ paper presented at the annual meeting of the Association for Women in Psychology, Providence, RI, March 1999; P. H. Collins, Black Feminist Thought: Knowledge, Consciousness, and the Politics of Empowerment, 2nd ed. (New York: Routledge, 2000); Defour, ‘‘The Interface of Racism and Sexism’’; Wyatt and Reiderle, ‘‘The Prevalence and Context’’; Murrell, ‘‘Sexual Harassment and Women of Color.’’ 65. E. Higginbotham, ‘‘Moving Up with Kin and Community: Upward Social Mobility for Black and White Women,’’ Gender and Society 6 (1992): 416–40; S. Levin, S. Sinclair, R. C. Veniegas, and P. L. Taylor, ‘‘Perceived Discrimination in the Context of Multiple Group Memberships,’’ Psychological Science 13(6) (2002): 557–60; C. West and S. Fenstermaker, ‘‘Doing Difference,’’ Gender and Society 9 (1995): 8–37; H. Landrine, E. A. Klonoff, R. Alcaraz, J. Scott, and P. Wikins, ‘‘Multiple Variables in Discrimination,’’ in B. Lott and D. Maluso, eds., The Social Psychology of Interpersonal Discrimination (New York: Guilford Press, 1995), pp. 183–224; J. Lorber, Gender Inequality: Feminist Theory and Politics (Los Angeles: Roxbury, 1998). 66. E. M. Almquist, ‘‘Untangling the Effects of Race and Sex: The Disadvantaged Status of Black Women,’’ Social Science Quarterly 56 (1975): 129–42; B. Greene,

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‘‘Lesbian Women of Color: Triple Jeopardy,’’ in L. Comas-Diaz and B. Greene, eds., Women of Color: Integrating Ethnic and Gender Identities (New York: Guilford Press, 1994), pp. 389–427; Landrine et al., ‘‘Multiple Variables’’; P. T. Reid and L. ComasDiaz, ‘‘Gender and Ethnicity: Perspectives on Dual Status,’’ Sex Roles 22 (1990): 397– 408; Martin, ‘‘Outsider Within’’; Murrell, ‘‘Sexual Harassment and Women of Color’’; Texeira, ‘‘Who Protects and Serves Me?’’; K. Crenshaw, ‘‘Mapping the Margins: Intersectionality, Identity Politics, and Violence against Women of Color,’’ in K. Crenshaw, N. Gotanda, G. Peller, and K. Thomas, eds., Critical Race Theory (New York: Free Press, 1995), pp. 357–83. 67. S. S. Tangri, M. R. Burt, and L. B. Johnson, ‘‘Sexual Harassment at Work: Three Explanatory Models,’’ Journal of Social Issues 38 (1982): 33–54. 68. B. W. Dziech and L. Weiner, The Lecherous Professor: Sexual Harassment on Campus, 2nd ed. (Champaign: University of Illinois Press, 1990); S. G. Bingham and L. L. Scherer, ‘‘Factors Associated with Responses to Sexual Harassment and Satisfaction with Outcomes,’’ Sex Roles 29 (1993): 239–69; E. Lafontaine and L. Tredeau, ‘‘The Frequency, Source, and Correlates of Sexual Harassment among Women in Traditional Male Occupations,’’ Sex Roles 15 (1986): 433–42; G. Timmerman and C. Bajema, ‘‘The Impact of Organizational Culture on Perceptions and Experiences of Sexual Harassment,’’ Journal of Vocational Behavior 57 (2000): 188–205. 69. J. B. Pryor, J. L. Giedd, and K. B. Williams, ‘‘A Social Psychological Model for Predicting Sexual Harassment,’’ Journal of Social Issues 51 (1995): 69–84; J. B. Pryor, C. LaVite, and L. Stoller, ‘‘A Social Psychological Analysis of Sexual Harassment: The Person/Situation Interaction,’’ Journal of Vocational Behavior 42 (1993): 68–83; M. S. Hesson-McInnis and L. F. Fitzgerald, ‘‘Sexual Harassment: A Preliminary Test of an Integrative Model,’’ Journal of Applied Social Psychology 27 (1997): 877–901; Gutek, Sex and the Workplace; E. Haavio-Mannila, K. Kaupinen-Toropainen, and I. Kandolin, ‘‘The Effect of Sex Composition of the Workplace on Friendship, Romance, and Sex at Work,’’ in B. A. Gutek, A. H. Stromberg, and L. Larwood, eds., Women and Work, vol. 3 (Beverly Hills, CA: Sage, 1988), pp. 123–38; U.S. Merit Systems Protection Board, ‘‘Sexual Harassment of Federal Workers: Is it a Problem?’’ (Washington, DC: Office of Merit Systems Review and Studies/Government Printing Office, 1981); U.S. Merit Systems Protection Board, ‘‘Sexual Harassment in the Federal Government.’’ 70. J. B. Pryor, ‘‘The Social Psychology of Sexual Harassment: Person and Situation Factors which Give Rise to Sexual Harassment,’’ paper presented at the 1st National Conference on Sex and Power Issues in the Workplace, Bellevue, WA, March 1992; Pryor et al., ‘‘A Social Psychological Analysis’’; Fitzgerald et al., ‘‘The Dimensions and Extent’’; M. J. Zickar, ‘‘Antecedents of Sexual Harassment,’’ paper presented at the 9th Annual Conference of the Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology, Nashville, TN, April 1994; C. L. Hulin, L. F. Fitzgerald, and F. Drasgow, ‘‘Organizational Influences on Sexual Harassment,’’ in M. S. Stockdale, ed., Sexual Harassment in the Workplace: Perspectives, Frontiers, and Response Strategies (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 1996), pp. 127–50; C. A. Cohorn, C. S. Sims, and F. Drasgow, ‘‘Organizational Climate, Sexual Harassment, and Outcomes on United States Military Installations,’’ paper presented at 17th annual conference of the Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology, Toronto, Canada, April 2001; Lafontaine and Tredeau, ‘‘The Frequency, Source, and Correlates’’; M. E. Bond, ‘‘Division 27 Sexual Harassment Survey: Definitions, Impact, and Environment Context,’’ Community Psychologist 21 (1988): 7–10;

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J. A. Livingston, ‘‘Responses to Sexual Harassment on the Job: Legal, Organizational, and Individual Actions’’ Journal of Social Issues 38 (1982): 5–22; Tangri et al., ‘‘Sexual Harassment at Work.’’ 71. R. Ilies, N. Hauserman, S. Schwochau, and J. Stibal, ‘‘Reported Incidence Rates of Work-Related Sexual Harassment in the United States: Using Meta-Analysis to Explain Reported Rate Disparities,’’ Personnel Psychology 56 (2003): 607–31. 72. Inman et al., ‘‘The Differential Effects.’’ 73. Culbertson and Rosenfeld, ‘‘Assessment of Sexual Harassment’’; T. C. Fain and D. L. Anderton, ‘‘Sexual Harassment: Organizational Context and Diffuse Status,’’ Sex Roles 17 (1987): 291–311; M. Martindale, ‘‘Sexual Harassment in the Military: 1988,’’ Sociological Practice Review, 2 (1991): 200–216; Tangri et al., ‘‘Sexual Harassment at Work’’; U.S. Merit Systems Protection Board, ‘‘Sexual Harassment of Federal Workers’’; U.S. Merit Systems Protection Board, ‘‘Sexual Harassment in the Federal Government.’’ 74. A. Culbertson and W. Rodgers, ‘‘Improving Managerial Effectiveness in the Workplace: The Case of Sexual Harassment of Navy Women,’’ Journal of Applied Social Psychology 27 (1997): 1953–71. 75. Livingston, ‘‘Responses to Sexual Harassment’’; D. E. Terpstra and S. E. Cook, ‘‘Complainant Characteristics and Reported Behaviors and Consequences Associated with Formal Sexual Harassment Charges,’’ Personnel Psychology 38 (1985): 559–74; Gruber and Bjorn, ‘‘Women’s Responses to Sexual Harassment’’; L. Brooks and A. R. Perot, ‘‘Reporting Sexual Harassment: Exploring a Predictive Model,’’ Psychology of Women Quarterly 15 (1991): 31–57; A. B. Malamut and L. R. Offermann, ‘‘Coping with Sexual Harassment: Personal, Environmental, and Cognitive Determinants,’’ Journal of Applied Psychology 86 (2001): 1152–66. 76. P. M. Popovich, ‘‘Sexual Harassment in Organizations,’’ Employee Responsibilities and Rights Journal 1 (1988): 273–82. 77. R. Niebuhr, ‘‘Sexual Harassment in the Military,’’ in W. O’Donohue, ed., Sexual Harassment: Theory, Research, and Treatment (Needham Heights, MA: Allyn and Bacon, 1997), pp. 250–62; L. R. Offermann and A. B. Malamut, ‘‘When Leaders Harass: The Impact of Target Perceptions of Organizational Leadership and Climate on Harassment Reporting and Outcomes,’’ Journal of Applied Psychology 87 (2002): 885–93; Pryor et al., ‘‘A Social Psychological Analysis.’’ 78. Offermann and Malamut, ‘‘When Leaders Harass.’’ 79. M. E. Bergman, R. D. Langhout, P. A. Palmieri, L. M. Cortina, and L. F. Fitzgerald, ‘‘The (Un)reasonableness of Reporting: Antecedents and Consequences of Reporting Sexual Harassment,’’ Journal of Applied Psychology 87 (2002): 230–42. 80. J. W. Adams, J. L. Kottke, and J. S. Padgitt, ‘‘Sexual Harassment of University Students,’’ Journal of College Student Personnel 24 (1983): 484–90; Fitzgerald et al., ‘‘The Dimensions and Extent’’; I. W. Jensen and B. A. Gutek, ‘‘Attributions and Assignment of Responsibility in Sexual Harassment,’’ Journal of Social Issues 38 (1982): 55–74. 81. Brooks and Perot, ‘‘Reporting Sexual Harassment’’; Malamut and Offermann, ‘‘Coping with Sexual Harassment’’; Bingham and Scherer, ‘‘Factors Associated with Responses.’’ 82. Popovich, ‘‘Sexual Harassment in Organizations.’’ 83. M. De Judicibus and M. P. McCabe, ‘‘Blaming the Target of Sexual Harassment: Impact of Gender Role, Sexist Attitudes, and Work Role,’’ Sex Roles 44 (2001): 401–17.

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84. Wyatt and Riederle, ‘‘Sexual Harassment and Prior Sexual Trauma.’’ 85. M. P. Miceli and J. P. Near, ‘‘Individual and Situational Correlates of WhistleBlowing,’’ Personnel Psychology 41 (1988): 267–81; J. P. Near and M. P. Miceli, ‘‘Effective Whistle-Blowing,’’ Academy of Management Review 20 (1995): 679–708; Gruber and Bjorn, ‘‘Women’s Responses to Sexual Harassment.’’ 86. M. S. Harned, A. J. Ormerod, P. A. Palmieri, L. L. Collinsworth, and M. Reed, ‘‘Sexual Assault and Other Types of Sexual Harassment by Workplace Personnel: A Comparison of Antecedents and Consequences,’’ Journal of Occupational Health Psychology 7 (2002): 174–88. 87. Cortina et al., ‘‘Effects of Sexual Harassment across Cultures.’’ 88. Dietch et al., ‘‘Subtle yet Significant.’’ 89. Ilies et al., ‘‘Reported Incidence Rates.’’ 90. Bruce and Buchanan, ‘‘Group Differences.’’ 91. Shelton and Chavous, ‘‘Black and White College Women’s Perceptions.’’ 92. Dovidio et al., ‘‘Racial, Ethnic, and Cultural Differences’’; M. R. Lee, ‘‘Resilience against Discrimination: Ethnic Identity and Other-Group Orientation as Protective Factors for Korean Americans,’’ Journal of Counseling Psychology 52 (2005): 36–44. See K. James, ‘‘Social Identity, Work Stress, and Minority Workers’ Health,’’ in G. P. Keita and J. J. Hurrell Jr., eds., Job Stress in a Changing Workforce: Investigating Gender, Diversity, and Family Issues (Washington, DC: American Psychological Association, 1994), pp. 127–45 for a review of social identity theory and how it relates to the experiences of racial discrimination at work. 93. Shupe et al., ‘‘The Incidence and Outcomes of Sexual Harassment.’’

3

Incivility, Sexual Harassment, and Violence in the Workplace Rudy Nydegger, Michele Paludi, Eros R. DeSouza, and Carmen A. Paludi Jr.

Domestic and social violence usually starts off with a few angry words and a few hurt feelings that don’t get resolved, then escalates into feelings of betrayal, rage and revenge. Inner feelings of rage soon spill over into all aspects of society. Social stress multiplies daily with every new report of political upheaval, child abuse, drug abuse, workplace violence, children bringing guns to school, homelessness, ethnic wars or some other crisis. —Doc Childre

In August 1986, Patrick Sherrill, a U.S. postal employee in Edmond, Oklahoma, received a poor performance appraisal from his supervisor. Subsequently, he stole weapons from a National Guard Armory and went to his workplace, where he opened fire, killing fourteen of his co-workers and injuring six more. In June 2005, David Wilhelm entered the EPAC plastic plant in Savoy, Texas, and killed his estranged wife and her male co-worker Felipe de Leon before shooting himself. The Wilhelms were in the process of divorcing. In March 1998 at the Connecticut Lottery Corporation, Matthew Beck, age thirty-five, an accountant involved in a pay dispute, fatally shot the president of the organization and three of his supervisors before killing himself. In Santa Fe Springs, California, in March 1994, Tuan Nguyen was fired from a electronics factory and subsequently used a still valid security code to gain access to the factory where he shot three people to death before killing himself. In Miami Beach, Florida, in April 2005, Gustavo Velastegui arrived at his wife’s workplace, where he shot and killed her before killing himself. These incidents, like all other human behaviors, need an examination of the social context to be understood. The following are pre-incident indicators that have been identified from research on workplace violence. They focus on symptoms regarding assailants.1

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Increased use of alcohol or illegal drugs Unexplained increase in absenteeism Noticeable decrease in attention to appearance and hygiene Depression and withdrawal Explosive outbursts of anger or rage without provocation Threatened or verbally abused co-workers and supervisors Repeated comments that indicate suicidal tendencies Frequent, vague physical complaints Noticeably unstable emotional responses Behavior that is suspect of paranoia Preoccupation with previous incidents of violence Increased mood swings Had a plan to ‘‘solve all problems’’ Resistance and overreaction to changes in procedures Increase of unsolicited comments about firearms and other dangerous weapons Empathy with individuals committing violence Repeated violations of company policies Fascination with violent or sexually explicit movies or publications Escalation of domestic problems, including having restraining orders against them Large withdrawals from or closing his or her account in the company’s credit union Frequent comments about fearing losing their job

Postincident interviews with co-workers of employees who committed a violent act indicated that they observed one of more of these symptoms but considered them insignificant.2 These employees had not been trained by their employer in symptom recognition of potentially violent behavior, nor were they provided instructions on how to report this behavior. Thus, a common thread among the examples presented at the beginning of the chapter is the extent to which employers could have prevented the assaults and murders. In previous generations, employees viewed work as a protected environment, one in which they felt safe. This view of workplaces no longer exists. Homicide is the most frequent manner in which women employees are fatally injured at work; it is the number two cause for men.3 The incidence of workplace violence has increased in the past sixteen years, according to a recent study identified by the Society for Human Resource Management.4 Moreover, reported homicides and serious nonfatal assaults are only a small part of workplace violence for women.5 Approximately 260,000 women are victims of workplace violence annually, according to the U.S. Justice Department. Types of violence against women include 178,400 simple assaults, 55,500 aggravated assaults, 17,400 robberies, and 8,800 rapes.6

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In this chapter we discuss workplace violence as a continuum with incivility on one end and violence, including homicide, at the other. We note legal issues and psychological dimensions involved in each of these types of violence. In addition, we offer resources for employers, including sample policies on workplace violence, domestic violence in the workplace, and sexual harassment. Rather than focusing on changing the level of analysis from the systemic to the individual, the goal in dealing with violence in the workplace is to pursue an institutional level of analysis to explain the prevalence of violence and to recognize the contexts within which it is more likely to occur. We note that the broken windows theory can be applied to workplaces trying to prevent and deal with workplace violence.7 If what is perceived by the organization to be trivial isn’t handled immediately, more severe forms of workplace violence may result.

INCIVILITY Workplace incivility is defined as ‘‘low-intensity deviant behavior with ambiguous intent to harm the target, in violation of workplace norms for mutual respect. Uncivil behaviors are characteristically rude and discourteous, displaying a lack of regard for others.’’8 Ambiguity of the behavior is a key characteristic of incivility, because the perpetrator can easily deny any intent to cause harm, for example, by suggesting that his or her behavior was misinterpreted (e.g., ‘‘I was just kidding’’). Incivility is an interpersonal process dependent on person–environment factors. It begins with perceptions of interpersonal injustice that causes one to lose face (e.g., the uncivil act is perceived as a threat to one’s identity) and feel angry, which fuels a desire for revenge for the perceived organizational or societal norm that has been violated. Note that at any time, one or more parties may choose to act in a civil manner and break the incivility cycle. The following personal factors are related to the escalation of uncivil acts: impulsiveness (e.g., lack of self-control), reactivity (e.g., sensitivity to negative events), and rebelliousness (e.g., independence, self-sufficiency, and resistance to peer pressure).9 Individuals with one or more of these personality traits tend to handle the daily frustrations at work by engaging in disrespectful or condescending behaviors, which may quickly reach a tipping point that spirals into more severe forms of coercive behaviors (e.g., emotional abuse, bullying, and sexual harassment). Furthermore, to handle occupational stress, individuals with a ‘‘hot temperament’’ may use alcohol or drugs while at work as coping mechanisms, which in turn disinhibit coercive behaviors even more. Last, Anderson and Pearson argue that a climate of informality contributes to incivility at the workplace by adding ambiguity to the boundary of acceptable behavior.10 Thus, careless bantering may lead to thoughtless remarks that escalate into incivility.11

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Pearson, Anderson, and Porath conducted 700 interviews and collected questionnaire data from 775 employees throughout the United States.12 They found that the perpetrator of incivility was typically of higher status than the victim and was male. Interestingly, men were more likely to be uncivil toward subordinates than toward superiors, whereas women were equally likely to behave uncivilly toward their superiors and subordinates. The consequences of incivility included negative effects on victims and organizations, including impaired concentration, reduced organizational commitment and productivity, and increased intentions to quit; in fact, 12 percent of the sample reported having ultimately quit their jobs. Moreover, 75 percent of the victims reported being dissatisfied with how the organization handled uncivil incidents. The authors found scant attention by organizations to address incivility. In fact, some managers even reported that rudeness and disrespect could be beneficial and appropriate in certain organizations. Cortina, Magley, Williams, and Langhout investigated the incidence and impact of incivility in a sample of 1,662 employees at the U.S. Eighth Circuit federal court system.13 The authors created the Workplace Incivility Scale (WIS), which has appropriate reliability and validity properties, to measure how often participants experienced incivility (e.g., disrespect, rudeness, and condescension) from superiors or co-workers during the past five years. Participants also completed several job-related as well as psychological and health measures. The authors found that 71 percent of these employees reported some experience with workplace incivility in the previous five years. Women experienced more uncivil acts than men did. However, both men and women experienced similar negative effects. Those who experienced more uncivil acts were less satisfied with their employment (including their jobs, supervisors, co-workers, pay and benefits, and promotional opportunities; they also considered quitting) and suffered greater psychological distress (especially men) than those who experienced less incivility. The studies indicate that even mild forms of interpersonal mistreatment (i.e., incivility) have negative outcomes and should not be ignored by organizations, as is frequently the case. Now we turn to another type of interpersonal mistreatment that is not only widespread but also illegal.

SEXUAL HARASSMENT Sexual harassment is a type of sex discrimination that violates Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.14 Since 1980, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) has defined sexual harassment as: Unwelcome sexual advances, requests for sexual favors, and other verbal or physical conduct of a sexual nature constitutes sexual harassment when (1) submission to such conduct is made either explicitly or implicitly a term or

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condition of an individual’s employment, (2) submission to or rejection of such conduct by an individual is used as the basis for employment decisions affecting such individuals, or (3) such conduct has the purpose or effect of unreasonably interfering with an individual’s work performance or creating an intimidating, hostile, or offensive work environment.

Parts 1 and 2 are typically referred to as quid pro quo sexual harassment, whereas part 3 is commonly referred to as hostile environment sexual harassment. Note that victims of sexual harassment also include men; however, only 15.1 percent of the sexual harassment charges were filed by men during 2004.15 Additionally, the EEOC states the victim does not have to be the target but could be a witness to the harassment. Furthermore, although the victim of sexual harassment does not have to show that she or he suffered psychological harm, the harassment must be unwelcome and must have occurred because of the victim’s sex, which is problematic in same-sex harassment cases.16 Psychologically, sexual harassment is defined as unwanted sexually offensive behavior that threatens one’s psychological health and well-being.17 The following empirical studies investigated the psychological rather than the legal aspect of sexual harassment by asking respondents if they had experienced a list of unwanted sexual behaviors. Such investigations allow researchers to learn a great deal about gender roles, power dynamics, and coping skills ‘‘without focusing on whether particular behavior would rise to the level of actionable conduct in a court of law.’’18 Congress commissioned three large-scale studies to determine the prevalence of sexual harassment across representative national samples of federal workers. The findings showed that 42 to 44 percent of women and 14 to 19 percent of men reported having experienced at least one sexually harassing behavior during the previous twenty-four months.19 The findings from these studies conducted on civilian samples parallel those from military samples. The Department of Defense (DoD) conducted a survey in 1988 to assess sexual harassment among active duty military personnel. The DoD survey was modeled after the U.S. Merit Systems protection Board survey. Of the 20,400 participants who completed the survey, 64 percent of the women and 17 percent of the men reported having experienced sexual harassment at least once during the last 12 months.20 In 1995, the DoD surveyed the active duty military personnel’s experiences of unwanted sexual behavior based on adaptations of Fitzgerald et al.’s Sexual Experiences Questionnaire (SEQ).21 Of the 28,296 participants who completed the SEQ-DoD survey, 76 percent of the women and 37 percent of the men reported having experienced some form of sexual harassment during the previous twelve months.22 Overall, these studies show that sexual harassment is much more common among women than men. Unlike incivility, sexual harassment is illegal behavior that can cost organizations millions of dollars in litigation and monetary awards.23 Sexual harassment

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can also cost organizations millions of dollars due to employees’ impaired concentration, reduced organizational commitment and productivity, increased intragroup conflict as well as reduced team cohesion and team performance, reduced job satisfaction, and job withdrawal, including turnover intention, actual transference, or termination.24 In addition, numerous survey studies as well as some experimental and longitudinal studies have shown the ill effects of workplace sexual harassment on the physical and mental health of the victim,25 including alcohol abuse26 and eating disorder symptoms among women but not men.27

THE ESCALATION: FROM INCIVILITY TO SEXUAL HARASSMENT Until recently, the literatures on sexual harassment and incivility have not interfaced. In addition, organizations have typically focused on sexual harassment rather than incivility, because the former is illegal but not the latter. As stated earlier, incivility is an interpersonal process that may escalate into more severe forms of interpersonal aggression, such as sexual harassment. One way to bridge the two literatures is to examine the types of sexual harassment to find which one is a link to both incivility and more severe forms of sexual harassment, such as quid pro quo sexual harassment. Thus, we briefly review Fitzgerald and colleagues’ typology of sexual harassment.28 Fitzgerald et al. developed a behavior-based assessment (the SEQ) based on Till’s typology of sexual harassment, which consists of gender harassment (sexist remarks or behavior), seductive behavior (sexual advances or propositions), sexual bribery (sexual favors in exchange for rewards), sexual coercion (sexual advances with a threat of punishment), and sexual imposition (assault).29 They found that the factor structure of the SEQ failed to validate Till’s five-level typology. Instead, a tripartite model (gender harassment, unwanted sexual attention, and sexual coercion) better accounted for the data. Gender harassment consists of sexist behaviors that do not appear to elicit sexual cooperation but rather convey hostile and offensive attitudes toward members of one gender, for example, offensive stories or jokes about women (or men). As the name implies, unwanted sexual attention denotes sexual attention that is unwelcome and unreciprocated, for example, unwanted touching or repeated requests for dates. Sexual coercion includes explicit or implicit bribes or threats to gain sexual favors. The first two types typically parallel the legal definition of hostile work environment, whereas the third parallels the legal definition of quid pro quo. Keep in mind that the SEQ measures behavioral experiences of sexual harassment and not the legal aspects of sexual harassment per se. A legal determination is based on several factors that surveys cannot adequately address. Research indicates that gender harassment is the most common type of sexual harassment, with sexual coercion being the least frequent and unwanted sexual attention being in between the two.30 Recently, Lim and Cortina examined the relationships and outcomes of incivility and sexual harassment in

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two samples of women employed in a large federal judicial circuit.31 The authors used the WIS and SEQ to measure the frequency of incivility and sexual harassment, respectively. They combined unwanted sexual attention and sexual coercion items into a sexualized harassment composite. The findings showed that incivility and sexual harassment co-occurred. That is, in both samples, gender harassment was strongly related to both incivility and sexualized harassment. There was also a moderate relationship between incivility and sexualized harassment, even after controlling for the correlation between incivility and gender harassment. Almost all women who experienced gender or sexualized harassment also experienced incivility but not vice versa. In addition, confirmatory factor analyses indicated that gender harassment linked incivility to sexualized harassment. These relationships may exist because experiencing one type of interpersonal mistreatment may sensitize victims to notice other types of misconduct. Moreover, Lim and Cortina used several measures to examine job, psychological, and health outcomes on four groups of women (i.e., those who never experienced incivility, gender harassment, or sexualized harassment; those who experienced only incivility; those who experienced incivility and gender harassment but not sexualized harassment; and those who experienced incivility, gender harassment, and sexualized harassment).32 The results indicated an incremental worsening of both job outcomes and psychological/health outcomes even after controlling for behavior frequency, with women who experienced incivility, gender harassment, and sexualized harassment having the worst outcomes, followed by women who experienced both incivility and gender harassment. Even women who experienced incivility alone had significantly worse outcomes than those who never experienced incivility, gender harassment, or sexualized harassment. These results suggest that sexual harassment does not happen in a vacuum; rather, it occurs in a climate of disrespect. Thus, multiple forms of interpersonal mistreatment need to be addressed simultaneously rather than in isolation, as is typically the case. As Lim and Cortina put it, ‘‘a concerted effort at eliminating all elements of a hostile work environment might be more effective and efficient.’’33 Lapierre et al. conducted a meta-analytic study to compare experiences of sexual nonviolent workplace aggression (i.e., sexual harassment) with nonsexual experiences of nonviolent workplace aggression (including incivility) on employees’ overall job satisfaction, which is one of the best indicators of employees’ attitude toward the quality of their overall work experience.34 The authors included in their analyses twenty-five studies on incivility and related constructs, representing a total of twenty-eight independent samples (three of which completed the WIS), and nineteen studies on sexual harassment, representing a total of twenty-two independent samples (twelve of which completed the SEQ). Concerning sexual aggression, because only two samples included women as well as men, the authors compared sexual to nonsexual aggression only among women to hold victims’ gender constant. Thus gender comparisons were

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conducted only on nonsexual aggression. The findings showed that both types of workplace aggression negatively affected victims’ overall job satisfaction. When the authors compared the two types of workplace aggression (among women only), they found that nonsexual aggression had a stronger negative relationship with overall job satisfaction than did sexual aggression. Furthermore, nonsexual aggression had a stronger negative relationship with overall job satisfaction among women than among men. Such a finding is inconsistent with earlier research possibly because Lapierre and colleagues used only one outcome of job satisfaction, whereas Cortina et al. used several job-related measures, including other measures to tap psychological and health-related outcomes.35 Overall, these findings suggest that because incivility generally happens more frequently than sexual harassment (see previous studies), incivility becomes a systemic organization problem that is often ignored and unpunished. Lapierre et al.’s findings are consistent with prior research on stress. That is, there is a parallel between incivility and daily hassles. Lazarus reported that daily hassles (e.g., workplace incivility) not only negatively affected people’s well-being but also had a stronger relationship with well-being than exposure to more severe, but less common incidents (e.g., workplace sexual harassment).36 We now continue with our continuum of workplace violence by focusing on criminal (not civil) offenses that occur in the workplace.

WORKPLACE VIOLENCE: BACKGROUND Approximately one out of six crimes committed in the United States occurs in the workplace. According to the Department of Justice, in 1994 1 million employees were assaulted at work in the United States, resulting in 160,000 personal injuries.37 A more recent study by Bowman and Zigmond found over 2 million workers who reported being attacked at work, which resulted in over $13.5 million in medical costs alone.38 One very detailed study examined workplace violence from 1987 through 1992 and found about 1 percent of workers reported being victimized by violence at work, and of these, 16 percent reported significant physical injuries. Between 1980 and 1992 the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) found that 9,937 homicides in the workplace were reported, which represented about 800 per year, yielding a workplace homicide rate of 0.7/100,000 workers. Workplace homicide is the fastest growing type of homicide in the United States, and other forms of aggression also are increasing. Each year, about 2 million workplace assaults occur, 16 million workers are harassed, and 6 million workers are threatened.39 As we endeavor to understand this frightening and expensive problem, we must first be clear as to exactly what we mean by violence. According to Nydegger, violence is ‘‘the actual infliction or threat of infliction of physical harm by a person or persons on another person, a group, or the broader organization

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which includes physical and human components.’’ He goes on to point out the difference between violence and aggression by suggesting that aggression is the intent to harm another or an organization and that this may take several forms: direct aggression, where a person takes action intended to inflict harm on another or an organization; this would also include verbal aggression or bullying.40 The other form of aggression that he describes is passive-aggression, in which there is intent to harm but in which the act is indirect and often disguised. This type of aggression will be discussed later in this chapter. Another definition agreed on by the European Commission defines workplace violence as ‘‘incidents where persons are abused, threatened or assaulted in circumstances related to their work, involving an explicit or implicit challenge to their safety, well-being, or health.’’41 The California Occupational Safety and Health Administration also adds an important way to conceptualize workplace violence. It points out that three distinctly different types of workplace violence exist: 1. Violent acts that occur primarily from robberies with the aim of obtaining cash or other valuables, and which involve situations in which the offender has no legitimate right to be on the work premises. 2. Violent acts from individuals who have a legitimate right to be on the work premises as those who are receiving or providing services that are offered at the workplace—for example, patients, customers, and students. 3. Violent incidents between co-workers, which includes violence committed toward a person or persons in superior, similar, and subordinate positions.42 This latter category of events often gets a lot of media attention, but in the United States, being murdered by a fellow employee only accounts for about 4 percent of the homicides, whereas the large majority are committed during robberies.43 However, Boyd suggests that workplace murders occurring due to ‘‘disgruntled’’ employees is a problem that is most relevant to the United States and probably can be linked to the availability of firearms.44 Baron and Neumann reported that of aggressive acts committed in the workplace, 44.5 percent are against co-workers, 31.4 percent are against supervisors, and 26.8 percent are against subordinates.45 Furthermore, many assert that much workplace violence comes from outside of the organization, and data seem to confirm this. Greenberg and Baron found that 81.82 percent of workplace violence results from robberies and other crimes.46 Business disputes account for 8.69 percent of the violence, police in the line of duty experience about 5.59 percent of the workplace violence, and personal disputes only account for 3.9 percent of the violent acts in the work environment. Obviously, the type of workplace violence that is of most concern is homicide. Runyon et al. reported that consistent with some other data, about 1,000 fatalities and over 20,000 nonfatal events occur in the workplace each

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year.47 One very concerning statistic is that the rate at which supervisors are murdered doubled between 1985 and 1997. The occupations that are most at risk for homicide are taxi drivers, law enforcement, and retail.48 According to NIOSH, retail and service industries are high risk for homicide, particularly when the employee handles money or makes deliveries. Although taxi drivers are at the highest risk for workplace homicide, most nonfatal assaults were in the service and retail businesses. In the service business most assaults were in the health care sector, with 27 percent occurring in nursing homes, 13 percent in social service settings, and 11 percent in hospitals. In fact, the assault rates for residential and nursing and personal care workers are more than ten times the rates for employees in private non–health care industries.49 More recent research has found similar patterns and reports that workers in retail and service industries are at high risk for workplace violence. Businesses open twenty-four hours/day and those having a history of violent events were at increased risk for employee injury.50 In studying public employees as a group, Barab found that health care workers, corrections officials, social service workers, teachers, municipal housing inspectors, and public works employees were all in ‘‘at-risk’’ jobs.51 Evidence indicates that men are more likely than women to be victims of homicide and physical assault and to be attacked by a stranger. Women, on the other hand, face greater odds of being attacked by someone known to them. This is assumed to be because of women’s vulnerable position in the workforce; women are concentrated in the lower paid and lower status positions and are often in occupations with high rates of client violence.52 Homicide is the second leading cause of workplace death (motor vehicle accidents is first), and although more men are victims of homicides than women, homicide is the leading cause of occupational death for women. Approximately 260,000 women are victims of workplace violence annually, according to the Justice Department. Federal Bureau of Investigation statistics indicate that women who are victims of violence by their mates account for one-quarter of all women who are murdered in a given year.53 Furthermore, more women in the United States are victimized by their male partners than are harmed because of muggings, automobile accidents, and rapes combined. Thus, although employment may provide an escape from the victimization women experience outside of the workplace by their mates, it also offers a site where the batterer can consistently find his victim.54 Although the actual number of workplace homicides has decreased since the mid-1990s, much less is known about the incidence of nonfatal events.55 Many point out that most workplace aggression is verbal or indirect and passive, which may be very hurtful and harmful, but is harder to recognize. These kinds of behaviors have more recently become the focus of study around the world and have been called various different names. For example, such behavior is referred to as bullying in the United Kingdom and Australia; mobbing in the Scandinavian and German-speaking countries; and workplace harassment, mistreatment, and emotional abuse in the United States.56

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Einarsen et al. have stated that ‘‘bullying emerges when one or several individuals persistently over a period of time perceive themselves to be on the receiving end of negative actions from one or several persons, in a situation where the one at the receiving end has difficulties in defending him/herself against these actions.’’57 Keashly defines emotional abuse as verbal and nonverbal behavior that is not explicitly tied to sexual or racial content directed at gaining compliance from others.58 Yelling, screaming, using derogatory names, giving the silent treatment, withholding important information, making aggressive eye contact, spreading negative rumors, having explosive outbursts of anger, and ridiculing in front of others are examples of emotional abuse. These are very similar to the types of behaviors that are described as bullying.59 A similar type of behavior that has been described in the clinical literature for decades but has only recently been addressed in the organizational literature is passive-aggressive. This is very similar in form to some of the other types of behavior that have been described earlier in this chapter. For example, incivility, emotional abuse, mistreatment, and workplace harassment certainly overlap with passive-aggressive behavior. When passive-aggressive is described in the clinical literature it may take the form of the passive-aggressive personality, which is a particular clinical description, or of passive-aggressive behavior, which can occur in any situation and be perpetrated by anyone. We are primarily concerned here with a type of behavior that has aggressive intent but is also disguised and not always obvious. Thus, passive-aggressive behavior may be found as a subset of some of the other types of workplace mistreatment, but because it has a link to other clinical literature, we chose to set it apart for the present discussion. Only recently has this become a focus of study in the workplace as well. Passive-aggressive behavior is more common than violence or direct aggression, and it, too, is harmful. Examples of this are such things as intentionally forgetting appointments, not returning calls, being late, spreading rumors, and so on. This type of behavior is hard to recognize as aggression because it usually looks like something else, and when confronted the perpetrator will almost always deny the aggressive intent. Clearly, violence, aggression, passive-aggression, and all of the other forms of workplace violence and aggression are extremely problematic for employees, managers, and organizations. In the next section, we examine some of the basic explanatory models for workplace violence and aggression in its various forms.

EXPLANATIONS AND SUSPECTED REASONS FOR WORKPLACE VIOLENCE When we discuss causes of workplace violence it is tempting to try to find simple explanations that seem to fit all situations. Complex problems, however, rarely have simple explanations, and those that exist are usually wrong. Some try

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to isolate the causal factors within the person, attempting to find out why a particular person committed the violent act. Rarely do we find that a person is uniformly violent in most or all situations, and thus trying to isolate causal factors only in the person is rarely adequate. Furthermore, some are tempted to specify social or situational factors as causing violence or aggression. However, if these factors were adequate causes for violence, then everyone who experienced them would be equally violent, and this is never the case. Thus, it is becoming increasingly obvious that the various causes of workplace violence probably interact in ways that will result in violent or aggressive behavior in some people, in some situations, and with respect to some social factors. The causes of aggression involve personal and workplace factors, and these things typically interact and combine in ways that predict different kinds of aggression against different targets. Keeping this in mind, let us examine some of these factors and the ways in which they might relate to violence or aggression. Greenberg and Barling found that a history of aggression and the amount of alcohol consumed predicted aggression toward co-workers.60 Nydegger discussed how a negative affective state (being in a bad mood) often leads to people behaving more aggressively and that these moods also are likely to elicit more aggressive behavior from others.61 Another personality variable that has been linked to aggression is selfmonitoring. This characteristic indicates how aware people are of their impact on others, and how much they are aware of their own behavior in social situations. People who are low self-monitors tend to be very unaware of their impact on others and are typically not that aware of others’ emotional states anyway. Thus, they might be obstructionist or inconsiderate of others and perhaps not even be aware of it. Therefore, they could be making other people very angry and not know it, thereby producing a situation where others might be more likely to be aggressive. Interestingly, low self-monitoring might not necessarily produce aggression in those with the trait, but it could produce it in people around them. However, if the low self-monitoring people consistently elicited hostile or aggressive behaviors from others it might make them more likely to be aggressive themselves. That is, they might develop a hostileattributional bias, which might cause them to be more aggressive. Thus, if their behavior evoked hostile/aggressive behavior from others, they would not see the cause in their own behavior but would assume that everyone else was hostile or aggressive and that they needed to respond in kind to protect themselves. Some assume that Type A personalities might also be more prone to violence or aggression because of their own personalities, traits, and behaviors. The Type A person tends to be very achievement-oriented, very busy, time-urgent, and aggressive toward others. Furthermore, they are easily frustrated, and thus may also be predisposed to aggressiveness.62 However, this variable is a little hard to interpret in this context. Rather than a personality type, this is more

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accurately a personality dimension that runs from nonproblematic to very problematic. At the problematic extreme, those with Type A personalities may be more disposed to aggression and even violence, but this connection is not clear from the literature. Interestingly, when people are asked why they committed violent or aggressive acts they typically say that someone did something to them that justified the response.63 They almost always externalize the responsibility for their behavior (they think that it is usually someone else’s fault), and feel that someone ‘‘drove’’ them to do what they did. However, this explanation is rarely satisfying to anyone except the perpetrator.64 In addition, some social factors seem to be related to workplace violence. For example, the frustration-aggression hypothesis suggests that aggression is the result of frustration.65 However, most psychologists would not agree that all aggression is based on frustration, although most would accept the idea that frustration can and does at times lead to aggression. Thus, experiencing frustration in a social situation increases the probability that some people will behave aggressively. Another social factor that is important has to do with people other than those who are part of the organization. As discussed earlier, most workplace violence is committed by people who come into the organization from outside. For example, Warren et al. showed that workplace violence differs from similar behavior in other settings according to the victim’s age, degree of injury, and whether the workplace was a medical setting.66 They conclude that the differences between workplace and nonworkplace violence is largely explained by the movement of people in and out of the work environment who bring societal violence into the workplace with them. Thus, one social factor we must consider is related to society and people outside the organization. Consequently, the external physical and social environment must also be considered when looking at workplace violence. This is certainly true with respect to domestic violence that spills over into the workplace. Domestic violence, also referred to as battering, spouse abuse, spousal assault, and intimate partner abuse is defined as violence between adults who are intimates, regardless of their marital status, living arrangements, or sexual orientation.67 Such violence includes throwing, shoving, and slapping as well as beatings, forced sex, threats with a deadly weapon, and homicide. Abuse in couples’ relationships may also include intense criticisms and put-downs, verbal harassment, intimidation, restraint of normal activities and freedoms, and denial of access to resources. Thus violence can be physical, emotional, or sexual and is used by one partner to control another.68 Domestic violence is about power and control. One partner uses intimidation and control tactics to gain power in the relationship. Of course, some social factors within the organization are related to workplace violence. For example, when employees feel or perceive that they are treated unfairly, they are at higher risk for violence or aggression. It is not

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uncommon that employees will even steal from employers or sabotage the workplace to ‘‘get even’’ for real or imagined harm. One social factor that is becoming more important today is diversity. An increasingly diverse workplace offers many advantages and some problematic circumstances. For example, as organizations become more diverse, violence and aggression will probably escalate.69 This may happen due to many factors, but it is not usually as simple a situation as to imply that the new and diverse members of the workforce are the problem. Lack of understanding, suspiciousness, lack of trust, stereotypes, communication problems, and so on are apparently the kinds of social factors that are related to the relationship between increasing diversity and higher rates of violence and aggression. Some organizations may have difficulties with violence and aggression because of their normative system. That is, the social norms and guidelines may actually promote aggression and even violence. In other situations, violating certain norms may result in violence or aggression. Other things that place workers at risk for nonfatal occupational violence include work climate variables (e.g., co-worker support, work group harmony), which were predictive of threats, harassment, and fear of becoming a victim of violence.70 Certain factors in many organizations set the stage for heightened violence and aggression. Many firms are making changes that have created conditions directly leading to increased aggression among employees. Even environmental conditions like noise, heat, and humidity can raise workers’ stress, producing negative affect, which can contribute to increases in violence and aggression. Cole and colleagues also found that structural aspects of the job like work schedule were also significant in predicting threats and fear of becoming a victim of violence.71 Another situational factor in organizations is related to management style. Authoritarian management styles and policies are also linked to increases in violence and aggression.72 Interestingly, in organizations like this, if violence or aggression does not result in loss of work it is typically not reported to supervisors or public authorities and thus may never be recognized or dealt with at all.73 Finally, as might be expected, layoffs, downsizing, and wage freezes create hostility in the workforce that can lead to problems involving violence and aggression.74 Nydegger also pointed out that cost-cutting, budgetary constraints, and other changes might produce problems as well.75 He suggested that any change— even positive change—produces stress, and we know that any type of stress raises the possibility of violence and aggression.

CONTROLLING VIOLENCE AND AGGRESSION IN THE WORKPLACE Workplace violence and aggression are significant sources of stress in the work environment and as such impact the personal, health, social, work-related, and management aspects of the whole workforce. Furthermore, employers must

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address domestic violence in the workplace because it poses a threat not only to the victim but to the safety of co-workers, vendors, and clients. Research indicates that battering annually costs employers more than $200 million in reduced worker productivity, increased turnover, and absenteeism.76 In addition, approximately 25 percent of women who visit emergency rooms are battered women. They incur more than $70 million in hospital bills annually.77 Thus, these realities demand that employers take remedial and educational steps to deal with domestic violence and its impact on the workplace. Certainly, employees and managers are concerned about violence and aggression, and how the work environment can be kept safe without infringing unnecessarily on individual rights and freedoms. It is becoming increasingly clear that employers, administrators, and supervisors share responsibility for controlling workplace violence and aggression, including domestic violence that spills over into the workplace.78 According to Chappell and DeMartino, dealing with these issues in the workplace requires responses in several different ways: 1. Preventive: employers must look for and deal with the causes. 2. Targeted: all types of violence can’t be handled the same way. Determine the type you want to deal with and handle it directly. 3. Multiple: combined responses are needed to deal with complex situations. 4. Immediate: responses to a potentially dangerous situation must be taken without hesitation. 5. Participatory: to be successful, any program must involve relevant employees or at least a representative group of them. 6. Long-term: issues ignored or minimized today are tomorrow’s big problems.79 Placing this entire problem area in a public health perspective and focusing on prevention seems sensible. Job stress and workplace violence are recognizable, predictable, and even preventable if managed correctly. Prevention means early identification of problems, decreasing risk of disputes, and thoughtful policies on handling stressful situations.80 Prevention strategies at the organizational level should include an explicit policy statement, investigatory procedures for handling complaints, and training programs for the entire workplace that include the company’s policy and procedures so employees know their rights and responsibilities.81 Sample policies and procedures for workplace and domestic violence as employment concerns are presented in the appendix to this chapter. In addition, OSHA recommends that a company train a Threat Assessment Team, whose task is to assist with dealing with workplace violence, including domestic violence.82 Responsibilities of the team include assessing the vulnerability of the company to violence and serving as advocates for victims, including victims of domestic violence that has carried over into the workplace.

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The team should include representatives from senior management, employee assistance, security, and human resources staff. Employers can also assist victims of domestic violence by developing a personalized safety plan for them.83 This plan can include the following: 

   

Include the workplace on the restraining order for the victim—copies of the restraining order can be provided to the employee’s supervisor, human resource representative, and security; Save any threatening email and voicemail messages; Identify the parking arrangements and have security escort the employee to his or her car; Remove the employee’s name and phone number from automated phone directories; and Rotate the employee’s work site or assignment if such a change would increase the employee’s safety at the workplace.

Employees should decide what is needed in their plan because they are more familiar with their abusers. In addition, the company should maintain communication with the employee during that person’s absence. The company must maintain confidentiality of the employee’s whereabouts. Recommendations for additional preventative measures include the following: 1. Posting phone numbers at worksites of the following:  Employee assistance program  Security department  National domestic violence hotline number  Local domestic violence resources  Information on obtaining orders of protection  List of certified batterers’ intervention programs 2. Developing policies and other educational materials in languages spoken by employees. 3. Modifying any human resource policies that negatively impact victims of domestic violence. 4. Collaborating with domestic violence services available in the community. In addition to developing and enforcing effective policies and procedures as well as training programs on workplace violence, employers can partner with employee assistance programs in dealing with workplace violence.84 For example, they may help employees develop a sense of trust and safety in the current environment. Employee assistance programs can also help women employees foster relationships with appropriate nonviolent male models. Furthermore, these programs can help employees counter any sense of guilt about having caused the violence or not being able to prevent the abuse. Trained

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counselors can offer several treatment modalities for employees, including cognitive and behavioral techniques to deal with specific problem behaviors, such as aggression; play assessment and therapy to encourage preschool children to express feelings about the trauma; individual counseling for children, including specific strategies for creating a better understanding of their reaction to the abuse and their preparation for future violence; information about shelters and employee-children support groups. These services can be integrated with other community agencies.85

CONCLUSION In summary, this review suggests that multiple types of workplace mistreatment need to be researched and confronted simultaneously. It also points to the importance of addressing the organizational climate. Certain climates may be tolerant of incivility and even gender harassment, which may then spiral into more severe forms of coercive behaviors, such as quid pro quo sexual harassment. Conversely, other climates may be intolerant of such behaviors, sending a clear message—through well-disseminated policies and sanctions (see the appendix), and regular training sessions and workshops on the ill effects of such behaviors on the victim—that all employees have the right to work in an environment free of any form of mistreatment. Organizations should also promote organizational and psychological empowerment to increase prosocial behaviors and create a strength-based culture of growth.86

APPENDIX: SAMPLE POLICIES Sample Policy on Domestic Violence as a Workplace Concern Employees of ___________ must be able to work in an atmosphere of mutual respect and trust. As a place of work, _________ should be free of violence and all forms of intimidation and exploitation. __________ is concerned and committed to our employees’ safety and health. The Company refuses to tolerate violence in our workplace. _________ has issued a policy prohibiting violence in the workplace. We have a zero tolerance for workplace violence. ___________ also will make every effort to prevent violent acts in this workplace perpetrated by spouses, mates, or lovers. The Company is committed to dealing with domestic violence as a workplace issue. __________ has a zero tolerance for domestic violence. Domestic Violence: Definition Domestic violence—also referred to as battering, spouse abuse, spousal assault, and intimate partner abuse—is a global health problem. This victimization is defined as violence between adults who are intimates, regardless of their marital status, living

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arrangements, or sexual orientations. Such violence includes throwing, shoving and slapping as well as beatings, forced sex, threats with a deadly weapon, and homicide. Domestic Violence: Myths and Realities Myth: Domestic violence affects a small percentage of employees. Reality: Approximately 5 million employees are battered each year in the United States. Domestic violence is the leading cause of injury and workplace death to women in the United States. Myth: People must enjoy the battering since they rarely leave the abusive relationship. Reality: Very often victims of battering do leave the relationship. Women and men remain in a battering relationship not because they are masochistic, but for several well-founded reasons, e.g.,     

Threats to their lives and those of their children, especially after they have tried to leave the batterer Fear of not getting custody of their children Financial dependence Feeling of responsibility for keeping the relationship together Lack of support from family and friends

Myth: Individuals who batter or abuse their partners because they are under a great deal of stress, including being unemployed. Reality: Stress does not cause individuals to batter their partners. Society condones partner abuse. In addition, individuals who batter learn they can achieve their goals through the use of force without facing consequences. Myth: Children are not affected by watching their parents in a battering relationship. Reality: Children are often in the middle of domestic violence. They may be abused by the violent parent. Children may also grow up to repeat the same behavior patterns they witnessed in their parents. Myth: There are no long-term consequences of battering. Reality: There are significant long-term consequences of battering, including depression, anger, fear, anxiety, irritability, loss of self-esteem, feelings of humiliation and alienation, and a sense of vulnerability. Myth: Domestic violence only occurs in poor and minority families. Reality: Domestic violence occurs among all socioeconomic classes and all racial and ethnic groups. Threat Assessment Team __________ has established a Threat Assessment Team to assist with dealing with workplace violence. Part of the duties of the Threat Assessment Team is to assess the vulnerability of the Company to domestic violence and serve as advocates for victims of workplace violence, including domestic violence that has carried over into the workplace.

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Each of these members of the Threat Assessment Team has received specialized training in workplace violence issues, including domestic violence as a workplace concern. Services Offered by __________ for Employees Who Are Victims of Domestic Violence _________will offer the following services for our employees who are victims of domestic violence:      



Provide receptionists and building security officer with a photograph of the batterer and a description of the batterer Screen employee’s calls Screen employee’s visitors Accompany the employee to her/his car Permit the employee to park close to the office building When there is a restraining order, the Vice President will send a formal notification to the batterer that indicates that his/her presence on the Company premises will result in arrest Referrals for individual counseling

Sample Personalized Safety Plan Name: _________________________________ Date Completed: _________________________ 1. I can inform my immediate supervisor, security, human resources and ______________ at work that I am a victim of domestic violence. 2. I can ask ___________________ to help me screen my telephone calls at work. 3. When leaving work, I can walk with ________________ to my car or the bus stop. I can park my car where I will feel safest getting in and out of the car. 4. If I have a problem while driving home I can _____________________________. 5. If I use public transit, I can ___________________________________. 6. I will go to different grocery stores and shopping malls to conduct my business and shop at hours that are different from those I kept when residing with my battering partner. 7. I can use a different bank and go at hours that are different from those kept when residing with my battering partner. 8. I can use _________________ as my code word with my co-workers when I am in danger so they will call for help. Important Telephone Numbers: Police: 911 and ___________________ Domestic Violence Program: _______________________ District Attorney’s Office: _________________________ My Supervisor’s Home Phone Number: ____________________ Cell Phone Number: _____________________

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My Clergy’s Phone Number: ______________________ Domestic Violence Shelter: ______________________ Human Resources Phone Number: ____________________ Security’s Phone Number: _______________________ Other: _______________________

Policy on Workplace Violence Administrators, faculty and employees of _________ must be able to work in an atmosphere of mutual respect and trust. As a place of work, _______should be free of violence and all forms of intimidation and exploitation. ______ is concerned and committed to our employees’ safety and health. We refuse to tolerate violence in our workplace and will make every effort to prevent violent incidents in this workplace. All employees at all levels must not engage in violence in the workplace and will be held responsible for insuring that _____ is free from violence. Any employee who engages in such behavior will be subject to disciplinary procedures. _____________ has a zero tolerance for workplace violence. _____ has issued a separate policy dealing with domestic violence as a workplace issue. What Is Workplace Violence? Workplace violence includes, but is not limited to, verbal threats, nonverbal threats, pushing, shoving, hitting, assault, stalking, murder, and related actions. These behaviors constitute workplace violence whether they are committed by employees who are in a supervisory position or by co-workers, vendors, clients, or visitors. And, these behaviors constitute workplace violence if they occur between employees of the same sex or between employees of the opposite sex. Threat Assessment Team ______has established a Threat Assessment Team to assist with dealing with workplace violence. Part of the duties of the Threat Assessment Team is to assess the vulnerability of _______ workplace violence and serve as advocates for victims of workplace violence, as explained below. Each of these members of the Threat Assessment Team has received specialized training in workplace violence issues, including prevention. Reporting Workplace Violence _______requires prompt and accurate reporting of all violent incidents whether or not physical injury has occurred. Any employee who has a complaint of workplace violence is encouraged to report such conduct to the Threat Assessment Team so that the complaint may be investigated and resolved promptly. All complaints of workplace violence will be investigated by ___________. Complainants and those against whom complaints have been filed will not be expected to meet together to discuss the resolution of the complaint.

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Employees who file a complaint of workplace violence may do so orally and/or in writing. A standardized form for filing complaints of workplace violence is included with this policy. Investigating Complaints of Workplace Violence _________ will investigate the complaint of workplace violence. The investigation will be limited to what is necessary to resolve the complaint. If it appears necessary for them to speak to any individuals other than those involved in the complaint, they will do so only after informing the complainant and the person against whom the complaint is made. _________ will endeavor to investigate all complaints of workplace violence expeditiously and professionally. In addition, she will make every attempt to maintain the information provided to her in the complaint and investigation process as confidentially as possible. If warranted, ___________will work with local police officials in resolving the complaint of workplace violence. Complaints will be investigated in the following manner: 1. Upon receipt of complaints, _____ will ask individuals if they have any witnesses they would like to be interviewed on their behalf. Individuals will complete a form providing names of witnesses as well as the issues to which the witnesses may address. Complainants will provide ______ with a signed statement giving her permission to contact these witnesses. 2. _____ will immediately forward a copy of the complaint, along with a copy of _____ Workplace Violence Policy Statement and Procedures, to the individual complained against and request a meeting with this individual within 3 business days. 3. During the meeting with the respondents, _______ will ask the individuals if they have any witnesses they would like to be interviewed on their behalf. Individuals will complete a form providing names of witnesses as well as the issues the witnesses may address. Complainants will provide _____ with a signed statement giving her permission to contact these witnesses 4. Names or other identifying features of witnesses on behalf of the complainant and respondent will not be made known to the opposing party. This will help ensure participation by witnesses in the investigation. 5. _____ will investigate all complaints of discrimination expeditiously and professionally. To the maximum extent possible, the investigation will be completed within three days from the time the formal investigation is initiated. _____ will also maintain the information provided to her in the complaint and investigation process confidential. Parties to the complaint will be asked to sign a ‘‘Confidentiality’’ form in which they state they will keep the complaint and complaint resolution confidential. They will also be asked to sign a form indicating they will not retaliate against any party to the complaint. 6. A safe environment will be set up for the complainant, respondent, and witnesses to discuss their perspectives without the fear of being ridiculed or judged. 7. No conclusions about the veracity of the complaint will be made until the investigation is completed.

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8. All documents presented by the parties to the complaint will be reviewed by _____. Documents include, but are not limited to: letters and notes. 9. Following the completion of an investigation, _____ will make one of the following determinations:  Sustain the Complaint: A finding of workplace violence has been made and recommendations for corrective action will be identified, including reprimands, relief from specific duties, transfer, or dismissal.  Not Sustain the Complaint: A finding of no workplace violence has been made.  Insufficient Information: Insufficient information exists on which to make a determination. ____ will reinvestigate all parties named in the complaint. 10. Following any determination and recommendations for corrective action, ____ will issue a written decision with findings to President______. President _______ will correspond with the complainant and person complained against of the findings of the investigation and recommendations for corrective action. President ______ will make appropriate statements of apology to individuals involved in the complaint. There will be no retaliation against employees for reporting workplace violence or assisting the investigators in the investigation of a complaint. Any retaliation against an employee is subject to disciplinary action. If after investigating any complaint of workplace violence it is discovered that the complaint is not bona fide or that an employee has provided false information regarding the complaint, the employee may be subject to disciplinary action. Inspection of Company for Workplace Violence The Threat Assessment Team will review previous incidents of violence at_____. They will review existing records identifying patterns that may indicate causes and severity of assault incidents as well as identify changes necessary to correct these hazards. In addition, the Threat Assessment Team will inspect ______and evaluate the work tasks of all employees to determine the presence of hazards, conditions, operations, and other situations which might place employees at risk of workplace violence. Periodic inspections will be performed every three months, on the first Friday of the month. The Threat Assessment Team will also survey employees at ______to identify and confirm the need for improved security measures. These surveys will be conducted once a year. Training ________will provide training on workplace violence annually to all employees. Policy Statement on Sexual Harassment (Name of Company) has an obligation to create a work environment for all employees that is fair, humane, and responsible–an environment that supports, nurtures, and rewards career progress based on relevant factors such as work performance. All employees of (Name of Company) have a responsibility to cooperate in creating a climate at (Name of Company) where sexual harassment does not occur. We have a zero

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tolerance for sexual harassment of our employees. All employees at all levels of (Name of Company) must not engage in sexual harassment. The following policy statement is designed to help employees of (Name of Company) become aware of behavior that is sexual harassment and the procedures (Name of Company) will use to deal with sexual harassment in a way that protects complainants, witnesses, and respondents. What Is Sexual Harassment? Sexual harassment is legally defined as ‘‘unwelcome sexual advances, requests for sexual favors, and other verbal or physical conduct of a sexual nature’’ when any one of the following criteria is met: Submission to such conduct is made either explicitly or implicitly a term or condition of the individual’s employment; Submission to or rejection of such conduct by an individual is used as the basis for employment decisions affecting the individual; Such conduct has the purpose or effect of unreasonably interfering with an individual’s work performance or creating an intimidating, hostile or offensive work environment. Two types of sexual harassment situations are described by this legal definition: quid pro quo sexual harassment and hostile environment sexual harassment. Quid pro quo sexual harassment involves an individual with organizational power who either expressly or implicitly ties an employment decision to the response of an employee to unwelcome sexual advances. Thus, a supervisor may promise a reward to an employee for complying with sexual requests (e.g., a better job, promotion, raise) or threaten an employee’s job for failing to comply with the sexual requests (e.g., threatening to not promote the employee, threatening to give an unsatisfactory performance appraisal). Hostile environment sexual harassment involves a situation that creates an atmosphere or climate in the workplace making it difficult, if not impossible, for an employee to work because he or she perceives it as intimidating, offensive, or hostile. For purposes of this policy, sexual harassment includes, but is not limited to the following:       

Unwelcome sexual advances Sexual innuendos, comments and sexual remarks Suggestive, obscene or insulting sounds Implied or expressed threat of reprisal for refusal to comply with a sexual request Patting, pinching, brushing up against another’s body Sexually suggestive objects, books, magazines, poster, photographs, cartoons, e-mail, or pictures displayed in the work area Actual denial of a job-related benefit for refusal to comply with sexual requests

Thus, sexual harassment can be physical, verbal, visual or written. These behaviors constitute sexual harassment if they are committed by individuals who are in supervisory positions or coworkers. They constitute sexual harassment if they occur between individuals of the same sex or of the opposite sex. (Name of Company) prohibits these and

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other forms of sexual harassment. Any employee who engages in such behavior will be subject to disciplinary procedures. What Isn’t Sexual Harassment? Sexual harassment does not refer to relationships between responsible, consenting adults. Sexual harassment does not mean flirting. Giving compliments does not mean sexual harassment. Sexual harassment refers to unwanted, unwelcome behavior. Not every joke or touch or comment is sexual harassment. The key is to determine if the behavior is unwanted and unwelcome. Furthermore, sexual harassment interferes with employees’ ability to get their work done. Costs of Sexual Harassment There are high costs of sexual harassment to individuals. They include depression, feelings of helplessness, headaches, anxiety, sleep disturbances, and disordered eating. The cost of sexual harassment to our company includes decreased productivity, absenteeism, and decreased morale. What Should Individuals Do If They Believe They Are being Sexually Harassed? Employees who have complaints of sexual harassment, including any supervisor, coworker, vendor, client or visitor, are urged to report such conduct to (Name of Investigator) so that (s)he may investigate and resolve the problem. Employees are encouraged to bring their concerns to (Name of Investigator) within 60 days of the alleged incident(s). Employees may ask (Name of Investigator) to postpone an investigation if their performance appraisals will be conducted by the party against whom the complaint is brought. (Name of Investigator) will investigate all complaints professionally and as expeditiously as possible. The confidentiality of the investigative procedures will be maintained. The complaint will be investigated and resolved typically within a two-week period. Complainants and those against whom complaints have been filed will not be expected to meet together to discuss the resolution of the complaint. Investigatory procedures have been developed and are fully explained in another memorandum: (Name of Company) Sexual Harassment Complaint Procedure. Any employee who is found to have engaged in sexual harassment will be subject to disciplinary action, as indicated in (Name of Company) complaint procedure. Discussions about Sexual Harassment: No Complaints Employees at (Name of Company) have the right to seek advice and information about sexual harassment from (Name of Investigator), who will maintain such consultation in confidence. Such discussions do not constitute filing a complaint of sexual harassment. Retaliation There will be no retaliation against employees for reporting sexual harassment or assisting (Name of Investigator) in the investigation of a complaint. Any retaliation against such individuals is subject to disciplinary action, including verbal and written reprimands, transfers, demotions, and dismissal.

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False Complaints If, after investigating any complaint of sexual harassment, it is discovered that the complaint is not bona fide or that an individual has provided false information regarding the complaint, that individual may be subject to disciplinary action, including verbal and written reprimands, transfers, demotions, and dismissal. Recommended Corrective Action The purpose of any recommended corrective action to resolve a complaint will be to correct or remedy the injury, if any, to the complainant and to prevent further harassment. Recommended action may include: a private or public apology, written or oral reprimand of the individual who engaged in sexual harassment, relief from specific duties, suspension, transfer, or dismissal of the individual who engaged in sexual harassment. If complainants are not satisfied with the attempts to resolve the sexual harassment, they may seek resolution through other sources, for example, the (Name of State) Division of Human Rights or the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. Policy Review This policy will be reviewed periodically by (Name of Investigator) and by (Name of President), who welcome comments on the policy, its interpretation or implementation. For additional information regarding sexual harassment, contact (Name of Investigator) or (Name of President). They have been trained in complaint resolution and receive additional education about sexual harassment law and its management and psychological applications. Both (Name of Investigator) and (Name of President) will be responsible for a program of information and education concerning this policy and procedures relating to sexual harassment. Office Numbers and Phone Numbers:(Of Investigator)(Of President) Sexual Harassment Complaint Procedure Employees of (Name of Company) who have complaints of sexual harassment by anyone at this Company, including any supervisors, are encouraged to report such conduct to (Name of Investigator) so that (s)he may investigate and resolve the problem. Individuals who feel subjected to sexual harassment should report the circumstances orally and/or in writing within 60 days to (Name of Investigator). (Name of Investigator) will maintain confidentiality in her/his investigation of complaints of sexual harassment. Any employee pursuing a complaint may do so without fear of reprisal. Informal Advice and Consultation Employees may seek informal assistance or advice from (Name of Investigator). All such consultations will be confidential and no action involving any individual beyond (Name of Investigator) and the employee will be taken until a formal complaint has been made. (Name of Investigator) may, however, take action, within the context of its existing policy and procedures, that (s)he deems appropriate on the basis of information received to protect all employees of (Name of Company).

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Resolutions of Informal Complaints Any employee may discuss an informal complaint with (Name of Investigator). If the employee who discusses an informal complaint is not willing to be identified to the person against whom the informal complaint is made, (Name of Investigator) will make a confidential record of the circumstances and will provide guidance about various ways to resolve the problem. If the employee bringing the complaint is willing to be identified to the person against whom the complaint is made and wishes to attempt an informal resolution of the problem, (Name of Investigator) will make a confidential record of the circumstances (signed by the complainant) and undertake appropriate discussions with the person complained about. When a number of people report incidents of sexual harassment that have occurred in a public context (for example, offensive sexual remarks in an office setting) or when (Name of Investigator) received repeated complaints from different employees that an individual has engaged in sexual harassment, the person complained against will be informed without revealing the identity of the complainants. Resolutions of Formal Complaints If an employee wishes to pursue the matter through a formal resolution, a written complaint must be submitted to (Name of Investigator), giving details of the alleged harassment, including dates, times, places, name(s) of individual(s) involved and names of any witnesses. The complaint must be addressed to (Name of Investigator). Formal complaints will be investigated in the following manner: Upon receipt of a written complaint, (Name of Investigator) will immediately forward a copy of the complaint, along with a copy of (Name of Company) Sexual Harassment Policy Statement and Procedures, to the individual complained against and request a meeting within 3 days. The investigation will be limited to what is necessary to resolve the complaint or make a recommendation. If it appears necessary for (Name of Investigator) to speak to any individuals other than those involved in the complaint, (s)he will do so only after informing the complainant and person complained against. (Name of Investigator) will investigate all complaints of sexual harassment expeditiously and professionally. To the extent possible, the investigation will completed within two weeks from the time the formal investigation is initiated. (Name of Investigator) also will maintain the information provided to her/him in the complaint and investigation process confidential. The only other employee of (Name of Company) who will be informed about the investigation is (Name of President), President of (Name of Company). (Name of Company)’s first priority will be to attempt to resolve the complaint through a mutual agreement of the complainant and the person complained against. If an employee making a formal complaint asks not to be identified until a later date (e.g., until the completion of a performance appraisal), (Name of Investigator) will decide whether or not to hold the complaint without further action until the date requested. If a formal complaint has been preceded by an informal investigation, (Name of Investigator) shall decide whether sufficient grounds exist to warrant a formal investigation. The names or other identifying information regarding witnesses for either party involved in the complaint will not be made known to the opposing party. Referrals for

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therapists and medical personnel for all individuals involved in an investigation will be made available upon request. Following the completion of an investigation, (Name of Investigator) will make one of the following determinations: Sustain the Complaint: A finding of sexual harassment has been made and recommendations for corrective action will be identified. Recommended corrective action may include an apology, written or oral reprimand, relief from specific duties, suspension, dismissal, or transfer of the employee found to have engaged in sexual harassment. Not Sustain the Complaint: A finding of no sexual harassment has been made. Insufficient Information: Insufficient information exists on which to make a determination. (Name of Investigator) will reinvestigate all parties named in the complaint. Following any determination and recommendations for corrective action, (Name of Investigator) will issue a written decision with findings of fact and reason to (Name of President). (Name of President) will correspond with the complainant and person complained against of the findings of the investigation and recommendations for corrective action. Appropriate statements of apology will be made to employees involved in the complaint by (Name of President). If complainants are not satisfied with the attempts to resolve their complaint of sexual harassment, they may seek resolution through other sources, for example, the (Name of State) Division of Human Rights or the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. For additional information regarding (Name of Company) zero tolerance of sexual harassment, contact Name of Investigator Office Number Phone Number Name of President Office Number Phone Number Both (Name of Investigator) and (Name of President) are trained in complaint resolution and receive additional education about sexual harassment law and its management and psychological applications. In addition, (Name of President) and (Name of Investigator) will be responsible for a program of information and education concerning sexual harassment in general and (Name of Company) policy and procedures.

NOTES 1. G. K. Moffatt, ‘‘Subjective Fear: Preventing Workplace Homicide,’’ American Management Association Human Resource Focus 75 (1998): 11. 2. S. Einarsen et al., eds., Bullying and Emotional Abuse in the Workplace: International Perspectives in Research and Practice (London: Taylor and Francis, 2003). 3. G. VandenBos and E. Bulatao, eds., Violence on the Job (Washington, DC: American Psychological Association, 1996). 4. E. Esen, SHRM Workplace Violence Survey (Alexandria, VA: Society for Human Resource Management, 2004).

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5. R. Dobash and R. Dobash, Rethinking Violence against Women (New York: Sage, 1998). 6. K. Bjorkqvist et al., ‘‘Aggression in the Workplace: Sex Differences in Covert Aggression among Adults,’’ Aggressive Behavior 20 (1994): 27–30. 7. G. Kelling and C. Coles, eds., Fixing Broken Windows: Restoring Order and Reducing Crime in our Communities (New York: Free Press, 1996). 8. L. Anderson and C. Pearson, ‘‘Tit for Tat? The Spiraling Effect of Incivility in the Workplace,’’ Academy of Management Review 24 (1999): 452–71; emphasis added. 9. Ibid. 10. Ibid. 11. C. Pearson and C. Porath, Rude Awakening: Detecting and Curtailing Workplace Incivility (London, Ontario: Richard Ivey School of Business, University of Western Ontario, 2002). 12. C. Pearson et al., ‘‘Assessing and Attacking Workplace Incivility,’’ Organizational Dynamics 29 (2000): 123–37. 13. C. Cortina et al., ‘‘Incivility in the Workplace: Incidence and Impact,’’ Journal of Occupational Health Psychology 6 (2001): 64–80. 14. E. DeSouza and J. Solberg, ‘‘Incidence and Dimensions of Sexual Harassment across Cultures,’’ in Michele Paludi and Carmen Paludi Jr., eds., Academic and Workplace Sexual Harassment: A Handbook of Cultural, Social Science, Management, and Legal Perspectives (Westport, CT: Praeger, 2003). 15. EEOC, ‘‘Sexual Harassment Charges EEOC & FEPAs Combined: FY1992-FY 2004,’’ available online at www.eeoc.gov/stats/harass.html. 16. J. Solberg and E. DeSouza, ‘‘An Update on Same-Sex Harassment Since Oncale: Employees Still Face Hurdles’’ (paper presented at the Academy of Legal Studies in Business, Ottawa, Canada, August 19, 2004). 17. L. Fitzgerald et al., ‘‘But Was it Really Sexual Harassment? Legal, Behavioral, and Psychological Definitions of the Workplace Victimization of Women,’’ in W. O’Donohue, ed., Sexual Harassment: Theory, Research, and Treatment (Boston: Allyn and Bacon, 1997). 18. B. Gutek and R. Done, ‘‘Sexual Harassment,’’ in R. Unger, ed., Handbook of the Psychology of Women and Gender (New York: Wiley, 2001). 19. U.S. Merit Systems Protection Board, Sexual Harassment in the Federal Government: Trends, Progress, Continuing Challenges (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1995). 20. M. Martindale, ‘‘Sexual Harassment in the Military: 1988,’’ Sociological Practice Review 2 (1991): 200–216. 21. L. Fitzgerald et al., ‘‘The Incidence and Dimensions of Sexual Harassment in Academia and the Workplace,’’ Journal of Vocational Behavior 32 (1988): 152–75. 22. L. Bastian et al., Department of Defense 1995 Sexual Harassment Survey (Arlington, VA: Defense Manpower Data Center, 1996). 23. M. Paludi and C. Paludi Jr., eds., Academic and Workplace Sexual Harassment: A Handbook of Cultural, Social Science, Management, and Legal Perspectives (Westport, CT: Praeger, 2003). 24. L. Fitzgerald et al., ‘‘The Antecedents and Consequences of Sexual Harassment in Organizations: A Test of an Integrated Model,’’ Journal of Applied Psychology 82 (1997): 578–89.

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25. C. Avina and W. O’Donohue, ‘‘Sexual Harassment and PTSD: Is Sexual Harassment Diagnosable Trauma?’’ Journal of Traumatic Stress 15 (2002): 69–75. 26. S. Freels et al., ‘‘Gender Differences in the Causal Direction between Workplace Harassment and Drinking,’’ Addictive Behaviors 30 (2005): 1454–58. 27. M. Harned and L. Fitzgerald, ‘‘Understanding a Link between Sexual Harassment and Eating Disorder Symptoms: A Mediational Analysis,’’ Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology 70 (2002): 1170–81. 28. L. Fitzgerald et al., ‘‘Measuring Sexual Harassment: Theoretical and Psychometric Advances,’’ Basic and Applied Social Psychology 17(1995): 425–45. 29. F. Till, Sexual Harassment: A Report on the Sexual Harassment of Students (Washington, DC: National Advisory Council on Women’s Educational Programs, 1980). 30. J. Pryor and L. Fitzgerald, ‘‘Sexual Harassment Research in the United States,’’ in S. Einarsen, ed., Bullying and Emotional Abuse in the Workplace: International Perspectives in Research and Practice (London: Taylor and Francis, 2003). 31. S. Lim and L. Cortina, ‘‘Interpersonal Mistreatment in the Workplace: The Interface and Impact of General Incivility and Sexual Harassment,’’ Journal of Applied Psychology 90 (2005): 483–96. 32. Ibid. 33. Ibid. 34. L. Lapierre et al., ‘‘Sexual versus Nonsexual Workplace Aggression and Victims’ Overall Job Satisfaction: A Meta-Analysis,’’ Journal of Occupational Health Psychology 10 (2005): 155–69. 35. L. Cortina et al., ‘‘Incivility in the Workplace: Incidence and Impact,’’ Journal of Occupational Health Psychology 6 (2001): 64–80. 36. R. Lazarus, ‘‘Puzzles in the Study of Daily Hassles,’’ Journal of Behavioral Medicine 7 (1984): 375–89. 37. U.S. Department of Justice, Violence and Theft in the Workplace (NJC-148199) (Annapolis Junction, MD: Bureau of Justice Statistics, 1994). 38. J. Bowman and C. Zigmond, ‘‘State Government Responses to Workplace Violence,’’ Public Personnel Management 26 (1997): 289. 39. Ibid. 40. R. Nydegger, ‘‘Violence, Aggression and Passive-Aggression in the Workplace,’’ Management Development Forum 3 (2000): 121–41. 41. R. Wynne et al., Guidance on the Prevention of Violence at Work (Brussels: European Commission, DG-V, Ref. CE/V1-4/97, 1997). 42. California Occupational Safety and Health Administration, Cal/OSHA Guidelines for Workplace Security (San Francisco: State of California, Department of Industrial Relations, Division of Occupational Safety and Health, 1995). 43. G. Toscano and W. Weber, ‘‘Violence in the Workplace,’’ Bureau of Labor Statistics, available online at www.bls.gov/osh/cfar0005.pdf. 44. N. Boyd, ‘‘Violence in the Workplace in British Columbia: A Preliminary Investigation,’’ Canadian Journal of Criminology October (1995): 491–519. 45. R. Baron and J. Neumann, ‘‘Workplace Violence and Workplace Aggression: Evidence on their Relative Frequency and Potential Causes,’’ Aggressive Behavior 22 (1996): 161–73. 46. J. Greenberg and R. Baron, Behavior in Organizations, 6th ed. (Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1997).

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47. C. Runyon et al., ‘‘Administrative and Behavioral Interventions for Workplace Violence Prevention,’’ American Journal of Preventive Medicine 18 (2000): 116–27. 48. Ibid. 49. K. Varner and J. Varner, ‘‘Workplace Violence,’’ Journal of Health Education 29 (1998): 140–43. 50. K. Schaffer et al., ‘‘A Case-Site/Control-Site Study of Workplace Violent Injury,’’ Journal of Occupational and Environmental Medicine 44 (2002): 1018–26. 51. J. Barab, ‘‘Public Employees as a Group at Risk for Violence,’’ Occupational Medicine 11 (1996): 257–67. 52. A. Meleis, ed., Women’s Work, Health, and Quality of Life (New York: Haworth Medical Press, 2001). 53. A. Roberts, Handbook of Domestic Violence Intervention Strategies: Policies, Programs, and Legal Remedies (New York: Oxford University Press, 2002). 54. L. Johnny, Addressing Domestic Violence in the Workplace (New York: HRD Press, 2004). 55. C. Peek-Asa et al., ‘‘The Role of Surveillance and Evaluation Research in the Reduction of Violence against Workers,’’ American Journal of Preventive Medicine 20 (2001): 141–48. 56. L. Price Spratlen, ‘‘Interpersonal Conflict which Includes Mistreatment in a University Workplace,’’ Violence and Victims 10 (1995): 285–97. 57. S. Einarsen et al., Mobbing og Harde Person Konflikter. Helsefartig samspill pa˚ arbeidsplassen (London: Sigma Forlag, 1994). 58. L. Keashly, ‘‘Emotional Abuse in the Workplace: Conceptual and Empirical Issues,’’ Journal of Emotional Abuse 1 (1998): 85–117. 59. L. Greenberg and J. Barling, ‘‘Predicting Employee Aggression against Coworkers, Subordinates and Supervisors: The Role of Person Behaviors and Perceived Workplace Factors,’’ Journal of Organizational Behavior 20 (1999): 897–913. 60. Ibid. 61. Nydegger, ‘‘Violence, Aggression and Passive-Aggression in the Workplace.’’ 62. D. Holmes and M. Will, ‘‘Expression of Interpersonal Aggression by Angered and Non-Angered Persons with Type A and Type B Behavior Patterns,’’ Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 40 (1985): 723–27. 63. T. Harris, Applied Organizational Communication: Perspectives, Principles and Pragmatics (Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 1993). 64. B. Torestadt, ‘‘What Is Anger-Provoking: A Psychophysiological Study of Perceived Causes of Anger,’’ Aggressive Behavior 16 (1990): 9–16. 65. J. Dollard et al., Frustration and Aggression (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1939). 66. J. Warren et al., ‘‘The Organizational Context of Non-Lethal Workplace Violence: Its Interpersonal, Temporal, and Spatial Correlates,’’ Journal of Occupational and Environmental Medicine 41 (1999): 567–81. 67. L. Walker, The Battered Woman Syndrome (New York: Springer, 2000). 68. L. Walker, Battered Woman (New York: Harper, 1980). 69. A. Tsui et al., ‘‘Being Different: Relational Demography and Organizational Attachment,’’ Administrative Science Quarterly 37 (1992): 549–79.

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70. L. Cole et al., ‘‘Psychosocial Correlates of Harassment, Threats, and Fear of Violence in the Workplace,’’ Scandinavian Journal of Work and Environmental Health 23 (1997): 450–57. 71. Ibid. 72. B. Sharif, ‘‘Understanding and Managing Job Stress: A Vital Dimension of Workplace Violence Prevention,’’ International Electronic Journal of Health Education 3 (2000): 107–16. 73. R. Johnson and J. Indvik, ‘‘Workplace Violence: An Issue in the 90’s,’’ Public Personnel Management 23 (1994): 515–22. 74. J. Brockner et al., ‘‘Layoffs, Job Insecurity, and Survivor’s Work Effort: Evidence of an Inverted U Relationship,’’ Academy of Management Journal 35 (1992): 413–25. 75. R. Nydegger, ‘‘Stress and Job Satisfaction in White- and Blue-Collar Workers,’’ International Business and Research Journal 1 (2002): 35–44. 76. V. Bowie et al., Workplace Violence: Issues, Trends, Strategies (New York: Willan, 2005). 77. S. Baron, Violence in the Workplace: A Prevention and Management Guide for Businesses (New York: Pathfinder, 2001). 78. W. Umiker, ‘‘Workplace Violence: The Responsibility of Employers and Supervisors,’’ Health Care Supervisor 16 (1997): 29–41. 79. D. Chappell and V. DeMartino, Violence at Work (Geneva: International Labor Office, 1998). 80. M. Stewart and B. Kleiner, ‘‘How to Curb Workplace Violence,’’ Facilities 15 (1997): 5–11. 81. C. Paludi and M. Paludi, ‘‘Developing and Enforcing Effective Policies, Procedures, and Training Programs for Educational Institutions and Businesses,’’ in M. Paludi and C. Paludi, eds., Academic and Workplace Sexual Harassment: A Handbook of Cultural, Social Science, Management, and Legal Perspectives (Westport, CT: Praeger, 2003). 82. J. Turner and M. Gelles, Threat Assessment: A Risk Management Approach (New York: Haworth Press, 2003). 83. See U.S. Department of Labor, Occupational Safety and Health Administration, www.osha.gov. 84. J. Swanberg and T. Logan, ‘‘Domestic Violence and Employment: A Qualitative Study,’’ Journal of Occupational Health Psychology 10 (2005): 3–17. 85. C. Paludi and M. Paludi, ‘‘Developing and Enforcing an Effective Workplace Policy Statement, Procedures, and Training Programs on Domestic Violence,’’ paper presented at the Conference on Domestic Violence as a Workplace Concern: Legal, Psychological, Management, and Law Enforcement Perspectives, Nashua, NH, October 2000. 86. N. Peterson and M. Zimmerman, ‘‘Beyond the Individual: Toward a Nomological Network of Organizational Empowerment,’’ American Journal of Community Psychology 34 (2004): 129–45.

4

Romantic Relationships in the Workplace Donna Castan˜eda

Movies, magazines, and novels are replete with depictions of romantic relationships in the workplace. This stands in contrast to the research literature, where studies of workplace romance, although increasing, are relatively few. Furthermore, although popular culture depictions of workplace romance may be positive—that is, the participants fall in love, marry, and live happily ever after—organizations show ambivalence toward such relationships or view them negatively. The existing literature on workplace romance tends to emphasize the legal, emotional, and work performance pitfalls, rather than the benefits to individuals or organizations, although the empirical research that may illuminate the true consequences of workplace romance for all involved is still to be done.1 The purpose of this chapter is to review pertinent research and theory on the prevalence, antecedents, and consequences of romantic relationships in organizational settings and discuss the implications they may have for women in particular. In this effort, the possible link between sexual harassment and workplace romantic relationships will also be discussed.

DEFINITION OF WORKPLACE ROMANTIC RELATIONSHIPS A workplace romance refers to a relationship between two individuals in the same organization that includes mutual sexual attraction that is acknowledged, and consensually and autonomously acted on, by both participants in some form of intimate behavior, such as dating.2 The fact that the relationship may or may not be known to co-workers or supervisors is an important aspect of workplace romances that distinguishes them from romantic relationships that occur outside a work setting.3 A workplace romance, whether known about or merely suspected by others, can impact their work behavior and thus its effects occur not only at the couple level but also at the organizational level.

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A definition of workplace romantic relationships does not include married couples.4 Married couples can work together either in a family-owned business or as co-workers in an organization, but compared to those in a dating relationship that originates and is played out in the workplace, married couples are not viewed in entirely the same way either by co-workers or the organization.5 Formal regulations may more explicitly apply to married than to dating couples. For example, company policy may prohibit married couples from working together on evaluation or performance teams, projects, or dual receipt of travel or other company funds. Greater research is needed on the experience of married couples in the workplace, particularly how being married to a co-worker affects women’s professional performance evaluation and upward mobility in organizations,6 but this experience will not be dealt with here. The setting for workplace romances is often perceived to be a white-collar one. In fact, the phrase ‘‘office romance’’ is sometimes colloquially used to refer to these relationships. However, the organizational setting of these relationships varies and can include factories, hospitals, retail businesses, construction sites, restaurants, and shop floors. The individuals’ connection to the workplace can be varied as well and can include co-workers, vendors, team members, clients, and contractors. They may work side by side or in different offices, divisions, or geographical locations, such as different neighborhoods, cities, states, or countries. For the most part, researchers assume a workplace romantic relationship to be heterosexual and the participants to be European American, although clearly this need not be the case. Nevertheless, researchers are only beginning to recognize the importance of studying same-sex workplace romances and the role of culture, social class, and race/ethnicity in them. Indeed, same-sex workplace romances may be subject to greater implications for participants because they tend to receive more negative responses from society.7 Furthermore, at least in some workplaces, those from already marginalized groups (the working class, certain ethnic or cultural groups) who engage in workplace romantic behavior may be more likely to be targeted for enforcement of existing workplace sexual harassment policies than those from socially dominant groups.8

PREVALENCE OF WORKPLACE ROMANTIC RELATIONSHIPS The traditional conceptualization of the workplace is one that is, ideally constructed, is free of intense emotionality, sexual attraction, and sexual behavior. In this work context, job positions are concrete but depersonalized, and they can hypothetically be filled by any qualified worker regardless of gender, race/ethnicity, or social class. Workers are seen as interchangeable, bodiless abstractions.9 In this conception of the workplace, sexual and emotional passion, which are very much embodied experiences, are seen as a threat to an organization’s effectiveness.10

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On the other hand, although the definitive prevalence study of workplace romance has yet to be done, available research suggests the workplace is an arena in which intimate romantic and sexual relationships are frequently formed. According to an American Management Association survey conducted among its members and customers,11 26 percent of men and 36 percent of women report having dated a workplace colleague. The proportion was higher among workers under forty-nine years old, 37 percent, compared to workers fifty years old and above, 22 percent. More men had dated a subordinate, 20 percent, compared to 2 percent for women, whereas more women had dated a superior, 18 percent, compared to 5 percent for men. In another survey of 610 employees representing a variety of industries across the United States, 58 percent reported engaging in an office romance, up from 46 percent in the same survey two years prior.12 The results in this survey were not broken down by gender, but 14 percent reported dating a superior and 19 percent said they dated a subordinate. Not only is the prevalence high for those who report engaging in a workplace romance, but many workers indicate they have been exposed to their co-workers’ workplace romances. In one of the first studies of the extent of workplace romance, Quinn found that 62 percent of respondents said they knew of at least one such relationship.13 Later, Anderson and Hunsaker found that 86 percent of respondents had been exposed to one or more workplace romantic relationships.14 Most recently, the Vault survey found that 43 percent of respondents knew of a currently occurring workplace romance in their organization.15 Often overlooked is that the workplace is an important source of partners for serious relationships, including marriage. For example, 22 percent of respondents in one survey reported meeting their spouse or long-term significant other in the workplace;16 in another survey, 45 percent of women and 43 percent of men who engaged in a workplace romance reported that the relationship had resulted in marriage.17 These results mirror those from social network research demonstrating that the workplace is one of the leading locations in which marriage partners are found. Furthermore, although organized settings such as family and neighborhood networks continue to influence choice of marriage partner, since 1945 the workplace (along with school) has increased in its importance as a site from which marriage partners are selected.18 Internet relationships notwithstanding, a close relationship can develop only between people with whom we actually meet and interact, and the workplace provides a pool of persons to choose from and an organized setting for social interaction. Of course, personal preferences influence the particular individual who is ultimately chosen as a romantic partner, but the opportunities to meet someone are often influenced by the organized settings traversed daily, such as schools, neighborhoods, family networks, and the workplace.19 The workplace is not only a site where romantic relationships can develop and ultimately culminate in marriage, it is also a location where various types of

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sexual behavior may take place.20 Such behavior can include sexual banter, touching, even fondling.21 As further evidence of sexual behavior in the workplace, the Vault survey found that 23 percent of respondents reported they had had a ‘‘tryst’’ there.22 These sexual encounters took place primarily in offices, but other locations were reported as well, such as restrooms, conference rooms, stairwells, elevators, and even the boss’s office. To the extent that the data in these studies on sexual behavior are not constrained by lack of clarity in terminology or social desirability bias, they indicate a fair amount of sexual behavior literally taking place in the workplace.

ANTECEDENTS OF WORKPLACE ROMANTIC RELATIONSHIPS As organizations confront the issue of romantic relationships among employees, the question arises: What factors facilitate initiation of a workplace romance? An important contribution to answering this question comes from the conceptual model of workplace romance developed by Pierce, Byrne, and Aguinis.23 They demonstrate that workplace romances are essentially similar to nonworkplace romances, and their development can be understood from the perspective of classic interpersonal attraction theory in social psychology. Important elements in this perspective include attitude similarity,24 proximity,25 repeated exposure,26 physical attractiveness,27 reciprocity of liking,28 and physiological arousal.29 In many ways, the workplace is an ideal location for these interpersonal attraction processes to occur. Employees in the same organization who are likely to have shared work goals and interests (attitude similarity) come together regularly, sometimes for long hours (proximity, repeated exposure). If a worker is physically attractive, this will lead to positive interpersonal perceptions of her or him, that is, that she or he is good, intelligent, kind, and so on. Employees have the opportunity to get to know one another and provide positive responses to what each says and does (reciprocity of liking), and they may have joint experiences that create physiological arousal, such as overcoming work-related challenges, meeting deadlines, or competitive behavior. This arousal from one source may then be mislabeled and interpreted as sexual attraction for the co-worker. Taken together, these processes could contribute to initiation of a romantic relationship. In addition to the interpersonal attraction processes, other elements that can contribute to development of a workplace romance are positive attitudes toward workplace romance and to flirting in the workplace,30 and the extent that an individual perceives her or his job as autonomous,31 although one study found that job autonomy was positively related to workplace romance only for men.32 Other variables that have been identified as influencing the incidence of workplace romance are self-rated sociability for both women and men, and among men only, having a disharmonious atmosphere in the workplace.33

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Another influence on workplace romance is an individual’s motive for engaging in the relationship. Early on, Quinn developed a typology of motives for participation in a workplace romance that continues to influence current thinking on this topic.34 The motives he outlined were (1) job-related, such as advancement, increased power, job security; (2) ego, such as excitement, ego satisfaction; and (3) love, such as true love or desire for a spouse. Given the complexity of close relationships, one can assume that more than three motives, or even mixed motives, exist for engaging in a workplace romance.35 However, the three motives that Quinn identified are those most often examined in the research literature. The most frequent motive overall for engaging in a workplace romance is not clear, but counter to what is often believed, job-related reasons are not the top motives associated with workplace romance participation. For example, one study of co-worker perceptions of motivation for workplace romance found that ego motives were most often attributed to men and love motives to women.36 In another study of hierarchical workplace romance, ego motives were most often attributed to both the senior- and lower-level participants in the relationship.37 Gender seems to play an important role in perception of reasons for engaging in a workplace romance. With regard to co-worker reactions to those involved in a workplace romance, love motives are perceived more positively than job-related or ego motives.38 This may be because those in a workplace romance who are believed to be motivated by love are viewed as more sincere and less likely to be a threat to their own work-related rewards or status in the organization. But Dillard found that men who were perceived as having a love motive for workplace romance were evaluated more favorably than women.39 Although love motives in general are considered positive, men seem to accrue points for them, possibly because many are socialized to consider love and intimacy as women’s domain.40 We may expect men to be less interested in love and intimacy, and when they do show interest, we may be pleased and surprised. Hierarchical workplace romances are considered most disruptive and viewed most negatively by co-workers and organizations, but again, gender plays a role in evaluations of motives for engaging in them.41 For example, an investigation of perceptions of hierarchical workplace romances found that male married (as compared to female single) team leaders were more frequently assigned an ego motive.42 Even in nonhierarchical workplace romances, men, compared to women, were significantly more likely to be assigned ego motives.43 Interestingly, at least one study found that women in hierarchical romances were no more likely, either as senior- or lower-level relationship participants, to be assigned job-related motives,44 although a later study found the opposite— job-related motives were more likely to be attributed to a female than to a male lower-level employee.45 Furthermore, in this later study hierarchical workplace romances were regarded as a more serious problem for the organization when

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the lower-level employee was perceived to be motivated by job-related concerns.46 Another study of nonhierarchical workplace romances found that although job-related reasons accounted for less than 10 percent of the attributed motivations for engaging in a workplace romance, the woman in the relationship was ten times more likely than the male to be perceived as exploiting sexuality for gain.47 Furthermore, co-workers respond more negatively to women than to men who are perceived as engaging in a workplace romance for job-related motives.48 Love relationships are used to meet a variety of psychological, emotional, and practical needs, and a workplace romance is no different in this respect. Greater investigation with samples of those actually involved in workplace romances is needed to uncover the full dimensionality of participant motives. The studies outlined here suggest, however, third-party perceptions of the cause of workplace romance, rather than what members of a couple in this situation truly feel, have the most serious implications for the couple. According to attribution theory, people have a need for a coherent and predictable environment, and because of this propose explanations for the behavior of other people.49 These explanations then guide their actions with those other individuals in subsequent situations.50 Available studies tell us that women’s and men’s motives for engaging in a workplace romance are perceived differently, and these perceived motives tend to be consistent with gender stereotypes depicting men as uncaring and seeking self-gratification in relationships and women as using sexuality to gain resources from men. Neither stereotype is positive or even particularly accurate, but due to their overall lesser power and influence in society and the workplace, women may be the most harmed when co-workers, managers, and organizations develop policies regarding these relationships.51 Organizational culture refers to the common values, beliefs, norms, and customs of an organization’s employees. It is the system of meanings produced and reproduced when people interact and includes a group’s basic assumptions that are taken for granted as the most correct way to behave in the environment.52 Thus, organizational culture is another element that can influence workplace romance by letting employees know what is considered appropriate or inappropriate behavior.53 Mainiero suggests that workplace romances are more likely to develop in organizations with a more liberal culture,54 where creativity and innovation are valued. Such organizations are more likely to tolerate workplace romances. Conversely, organizations with a conservative culture, where traditional values and practices are highly regarded, are less accepting of workplace romances, and they may occur in such organizations less frequently. Although some organizations may accurately be described as having a liberal or conservative culture, most probably fall somewhere in between these two extremes. Therefore, the organizational culture that characterizes a particular workplace likely has both facilitative and prohibitive effects on workplace romance.

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Beside whether it can be characterized as liberal or conservative, other aspects of organizational culture, such as the type of gender meanings that pervade the organization, may influence workplace romance. Parkin and Maddock identify a gender typology of organizational cultures that they contend is influential in perpetuating women’s inequality in the workplace.55 Although not the focus of their work, the gendered organizational cultures Parkin and Maddock identify may have significant effects on women’s and men’s initiation of and experience within workplace romances. Among others, these gendered organizational cultures include ‘‘the gentlemen’s club,’’ ‘‘the locker room,’’ and ‘‘the smart macho,’’ all of which tend be hostile to women and distinctly hierarchical, with sexualized work atmospheres.

CONSEQUENCES OF WORKPLACE ROMANCE Workplace romances are often difficult to keep hidden, and if they become known, they can influence work environments and co-workers.56 Of most interest are the potential effects of workplace romances on job performance, but studies of this topic provide mixed messages. Some show that involvement in a workplace romance does not result in decrements in work performance, and in some cases, it is related to improvement.57 In fact, involvement in a romantic relationship, in or out of the workplace, has been positively linked to one’s own work motivation, job involvement, and satisfaction with type of work.58 In at least one study, motives for engaging in a workplace romance affected work performance. In this case, women (and to a lesser extent men) who engaged in workplace romance due to love were more likely to increase their work performance and job involvement than those who engaged in it due to job-related or ego motives.59 Research on the effects of workplace romance on co-workers tends to show more negative consequences. If the workplace romance is seen as hierarchical, exploitive, or due to job-related motives, it can reduce the morale and productivity of co-workers who may fear resulting unfairness in task and career rewards.60 It can also lead to increased gossip among co-workers. Gossip is communication about someone, rather than communication directly with that individual. Though gossip can be benign, it also can be an expression of coworker anxieties surrounding a workplace romance and an effort to build alliances against the couple.61 Furthermore, gossip about those involved in a workplace romance is not gender-neutral.62 It is most negative toward females in a workplace romance who are perceived to have job-related motives. Other aspects of co-worker response to workplace romance relate to preferences for and responses to managerial interventions. According to a model developed by Foley and Powell,63 when co-workers perceive that a workplace romance will lead to a conflict of interest or work disruption, this, along with several other factors they specify, will result in a preference for management

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intervention. To the extent that co-workers perceive this intervention process to be fair and the outcomes just, co-worker productivity and morale will not be negatively affected. Critical to co-worker perceptions of fairness and justness are congruence between (1) the severity of actions co-workers prefer and managers take in response to the workplace romance and (2) co-worker beliefs about a just process for managerial decision making and the actual process. This model implies that the most effective interventions in workplace romances occur when managers understand what employees consider to be a fair and just response in a specific case. Another study of the perception of fairness of organizational workplace romance policies found that co-workers perceived a managerial policy of counseling the couple on the risks of workplace romances as the most fair approach, as opposed to no policy, or more strict approaches such as verbal reprimand, written warning, transfer, or termination.64 Stricter policies were perceived as fair if the couple’s work performance declined. If it improved, however, taking no action was perceived as more just than any other managerial intervention. Research on perceptions of fairness in managerial interventions in workplace romance is helpful and goes beyond simple advice on managerial action. It does not suggest prohibition of workplace romances but provides insight into how co-workers may perceive and react to various managerial interventions. Currently, the most common managerial approach to workplace romance is to either ignore the relationship or take no action. Few organizations have written or informal unwritten policies about how to approach workplace romances, despite repeated exhortations in the literature that such policies are needed to protect organizations against potential legal risks.65 The underlying tension for organizations in their attempt to manage workplace romances is the understanding that they are difficult if not impossible to prevent, but that they must be regulated due to concerns about their assumed negative effects on the organization. Part of the difficulty is that although advice about how to manage workplace romance is abundant, very little is based on adequate empirical research. The little research available shows that nonhierarchical workplace romances have either no effects or somewhat positive effects on job performance, but this is not the impression one gains from articles on workplace romance. Terms such as pitfalls, landmine, and threat are not uncommon in descriptions of the topic. Another challenge associated with advice on organizational response to workplace romance is lack of understanding of the variable, emergent, and uncharted nature of these relationships for participants themselves. For example, companies may require employees to report their involvement in a workplace romance to their supervisors, especially if it involves a hierarchical relationship. With this disclosure they may even be asked to sign a love contract ensuring that the relationship is consensual and unrelated to the company to eliminate any employer liability.66 However, at what point in the relationship is this done? After the first date, first sexual relations, after the partners mutually

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acknowledge that they have fallen in love? Do they tell their family, friends, or company officials first? How do couples even discuss something as logical as when to inform a supervisor of their relationship when they may still be trying to understand their own feelings for each other? At this point, management intervention in a workplace romance on a caseby-case basis appears to be the approach that is most often recommended.67 Much depends on how the participants in the relationship behave in the work setting. Only when work performance of the couple or co-workers declines do managers feel compelled to intervene.68 This approach is more flexible and realistic, particularly considering the many interests that must be balanced, including employee privacy rights, respect for employees’ personal lives, organizational interests, and co-worker needs and concerns.69

THE LINK BETWEEN SEXUAL HARASSMENT AND WORKPLACE ROMANCE A major organizational concern surrounding workplace romance is the potential for sexual harassment claims that may result when the relationship fails. Some data indicate a link between the two. A quarter of the respondents to a survey conducted by the Society for Human Resource Management indicated that sexual harassment claims in their organizations were due to workplace romances.70 These data are third-party observations, but they are still disquieting. Of particular concern are dissolved hierarchical relationships, especially direct reporting ones, as they are thought to contain greater potential for sexual harassment claims for several reasons. First, although one or both partners may have negative feelings, they must continue to work with one another after the relationship is over. In addition, the lower-level partner in such relationships may have had job-related motives for entering them, which have now been thwarted. This could lead to resentment by the lower-level employee. Finally, a power differential between the two exists that could lead to sexual coercion or discriminatory managerial decision making.71 With respect to a dissolved workplace romance, judgments of responsibility for the sexual harassment and decisions about subsequent managerial intervention do not stem solely from the objective behaviors of the former relationship partners. The characteristics of observers and aspects of the former workplace romance play a role in perceptions of responsibility and intervention decisions. For example, Pierce and colleagues found that assessment of the immorality of the sexually harassing behavior mediated decisions about whether the accused or complainant had greater responsibility for it.72 Assessment of responsibility in turn influenced disciplinary action decisions that ranged from no response to punitive consequences. However, the assessment of immorality was influenced by factors completely unrelated to the specific harassing behavior. If the prior workplace romance had been hierarchical, the company had a

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workplace romance policy in place, and the sexually harassing behavior was quid pro quo rather than hostile environment, the behavior was considered immoral. Motives for engaging in a workplace romance, as well as gender of the relationship partner, also play a key role in perceptions of judgments of responsibility for sexual harassment. In a study where a woman was the complainant and a man was the accused, perceptions of their job motives affected judgments of responsibility. In this case, the accused was considered most responsible when he had an ego motive and the complainant had a love motive and least responsible when he had a love motive and the complainant had a jobrelated motive for participation in the relationship. Conversely, the complainant was judged as most responsible for the harassment when she had a job-related or ego motive compared to a love motive and the accused had a love compared to ego motive for participation in the relationship. This study also found that observers considered disciplining the accused as an appropriate action when the romance had been a hierarchical one, but if the complainant in a hierarchical workplace romance was perceived to be motivated by job-related factors, male (but not female) observers did not consider company-funded counseling as an appropriate intervention.73 The growing research on the potential link between workplace romance and sexual harassment provides insight into the complex social and cognitive processes involved in coworker responses to sexual harassment claims by former workplace romance participants. Again, the importance of motives observers perceive for the romance is demonstrated, and even if erroneous, they must be taken seriously. However, a more fundamental and crucial issue surrounding workplace romances and sexual harassment remains unexamined. Although women are acknowledged to more likely be victims of sexual harassment, the reasons for this are not questioned. Therefore, the deeper causes of sexual harassment in the workplace are not addressed. Sexual harassment claims are a legitimate organizational concern, however, the rationale for organizational attempts to prevent them is usually based on their negative organizational consequences, such as low staff morale, high turnover, and reduced productivity, and less on their harmful impact on women.74 The view implicit in advice to organizations is that sexual harassment is due to individual aberrant behavior and is containable and readily resolved by following a checklist of managerial actions. This traditional approach to sexual harassment obscures the highly gendered power relations in organizations that structure and perpetuate women’s inequality in the workplace. One expression of this workplace inequality is sexual harassment. Much research demonstrates the structures and processes in organizations such as hiring, evaluation, salary, maternity leave, traditional work schedules, and so on, are linked, both overtly and subtly, to gender inequality. These gendered structures and processes make up the context in which workplace romances occur.75 The experience of sexuality and being in love can make

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people feel the most authentic, but this experience is influenced by social and cultural context more than generally realized.76 The workplace does not operate in isolation from the world, and all cultures contain attitudes and practices that impede women’s social, political, and economic equality.77 These operate in the work world as in any other social context. This may be a reason why women tend to have more negative attitudes toward workplace romantic relationships, especially hierarchical ones, than do men.78 They may correctly understand that women in these associations will be evaluated more negatively and therefore have more to lose.79 Furthermore, they may better understand and possibly fear that their claims of sexual harassment after a workplace romance has ended will be taken less seriously due to their involvement in the relationship.80 We often think of biology as immutable, but humans routinely transcend biology—some examples are in vitro fertilization, vaccines against disease, and organ transplants. Far more difficult to change are social and cultural norms, attitudes, and behaviors. Because of this, modifications in gender relations that would lead to true solutions to sexual harassment are difficult for organizations to make. But organizations are human creations and as such ‘‘can be restructured, reordered, and re-created in any form that people deem feasible.’’81 They need only make sincere attempts.

CONCLUSIONS Workplace romances cannot be eliminated from organizations; romance, sexuality, intimacy, and love are part of life, both in and out of the workplace. Indeed, organizations can benefit from fostering truly caring and effective relationships between women and men in the workplace.82 In that effort, we must continue to investigate the risks for involvement in workplace romance, particularly for women, because many questions are yet unanswered. For example, the integration of race/ethnicity, social class, and sexual orientation in research on workplace romance is minimal or nonexistent; in fact, an invisibility and silence surrounding the organizational lives of women of color is only recently being lifted.83 How do sexuality and race/ethnicity intersect in the workplace? Differential history and social relationships may affect the association between these elements for women of color. For example, Aida Hurtado explains that women of color and European American women have a different relationship to European American men.84 European American women experience oppression, but through sexuality, they also have access to the privileges that European American men can offer. This option is not open to women of color. How might this reality be reflected in the experience of workplace romance for women of color? Studies of married couples who share the same workplace show that the wife’s work may be perceived as lesser in quality than the husband’s.85 Does this happen when women are involved in a workplace romance? What are the

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short- and long-term effects of workplace romance on women’s career choices, on-the-job performance, salary, turnover, and progression in their fields? As mentioned previously, much of the current research on workplace romance assumes a couple is heterosexual, and very little is known about how lesbians and gay men navigate romantic relationships in the workplace. Companies can be very positive or very negative toward openly lesbian and gay workers, but how does an organization’s attitudes toward them influence its policies toward samegender workplace romance?86 In addition, despite some evidence of a link between dissolved workplace romances and sexual harassment, very little clarity exists concerning the true affective, cognitive, and behavioral mechanisms that may connect these two elements. Finally, these questions and others would benefit from investigation with actual workplace romance participants. Recruitment of adequate sample sizes of individuals currently involved in a workplace romance is difficult but certainly not impossible. Greater integration of theory and methodologies from the burgeoning field of close relationship research could enhance the research strategies used in the study of workplace romance.87 Until more studies of actual participants are done, understanding of such relationships will remain incomplete.

NOTES 1. Gary N. Powell and Sharon Foley, ‘‘Something to Talk About: Romantic Relationships in Organizational Settings,’’ Journal of Management 24 (1998): 421–48; Christine L. Williams, Patti A. Giuffre, and Kirsten Dellinger, ‘‘Sexuality in the Workplace: Organizational Control, Sexual Harassment, and the Pursuit of Pleasure,’’ Annual Review of Sociology 25 (1999): 73–93. 2. Lisa A. Mainiero, ‘‘Dangerous Liaisons? A Review of Current Issues Concerning Male and Female Romantic Relationships in the Workplace,’’ in Ellen A. Fagenson, ed., Women in Management: Trends, Issues, and Challenges in Managerial Diversity, vol. 4 (Newbury Park, CA: Sage Publications, 1993), pp. 162–85; Charles A. Pierce, Donn Byrne, and Herman Aguinis, ‘‘Attraction in Organizations: A Model of Workplace Romance,’’ Journal of Organizational Behavior 17 (1996): 5–32; Powell and Foley, ‘‘Something to Talk About.’’ 3. Mainiero, ‘‘Dangerous Liaisons’’; Powell and Foley, ‘‘Something to Talk About.’’ 4. Powell and Foley, ‘‘Something to Talk About.’’ 5. Elizabeth M. Street and Warren R. Street, ‘‘Marriage to a Co-Worker in an Academic Setting,’’ Behavior Analysis and Social Action 6 (1988): 34–39. 6. Rebecca B. Bryson, Jeffrey B. Bryson, Mark H. Licht, and Barbara G. Licht, ‘‘The Professional Pair: Husband and Wife Psychologists,’’ American Psychologist 31 (1976): 10–16. 7. Powell and Foley, ‘‘Something to Talk About’’; Cindy M. Schaefer and Thomas R. Tudor, ‘‘Managing Workplace Romances,’’ S.A.M. Advanced Management Journal 66 (2001): 4–10.

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8. Williams et al., ‘‘Sexuality in the Workplace.’’ 9. Joan Acker, ‘‘Hierarchies, Jobs, Bodies: A Theory of Gendered Organizations,’’ Gender and Society 4 (1990): 139–58. 10. Gibson Burrell, ‘‘Sex and Organizational Analysis,’’ Organization Studies 5 (1984): 97–118; Margaret Mead, ‘‘A Proposal: We Need a Taboo on Sex at Work,’’ in Dail A. Neugarten and Jay. M Shafritz, eds., Sexuality in Organizations (Oak Park, IL: Moore, 1980), pp. 53–56. 11. American Management Association, ‘‘AMA’s 2003 Survey on Workplace Dating,’’ available online at www.amanet.org/research/archives.html (accessed September 14, 2005). 12. Vault, ‘‘Cupid in the Cubicle, Says New Vault Survey,’’ available online at www.thevault.com/nr/printable.jsp?ch_id¼420&article_id¼235 (accessed September 14, 2005). 13. Robert E. Quinn, ‘‘Coping with Cupid: The Formation, Impact, and Management of Romantic Relationships in Organizations,’’ Administrative Science 22 (1977): 30–45. 14. Carolyn I. Anderson and Phillip L. Hunsaker, ‘‘Why There’s Romancing at the Office and Why it’s Everybody’s Problem,’’ Personnel 62 (1985): 57–63. 15. Vault, ‘‘Cupid in the Cubicle.’’ 16. Ibid. 17. American Management Association, ‘‘AMA’s 2003 Survey.’’ 18. Matthijn Kalmijn and Henk Flap, ‘‘Assortative Meeting and Mating: Unintended Consequences of Organized Settings for Partner Choices,’’ Social Forces 79 (2001): 1289–312. 19. Ibid. 20. Kirsten Dellinger and Christine L. Williams, ‘‘The Locker Room and the Dorm Room: Workplace Norms and the Boundaries of Sexual Harassment in Magazine Editing,’’ Social Problems 49 (2002): 242–57; Patti A. Giuffre and Christine L. Williams, ‘‘Boundary Lines: Labeling Sexual Harassment in Restaurants,’’ Gender and Society 8 (1994): 378–401; Williams et al., ‘‘Sexuality in the Workplace.’’ 21. Dellinger and Williams, ‘‘The Locker Room and the Dorm Room’’; Giuffre and Williams, ‘‘Boundary Lines.’’ 22. Vault, ‘‘Cupid in the Cubicle.’’ 23. Pierce et al., ‘‘Attraction in Organizations.’’ 24. Donn Byrne and Don Nelson, ‘‘Attraction as a Linear Function of Proportion of Positive Reinforcements,’’ Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 1 (1965): 659–63. 25. Jill Gilbertson, Kathryn Dindia, and Mike Allen, ‘‘Relational Continuity Construction Units and the Maintenance of Relationships,’’ Journal of Social and Personal Relationships 15 (1998): 774–90. 26. Robert B. Zajonc, ‘‘Attitudinal Effects of Mere Exposure,’’ Journal of Personality and Social Psychology Monograph Supplement 9 (1968): 1–27. 27. Karen K. Dion, Ellen Berscheid, and Elaine Walster, ‘‘What Is Beautiful Is Good,’’ Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 24 (1972): 285–90. 28. Rebecca C. Curtis and Kim Miller, ‘‘Believing Another Likes or Dislikes You: Behaviors Making Beliefs Come True,’’ Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 51 (1986): 284–90. 29. Donald G. Dutton and Arthur P. Aron, ‘‘Some Evidence for Heightened Sexual Attraction under Conditions of High Anxiety,’’ Journal of Personality and Social

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Psychology 30 (1974): 510–17; for additional discussions of these concepts as applied to workplace romance, see Jeanette N. Cleveland, Margaret Stockdale, and Kevin R. Murphy, ‘‘Physical Attractiveness, Interpersonal Relationships, and Romance at Work,’’ in Women and Men in Organizations: Sex and Gender Issues at Work (Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 2000), pp. 67–92; Powell and Foley, ‘‘Something to Talk About.’’ 30. Theresa J. Brown and Elizabeth Rice Allgeier, ‘‘The Impact of Participant Characteristics, Perceived Motives, and Job Behaviors on Co-Workers’ Evaluations of Workplace Romances,’’ Journal of Applied Social Psychology 26 (1996): 577–95; Elina Haavio-Mannila, Kaisa Kauppinen-Torpainen, and Irja Kandolin, ‘‘The Effect of Sex Composition of the Workplace on Friendship, Romance, and Sex at Work,’’ in Barbara Gutek, Ann H. Stromberg, and Laurie Larwood, eds., Women and Work: An Annual Review, vol. 3 (Newbury Park, CA: Sage, 1988), pp. 123–38; Gwen E. Jones, ‘‘Hierarchical Workplace Romance: An Experimental Examination of Team Member Perceptions,’’ Journal of Organizational Behavior 20 (1999): 1057–52; Charles A. Pierce, ‘‘Factors Associated with Participating in a Romantic Relationship in a Work Environment,’’ Journal of Applied Social Psychology 28 (1998): 1712–30. 31. Pierce, ‘‘Factors Associated.’’ 32. Haavio-Mannila et al., ‘‘The Effect of Sex Composition of the Workplace.’’ 33. Ibid. 34. Quinn, ‘‘Coping with Cupid.’’ 35. Claire J. Anderson and Caroline Fisher, ‘‘Male-Female Relationships in the Workplace: Perceived Motivations in Office Romance,’’ Sex Roles 25 (1991): 163–80; James P. Dillard, ‘‘Close Relationships at Work: Perceptions of the Motives and Performance of Relational Participants,’’ Journal of Social and Personal Relationships 4 (1987): 179–93. 36. Anderson and Fisher, ‘‘Male-Female Relationships in the Workplace.’’ 37. Jones, ‘‘Hierarchical Workplace Romance.’’ 38. Brown and Allgeier, ‘‘The Impact of Participant Characteristics’’; Dillard, ‘‘Close Relationships at Work.’’ 39. Dillard, ‘‘Close Relationships at Work.’’ 40. Francesca M. Cancian, ‘‘Feminine and Masculine Love,’’ in Love in America: Gender and Self-Development (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987), pp. 69–80. 41. Mainiero, ‘‘Dangerous Liaisons’’; Gary N. Powell, ‘‘Workplace Romances between Senior-Level Executives and Lower-Level Employees: An Issue of Work Disruption and Gender,’’ Human Relations 54 (2001): 1519–44. 42. Jones, ‘‘Hierarchical Workplace Romance.’’ 43. Anderson and Fisher, ‘‘Male-Female Relationships in the Workplace.’’ 44. Jones, ‘‘Hierarchical Workplace Romance.’’ 45. Powell, ‘‘Workplace Romances between Senior-Level Executives.’’ 46. Ibid. 47. Anderson and Fisher, ‘‘Male-Female Relationships in the Workplace.’’ 48. Dillard, ‘‘Close Relationships at Work.’’ 49. Fritz Heider, The Psychology of Interpersonal Relations (New York: Wiley, 1958). 50. Edward. E. Jones and Keith E. Davis, ‘‘A Theory of Correspondent Inferences: From Acts to Dispositions,’’ in Leonard Berkowitz, ed., Advances in Experimental Social Psychology, vol. 2 (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1965), pp. 219–66.

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51. Anderson and Hunsaker, ‘‘Why There’s Romancing at the Office’’; Lisa A. Mainiero, ‘‘A Review and Analysis of Power Dynamics in Organizational Romance,’’ Academy of Management Review 11 (1986): 750–62. 52. Sylvia Gherardi, ‘‘Organizational Symbolism, Culture, and Gender,’’ in Gender, Symbolism, and Organizational Cultures (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 1995), pp. 7–37. 53. Cleveland et al., ‘‘Women and Men in Organizations.’’ 54. Lisa A. Mainiero, Office Romance: Love, Sex, and Power in the Workplace (New York: Rawson Associates/Macmillan, 1989). 55. Su Maddock and Di Parkin, ‘‘Gender Cultures: How They Affect Men and Women at Work,’’ in Marilyn J. Davidson and Ronald J. Burke, eds., Women in Management: Current Research Issues (London: Paul Chapman, 1994), pp. 29–40. 56. Anderson and Hunsaker, ‘‘Why There’s Romancing at the Office.’’ 57. Dillard, ‘‘Close Relationships at Work’’; James P. Dillard and Scott M. Broetzman, ‘‘Romantic Relationships at Work: Perceived Changes in Job-Related Behaviors as a Function of Participant’s Motive, Partner’s Motive, and Gender,’’ Journal of Applied Social Psychology 19 (1989): 93–110; Pierce, ‘‘Factors Associated.’’ 58. Pierce, ‘‘Factors Associated.’’ 59. Dillard, ‘‘Close Relationships at Work’’; Dillard and Broetzman, ‘‘Romantic Relationships at Work.’’ 60. Anderson and Hunsaker, ‘‘Why There’s Romancing at the Office’’; Mainiero, ‘‘Dangerous Liaisons’’; Mainiero, ‘‘Office Romance’’; Pierce et al., ‘‘Attraction in Organizations. 61. Harriet Lerner, ‘‘Your Anxious Workplace,’’ in Fear and Other Invited Guests (New York: HarperCollins, 2004), pp. 92–116. 62. Dillard, ‘‘Close Relationships at Work’’; Quinn, ‘‘Coping with Cupid.’’ 63. Sharon Foley and Gary N. Powell, ‘‘Not All Is Fair in Love and Work: Coworkers’ Preferences for and Responses to Managerial Interventions Regarding Workplace Romances,’’ Journal of Organizational Behavior 20 (1999): 1043–56. 64. Katherine A. Karl and Cynthia L. Sutton, ‘‘An Examination of the Fairness of Workplace Policies,’’ Journal of Business and Psychology 14 (2000): 429–42. 65. Theresa J. Brown and Elizabeth Rice Allgeier, ‘‘Managers’ Perceptions of Workplace Romances: An Interview Study,’’ Journal of Business and Psychology 10 (1995): 169–76; Charlotte Denaud and Ghita Fizazi, ‘‘The Pitfalls of Workplace Romance,’’ Washington Times (February 14, 2005), available online at washingtontimes .com/upi-breaking/20050211-053555-5686r.htm (accessed September 14, 2005); Sue Shellenbarger, ‘‘Employers Often Ignore Workplace Romances,’’ Wall Street Journal, available online at www.careerjournal.com/columnists/workfamily/20050311-wor (accessed September 14, 2005). 66. Braun Consulting News, ‘‘Workplace Romance: How about a Love Contract?’’ Winter 1999, available online at www.braunconsulting.com/bcg/newsletters/winter99 .html (accessed September 14, 2005). 67. Foley and Powell, ‘‘Not All Is Fair in Love and Work’’; Sharon A. Lobel, ‘‘Sexuality at Work: Where Do We Go from Here?’’ Journal of Vocational Behavior 42 (1993): 136–52; Mainiero, ‘‘Office Romance’’; Gary N. Powell and Laura M. Graves, ‘‘Dealing with Sexuality in the Workplace,’’ in Women and Men in Management, 3rd ed. (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 2003), pp. 157–82.

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68. Brown and Allgeier, ‘‘Managers’ Perceptions of Workplace Romances’’; Kathy Gurchiek, ‘‘Be Ready for Slings, Arrows of Cupid in the Cubicles,’’ HR Magazine 50 (2005): 27, 36–37. 69. Margaret F. Karsten, ‘‘Sexual and Racial Harassment and Corporate Romance,’’ in Management and Gender: Issues and Attitudes (Westport, CT: Quorum Books, 1994), pp. 57–72; Rebecca J. Wilson, Christine Filosa, and Alex Fennel, ‘‘Romantic Relationships at Work: Does Privacy Trump the Dating Police?’’ Defense Council Journal 70 (2003): 78–88. 70. Society for Human Resource Management, ‘‘Workplace Romance Survey (item no. 62.17014),’’ Alexandria, VA: SHRM Public Affairs Department. 71. Charles A. Pierce and Herman Aguinis, ‘‘Bridging the Gap between Romantic Relationships and Sexual Harassment in Organizations,’’ Journal of Organizational Behavior 18 (1997): 197–200. 72. Charles A. Pierce, Brandee J. Broberg, Jamie R. McClure, and Herman R. Aguinis, ‘‘Responding to Sexual Harassment Complaints: Effects of a Dissolved Workplace Romance on Decision-Making Standards,’’ Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes 95 (2004): 66–82. 73. Charles A. Pierce, Herman Aguinis, and Susan K. R. Adams, ‘‘Effects of a Dissolved Workplace Romance and Rater Characteristics on Responses to a Sexual Harassment Accusation,’’ Academy of Management Journal 43 (2000): 869–80. 74. Harriet Samuels, ‘‘Sexual Harassment in the Workplace: A Feminist Analysis of Recent Developments in the UK,’’ Women’s Studies International Forum 26 (2003): 467–82. 75. Rosabeth Moss Kanter, Men and Women of the Corporation (New York: Basic Books, 1977); Leslie Salzinger, ‘‘Trope Chasing: Making a Local Labor Market,’’ in Genders in Production: Making Workers in Mexico’s Global Factories (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003), pp. 35–50; Christine L. Williams, ‘‘Femininity in the Marine Corp,’’ in Gender Differences at Work: Women and Men in Nontraditional Work (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1989), pp. 45–87. 76. Donna Castan˜eda and Alyson Burns-Glover, ‘‘Gender, Sexuality, and Intimate Relationships,’’ in Michele A. Paludi, ed., The Praeger Guide to the Psychology of Gender (Westport, CT: Praeger, 2004), pp. 69–91. 77. Maddock and Parkin, ‘‘Gender Cultures’’; Virginia E. Schein, ‘‘Managerial Sex Typing: A Persistent and Pervasive Barrier to Women’s Opportunities,’’ in Marilyn J. Davidson and Ronald J. Burke, eds., Women in Management: Current Research Issues, (London: Paul Chapman, 1994), pp. 41–54. 78. Pierce, ‘‘Factors Associated’’; Pierce et al., ‘‘Attraction in Organizations.’’ 79. Anderson and Fisher, ‘‘Male-Female Relationships in the Workplace’’; Gary Powell, ‘‘Workplace Romance in the Public Sector: Sex Differences in Reactions to the Clinton-Lewinsky Affair,’’ Psychological Reports 87 (2000): 1043–49; Powell, ‘‘Workplace Romances between Senior-Level Executives.’’ 80. Pierce et al., ‘‘Responding to Sexual Harassment Complaints.’’ 81. Ellen A. Fagenson and Janice J. Jackson, ‘‘Final Commentary,’’ in Ellen A. Fagenson, ed., Women in Management: Trends, Issues, and Challenges in Managerial Diversity (Newbury Park, CA: Sage), p. 305. 82. Lobel, ‘‘Sexuality at Work.’’

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83. For discussion of this issue see Patricia S. Parker, ‘‘Visions of Leadership in Traditional (White Masculine) and (White) Feminine Leadership Approaches: A Review and Critique,’’ in Race, Gender, and Leadership (Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 2005), pp. 3–19; Lynn Weber and Elizabeth Higginbotham, ‘‘Black and White Professional-Managerial Women’s Perception of Racism and Sexism in the Workplace,’’ in Elizabeth Higginbotham and Mary Romero, eds., Women and Work: Exploring Race, Ethnicity, and Class (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 1997), pp. 153–75. 84. Aida Hurtado, ‘‘Relating to Privilege and Political Mobilization: Toward a Multicultural Feminism,’’ in The Color of Privilege: Three Blasphemies on Race and Feminism (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1996), pp. 1–44. 85. Bryson et al., ‘‘The Professional Pair.’’ 86. Micah E. Lubensky, Sarah L. Holland, Carolyn Wiethoff, and Faye J. Crosby, ‘‘Diversity and Sexual Orientation: Including and Valuing Sexual Minorities in the Workplace,’’ in Margaret S. Stockdale and Faye J. Crosby, eds., The Psychology and Management of Workplace Diversity (Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2004), pp. 206–23. 87. Benjamin R. Karney and Thomas N. Bradbury, ‘‘The Longitudinal Course of Marital Quality and Stability: A Review of Theory, Method, and Research,’’ Psychological Bulletin 118 (1995): 3–34; Benjamin R. Karney, Joanne Davila, Catherine C. Cohan, Kieran T. Sullivan, Matthew D. Johnson, and Thomas N. Bradbury, ‘‘An Empirical Investigation of Sampling Strategies in Marital Research,’’ Journal of Marriage and the Family 57 (1995): 909–20.

5

Pregnancy Discrimination: Laboring under Assumptions in the Workplace Julie Manning Magid

Assumptions are made about pregnant women who work. For example, it is assumed that they will require extended leaves to give birth and care for their infants, change work patterns after giving birth, or have more than one child, thereby affecting their employer not once but possibly several times. Statistics can be found to support each of these assumptions. Working women in the United States who became first-time mothers from 1991 to 1994 averaged nearly three months leave after the birth of their child.1 Mothers with infants under age one are more likely to work part-time than other women, and 45 percent do not participate in the workforce.2 Many women bear more than one child; in the 1990s, U.S. fertility rates averaged two births per woman, an increase from the 1970s.3 These assumptions culminate in an idea that is devastating for pregnant working women—the assumption that their level of commitment to work is forever changed. This notion affects not just pregnant women but all women. An overwhelming majority of women will give birth at some point in their lives.4 Thus from the moment women enter the workforce, they bear the weight of all these (statistically accurate) assumptions, which remain with them throughout most of their work lives. Assumptions are often the source of pregnancy discrimination in the workforce. Statistics about women in the workplace help document trends and calculate averages but do not determine or predict how a given woman will organize her work life in relation to her family life. Each woman should make individual decisions about work and family based on her particular circumstances. If a woman is pregnant, the law should respect the dignity of her decisions concerning work and family by allowing her to work free from the burden of assumptions about parenting responsibilities and future pregnancies. Employers run afoul of the law if the workplace environment is based on predetermined notions and expectations about how women should organize their work and families. Despite laws prohibiting pregnancy discrimination in

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the workplace, women believe preset notions about pregnancy and family life underlie employers’ actions all too often. The number of pregnancy discrimination complaints filed with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) increased nationwide by 10 percent between 2001 and 2002.5 Although the number decreased slightly the following year, a long-term trend indicates complaints concerning discrimination based on pregnancy have risen 39 percent since 1992.6 During the same time period, the nation’s birth rate dropped by 9 percent. Pregnancy discrimination claims filed with the EEOC now climb each year at a rate exceeding the increase in filings for either sex discrimination or sexual harassment claims. Why is pregnancy discrimination a growing concern? Employment trends suggest some reasons why the number of claims is increasing. More women now remain in their jobs while pregnant. In this era of leaner workforces, the time away from work often associated with pregnancy may create resentment. Managing parental leaves creates challenges for employers, particularly smaller ones. Finally, employers are less aware of prohibitions concerning pregnancy discrimination than of other federal discrimination laws. Women represent about 47 percent of the labor force, and estimates are that the percentage will continue to grow.7 While they are pregnant, women often remain in the workforce; in the 1990s, only 27 percent of pregnant women quit their jobs.8 During the same decade, however, employers fired pregnant women at a higher rate than in the 1980s.9 As more working women remain in their jobs while pregnant, incidents of discriminatory conduct rise. Women often resent the assumptions made about their work and family life and decide to file complaints when they determine the work environment is intolerable.10 Economic trends are related to the increase in pregnancy discrimination complaints. Productivity demands of lean workforces mean that employees work longer hours. If a woman takes maternity leave or other time off during pregnancy, overworked co-workers usually must share her job responsibilities. This is a particularly acute problem for smaller employers with fewer employees among whom additional work responsibilities can be divided. In addition to the cost of lost productivity and efficiency during pregnancy or maternity leave, pregnancy raises employers’ health insurance costs. However, pregnancy discrimination is expensive for employers too. In fiscal year 2005, the EEOC and state and local agencies collected $11.3 million from employers for violations of pregnancy discrimination laws.11 This amount does not include the cost of litigation and damages paid when employees filed a lawsuit in federal or state courts. The increase in complaints filed with the EEOC indicates that federal legislation has failed to end pregnancy discrimination. Although Congress attempted to include pregnancy discrimination as part of sex discrimination legislation generally, many courts interpret pregnancy discrimination law dissociated from gender stereotypes. Thus employers and employees alike are confused by varying interpretations of the legal parameters. More recent legislation

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used a gender-neutral approach to prohibiting discrimination based on familyrelated commitments. However, this approach did not account for the biological reality of childbirth and resulted in the unintended consequence of making it more difficult for women to maintain legislative protection than men. An overview of pregnancy discrimination law’s laborious development is described in this chapter. Uncertainties remain concerning the legality of crucial employer policies and procedures. Organizations’ efforts to comply with antidiscrimination legislation are compromised by the lack of clarity of the underlying statutes and the differing interpretations. This chapter highlights the areas of greatest ambiguity concerning pregnancy discrimination law. In addition, the overlap between federal family leave legislation is analyzed. Two of the most important issues emerging in the context of pregnant employees—benefits policies and defining which aspects of motherhood are included in pregnancy discrimination legislation—are assessed. Before turning to the legislative landscape, however, a recent court decision provides an example of the assumptions that prevent women from contributing to an organization. Eliminating these assumptions, as demanded by the court in this case, offers the best opportunity to promote organizational excellence and workplace equity. Compared to other types of discrimination, that based on pregnancy is less well known. Although the Civil Rights Act of 1964 prohibited sex discrimination in employment, the U.S. Supreme Court did not interpret sex discrimination as including differential treatment based on pregnancy. In 1978, fourteen years after Congress passed this major federal antidiscrimination law, it was amended to include pregnancy. Unfortunately, courts interpreting pregnancy discrimination law have reached vastly different conclusions concerning the parameters of this protection.12 Some interpret pregnancy discrimination bans narrowly so that many pregnant women have no opportunity to redress this type of workplace discrimination. Although other courts take a broader view concerning the types of employment actions that are prohibited legally, these different interpretations leave employers and employees alike confused about the law and the nature of pregnancy discrimination. The increasing number of pregnancy discrimination complaints filed with the EEOC and federal courts indicates a wide range of conduct result in women seeking to redress discrimination through the law. Elana Back, an elementary school psychologist who filed a discrimination claim against her employer for assumptions about her commitment to work following her pregnancy, had received several positive performance reviews. Following the birth of her first child and three months of maternity leave, however, Back’s career path derailed due to her employer’s concern that she could not be a good mother and remain devoted to her job. Back believed that her supervisor relied on predetermined notions about women and their family responsibilities to inquire repeatedly about her plans for additional pregnancies. In particular, the supervisor asked about how Back would ‘‘space’’ her pregnancies,

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requested that she not become pregnant again until the supervisor retired, and suggested that Back should wait until her first child was in kindergarten before conceiving again. As Back approached job tenure, her supervisor expressed growing concern about her work and family priorities. The supervisor told Back that it was impossible to be a good mother and have her job. In addition, the supervisor was concerned that after the school awarded Back tenure, her level of job commitment would drop because she had ‘‘little ones at home.’’ The supervisor believed another year before recommending tenure would give her time to assess Back’s child care situation.13 Back asked a federal court, the Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, to determine whether her employer’s stereotypical statements and actions about motherhood and the qualities of a good mother were a form of gender discrimination. The Second Circuit concluded that questioning a woman’s abilities and workplace commitment based on her status as a mother strikes at the heart of gender stereotyping. The court referenced a recent U.S. Supreme Court decision that characterized persistent generalizations based on gender, such as those Back described, as the fault line between work and family life that is an enduring obstacle in employment opportunity.14 The court held that ‘‘the notions that mothers are insufficiently devoted to work, and that work and motherhood are incompatible, are properly considered to be, themselves, gender-based.’’15 Although the ruling in the Back decision is limited to the states within the Second Circuit, nonetheless, the court’s recognition of the link between gender and pregnancy—including postpregnancy assumptions about family planning and responsibilities—is an important step toward reuniting pregnancy discrimination law with gender discrimination. All too often, assumptions about women in the workplace correspond with those about their role as mothers. The history of gender discrimination law, however, shows a concerted effort to dissociate gender discrimination from pregnancy and parenting. Such dissociation ignores the reality of women’s experience in the workplace. When Congress enacted Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 to address employment discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex, and national origin,16 pregnancy discrimination received no specific consideration. In fact, the legislative history of Title VII suggests that some members of Congress did not intend to include sex as a protected class. Congressman Howard Smith of Virginia, a representative with little commitment to the civil rights bill, amended the pending legislation to include sex as a protected class in what some speculate was a maneuver to defeat the law’s passage.17 Following Smith’s amendment, debate concerning the amendment was lighthearted and humorous.18 Although Title VII survived with the amendment intact, the less-than-serious discussion concerning protection from gender discrimination left only a brief and often unhelpful legislative history.19 The EEOC, the agency responsible for administering Title VII, issued inconsistent interpretations concerning the role pregnancy played in gender

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discrimination. Initial EEOC opinions permitted maternity, pregnancy, and childbirth exclusions from employers’ benefit plans under Title VII. By 1972, however, the EEOC reversed its earlier opinions and promulgated guidelines indicating that pregnancy, childbirth and recovery, and related medical conditions had to be treated the same as other temporary disabilities for insurance purposes in employee benefit plans. Thus, if an employer’s plan provided time off for other temporary disabilities, it also had to allow women the same amount of time for temporary disability for pregnancy-related reasons. The Supreme Court addressed pregnancy discrimination within the meaning of Title VII in a 1976 case, General Electric v. Gilbert (referred to as Gilbert). In that case, a group of female employees filed a lawsuit against their employer based on its insurance plan. It covered employees who became disabled due to illness or injury. It also covered procedures specific to male reproduction, such as vasectomies, but excluded disabilities resulting from pregnancy. The female employees claimed this exclusion violated Title VII. In the Gilbert decision, the Supreme Court determined that discrimination because of sex, as prohibited by Title VII legislation, did not include pregnancy discrimination. The Court reasoned that the employer’s insurance policy excluding pregnancy disability did not distinguish between males and females but between ‘‘pregnant persons and non-pregnant persons.’’ This was not understood to represent a gender-based classification because the group of nonpregnant persons included both men and women. The Court found pregnancy was not ‘‘a disease or disability comparable in all other respects to covered diseases or disabilities and yet confined to the members of one sex or race.’’20 This ruling denied disability coverage to pregnant women under the private employer’s insurance plans. In an earlier case, the Court upheld an exclusion of pregnant women from disability coverage under a state insurance plan.21 Not all members of the Court agreed with the Gilbert decision. Justice William Brennan authored a dissenting opinion that asserted the Court had lost sight of Title VII’s intent when it held that pregnancy discrimination was not gender discrimination. Brennan appealed for the Court to approach the issue with a broader understanding of gender. In the dissenting opinion he wrote, ‘‘surely it offends common sense to suggest that a classification revolving around pregnancy is not, at a minimum, strongly ‘sex related.’ ’’22 Similarly, Justice John Paul Stevens’s dissenting opinion rejected dividing the pool of employees into pregnant women and nonpregnant persons. Instead, he argued for an implicit recognition that biological females cannot be dissociated from the reality of pregnancy. Stevens stated: ‘‘The classification is between persons who face a risk of pregnancy and those who do not.’’23 The dissents by Brennan and Stevens received full vindication when Congress responded to the Gilbert decision by amending Title VII ‘‘to prohibit sex discrimination on the basis of pregnancy.’’ The House and Senate Reports specifically acknowledged that Brennan’s and Stevens’s dissents reflected congressional intent

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in enacting Title VII. The Pregnancy Discrimination Act (PDA) amended Title VII by providing that the terms ‘‘because of sex’’ or ‘‘on the basis of sex’’ include, but are not limited to, because of or on the basis of pregnancy, childbirth, or related medical conditions; and women affected by pregnancy, childbirth, or related medical conditions shall be treated the same for all employment-related purposes, including receipt of benefits under fringe benefit programs, as other persons not so affected but similar in their ability or inability to work.24

The PDA’s dual purpose of addressing the definition of sex discrimination and overruling the controversial Gilbert decision is evident in the congressional committee reports as well as the language of the amendment. The bill ‘‘was introduced to change the definition of sex discrimination in Title VII to the commonsense view and to ensure that working women are protected.’’25 The Supreme Court recognized Congress’s expression of its intent to prohibit discrimination based on pregnancy by enacting the PDA.26 The Court noted the act’s proponents ‘‘repeatedly emphasized that the Supreme Court had erroneously interpreted congressional intent and that amending legislation was necessary to reestablish the principles of Title VII law as they had been understood prior to the Gilbert decision.’’27 In a later case, the Court debated whether the PDA preempted a California statute requiring employers to provide four months of unpaid maternity leave and guaranteed reinstatement to pregnant employees.28 If the PDA had preempted the statute, states could not mandate broader pregnancy discrimination laws than the PDA. With a fractured majority, the Court concluded Congress did not mean to prohibit employers from giving preferential treatment to pregnant employee in enacting the PDA. Instead, the Court emphasized the broad goals of the PDA by noting, ‘‘rather than limiting existing Title VII principles and objectives, the PDA extends them to cover pregnancy.’’29 As a result of this decision, some states require private employers to provide rights to its pregnant employees beyond those identified in the PDA. Defining the prohibitions under the PDA has proved challenging. For instance, does it apply to women who are not pregnant? Mary Craig was one such woman. She had a decision to make in 1982. She could lose her job or be sterilized and present evidence of her sterility to her employer. Her co-worker, Elsie Nason, was not willing to be sterilized to keep her job and because of that, she received less pay in a job to which she was involuntarily transferred. Another co-worker, Donald Penney, however, did not receive a requested leave from his job. He was required to remain in a position that threatened his future children through high lead exposure. These are the representatives of the class who challenged their employer’s fetal protection policy by filing a federal lawsuit.30 The employer, a battery manufacturer, had a valid concern about its legal liability. During the manufacturing process, employees were exposed to lead.

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The Occupational Safety and Health Administration had determined that such exposure sometimes resulted in blood lead levels exceeding the critical level for an employee who planned to have biological children. Parents’ high levels of exposure to lead increased the risk that their children would suffer serious birth defects. After eight of its employees became pregnant with blood lead levels regularly exceeding the critical level, the employer instituted a new policy affecting all women employees (although male exposure could result in birth defects of biological children as well): ‘‘It is policy that women who are pregnant or who are capable of bearing children will not be placed into jobs involving lead exposure or which could expose them to lead through the exercise of job bidding, bumping, transfer or promotion rights.’’31 One federal appeals court judge characterized this case as ‘‘likely the most important sex-discrimination case in any court since 1964, when Congress enacted Title VII.’’32 None of the three employees who filed the lawsuit was pregnant or planned on becoming pregnant. Mary Craig chose sterilization to comply with the company policy and therefore was medically incapable of becoming pregnant. Nonetheless, their status as nonpregnant persons did not exclude them from the discrimination prohibitions under Title VII as amended by the PDA. The Supreme Court noted the employer’s policy explicitly categorized employees based on the ‘‘potential for pregnancy,’’ ‘‘[The company] has chosen to treat all of its female employees as potentially pregnant; that choice evinces discrimination on the basis of sex.’’33 The Court found this stereotype of women goes to the very heart of what is prohibited by the PDA: ‘‘Congress in the PDA prohibited discrimination on the basis of a woman’s ability to become pregnant. We do no more than hold that the PDA means what it says.’’34 The law is clear, then, that employers cannot institute employment policies that single out female employees based on the assumption that these employees may become pregnant. They cannot bar women, but not men, from jobs involving exposure to substances known to harm the human reproductive system. Less clear and far more problematic are the decisions made about employees who are pregnant and require leave. The wording of the PDA is convoluted and subject to differing interpretations. Specifically, courts have long discussed whether Congress intended the amendment broadly to incorporate pregnancy with gender discrimination or if the PDA addresses more specifically the medical leave associated with pregnancy and childbirth. The debate arises from the specific language of the PDA, which was quoted earlier. Two clauses are joined by the conjunction and. Often these clauses are read together to limit the PDA to outlawing discrimination only as it relates to the disability associated with pregnancy. In this interpretation, the conjunction is defined as meaning ‘‘therefore.’’ That interpretation unnecessarily narrows the discrimination that women encounter in the workplace. The reading of the clauses of the PDA most supported by the legislative history and the Supreme Court’s rulings is to consider them independently. The meaning of the first clause is not limited by the specific language in the second. This interpretation

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means the conjunction is defined as ‘‘in addition,’’ a more common definition of and than ‘‘therefore.’’ The second clause directly overturns the Gilbert case by explaining the application of the general principle to women employees disabled by pregnancy, childbirth, and related conditions.35 Perhaps the most notable decision limiting the language of the PDA to disability leave concerns a department store employee. The following federal Court of Appeals decision is notable due to its narrow interpretation of pregnancy discrimination and its impact on decisions concerning pregnancy discrimination claims filed in many federal courts. A department store fired its pregnant employee, Kimberly Hern Troupe, one day before her scheduled maternity leave. Her employer stated the termination was not due to pregnancy but due to repeated absences and tardiness caused by her severe morning sickness. The employee countered that the employer’s explanation for termination was nonsensical given that she was one day away from the maternity leave that would resolve the issue of morning sickness. The court drew a now often cited comparison to resolve this issue: Suppose that Lord & Taylor had an employee named Jones, a black employee scheduled to take a three-month paid sick leave for a kidney transplant; and whether thinking that he would not return to work when his leave was up or not wanting to incur the expense of paying him while he was on sick leave, the company fired him. In doing so . . . the company could not be found guilty of racial discrimination unless . . . there was evidence that it failed to exhibit comparable rapacity toward similarly situated employees of the white race.36

This example of a black employee in need of a kidney transplant is irrelevant to the situation of an employee who no longer will need leave following giving birth. As a commentator has described the difference, ‘‘the black kidney patient does not undergo transplant surgery because he is black. Rather, he happens to be a man of color who also needs a kidney transplant. A working woman like Troupe, on the other hand, must take a maternity leave precisely for the reason that the law protects her from discrimination: her pregnancy.’’37 Nonetheless, other courts adopted this rationale in pregnancy discrimination cases. In doing so, several courts support the rationale first voiced by the court deciding Troupe’s claim of pregnancy discrimination: ‘‘Employers can treat pregnant women as badly as they treat similarly affected but non-pregnant employees.’’38 However, pregnancy is not the same as other employees’ disabilities. As one judge noted, ‘‘if Congress intended to equate pregnancy with a temporary disability . . . it afforded pregnant women precious little protection when it enacted the PDA.’’39 Characterizing pregnancy as a disability further dissociates pregnancy from the reality of women in the workplace. Assumptions concerning loyalty to the job, future time off, and parenting are not made when an employee needs a kidney transplant. Pregnancy is unique in these assumptions and in the gender it affects. Furthermore, most individuals do not intend to become

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disabled or expect it as a logical result of their actions. Pregnancy often is an intended and expected result. Therefore, although no one would suggest Jones should consider the impact medical leave will have on his job in deciding whether to have a kidney transplant, employers often expect women to consider timing of pregnancies to minimize the impact on their job. As one court noted about a comparison between men on sick leave and women on maternity leave, ‘‘the men were incapacitated while the women were not. . . . One can draw no valid comparison between people, male or female, suffering extended incapacity from illness or injury and young mothers wishing to nurse little babies.’’40 As this opinion indicates, disability is considered a more acceptable reason to take time away from work than leave associated with pregnancy. Unfortunately, women’s pregnancy-related leaves too often are viewed as an admission of women’s disinterest in their work or career. A comparison between pregnancy and disability is inappropriate because the former is plagued by unique stereotypes and assumptions that include not only pregnancy itself but also motherhood and childrearing. By its nature, however, pregnancy carried to term will result in a short-term medical disability. Nonetheless, some courts hold this disability is not covered by the PDA and that the PDA does not include protection of pregnant employees’ jobs if the employees take time away from work. The recovery from pregnancy, although medically recognized, is not consistently interpreted as protected by the PDA’s discrimination prohibitions. One court rejected the claim that more than one week of incapacitation was required after giving birth.41 However, other courts hold this narrow interpretation of the PDA is a violation of the letter as well as the spirit of Title VII and the PDA.42 ‘‘A short-term inability to work is bound up with the very nature of pregnancy and childbirth’’ and it is therefore a violation of the PDA to dismiss an employee for taking leave under the PDA.43 The PDA, according to a federal Court of Appeals, ‘‘was not designed to handcuff employers by forcing them to wait until an employee’s pregnancy causes a special economic disadvantage.’’44 Instead, the court noted that the bank employing Jessica Maldonando as a part-time teller would not violate the PDA by terminating her if her pregnancy leave would affect the bank’s functioning. The court held that ‘‘an employer cannot take anticipatory adverse action45 against a pregnant employee,’’ however, ‘‘an employer may . . . project the normal inconveniences of pregnancy and their secondary effects in the future and take actions in accordance with and in proportion to those predictions.’’46 The ‘‘normal inconveniences’’ that may result in adverse action, including termination of a pregnant employee, include ‘‘the need to take more frequent snack and restroom breaks and the need to take some time off, at the very least, to give birth.’’47 This conclusion is perhaps understandable given the fundamental misunderstanding of the PDA’s purpose. The court deciding Maldonado’s discrimination claim posited that ‘‘the PDA was designed to allow individual women to

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make independent choices about whether to continue to work while pregnant.’’48 This statement is not a true reflection of the congressional record when Congress amended Title VII to explicitly include pregnancy as gender discrimination. Rather, a sponsor of the PDA, Senator Williams, explained that the ‘‘entire thrust’’ of the PDA ‘‘is to guarantee women the basic right to participate fully and equally in the workforce, without denying them the fundamental right to full participation in family life.’’49 Representative Tsongas stated, ‘‘Title VII and the PDA are designed to ‘put an end to an unrealistic and unfair system that forces women to choose between family and career.’ ’’50 An employer who terminates an employee because she needs time off to give birth is forcing the employee and her family to choose between work and family. A division exists between those federal appellate courts that hold pregnancy requires employers to grant some leave for the disability associated with giving birth and those that hold the PDA does not require any leave for pregnant employees if the employer does not offer leave to other employees with similar temporary disabilities. Therefore, a pregnant employee’s job may depend on where she lives, not federal law. In 1993, Congress implicitly acknowledged that Title VII—and the PDA specifically—failed to eliminate pregnancy discrimination. Therefore, it enacted new federal legislation to address the issue of pregnancy as well as other disabilities and family care–related leaves. As a whole, the legislation promoted work and family life balance but failed to address some of the most pressing pregnancy discrimination concerns. The Family and Medical Leave Act of 1993 (FMLA) offered far more comprehensive protection concerning employment policies affecting pregnancy and maternity leave than the PDA.51 By specifying leave provisions related to pregnancy and childbirth, it clarified for affected employers their obligations concerning pregnant employees. After holding hearings concerning parental leave, Congress determined that ‘‘historically, denial or curtailment of women’s employment opportunities has been traceable directly to the pervasive presumption that women are mothers first and workers second. This prevailing ideology about women’s roles has in turn justified discrimination against women when they are mothers or mothers-to-be.’’52 The FMLA was enacted to minimize the potential for discrimination against women by making leave for family related commitments available to everyone, regardless of gender. The FMLA requires employers to allow employees to return to work following a leave for the birth of a child, adoption of a child, or the serious health condition of employees or members of the employees’ immediate family. It eliminates the difficulty in taking leave for prenatal care or childbirth and the confusion about whether such leave is required by the PDA by specifically addressing these aspects of pregnancy. Typically, employers may require employees to have their health care providers certify that their requests for leave meet the parameters of the FMLA. Employees must notify employers of the need for leave in advance. However, Congress recognized the unique needs of

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pregnant employees by providing some latitude from these documentation requirements.53 Under the FMLA, pregnant employees can miss work for morning sickness without obtaining a doctor’s note. Absences related to pregnancy and prenatal care are permitted in short time increments. Therefore, an employee who is protected by the FMLA may arrive to work one hour late every day if she is ill as a result of her pregnancy, and her employer may not take any disciplinary action against her. Similarly, that employee may be late to work one day, leave at noon the following day, and continue that pattern for weeks, all without discipline or other adverse employment action. Although the FMLA is important legislation, it has several important drawbacks. First, it only applies to employers who have fifty or more full-time employees for twenty or more calendar weeks. This includes the largest employers but excludes most employees. Second, and importantly for working women, the FMLA only covers employees who have been employed full-time for at least one year. The firing of Troupe one day before her maternity leave and Maldonado if she would have asked for a day off to give birth would not have violated the FMLA. Neither Troupe nor Maldonado was employed full-time for one year when terminated. One way Congress tried to consider employers’ needs was by requiring employees to work full-time for one year before receiving the benefits of the FMLA. Congress also attempted to end the stigma associated with family leave by making it available to both sexes. However, the FMLA has the unintended consequence of perpetuating women’s career stagnation based on pregnancy. It prevents many women from changing jobs to advance their careers and increase their earning power because of its limited coverage. Although men who take family leave when a child is born most likely do not need it before that time, women may need leave throughout the pregnancy. Therefore, to be protected by the FMLA they must work twelve months before conceiving. The inexact nature of conception makes many women leery of changing jobs if they believe they might conceive prior to their first twelve months of employment. Retaining parental leave protection is more difficult for women than for men, but the FMLA coverage provisions do not recognize this gap in coverage. A genderneutral approach to family leave protection ignores the reality that working women may become pregnant throughout the majority of their working lives. In addition to limitations concerning the employees covered by the FMLA, the leave it guarantees is limited to twelve weeks in a twelve-month period and is unpaid. Each increment of absence, whether fifteen minutes or several hours, is counted toward the total of twelve weeks. This is both an administrative problem for many employers and a disadvantage of the FMLA for employees who have difficult pregnancies. Absences during pregnancy count against the time employees have to recover from childbirth and care for their infants. Women suffering complications of pregnancy may deplete their entire leaves before their infants are born. Because FMLA leaves are unpaid, financial concerns may

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prevent women from taking additional leave even if their employers permit an extension. Women’s short-term medical disability following childbirth does not entitle them to additional leave time. After the twelve-week total, they must return to work or risk termination. The Supreme Court described the FMLA as a positive advance to eliminate the stereotypes confronting working women. By creating an across-the-board, routine employment benefit for all employees, Congress sought to ensure that family-care leave would no longer be stigmatized as an inordinate drain on the workplace caused by female employees, and that employers could not evade leave obligations simply by hiring men. By setting a minimum standard of family leave for all eligible employees, irrespective of gender, the FMLA attacks the formerly state-sanctioned stereotype that only women are responsible for family care-giving, thereby reducing employers’ incentive to engage in discrimination by basing hiring and promotion decisions on stereotypes.54

The Court extended FMLA coverage to state employees and large private employers after agreeing that Congress, in legislative hearings prior to passage of the FMLA, recorded a pattern of state constitutional violations based on gender discrimination. The Court found the FMLA was an appropriate remedy for these violations because statutes such as Title VII that merely demanded gender equality without requiring any actions to achieve that result had proved ineffective.55 Despite congressional efforts to make pregnancy a more gender-neutral event by passing the FMLA, the biological reality is that pregnancy affects women, and gender distinctions remain barriers to their employment opportunities. An issue receiving much attention in this regard is the exclusion of contraception from employers’ benefit plans. Courts have revisited the PDA and Title VII to test the intersection of employer’s insurance plans and sex discrimination based on pregnancy-related issues. In Erickson v. Bartell Drug Co., the employer no longer requires employees to avoid childbearing to qualify for the best jobs, as did the employer in Gilbert, but an employee is seeking employer support of her decision not to have children.56 The resulting issue is whether the PDA and Title VII address pregnancy prevention rather than pregnancy or the capacity to become pregnant. Bartell Drug, an employer in Washington state, included a comprehensive prescription plan in its employee benefits package. The plan was self-insured and covered all prescription drugs, including several preventive drugs and devices, such as blood pressure- and cholesterol-lowering drugs, hormone replacement therapies, prenatal vitamins, and drugs to prevent allergic reactions, breast cancer, and blood clotting. It specifically excluded a handful of products, including contraceptive devices such as birth control pills, Norplant, Depo-Provera, intrauterine devices, and diaphragms. Prescribed weight reduction, infertility,

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smoking cessation, and experimental drugs also were excluded, as were dermatological treatments for cosmetic purposes and growth hormones. The employer maintained that its prescription plan was unrelated to the gender equality provisions of Title VII and the PDA. The district court disagreed, stating: The legislative history of Title VII does not forecast how the law was to be interpreted by future courts faced with specific examples of allegedly discriminatory conduct. The truth of the matter is, Congress’ intent regarding the evolution of a law is rarely apparent from fragments of legislative history. Long before this particular dispute arose, the protections of Title VII had no doubt been applied in ways that were never anticipated by the Representatives and Senators who voted for it or the President who signed it into law. Nevertheless, Congress has generally chosen to interfere with the judiciary’s interpretation of Title VII only where the courts attempted to restrict its application.57

Although the control of fertility, enabled by the excluded contraceptives, does not correlate with the terms of ‘‘pregnancy, childbirth or related medical conditions’’ in the language of the PDA, the district court interpreted this provision broadly based on the PDA’s history. It found that Congress ‘‘clearly had in mind the obvious and then-commonplace practice of discriminating against women in all aspects of employment, from hiring to the provisions of fringe benefits, based on an assumption that women would get pregnant and leave the workforce.’’58 Sex-based categorization violates Title VII as amended by the PDA. The court ruled that exclusion of a woman-only benefit, such as female contraception, from a comprehensive prescription benefit plan is sex discrimination in violation of federal law. This case represented the first time a federal court ruled on the issue of contraception exclusion from a prescription plan. As a district court decision, the ruling is limited to western Washington state. However, the EEOC reached the same decision in a similar case. Although EEOC decisions are not binding on courts interpreting the law, they carry some weight with the courts, as the following EEOC decision did with the Erickson court. The EEOC heard a case brought by nurses whose employer did not cover contraception in its health insurance plan. In finding this exclusion discriminatory, the EEOC reasoned that only women can become pregnant. This gender distinction cannot, under employment discrimination laws, affect women’s terms and conditions of employment in any way. ‘‘Contraception is a means by which a woman controls her ability to become pregnant. The PDA’s prohibition on discrimination against women based on their ability to become pregnant thus necessarily includes a prohibition on discrimination related to a woman’s use of contraceptives.’’59 The EEOC found additional support for this contention from language in the PDA exempting employers from any obligation to pay for abortions. If Congress explicitly made this exception, Congress also could have exempted

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employers from an obligation to include contraception in their benefit plans but did not. Therefore, employers providing benefits must do so without discriminating under the PDA. Increasingly, state law prohibits many employers from excluding prescription contraceptives from comprehensive insurance coverage of prescriptions. The state laws generally require insurance plans to provide equal coverage for FDA-approved prescription contraceptives and related outpatient care as other preventive prescription drugs and outpatient care.60 Many employees do not benefit from these state laws, however, because federal law governs employers who are self-insured.61 Therefore, future court decisions will determine how broadly the PDA is interpreted in instances of contraceptive exclusion from an employer’s benefit plan. Another emerging issue concerning pregnancy discrimination focuses on defining when it starts and ends. One view is that pregnancy is an easily definable biological condition. While the biological condition exists, adverse employment action based on the pregnancy itself is prohibited. Related implications of pregnancy, such as absence not covered by the FMLA, are not based on the pregnancy but on the employer’s expectations of job performance. As one court has described it, firing a pregnant employee because of excessive absences due to pregnancy-related illness is harsh but is not discrimination.62 This rationale is based on the assumption the employer would terminate any employee with excessive absences. This of course ignores the stereotypes and preset notions that Congress recognized were associated with pregnancy when it enacted both the PDA and the FMLA. If pregnancy is not purely a biological condition but a gender distinction that includes conception, as some courts recognize, what other elements of a working woman’s life are associated with pregnancy? Assumptions about working mothers with infants increasingly are the source of complaints filed with the EEOC and the courts. The typical scenario is that experienced by Celena Venturelli when she was pregnant and working as a temporary employee in a not-for-profit corporation. Her supervisors were impressed by her work and decided to offer her a permanent position. When a supervisor met with her to discuss the permanent job offer, the discussion was not about employment but about her impending status as a new mother. The supervisor maintained he wanted to be sensitive to Venturelli’s pregnancy and not make her feel that the employer was rushing her into larger responsibilities. If this was the intent, it was not what was communicated in the conversation. Instead, the supervisor discussed in detail Venturelli’s pregnancy and how she would deal with it in a permanent job with the employer. He made comments about women changing their minds about working after they hold their babies in their arms. The supervisor suggested she take the time necessary to stay at home with her child. Venturelli was stunned into silence. Rather than viewing the discussion as sensitivity to her situation, she was offended by the stereotypes of mothers that

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were irrelevant to offering her a permanent job. After this conversation, Venturelli no longer wanted the job she once hoped for because she did not want to work for a discriminatory employer. The employer lost the individual it determined was the best candidate for the job because of the supervisor’s conduct.63 Many courts view pervasive assumptions about a new mother’s work life as ‘‘callous’’ but not discriminatory.64 Supervisors’ expressions that a woman will not return to work full-time after having a baby are insufficient evidence of pregnancy discrimination.65 Instead, some discriminatory action during pregnancy often is required. For instance, a district manager’s instructions to others to reduce efforts to train a pregnant employee due to the manager’s doubts about whether she would return from maternity leave could constitute evidence of discrimination. The employee did not receive training because of her pregnancy.66 Requiring such a close connection to action during pregnancy directly contradicts the congressional record concerning passage of the PDA. Congress intended the PDA to address ‘‘the assumption that women will become [pregnant] and leave the labor force [which] leads to the view of women as marginal workers, and is at the root of the discriminatory practices which keep women in low-paying and dead-end jobs.’’67 These interpretations of pregnancy discrimination allow assumptions to eliminate women’s decisions about organizing work and family. Such assumptions negatively impact the family generally, making this an issue affecting both men and women. For women to participate fully in the workforce, pregnancy discrimination must confront the assumptions and stereotypes surrounding roles of mother or caregiver. Even the most conscientious and concerned employer, as Venturelli’s supervisor professed to be, may create a difficult work environment because pervasive stereotypes are accepted as the norm in the workplace. Employers must understand these stereotypes and accept each woman’s individual decision about whether to have children and how to be a parent. The major challenge for working women today is to make decisions about their family relationships free from the weight of expectations and assumptions. Not all working women will have children during their work lives. Each pregnancy represents a unique and unpredictable experience for each working woman who has a biological child, and each family adjusts differently. Accepting the uniqueness of the parenting situation rather than relying on personal past experience or statistical averages is the key to treating working women with dignity. Allowing women the dignity of defining their parenting role within their employers’ organizational requirements eliminates the many facets of pregnancy discrimination before, during, and after pregnancy.

NOTES 1. Kristen Smith, Barbara Downs, and Martin O’Connell, Maternity Leave and Employment Patterns: 1961–1995, Current Population Reports, U.S. Census Bureau.

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2. Barbara Downs, Fertility of American Women: June 2002, Current Population Reports, U.S. Census Bureau. 3. Ibid. 4. Ibid. 5. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 (known as Title VII) established the EEOC. This federal administrative agency enforces the federal statutes prohibiting employment discrimination. 6. Pregnancy Discrimination Charges EEOC and FEPAs Combined: FY 1992– FY 2004, U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. 7. Women at Work: Looking behind the Numbers 40 Years after the Civil Rights Act of 1964, National Partnership for Women and Families ( July 2004). 8. Smith et al., Maternity Leave and Employment Patterns. 9. Ibid. 10. See, for example, Venturelli v. ARC Comm. Servs., Inc., 350 F.3d 592 (7th Cir. 2003). 11. EEOC, available online at www.eeoc.gov/types/pregnancy. 12. See Julie Manning Magid, ‘‘Contraception and Contractions: A Divergent Decade Following Johnson Controls,’’ American Business Law Journal 41 (2003): 115. 13. Back v. Hastings on Hudson Union Free Sch. Dist., 365 F.3d 107, 115 (2004). 14. Nev. Dep’t of Human Res. v. Hibbs, 538 U.S. 721, 738 (2003). 15. Back v. Hastings on Hudson, 121. 16. 42 U.S.C. § 2000e. Title VII regulates the conduct of employers with fifteen or more employees. However, smaller employees typically are covered under similar state legislation prohibiting employment discrimination. 17. ‘‘The Civil Rights Act of 1964 was the culmination of decades of debate and political maneuvering over various civil rights proposals. In the end, it took three momentous events to finally propel the bill to the top of the agenda of Congress and the Administration. The first was the August 1963 march on Washington during which Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., gave his famous ‘I have a dream’ speech. The second was the September 1963 bombing of a black church in Birmingham, Alabama, in which four little girls were killed. The third was the assassination of President Kennedy, whose support for the bill carried even more weight in Congress and with the public after his untimely death. It was in this time that Bob Dylan warned, ‘Come Senators, Congressmen, please heed the call. Don’t stand in the doorway, don’t block up the hall,’ Bob Dylan, The Times They Are A-Changin’, on The Times They Are A-Changin’ (Sony Music Entertainment/Columbia Records 1964). After months of debate and a seventyfive day filibuster in the Senate, the bill finally passed and was signed into law by President Johnson on July 2, 1964.’’ Erickson v. Bartell Drug Co., 141 F.Supp. 2d 1266, 1269 n. 4 (W.D. Wash. 2001). 18. Francis J. Vass, Title VII: Legislative History, Boston College Industrial and Commercial Law Review 7 (1966): 431. 19. Gen. Elec. v. Gilbert, 429 U.S. 125, 143 (1976). 20. Ibid., 136. 21. Geduldig v. Aiello, 417 U.S. 484 (1974). 22. Gen. Elec. v. Gilbert, 149. 23. Ibid., 161 n. 5. 24. 42 U.S.C. § 2000e(k).

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25. H.R. Rep. No. 948, 95th Cong., 2d Sess. at 3 (1978), 1978 U.S. Code Cong. & Ad. News at 4751. 26. See Julie Manning Magid, ‘‘Pregnant with Possibility: Reexamining the Pregnancy Discrimination Act,’’ American Business Law Journal 38 (2001): 819. 27. Newport News Shipbuilding & Dry Dock Co. v. EEOC, 462 U.S. 669, 679 (1983). 28. Cal. Fed. Sav. & Loan Ass’n. v. Guerra, 479 U.S. 272 (1987). 29. Ibid., 272, 288–89. 30. UAW v. Johnson Controls, 499 U.S. 187 (1991). 31. Ibid., 187, 191–92. 32. UAW v. Johnson Controls, 886 F.2d 871, 920 (7th Cir. 1989). 33. UAW v. Johnson Controls, 499 U.S. 187, 199 (1991). 34. Ibid., 187, 211. 35. Erickson v. Bartell Drug Co., 141 F.Supp. 2d 1266, 1270 (W.D. Wash. 2001). 36. Troupe v. May Dep’t. Store, 20 F.3d 734, 738 (7th Cir. 1994). 37. Ann C. McGinley and Jeffrey W. Stempel, ‘‘Condescending Contradictions: Richard Posner’s Pragmatism and Pregnancy Discrimination,’’ Florida Law Review 46 (1994): 193, 210 n. 166. 38. Troupe v. May Dep’t. Store, 734, 738. 39. In re Carnegie Ctr. Assocs., 129 F.3d 290, 304 (3rd Cir. 1997). 40. Barrash v. Bowen, 846 F.2d 927 931-32 (4th Cir. 1988). 41. EEOC v. Elgin Teachers Assoc., 27 F.3d 292, 295 (7th Cir. 1994). 42. Abraham v. Graphic Arts Int’l Union, 660 F.2d 811, 819 (D.C. Cir. 1981). 43. Smith v. F.W. Morse & Co., Inc., 76 F.3d 413,424 (1st Cir. 1996). 44. Maldonado v. U.S. Bank, 186 F.3d 759, 767 (7th Cir. 1999). 45. ‘‘Adverse action’’ in employment law is any change in employment status that negatively impacts the employee. Such actions include demotion, discipline, termination, changes in job responsibilities, and negative evaluations. 46. Maldonado v. U.S. Bank, 759, 767. 47. Ibid. 48. Ibid. 49. 123 Cong. Rec. 29658 (daily ed. Sept. 16, 1977). 50. 124 Cong. Rec. 21442 (1978). 51. 29 U.S.C. § 2601. 52. The Parental and Medical Leave Act of 1986: Joint Hearing before the Subcommittee on Labor-Management Relations and the Subcommittee on Labor Standards of the House Committee on Education and Labor, 99th Cong., 2nd Sess., 100 (1986). 53. 29 CFR § 825.114 (e). ‘‘Absences attributable to incapacity [due to pregnancy or for prenatal care] qualify for FMLA leave even though the employee . . . does not receive treatment from the health care provider during the absence. . . . [For example, an] employee who is pregnant may be unable to report to work because of severe morning sickness.’’ 54. Nev. Dep’t of Human Res. v. Hibbs, 721, 737. 55. Ibid., 721. 56. Erickson v. Bartell Drug Co., 1266. 57. Ibid., 1266, 1269. 58. Ibid., 1266, 1274.

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59. Decision on Coverage of Contraception, EEOC Report, available online at www .eeoc.gov/docs/decision-contraception. 60. Susan A. Cohen, ‘‘Federal Law Urged as Culmination of Contraceptive Insurance Coverage Campaign,’’ Guttmacher Report 4(5) (October 2001). 61. ERISA, 29 U.S.C. 1144(b)(2)(B). 62. Dormeyer v. Comerica Bank, No. 96 C 4805, 1998 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 16585, at *28–29 (N.D. Ill. 1998). 63. Venturelli v. ARC Comm. Servs., Inc., 592. 64. Ibid., 592, 604. 65. Ilhardt v. Sara Lee Corp., 118 F.3d 1151, 1156 (7th Cir.1997). 66. Briody v. Am. Gen. Fin. Co., No. 98-2728, 1999 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 8405, at *9 (E.D. Pa. May 27, 1999). 67. H.R. Rep. No. 948, 95th Cong., 2d Sess. 3 (1978).

6

The Family and Medical Leave Act: Lost in Translation Joan E. Gale

The Family and Medical Leave Act of 1993 (FMLA) provides up to twelve weeks of unpaid, job-protected leave in a twelve-month period to eligible employees necessitated by their own serious health condition or to care for employees’ parent, child, or spouse with a serious health condition or a child born or placed for adoption or foster care with employees.1 During an FMLA leave, employees’ health benefits must be maintained on the same basis as if they were working their regular schedule. To be eligible, employees must have worked for the employer for at least twelve months, have worked at least 1,250 hours in the twelvemonth period prior to the commencement of the leave, and must be employed at a facility with fifty or more employees within a seventy-five-mile radius. The core concept of the FMLA is job-protected leave. Most would agree that the basic premise of the FMLA is good; it has sometimes run aground due to the way the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL), the agency charged with enforcing the provisions of the act, has exercised its interpretive authority. In some areas, the act’s original purpose has been obscured by the DOL’s sometimes surprising interpretations and pronouncements. As a result, some employees have used the FMLA to circumvent their employers’ attendance and sick leave policies, which was never the intent or purpose of the act. Under the auspices of a business-friendly administration, those advocating on behalf of employers would like to see the DOL overhaul some of its FMLA regulations. Conversely, employee advocates want to see the current regulatory scheme remain as is but also would like Congress to expand the act’s coverage to include smaller employers and require mandatory paid leave. Currently, the act only covers public and private employers with fifty or more workers and provides only unpaid leave. So far, the DOL has been slow to respond to the calls for change. Although one of its regulations was invalidated by the U.S. Supreme Court in Ragsdale v.

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Wolverine World Wide, Inc.,2 the DOL did not seek comments on proposed new language to replace the defunct regulation until June 2006, even though updating the rule has been on the DOL’s agenda since 2003. At this juncture, the DOL has given no indication on how it intends to proceed, aside from indicating that it will revise the regulation invalidated by Ragsdale. In the absence of a DOL pronouncement at this writing, this chapter examines some areas in which compliance with the act has frustrated employers and will suggest ways to ease their dissatisfaction.

WHAT THE LAW WAS INTENDED TO ACCOMPLISH On February 5, 1993, President Bill Clinton signed the FMLA into law. The law went into effect in August of that year. In his remarks on the occasion of the signing, Clinton observed that the United States was ‘‘virtually the only advanced industrialized country without a national family and medical leave policy.’’3 A Senate Report issued prior to the law’s signing surveyed maternity or parental leave available in other industrialized countries.4 The report found that Japan provided twelve weeks of partially paid pregnancy leave, Canada allowed women to take up to forty-one weeks of maternity leave (of which they received 60 percent of their salary during the first fifteen weeks of their leave), Sweden provided eighteen months of family leave (at approximately 90 percent of an employee’s gross pay) to both men and women, and Norway provided paid leave equal to the employee’s income covered by pensions for up to one month a year to care for a terminally ill close relative.5 The Senate Report further found that partially paid maternity leave was the norm among other industrialized countries; 127 of the 135 countries surveyed offered maternity leave and some wages.6 While acknowledging that some employers already offered leave benefits such as those provided for in the new law, Clinton noted that many other employees still had no such coverage in the early 1990s.7 Citing U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics data for 1991, the president observed that only 37 percent of full-time employees in private businesses with 100 or more workers received unpaid maternity leave. Only 14 percent of employees of private employers with fewer than 100 workers received unpaid maternity leave.8 In summary, the president stated: ‘‘This legislation balances the demands of the workplace with the needs of families. In supporting families, it promotes job stability and efficiency in the American workplace.’’9 When enacted in 1993, the FMLA was not without its detractors. Some senators believed that Congress had no business mandating family and medical leave benefits for employers.10 Rather, they argued that employers should be ‘‘encouraged through a policy of providing incentives and lifting legal restrictions’’ to offer family and medical leave benefits to ‘‘preserve the elements of choice and flexibility inherent to the successful employer–employee relationship and necessary for us to remain competitive in a global economy.’’11

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Although the FMLA marked the first federal foray into mandating family leave benefits, when it was enacted, twenty-nine states plus the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico had already adopted some form of protected family or medical leave.12 Today, all but five states have passed some type of family or medical leave legislation covering workers in the private and/or public sector(s).13 States currently without any protected family or medical leave legislation include Arkansas, Michigan, Mississippi, Nevada, and Wyoming.

FMLA ENFORCEMENT STATISTICS (2001–2004) According to recent FMLA enforcement statistics issued by the DOL, the number of complaints filed with the DOL declined in fiscal year 2004, after reaching a high of 3,565 in fiscal year 2003.14 A total of 3,350 new complaints were filed in 2004, the first year since 2001 that the number of new complaints did not exceed the previous year’s filings.15 As had been the case in previous years, the most common reason for filing was because the complainant was wrongfully terminated for exercising rights under the FMLA (1,473); the second and third most frequently cited reasons involved discrimination claims (763) and the refusal to grant FMLA leave (697), respectively.16 The least common reason for filing a complaint was the employer’s failure to maintain the employee’s health benefits while on leave.17 In fiscal year 2004, the DOL found no FMLA violation in 1,848 cases and discovered such violations in 1,502 cases.18 The DOL did not explain why fewer complaints were filed in fiscal year 2004.

SURVEY FINDINGS In 1995 and 2000, the federal government had studies conducted to measure the impact of the FMLA on private sector employers and employees.19 In 1995, the Commission on Family and Medical Leave, a bipartisan group established by the act, authorized the first study, and five years later, the DOL commissioned two additional surveys to update the 1995 findings.20 The 1995 findings, based on a survey conducted so soon after the act’s effective date, probably do not provide as accurate a picture of the law’s impact on business operations as do later studies. In 1995, many employees were not yet familiar with the new law, and utilization rates were low. Although the 2000 survey showed a moderate increase in the act’s utilization compared to the 1995 findings, a noticeable shift occurred in employers’ attitudes toward the act. They became more negative, a trend that continues to this day. The DOL did not commission a new survey on the law’s tenth anniversary. The few sources that provide insight into employers’ views of the act today include the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM), an association that represents human resources professionals, which conducted a survey

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in 2003, and the Employment Policy Foundation, a public policy research group, which in 2005 released questionnaire results based on data collected in 2004. Survey Findings: 1995 and 2000 In 1995 and 2000, similar percentages of private sector employees worked for firms covered by the act and were familiar with their rights under the FMLA.21 In addition, the percent of employees who took a leave only once in the eighteen months prior to the survey remained fairly stable, as did the leave’s median length and the percent of workers who wanted to take a leave but did not.22 Sixty percent of employees worked for covered employers in 1995, as did 58 percent in 2000, and about 59 percent were familiar with their rights under the law in both years.23 Approximately three-quarters of private sector workers taking a leave did so only once in 1995 and 2000; the median length in both years was ten days.24 In 1995, 3.1 percent of private sector workers wanted to take a leave but did not; this figure dropped to 2.4 percent in 2000.25 The three main reasons why employees who desired a leave did not take it were identical in both years: they could not afford an unpaid leave; work was too important; or they feared losing their job.26 Table 6.1 presents selected characteristics of leave takers and shows that in both 1995 and 2000, a majority were female.27 Nearly three-quarters of those using FMLA leave were married in 2000, up from about 71 percent in 1995.28 Regardless of marital status, nearly 60 percent of employees using FMLA leave in 2000 had children, compared to about 55 percent in 1995.29 The age of the FMLA leave takers most and least likely to take FMLA leave barely budged from 1995 to 2000.30 An equal percent of those most likely to use leaves had average earning levels of between $30,000 and $50,000 and between $50,000 and $75,000 in 2000; in 1995, slightly more of those most likely to use leave had average earnings of between $30,000 and $50,000.31 In both years, less than 3 percent of employees aged sixty-five and over used leave, and only 11 percent of the eighteen- to twenty-four-year old workers took leave in 1995.32 The comparable figure for that latter age group in 2000 was 10 percent.33 Though not indicated in Table 6.1, an identical percentage of employees (54.5) using leave earned an hourly wage rather than a salary in 1995 and 2000, and leave taking was greatest among those working for manufacturing firms with 250 or more employees.34 The percent of survey respondents who perceived that administrative and benefits costs rose due to the act were similar, though slightly higher, in 2000 than in 1995, whereas the percent who thought the law led to higher training and hiring costs jumped. Forty-seven percent said administrative costs had increased due to the act in response to the earlier questionnaire; 51.5 percent said so in 2000.35 Percentages who believed the FMLA led to higher benefits costs moved from 34.3 to 36.2, respectively, in 1995 and 2000; 23.7 percent thought

TABLE 6.1.

Selected Characteristics of FMLA Leave Takers: 1995 and 2000 (Percent)

Sex

Marital Status

Age Group Least Likely to Take Leave

Children

Age Group Most Likely to Take Leave

Annual Avg. Earnings of Those Most Likely to Take Leave

Year

F

M

Married

Not

Yes

No

18–24

>65

30–39

$30–$50k

$50–$75k

1995 2000

56.2 58.1

43.8 41.9

70.9 75

29.1 25

54.5 59.6

45.5 40.4

11.1 10

2.9 2.1

40.8 39.7

30.6 25.5

NA 25.7

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TABLE 6.2.

Reasons for Longest FMLA Leave in 1995 and 2000 (Percent)

Reason

1995

2000

Care for own serious health condition Care for newborn/adopted infant or child Care for sick child Care for sick parent Maternity/disability Care for sick spouse

61.4

47.2

14.3 8.5 7.6 4.6 3.6

17.9 11.4 7.8 5.9 5.9

Note: Disability due to pregnancy is actually considered a serious health condition leave; however, the data broke out leave due to pregnancy disability separately.

the law increased hiring and training costs in 1995 compared to 34.1 percent who believed similarly in 2000.36 Larger employers seemed to experience higher costs of compliance with the act than smaller employers in 2000. Among those with 250 or more employees, over 75 percent had increased administrative costs, and over half said they had greater benefit and hiring/training costs due to the FMLA.37 Table 6.2 indicates the reason for taking the longest FMLA leave in the two years studied.38 The only appreciable decline from 1995 to 2000 was seen among employees taking leave for their own serious health conditions. Several other reasons for taking leave, such as the care of a sick child or spouse, increased in the latter survey and may explain why fewer employees took leave for their own health concerns. Several distinctions between answers of survey respondents in 1995 and 2000 seem noteworthy and may warrant further analysis. For example, the FMLAcovered employees who were eligible to take leave rose from 46.5 to 61.7 percent from 1995 to 2000;39 the percent covered and eligible using any kind of FMLA leave increased from 11.6 to 18.3;40 and the percent of employees denied leaves they had requested went from 9.9 to 20.8 percent over the same five-year span.41 As Table 6.3 shows, the vast majority of respondents noticed no effect of the act on various business and employee outcomes in either 1995 or 2000. The percent who said the law had no noticeable impact on employee productivity, however, dropped during that time frame.42 TABLE 6.3. Percentage of Employers Finding No Noticeable Effect of the FMLA on Business and Employee Outcomes in 1995 and 2000 Year

Business Productivity

Business Profitability

Business Growth

Employee Productivity

Employee Absences

1995 2000

86.4 76.5

92.5 87.6

95.8 87.7

82.7 67.0

89.5 76.3

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TABLE 6.4. Percentage of Employers Finding Compliance with the FMLA Very or Somewhat Difficult

Administer the FMLA’s notification, description, certification requirements Coordinate the FMLA with other federal laws Maintain additional recordkeeping Coordinate state and federal leave policies Coordinate the FMLA with other leave policies Coordinate the FMLA with company attendance policies Determining whether medical condition is a serious health condition

1995

2000

Not asked

54.4

25.7 24.0 18.9 21.1

52.8 38.0 42.9 40.1

Not asked

34.5

Not asked

42.3

Seven years after its enactment, employers still held a relatively favorable view of the act, but those finding compliance somewhat or very difficult rose from 14.9 percent to 36.4 percent from 1995 to 2000.43 Specific areas of compliance found to be challenging are listed in Table 6.4.44 Intermittent leave use was analyzed closely in 2000 but not in 1995. Though relatively few employees took such leave in 1995, 39.2 percent of employers indicating experience with intermittent leave said they had difficulty managing it.45 In 2000, 53.9 percent of intermittent leave users said that less than half of their FMLA leave was taken intermittently, and 86.6 percent said they took this type of leave on an ‘‘as-needed basis.’’46 Reasons for use were more likely to involve care for a child, parent, or spouse than self-care.47 Overall, most employers said intermittent leave had no impact on their productivity or profitability, but slightly less than one-third of larger employers (with 250 or more employees) said it negatively affected productivity, and 17.4 percent of this latter group said it adversely affected profitability.48 2003 Survey Results In 2003, in conjunction with the law’s tenth anniversary, the SHRM queried its membership on its perceptions of the FMLA. This survey was in followup to the association’s initial FMLA survey, conducted in 2000.49 The 2003 survey found that on average, less than half (48 percent) the employees who took FMLA leave scheduled it in advance but also noted a wide degree of variation among the responses. In the earlier survey (2000), participants reported that on average, 40 percent of the employees who took FMLA leave scheduled it in advance. The 2003 survey found that employees were twice as likely to take FMLA leave for a medical as for a family reason. Thirtyfour percent of employees took leave for a medical reason, whereas 17 percent

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took leave for a family reason. However, responses varied widely based on employer size. For instance, small employers (50–99 employees) reported that 7 percent of their employees took FMLA leave for family reasons, and large employers (500þ employees) indicated that 21 percent of their employees took leave for family reasons.50 Asked about the ease of determining whether an employee was entitled to leave under the act, 52 percent of the respondents to the 2003 survey had granted FMLA requests they did not believe were legitimate due to the DOL’s regulations and interpretations. Large employers were even more likely to approve dubious leave requests than smaller employers (63 percent versus 24 percent) according to the 2003 questionnaire. In 2000, the same percentage of employers reported approving leave requests of questionable legitimacy. Asked about the ease of administering intermittent leave, 62 percent of employers responding to the 2003 survey reported that it was extremely difficult or difficult to track their employees’ use of intermittent leave. This was down slightly from the 2000 findings in which 77 percent of employers indicated that tracking such leave was extremely difficult or difficult. The percentage of employers reporting no difficulty tracking intermittent leave remained the same between 2000 and 2003, at 6 percent. Very few employers stated that they had calculated the cost of complying with the FMLA. Only 3 percent provided an approximate cost, and 69 percent said that they had not bothered to compute the cost of administering the FMLA. Although most employers had not placed a dollar figure on the cost of administering the act, they were aware of the act’s impact on employee morale. Slightly more than one-third of the employers (35 percent) polled stated that they were aware of employee complaints from co-workers because of another worker’s questionable use of FMLA leave. The 2000 survey findings were similar. 2005 Survey Results The Employment Policy Foundation (EPF) conducted a survey of FMLA use in 2004; its results were released in 2005.51 The survey, which looked at FMLA utilization in both the public and private sectors, found that on average, 14.5 percent of employees took FMLA leave in 2004. However, the survey found wide variation in FMLA use among industries. For instance, FMLA use was greatest among telecommunication workers (>20 percent) and least among education workers (5 percent). Consistent with the 1995 and 2000 survey findings, the EPF survey found that the average FMLA leave lasted 10.1 days in 2004, but the leave’s duration varied widely depending on the industry. In the telecommunications industry, more than 40 percent of the FMLA leave taken was for one day or less. Among all employers, 50 percent of FMLA leave was taken for fewer than five days. The EPF survey found that 35 percent of FMLA users took leave under the act more than once in 2004. Chronic health conditions accounted for 27

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percent of the FMLA leave taken in that year. In some industries, at least 50 percent of the leave taken was for a chronic health condition. Fifty-eight percent of FMLA leave taken was for that reason in the transportation industry; in the telecommunications industry, which had the second highest percent of leave taken to cope with a chronic health condition, the rate was 42 percent. The EPF survey noted that most leave takers did not give their employer advance notice of their leave. Only 35 percent provided at least a week’s notice or more before they took FMLA leave. Fifty percent gave no notice before taking leave, and 11 percent provided notice at the time their leave began or shortly thereafter. The EPF survey estimated that employers incurred direct costs totaling $21 billion in connection with FMLA compliance. Direct costs consider lost productivity, cost of continuation benefits, and labor replacement costs. This amount, according to the EPF, still underestimated the ‘‘true cost’’ of complying with the FMLA because it excluded the administrative costs employers incur in having to track employees’ leave usage and did not reflect the ‘‘secondary economic impacts of declining profitability on economic activity.’’ Among the three factors used to compute the FMLA’s direct cost to employers, the EPF survey found that labor replacement costs were the most expensive. Overall, employers spent $10.3 billion to replace workers on leave. Not surprisingly, the transportation and telecommunications industries incurred the largest replacement costs—each paying the equivalent of nearly 1.7 percent of its compensation costs to cover replacement. The next most costly expense was for continuation of benefits. Employers paid an additional $5.9 billion, or nearly 2 percent of their total health care expenses, to continue health benefits. Finally, the survey estimated that in 2004, employers lost $4.8 billion in profits due to FMLA leave.

SUGGESTED REVISIONS TO THE DOL REGULATIONS In 2002, the U.S. Office of Management and Budget asked the public to nominate federal regulations it believed should be revised. Among those nominated, the FMLA regulations received over 1,000 comments, the most ‘‘votes’’ tabulated by any federal regulation.52 Many objections to the FMLA’s current regulatory scheme were first raised by employer groups during the public comment phrase, prior to the release of the final regulations in January 1995.53 Employers’ objections have largely turned on their belief that the DOL, in preparing the regulations, failed to draw their essence from Congress’ stated intentions. One of the most frequently cited examples of this is the definition of a ‘‘serious health condition.’’ This represents a fundamental difficulty employers experience in trying to comply with the FMLA, but employees and their advocates regard it as a sacred cow. As employees and employers await the DOL’s next move, the rest of this article will explore how the DOL might revise some

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of the regulations to respond to the concerns employers have raised since the act’s inception. Remove Minor, Short-Term Illnesses from the Definition of a Serious Health Condition The expansive definition of ‘‘serious health condition’’ has been an early and constant source of frustration for employers who must determine whether an employee is entitled to protection under the FMLA. Not surprisingly, the question of whether an employee is suffering from a serious health condition is one of the act’s most litigated provisions.54 Under the act, an employee has two ways to satisfy the definition of a serious health condition. An employee suffers from a serious health condition if he or she is receiving: a. care as a patient in a hospital, hospice, or residential medical care facility; or b. continuing treatment by a health care provider.55 The first listed item is relatively self-explanatory, but the second needs further clarification, which the DOL chose to provide via regulation. Although the DOL stated in its comments in response to the FMLA regulations that it was mindful of the act’s legislative history, the regulations ignore the very guidance that the DOL indicated helped shape them. From the record, Congress clearly did not intend a serious health condition to include short-term conditions that would typically fall within the ‘‘most modest sick leave policies,’’ such as minor illnesses lasting only a few days and surgical procedures entailing no hospitalization and only a brief recovery period.56 The DOL’s interpretive guidance on what Congress meant by ‘‘continuing treatment’’ has greatly expanded the definition of a serious health condition. Title 29 C.F.R. § 825.114 states that those undergoing continuing medical treatment satisfy the definition of a serious health condition when they are: 1. unable to work for more than three consecutive calendar days, and 2. are undergoing treatment by a health care provider involving: a. treatment two or more times by a health care provider, or b. treatment by a health care provider at least once which results in a regimen of continuing treatment under a health care provider’s supervision.57 On April 7, 1995, the day after the FMLA Final Rule was effective, the DOL appeared to retreat from its expansive stance and issued an advisory opinion letter to respond to a writer’s concerns that the DOL’s definition of a serious health condition did not ‘‘reflect the intent of the Act’s authors and [was]

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being applied inconsistently.’’58 The DOL explained that even if employees had been sick for more than three days, had been seen by a health care provider at least once, and were on a regimen of continuing treatment, they would not qualify for FMLA protection if they were merely suffering from a common cold without complications.59 The DOL’s response was encouraging. It suggested that the analysis explained in § 825.114 would not ignore basic common sense notions about what medical conditions are serious in nature. Reliance on the DOL’s common sense approach proved to be short-lived. Eighteen months later, the DOL withdrew its opinion letter of April 7 in a new advisory opinion letter dated December 12, 1996.60 The DOL indicated that it was withdrawing the earlier letter because it contained an ‘‘incorrect construction’’ of the definition of a serious health condition.61 The new opinion letter stated that employees who were ill with a common cold or flu would be entitled to FMLA protection if they met the test set forth in § 825.114. In addition, according to the new DOL opinion letter, employees did not have to demonstrate that complications occurred to satisfy the definition of a serious health condition.62 Although hinting that these conditions (common cold or flu) might not routinely meet the regulatory threshold for a serious health condition, the DOL concluded there was no basis to exclude such conditions from protection if they in fact met the stated criterion.63 Not only did the DOL’s remarks soundly reject its earlier ruminations on what constitutes a serious health condition, the DOL effectively struck the portion of the regulation stating that conditions such as the common cold, flu, earaches, upset stomach, minor ulcers, headaches (other than migraines), routine dental or orthodontic problems, and periodontal disease would not qualify as serious health conditions unless there were accompanying complications.64 One need only look at the case law to see that the DOL’s construction of serious health condition has turned the FMLA into the national sick leave policy Congress expressly did not envision.65 Courts have found that employees suffering from the flu, upper respiratory inflections, and stomach problems were entitled to protection under the FMLA.66 Although many courts have refused to find that the act applies to such minor conditions, the haphazard interpretation of the term serious health condition has led many employers to err on the side of inclusion to avoid a potential lawsuit.67 In comments on the FMLA submitted to the U.S. House of Representatives Congressional Committee on Education and the Workplace Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations in 1997, one company described its difficulties trying to comply with the act’s requirements.68 Kansas City, Missouri–based Hallmark Cards viewed the agency’s definition of serious health condition as going well beyond the scope of what Congress intended. It thus enabled employees to potentially receive protected leave for such conditions as a bladder infection, stress caused by divorce, a ‘‘personal family crisis,’’ and a gum infection—none of which the company believed were entitled to FMLA protection based on the act’s legislative history.69 The lack of predictability or

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useful guidance has left employers feeling that they have the burden to prove that an employee’s health condition is not covered by the FMLA, rather than the other way around. Various suggestions have been made for reworking the definition of serious health condition. Foremost, the definition must only address medical conditions that are genuinely serious in nature. To do so, the analysis should not require employers (or judges) to suspend disbelief in favor of a rigid test that discourages people from using their common sense in answering the question—as is currently the case. At minimum, § 825.114 should be revised to require that an employee be totally incapacitated (unable to perform most or all of his or her job duties or the normal activities of daily living) for at least seven to ten consecutive calendar days. The current threshold of more than three days enables too many minor medical conditions to satisfy the definition. Additionally, the ‘‘continuing treatment’’ requirement should not be satisfied by a mere showing that an individual has been prescribed a course of prescription drug therapy, without considering the specific medical condition being treated, the type of drug therapy prescribed, and the drug’s side effects. A prescription drug regimen alone is a poor gauge for assessing whether someone suffers from a serious health condition. Perhaps twenty years ago, when doctors were more circumspect about prescribing medication, such treatment might have indicated a serious health condition, but not today. The regulation’s analysis should be treated as a minimum threshold from which employers should be permitted to take into account all relevant information that turns on the question of whether the employee is suffering from a serious health condition. Allow Employers to Obtain More Information from the Employee’s Health Care Provider As the EPF survey observed, few employers are receiving advance notice of an employee’s need for FMLA leave. Even when the employee gives notice and provides supporting medical certification, the information justifying the leave request is often incomplete or raises more questions than it answers about the employee’s need for leave. Although an employer is permitted to send an employee for a second (or third) opinion at its own expense if it questions the validity of certification, the current scheme has proved to be both protracted and costly.70 Among the obstacles imposed on employers is that they generally not permitted to contact an employee’s doctor about a medical certification.71 An employer, through its health care provider representative, may contact an employee’s physicians for purposes of ‘‘clarification and authenticity of the medical certification’’ only if the employee agrees.72 The lack of unfettered and direct access to an employee’s doctors to quickly and efficiently resolve questions

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pertaining to the medical certification is an immense handicap. Asking an employee to resubmit a certification form several times before determining entitlement to FMLA leave is not unusual for employers. The process could be greatly streamlined if the employer did not have to obtain an employee’s permission before contacting his or her doctors. The right to send employees for a second opinion, in principle, sounds like a good idea. In practice, however, the option fails to consider the real costs employers incur by doing so. Hallmark Cards told a House Committee in 1997 that the cost of obtaining a second opinion was ‘‘extremely expensive.’’ Citing two instances in which it sent employees for a second opinion—one for a back injury and the other for a mental health condition—Hallmark Cards paid $700 and $600, respectively, for each examination. Considering that over 1,900 of its employees took FMLA leave in 1996, Hallmark Cards stated that the cost of obtaining a second—let alone a third—opinion was ‘‘a real deterrent’’ to its ability to manage FMLA leaves. Very few employers—large or small—are likely to have the financial resources to assume this expense.73 An additional obstacle to the use of second and third opinions is that employees are not required to provide copies of their medical records to doctors hired to conduct an exam and provide second/third opinions.74 The absence of this information can be particularly problematic when employees no longer suffer from the condition that prompted the original need for FMLA leave. This places the doctors, through no fault of their own, at a significant disadvantage. Practically speaking, without this information, referring physicians may lack the necessary background information to form a reasonable opinion. Second and third opinions also are of limited usefulness to determine if relatively minor acute conditions (i.e., those falling within the category of more than three consecutive calendar days plus treatment) are in fact serious health conditions. Often, by the time employees finally see the second or third opinion physician, determining whether they were incapacitated at the time of the absences is impossible. Finally, if the third opinion finds that employees do not have a serious health condition, the employer may be faced with difficult decisions. If employees have been taking intermittent leave and the third opinion concludes that they do not have a serious health condition, the decision to take action, such as termination, should be relatively defensible because the absences would not be protected. This presumes that the employer has a reasonably welldefined attendance policy that has been consistently applied. On the other hand, if employees have missed a block of time while the issues were being sorted out, that time cannot be counted against their FMLA entitlement, but it may not be equitable or in accordance with policy to terminate them. In this circumstance, the employer is sometimes better off assuming the time was FMLA qualifying so that it could be counted. Fortunately, current limits placed on the free exchange of relevant employee medical information can be addressed. Unquestionably, employers must

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have greater access to employees’ health care providers to resolve any questions arising in conjunction with the employees’ medical certification. Employers should not be forced to incur unnecessary medical expenses simply because employees will not permit them to speak to employees’ doctors. If employers were allowed to communicate with employees’ providers directly, employers could ensure that providers had an accurate understanding of the physical requirements of their patients’ jobs and had been fully apprised of other relevant information, such as the pattern and frequency of employees’ absences. At the same time, employers must limit their inquiry to employees’ reason for requesting FMLA leave. They should not be able to request medical documentation beyond the information required on the medical certification form. If, however, employers still find it necessary to send an employee for a second/ third opinion, employees should be required to produce all relevant medical records to the second/third opinion doctors. These records must be returned to the employees or their health care providers after the doctors have completed their reports and must be kept confidential in accordance with applicable law, unless specifically released to the employers. Revise the Notice Requirements Raised by Ragsdale to Make Them Less Onerous for Employers In 2002 the U.S. Supreme Court invalidated the following portion of the regulation, 29 C.F.R. § 825.700(a): ‘‘If an employee takes paid or unpaid leave and the employer does not designate the leave as FMLA leave, the leave taken does not count against an employee’s FMLA entitlement.’’ Another portion of the regulations, §825.301(b)(2), requires employers to notify employees of their rights and obligations under the FMLA within one to two business days of learning of the need for FMLA leave.75 The Supreme Court’s reason for striking down the first provision as contrary to the act and beyond the DOL’s authority was twofold. First, the regulation relieved employees of the burden of providing any proof that their rights had been impaired or that they were prejudiced by the employer’s failure to properly designate their leave. Second, it amended the act’s most fundamental right—the guaranteed twelve work weeks of leave during any twelve-month period.76 The employer in Ragsdale had provided much more leave than the twelve weeks the FMLA requires but had not specifically designated the leave as FMLA-qualifying. Following the decision in Ragsdale, federal courts have held that employees have no claim against employers for failing to designate leave on a timely basis unless the employees can show that they were prejudiced by the employers’ actions or would have exercised their rights under the FMLA differently had proper notice been given. In the dozen or so cases that have been decided since Ragsdale, most employees have been unable to satisfy this burden—usually because they were medically unable to return to work after exhausting their leave rights.77

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The quoted section of §825.700(a) should be removed from the regulations. Additionally, §825.301(b)(2) should be revised to allow a longer time period for notice to be sent, for example, ten business days instead of the current one to two. Furthermore, the regulations should be revised so that employers are not penalized for failing to timely or properly designate employees’ leave as long as employees receive the substantive benefits of the act (i.e., job-protected leave and continuation of benefits). Thus, the regulations should not arbitrarily impose any penalty on employers who fail to provide proper notice. This construction is consistent with the Supreme Court’s analysis in Ragsdale. Curb the Abuse of Intermittent Leave Intermittent and reduced-schedule leave are often used interchangeably because they both connote leave taken on a less than full-time basis. As the FMLA has evolved, intermittent leave generally refers to unplanned sporadic leave, most often for a chronic serious health condition. Reduced work schedule leave, on the other hand, generally is a regular part-time arrangement needed to accommodate planned medical treatment(s) or employees’ inability to work a full-time schedule. Of the two forms of part-time leave, unplanned intermittent leave is the more difficult for employers to administer. Both types are available to employees if they are experiencing—or their covered family members are dealing with—a serious health condition, provided that intermittent or reduced leave is medically necessary. Conversely, employees who wish to take intermittent or reduced leave due to the birth of a child, adoption, or foster care placement must obtain their employers’ permission before taking such leave.78 Currently, employers cannot compel employees to take more time off than is necessary.79 The only limitation the regulations allow is an employer ‘‘may limit leave increments to the shortest period of time that the employer’s payroll system uses to account for absences or use of leave, provided it is one hour or less.’’80 For some employers, this increment of time can be as small as fifteen minutes.81 Unplanned intermittent leave presents a serious problem for many employers, who often struggle to keep track of employees’ intermittent leave usage and who, with little or no advance warning, must scramble to meet their staffing needs. Unlike the Americans with Disabilities Act, the FMLA has no hardship component. So if a high percentage of employees in a department or on a work shift have certifications for intermittent leave, employers have few choices. As employees become more sophisticated in their understanding of the FMLA, an increasing problem is that a small percentage use intermittent leave to make an end run around their employers’ policies. Some request intermittent leave to avoid written warnings or other disciplinary measures for tardiness.82 Others claim they cannot work overtime due to an FMLA-qualifying reason or use intermittent leave on weekends, before holidays, or on other undesirable shifts at the last minute. Because such leave can be taken with little or no warning,

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employers exercise minimal control over the time when employees take it. Although the legislative history suggests that intermittent leave was expected to be used for such scheduled activities as radiation therapy, chemotherapy, and dialysis, in practice it has been used primarily for unscheduled leaves associated with chronic serious health conditions, such as migraine headaches, backaches, depression, and allergies.83 Furthermore, even though the regulations require employees and employers to cooperate to devise intermittent leave schedules that are not ‘‘unduly disruptive’’ to employers’ operations, this presumes that employees know ahead of time when they need to take intermittent leave, which is generally not the case.84 The only other tool employers have to minimize the disruption caused by employees certified to take intermittent leave is to reassign them to other positions that may better accommodate their unplanned and reoccurring absences.85 But here again, the regulations speak in terms of transfer for planned medical treatment and do not expressly permit transfer for unplanned intermittent leave takers whom employers probably want to transfer. The regulation should be changed to allow transfer in this situation. If employers question the legitimacy of employees’ needs for intermittent leave, the regulations enumerate circumstances in which employees can be asked to recertify their continued need for intermittent leave for a pregnancy or a chronic or permanent/long-term serious health condition.86 In 2004, the DOL issued an advisory opinion letter in which it provided further clarification on when employers can request recertification.87 Generally, employers may not seek a recertification before the conclusion of the stated duration of the medical condition as set forth in the original certification supporting an employee’s request for intermittent leave.88 If the original request stated that the duration was unknown or unspecified, with some exceptions, employers may ask for recertification no more than every thirty days and only in connection with an employee’s absence.89 Exceptions are provided by regulation 29 C.F.R. § 825.308, which states that employers are allowed to request recertification at ‘‘any reasonable interval’’ (less than thirty days) in any of the following circumstances: (1) the employee seeks to extend the period of time during which intermittent leave is needed, (2) the medical condition or circumstances related to it have changed significantly since the original request was made, or (3) employers receive information casting doubt on the employee’s reason for leave.90 The DOL’s advisory opinion letter further provides that employers may ask for recertification for intermittent leave more often than every thirty days if their request is made in conjunction with an employee’s absence, the basis for which is questionable due to a suspicious pattern of occurring immediately before or after a weekend or holiday.91 The current regulatory scheme has placed few restraints on intermittent leave usage, according to the EPF’s survey. Overall, in 2004, the EPF survey found that 20 percent of all FMLA leave taken was for periods of one day or less. Nearly half of those taking FMLA leave in 2004 did so more than once,

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with nearly 15 percent taking six or more leaves within the year.92 Chronic serious health conditions account for a vast majority of the intermittent leave used, according to the EPF’s survey.93 As mentioned earlier, a staggering 58 percent of the workers taking FMLA leave in the transportation industry, followed by 42 percent of telecommunication workers, did so for a chronic health condition.94 Another way to control intermittent leave abuse is to insist that employees take leave in blocks of time no less than a half day. This would dissuade employees who use their intermittent leave to sidestep their employer’s attendance policies (to avoid disciplinary action for arriving late to work) and encourage them to be more selective about when they take their leave. Requiring employees to take their intermittent leave in larger time blocks also should facilitate employer tracking of employee FMLA leave usage. Abuse of intermittent leave also can be reduced by requiring employees (and their health care providers) to give more specific guidance about how much leave is anticipated. Currently, many intermittent leave takers provide certifications that simply say the need for leave is ‘‘unknown’’ or ‘‘lifelong’’ with no estimate of the number of days off to be taken or the frequency of the absences. This sort of certification provides carte blanche for employees who have no desire to work full-time but want to maintain full-time health benefits. Employee advocates do not favor policy changes discussed in the previous paragraphs. They believe that the incidence of abuse is negligible and that employees with a legitimate basis for taking intermittent leave will be the only ones to suffer if such modifications are made. Furthermore, employee advocates argue that employees could exhaust their intermittent leave allotment before their need for such leave lapses if they are required to use more than they actually need.95 Currently, many employees never exhaust their intermittent leave because they may take it in such small time increments.96 Although some employees may be penalized if forced to take intermittent leave in fixed units of time or provide more detail about the scope of their leaves, the current regulatory scheme is neither practical nor workable. Allow Employers to Require Light Duty as an Alternative to FMLA Leave The regulations now provide that employers cannot mandate that employees who have asked for FMLA leave remain at work in a light-duty capacity, even if the position is within the employees’ work restrictions.97 The DOL unnecessarily focuses on the fact that employees would have to transfer to jobs that do not contain the same essential functions as their permanent position to explain why they should not be compelled to remain at work on light duty due to their reassignment rights. This reading ignores the reality of today’s workplace.98 Regulations should be amended to permit employers to require employees to accept light-duty job assignments when employees’ physicians agree that

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workers can perform duties of the alternative job assignment safely. Though this change in policy might seem to run counter to the act’s purpose, which is to provide protected leave to employees, it enables the parties to consider reasonable and legitimate ways to keep employees on the job or allow them to return from leave at an earlier date without jeopardizing their health. By offering light duty as a legitimate alternative to taking leave, employers regain some of the control to address staffing needs that they have lost. Allow Employers to Obtain Second/Third Opinions after a Recertification The regulations prohibit employers from obtaining a second/third opinion after employees have provided a recertification of their serious health condition.99 Unfortunately, in some situations, employers may have accepted the original certification without challenge only to have issues regarding the duration, frequency, and legitimacy of the absences arise after recertification. The regulation arbitrarily prohibits a second/third opinion in such cases, which severely limits employers’ rights to challenge the legitimacy of employees’ continued rights to FMLA leave. This section of the regulations should be amended to allow a second/third opinion after a recertification is received on the same basis that second/third opinions are permitted for the initial certification.100 CONCLUSION The FMLA has been in effect for thirteen years. In many ways, it works very well, and most employees who take advantage of its provisions do so legitimately and as Congress intended. To address instances where employees have used (and abused) the FMLA in ways never intended, additional safeguards should be built into the regulations so employers can make sure that leave being taken is in accordance with the law. Only then will the FMLA truly accomplish its stated purpose of providing a balance for employees ‘‘in a manner that accommodates the legitimate interests of employers.’’101 NOTES The author extends her deep gratitude to Ina R. Silvergleid, whose assistance in the preparation of this chapter was invaluable. 1. 29 U.S.C.A. §§ 2601–2654 (1999). 2. 535 U.S. 81 (2002) 3. Statement by President Bill Clinton upon Signing H.R. 1 [FMLA] (Feb. 5, 1993), reprinted in 1993 U.S.C.C.A.N. (United States Codes Congressional Record and Administrative News) 54, 55 (hereafter ‘‘President’s Statement’’).

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4. S. Rep. No. 103-3, at 19 (1993), reprinted in 1993 U.S.C.C.A.N. 21 (hereafter ‘‘Senate Report’’). 5. Ibid. 6. Ibid. 7. President’s Statement, 55. 8. Ibid. 9. Ibid. 10. Senate Report, 51–53. 11. Ibid. 12. Ibid. The Senate Report did not specify whether these laws covered employees in the private or public sector. 13. Currently, the following states have laws mandating some form of family or medical leave for workers in the private sector: California, Colorado, Connecticut, Hawaii, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Montana, New Hampshire (law does not mandate a fixed amount of leave, requires that employer allow employee leave for a temporary disability related to pregnancy or childbirth), New Jersey, New York, Ohio (regulation does not mandate a fixed amount of leave, provides that women are entitled to a reasonable period of leave for childbearing), Oklahoma, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Carolina (similar to Ohio, regulation provides that an employer cannot deny an employee maternity leave), Tennessee, Vermont, Washington, and Wisconsin. Some of these laws only provide leave for women in conjunction with the birth of a child. This list does not include those states that have passed laws covering leave for organ/bone marrow donors, crime or domestic violence victims, school visitation. 14. FMLA enforcement data is available online at www.dol.gov/esa/whd/statistics/ 200411.htm. 15. Ibid. 16. Ibid. 17. Ibid. 18. Ibid. 19. ‘‘Balancing the Needs of Families and Employers: Family and Medical Leave Surveys,’’ U.S. Dept. of Labor (2000) (hereafter ‘‘2000 Survey Update’’); ‘‘A Workable Balance: Report to Congress on Family and Medical Leave Policies,’’ U.S. Dept. of Labor (1996) (hereafter ‘‘Workable Balance Report’’). Because the 2000 Survey Update summarizes much of the findings contained in the earlier report, this chapter will cite primarily the later report because it presents the 1995 and 2000 findings in tables that allow the reader to compare the data for the two years. 20. 2000 Survey Update. 21. Ibid., 3-3, 11; A-2-21. 22. Ibid. A-2-1, 2-3; 2-14, 16. 23. Ibid., 3-3, 11; A-2-21. 24. Ibid., A-2-1; 2-3. 25. Ibid., 2-14. 26. Ibid., 2-16. 27. Ibid., A-2-4. 28. Ibid. 29. Ibid.

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30. Ibid. 31. Ibid. 32. Ibid. 33. Ibid. 34. Ibid. 35. Ibid., A-2-62. 36. Ibid. 37. Ibid., A-2-61. 38. Ibid., 2-4, 6. 39. Ibid., 1-9, 3-3; A-2-21. 40. Ibid., 3-14. 41. Ibid., 2-16. 42. Ibid., 6-11. 43. Ibid., 6-9. 44. Ibid. 45. Workable Balance Report, App. E, table 6.A. 46. 2000 Survey Update, 2-11, 12. 47. Ibid., 2-13. 48. Ibid., A-2-59. 49. SHRM 2003 FMLA Survey. This survey can be obtained from the SHRM Web site, www.shrm.org. 50. Similar findings were made by Commerce Clearing House (CCH) in its annual Unscheduled Absence Survey for 2003. The CCH survey found that 38 percent of unscheduled absences were taken for a personal illness, and 23 percent of unscheduled absences were taken for family reasons. 51. EPF, Issue Backgrounder, The Cost and Characteristics of Family and Medical Leave (April 19, 2005) (hereafter ‘‘EPF Survey’’). The Issue Backgrounder is available online at www.epf.org. 52. Testimony by Nancy McKeague on behalf of the SHRM and the FMLA Technical Corrections Coalition, before the Government Reform Committee Subcommittee on Energy Policy, Natural Resources and Regulatory Affairs, U.S. House of Representatives (Nov. 17, 2004), 3 (hereafter ‘‘McKeague Testimony’’). 53. The Family and Medical Leave Act of 1993, Summary of Major Comments, Subparts A-F, 60 Fed. Reg. 2180, 6658, 16,382 (1995). 54. Nucleus Solutions, The State of FMLA: How to Get a Handle on the Family Medical Leave Act (Dec. 2001), reprinted June 2003. 55. 29 U.S.C.A. § 2611(11). 56. Senate Report, 30. 57. 29 C.F.R. § 825.114(a)(2)(i)(A)–(B) (2004). To date, the U.S. Supreme Court has declined to address the reasonableness of the DOL’s construction of serious health condition. The two federal courts of appeal to consider this question upheld the department’s rule-making authority. See Miller v. AT&T Corp., 250 F.3d 820 (4th Cir. 2001) (found that department’s definition of ‘‘treatment’’ was not overly broad and that § 825.114 did not contravene the underlying purpose of the statute); Thorson v. Gemini, Inc., 205 F.3d 370 (8th Cir.), cert. denied, 531 U.S. 871 (2000). 58. Opinion FMLA-57 (April 7, 1995). 59. Ibid.

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60. Opinion FMLA-86 (Dec. 12, 1996). 61. Ibid. 62. Ibid. 63. Ibid. 64. 29 C.F.R. § 825.114(c). 65. McKeague Testimony, 5. 66. See, e.g., Miller (flu); Thorson v. Gemini, Inc., 205 F.3d 370 (8th Cir.), cert. denied, 531 U.S. 871 (2000) (diarrhea and stomach cramps); Wheeler v. Pioneer Developmental Servs., 2004 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 24960 (D. Mass. Dec. 8, 2004) (upper respiratory infection); Corcino v. Banco Popular De P.R., 200 F. Supp. 2d 507 (D.V.I. 2002) (pharyngitis); Summerville v. Esco Co., 52 F. Supp. 2d 804 (W.D. Mich. 1999) (heel spurs). 67. SHRM 2003 FMLA Survey, found that more than half (52 percent) of the human resources professionals questioned had granted FMLA requests that they did not believe were legitimate, in response to the DOL’s shifting interpretations of the regulations. 68. Comments of Hallmark Cards, Inc. on the Implementation of the Family and Medical Leave Act Submitted to the Committee of Education and the Workforce Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations, U.S. House of Representatives ( June 10, 1997), 6–8 (hereafter ‘‘Hallmark Cards Comments’’). 69. Ibid. 70. 29 C.F.R. § 825.307(a)(2); Hallmark Cards Comments, 10–11. 71. The one exception to this rule arises where the employee’s FMLA leave runs concurrently with his or her worker’s compensation leave, and the state worker’s compensation statute permits the employer to have direct contact with the employee’s physician, the employer may follow the state statute. 29 C.F.R. § 825.307(a)(1). 72. 29 C.F.R. § 825.307(a). 73. There is a split in the case law as to whether an employer’s failure to go through the second/third opinion process is a waiver of the employer’s right to challenge whether an employee has a serious health condition at the litigation stage. See, e.g., Rhoads v. FDIC, 257 F.3d 373 (4th Cir. 2001), cert. denied, 535 U.S. 933 (2002) (no waiver found; ruling at odds with court’s earlier decision in Thorson); Stekloff v. St. John’s Mercy Health Sys., 218 F.3d 858 (8th Cir. 2000) (no waiver found); Thorson v. Gemini, Inc., 205 F.3d 370 (8th Cir. 2000) (waiver found); Wheeler v. Pioneer Developmental Servs., 2004 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 24960 (D. Mass. Dec. 8, 2004) (waiver found); Dillaway v. Ferrante, 2003 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 23468 (D. Minn. Dec. 9, 2003) (no waiver found); Smith v. Univ. of Chi. Hosps., 2003 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 20965 (N.D. Ill. Nov. 20, 2003) (waiver found); Porter v. N.Y. Univ. Sch. of Law, 2003 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 14674 (S.D.N.Y. Aug. 22, 2003) (no waiver found). 74. Hallmark Cards Comments, 11. 75. 29 C.F.R.§825.301(b)(2). 76. Ragsdale, 89, 93–95. 77. See, e.g., Conoshenti v. Public Serv. Elec. & Gas Co., 364 F.3d 135 (3d Cir. 2004) (found that plaintiff may have exercised his FMLA rights differently if properly notified); Fogleman v. Greater Hazleton Health Alliance, 2004 U.S. App. LEXIS 26861 (3d Cir. Dec. 23, 2004) (no prejudice found); Duty v. Norton-Alcoa Proppants, 293 F.3d 481 (8th Cir. 2002) (affirmed jury award for employee who detrimentally relied on employer’s erroneous statement regarding his FMLA rights); Miller v. Personal-Touch of

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Va., Inc., 342 F. Supp. 2d 499 (E.D. Va. 2004) (no interference with plaintiff’s FMLA rights found); Wright v. Owens-Illinois, Inc., 2004 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 8535 (S.D. Ind. May 14, 2004) (no harm to plaintiff found); Roberts v. Owens-Illinois, Inc., 2004 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 8534 (S.D. Ind. May 14, 2004) (no prejudice found); Donahoo v. Master Data Ctr., 282 F. Supp. 2d 540 (E.D. Mich. 2003) (no prejudice found); Farina v. Compuware Corp., 256 F. Supp. 2d 1033 (D. Ariz. 2003) (no prejudice or detrimental reliance found); Phillips v. Leroy-Somer N. Am., 2003 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 5349 (W.D. Tenn. Mar. 28, 2003) (no prejudice found); Kelso v. Corning Cable Sys. Int’l Corp., 224 F. Supp. 2d 1052 (W.D.N.C. 2002) (no prejudice found); Summers v. Middleton & Reutlinger, P.S.C., 214 F. Supp. 2d 751 (W.D. Ky. 2002) (no prejudice found). 78. 29 C.F.R. § 825.203. 79. 29 C.F.R. § 825.203(d). 80. Ibid. 81. Eric Lekus, ‘‘Two Hundred Organizations Sign Letter Urging DOL to Keep Leave FMLA Intact,’’ Daily Labor Report 72 (April 15, 2005): A-10. 82. Fawn H. Johnson, ‘‘ ‘Roundtable’ Panel Debates Usefulness of ‘Intermittent Leave’ in Family Leave Law,’’ Daily Labor Report 121 ( June 24, 2005): A-10; Stephanie Armour, ‘‘Family, Medical Leave Act at Center of Hot Debate,’’ USA Today (May 25, 2005), available online at www.usatoday.com/money/employment/2005-05-05-medicalleave-usat_x.htm. 83. McKeague Testimony, 8; Senate Report, 28. 84. 29 C.F.R. § 825.302(f). 85. 29 C.F.R. § 825.204. 86. 29 C.F.R. § 825.308. 87. Opinion FMLA 2004-2-A (May 25, 2004). 88. 29 C.F.R. § 825.308(b)(2). 89. 29 C.F.R. § 825.308(a). 90. 29 C.F.R. § 825.308(c). 91. In addition to these scenarios, a DOL pronouncement by Michael Ginley, Office of Enforcement Policy, confirmed that effective May 25, 2004, the DOL would ‘‘not cite an employer’s request for a new medical certification in conjunction with the employee’s first absence in a new 12-month period as a violation of section 103 of the FMLA.’’ This allows an employer to seek a second/third opinion, even though there may have been a recertification in the prior leave year. See also Opinion FMLA-112 (Sept. 11, 2000) (if an employer calculates an employee’s entitlement to FMLA leave as of the date the employee takes leave, an employer can seek recertification twelve months from the date the employee’s intermittent leave commenced). 92. EPF Survey, 2. 93. Ibid., 2-3. 94. Ibid. 95. Lekus, ‘‘Two Hundred Organizations.’’ 96. Hallmark Cards Comments, 13; Eric Lekus, ‘‘Business Groups Urge DOL to Reopen Regulations, Reform Medical Leave Rules,’’ Daily Labor Report 71 (April 14, 2005): A-9. 97. 29 C.F.R. §§ 825.207(d)(2), 825.702(d)(1). 98. See, e.g., Artis v. Palos Community Hosp., 2004 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 20150 (N.D. Ill. Sept. 22, 2004). In that case, the court granted summary judgment to the employer

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despite a last-minute argument by the plaintiff that she was coerced into remaining at work in a light-duty position after a work-related injury resulted in restrictions in the performance of her duties as a certified nursing assistant. The court reasoned that the employee was not released to return to her former position until more than twenty weeks had elapsed from when she suffered her injury, and therefore the employee was afforded greater job protection than she was entitled to under the act. 99. 29 C.F.R. § 825.308(e). 100. 29 C.F.R. § 825.307 allows for a second/third opinion where the employer has reason to doubt the validity of the certification. As noted (EPF Survey, 2), it is permissible to require a ‘‘new’’ certification once twelve months have elapsed from the date of the original certification. 101. 29 U.S.C. § 2601(b).

7

Gender and Managerial Stereotypes: Have the Times Changed? Gary N. Powell, D. Anthony Butterfield, and Jane D. Parent

Stereotyping of group members may occur on the basis of gender, race, and ethnicity as well as many other dimensions of diversity. In this chapter, we examine stereotypes of the managerial role in relation to gender stereotypes. How well do gender stereotypes, which represent stereotypical views of male– female differences in general, apply to the managerial ranks in particular? We know that the face of management has changed considerably over the last quarter-century. That face is now female at least 40 percent of the time in at least twenty countries from A (Argentina, Australia) to U (United Kingdom, United States) (Powell & Graves, 2003). As an example of the magnitude of change, the proportion of women managers in the United States increased from 26 percent in 1980 to 45 percent in 2000. No matter what the starting point, the trend in almost all countries has been in the same direction, toward the increased representation of women in the managerial ranks. Have these changes in the face of management led to changes in views of what constitutes a good manager to incorporate a greater emphasis on ‘‘feminine’’ traits associated with women or a lesser emphasis on ‘‘masculine’’ traits associated with men? The study reported in this chapter, which is the third in a series of studies conducted since the mid1970s, addresses this question. There has been a considerable increase in the proportion of women managers in recent years, from 21 percent in 1976 to 46 percent in 1999, and a call for ‘‘feminine leadership’’ to capitalize on this increase. The present study examines whether there has been a corresponding change in men’s and women’s stereotypes of managers such that less emphasis is placed on managers’ possessing masculine characteristics. Data from 348 undergraduate and part-time graduate business students indicate that although managerial stereotypes place less emphasis on masculine characteristics than in earlier studies (Powell & Butterfield, 1979, 1989), a good manager is still perceived as predominantly masculine.

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Stereotypes are ‘‘beliefs about the characteristics, attributes, and behaviors of members of certain groups’’ (Hilton & von Hippel, 1996, p. 240). Stereotyping is an enduring human phenomenon (Fiske, 1998), partly because stereotypes are so convenient to use. For example, stereotypes may be used to simplify the demands on the perceiver. They make information processing easier by allowing people to substitute previously acquired information for incoming information. When people are identifiable as members of a larger group (e.g., the male or female sex), stereotyping makes it easier for others to remember and categorize them (Klatzky & Anderson, 1988). Stereotypes may also be used to justify the current assignment of social roles. However, stereotypes often operate to the disadvantage of women in work settings (Carli & Eagly, 1999; Deaux & LaFrance, 1998). Consider the case of managerial stereotypes. In prior studies (Powell & Butterfield, 1979, 1989), women and men have described a good manager as possessing predominantly masculine characteristics that are traditionally associated with males (e.g., assertiveness, independence, and willingness to take risks). Thus, women who aspire to management positions have to contend with common stereotypes of being unfit for the role. These stereotypes disadvantage women at all levels of management (Powell, 1999). When decision makers believe that masculine characteristics are best suited for managerial roles and that men possess these characteristics in greater abundance than women, they are more likely to select men for open management positions than equally qualified women (Heilman, 1995); they are also likely to evaluate male managers more favorably than female managers who have exhibited equivalent performance (Bartol, 1999; Heilman, 1983; Nieva & Gutek, 1980). Further, women who hold these beliefs may hold back in seeking management positions (Powell & Butterfield, 1979). However, since the mid-1970s, there has been a considerable increase in the proportion of women in management (U.S. Department of Labor, Bureau of Labor Statistics, 1983, 1999) and a call for ‘‘feminine leadership,’’ that is, a greater emphasis in management on feminine characteristics that are traditionally associated with females (e.g., compassion, sensitivity to the needs of others, and understanding), to take advantage of this increase (e.g., Helgesen, 1990; Loden, 1985; Rosener, 1995). The purpose of this study was to examine whether there has been a corresponding change in men’s and women’s stereotypes of managers such that less emphasis is placed on managers’ possessing masculine characteristics.

STEREOTYPES Stereotypes tend to be durable over time (Hamilton & Sherman, 1994). This is because stereotypes are reinforced by both cognitive and social mechanisms. According to a cognitive perspective of stereotyping, individuals categorize people into groups and then develop self-enhancing beliefs about the attributes held in

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common by members of different groups, including their own (Ashforth & Humphrey, 1995; Tajfel & Turner, 1986); these beliefs in turn act as selffulfilling prophecies through processes of expectancy confirmation (Darley & Fazio, 1980; Merton, 1948). According to a sociocultural perspective of stereotyping, individuals learn stereotypes of different groups in their formative years from their parents, teachers, and other significant adults in their lives as well as from the public media (Hamilton & Sherman, 1994). Both of these perspectives have been supported in research on gender stereotypes. Stereotypes of males and females have remained essentially stable over time in different cultures, even as attitudes about women’s rights and roles have changed (Deaux & Kite, 1993; Deaux & LaFrance, 1998; Williams & Best, 1990). In general, research on gender stereotypes reveals that people consider women to have more communal qualities (e.g., are more gentle, kind, supportive, expressive, affectionate, and tactful) and men more agentic qualities (e.g., are more assertive, competitive, daring, and courageous) (Broverman et al., 1972; Carli & Eagly, 1999; Deaux & Kite, 1993; Williams & Best, 1990). However, stereotypes may change over time in the presence of disconfirming information. Rothbart (1981) distinguished between two models of stereotype change—the bookkeeping model and the conversion model. According to the bookkeeping model, stereotypes are continually open to revision as new pieces of information, either confirming or disconfirming, are received; stereotypes change gradually if there is a steady stream of disconfirming information. According to the conversion model, stereotypes change suddenly in response to highly salient and critical pieces of disconfirming information. Thus, if new information about the accuracy of a particular stereotype has been moderately disconfirming, the bookkeeping model would predict modest change in the stereotype, and the conversion model would predict no change. If new information has overwhelmingly discredited the stereotype, both models would predict substantial change in it. A third model of stereotype change focuses on the typing of group members. When a few members of a group do not conform to the group stereotype, the observer may break down the larger group into subgroups and categorize the small group exhibiting the unexpected behavior as ‘‘deviants.’’ This cognitive response enables preservation of the general stereotype for the group through the establishment of subgroup stereotypes (Weber & Crocker, 1983). Further, an exemplarbased model assumes that stereotypes consist of representations of specific individuals; thus, stereotypes may change as new exemplars replace and differ in personal characteristics from earlier exemplars (Smith & Za´rate, 1992). However, the literature on stereotypes has placed far greater emphasis on cognitive processes that reinforce the durability of stereotypes than their changeability (e.g., Darley & Fazio, 1980; Fiske, 1998; Hamilton & Sherman, 1994; Merton, 1948). In general, it is assumed that it is easier for an individual to maintain a stereotype than to change it (Hilton & von Hippel, 1996).

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GENDER STEREOTYPES AND MANAGERIAL STEREOTYPES In this section, we review prior research on the relationship between gender stereotypes and managerial stereotypes. Note that our concern is with gender stereotypes, not with fundamental conceptualizations of sex, gender, or androgyny, about which there has been much controversy. See Korabik (1999) for a recent review of this controversy. There have been two streams of research on the relationship between gender stereotypes and managerial stereotypes (see Butterfield & Grinnell, 1999). Schein (1973, 1975) initiated one stream when she hypothesized that gender stereotyping impeded the progress of women in management through the creation of occupational sex typing: since the vast majority of managers were men, the managerial job could be classified as a masculine occupation calling for personal attributes thought to be more characteristic of men than women. In support of her hypothesis, she found that both male and female middle managers believed that a successful middle manager possessed personal characteristics that more closely matched beliefs about the characteristics of men in general than beliefs about the characteristics of women in general. In later studies, the managerial job was no longer sex-typed by female middle managers (Brenner et al., 1989) or female management students (Schein et al., 1989). In addition, sex typing of the managerial job was reduced when contextual information such as level of success was available. However, when women were depicted as managers, they were still seen as more different from successful managers than men (Heilman et al., 1989). The belief of ‘‘think manager— think male’’ seems to be a global phenomenon, especially among males (Schein & Mueller, 1992; Schein et al., 1996). The other stream of research on the relationship between gender stereotypes and managerial stereotypes is the focus of this study. Bem (1974, 1975) directly challenged the traditional assumptions and beliefs that males were supposed to be masculine, females were supposed to be feminine, and anyone who fell in the middle or at the ‘‘wrong’’ end of the scale was maladjusted and in need of help (Broverman et al., 1972). She argued that masculinity and femininity should be regarded as independent dimensions rather than as opposite ends of the same dimension and that the concept of androgyny, defined as a high propensity toward both feminine and masculine characteristics, offered a more appropriate standard for both sexes than did the traditional standard for each sex. An association between androgyny and more effective behavior was soon observed in a variety of nonorganizational settings (e.g., Bem, 1975; Bem & Lenney, 1976; Spence et al., 1975). Powell and Butterfield (1979) applied Bem’s concept of androgyny to individuals’ concept of management. They asked part-time graduate business students (evening MBAs), nearly all of whom worked full-time, and undergraduate business students during 1976–77 to describe both themselves and a ‘‘good manager’’ using the Bem Sex Role Inventory (BSRI), the instrument Bem (1974) developed. In 1976, when they began their data collection,

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the proportion of women in management positions in the United States was 21 percent, an increase from 16 percent in 1970 (U.S. Department of Labor, Bureau of Labor Statistics, 1983). Based on Bem (1974, 1975) and the recent increase in the proportion of women in management, Powell and Butterfield (1979) hypothesized that a good manager would be seen as androgynous (i.e., high in both masculine and feminine characteristics). However, contrary to their hypothesis, a good manager was seen as possessing predominantly masculine characteristics by all groups of respondents, including undergraduate and parttime graduate males and females. Thus, a belief of ‘‘think manager—think masculine’’ prevailed in that study. Powell and Butterfield (1989) conducted a replication of their original study during 1984–85 using a refined and abbreviated version of the original BSRI instrument called the Short BSRI (Bem, 1981); they also rescored their original results using only the items that belonged to the Short BSRI. In 1984, when this data collection effort began, the proportion of women in management in the United States was 35 percent (U.S. Department of Labor, Bureau of Labor Statistics, 1985), a considerable increase from 21 percent in 1976. Powell and Butterfield (1989) hypothesized that the further increase in the proportion of women in management since their earlier study would now lead to a good manager being viewed as androgynous. However, their new results were consistent in direction with their earlier results, even when the earlier results were rescored. A good manager was still seen as possessing predominantly masculine characteristics by all groups of respondents. In fact, contrary to the bookkeeping, conversion, and exemplar-based models of stereotype change (Rothbart, 1981; Smith & Za´rate,1992), some groups exhibited strengthened support since the earlier study for the belief that a good manager is masculine. By 1999, the proportion of women managers in the United States was 46 percent (U.S. Department of Labor, Bureau of Labor Statistics, 1999), a further substantial increase from 35 percent in 1984. Having a woman manager has become a more routine and less novel experience for male and female subordinates. Thus, management as a whole should no longer be viewed as a sextyped occupation; the managerial role is not as associated statistically with men as it once was. However, is the managerial role still associated with the possession of predominantly masculine characteristics? If women truly bring a different set of personal characteristics to the managerial role than men, there may be a sufficient amount of new information disconfirming the belief in a good manager as masculine since the mid-1970s to cause a rethinking of managerial stereotypes. In this event, given that the proportion of women managers has more than doubled since 1976 and is now almost half of all managers, a change in managerial stereotypes should be predicted by the bookkeeping, conversion, and exemplar-based models of stereotype change (Rothbart, 1981; Smith & Za´rate, 1992). Managerial stereotypes may place less emphasis on the masculine characteristics traditionally associated

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with men than in the past and greater emphasis on the feminine characteristics traditionally associated with women or an androgynous combination of characteristics (i.e., high in both masculine and feminine characteristics). Although there has been mixed evidence over three decades of research as to whether men and women differ as leaders (Butterfield & Grinnell, 1999), some recent evidence has supported the existence of such differences (e.g., Bass et al., 1996). Moreover, several writers (e.g., Grant, 1988; Helgesen, 1990; Loden, 1985; Rosener, 1990, 1995) have argued that organizations need to place greater emphasis on feminine characteristics associated with women managers (e.g., caring, compassionate, understanding, collaborative) to be successful in an increasingly diverse and competitive economic environment. However, the top ranks of management are still male-dominated, and a glass ceiling that is keeping women as a group from reaching these ranks still seems to prevail (Catalyst, 2000b; Davidson & Cooper, 1992; Morrison & Von Glinow, 1990; Powell, 1999). For example, the proportion of women in corporate officer positions in Fortune 500 corporations, although much higher than in the 1970s (Epstein, 1975), is only 13 percent (Catalyst, 2000a). If top managers still believe in and adhere to the traditional stereotype of managers as masculine, women as well as men may feel compelled to display personal characteristics that are consistent with this stereotype to be selected for and successful in managerial roles. If this were the case, there would be little reason to expect managerial stereotypes to have changed with the increased proportion of women managers or the increased call for an emphasis on feminine characteristics in management. The present study was designed to explore these speculations further. It replicated Powell and Butterfield (1979, 1989) using the Short BSRI as an instrument. Consistent with the bookkeeping and conversion models of stereotype change (Rothbart, 1981), it was hypothesized that a good manager would be seen as possessing less masculine characteristics in 1999 than in 1984–85 (Powell & Butterfield, 1989) or 1976–77 (Powell & Butterfield, 1979).

METHOD Data were collected in 1999 at two American universities from two groups of subjects who differed considerably in age, education, and work experience. One group consisted of 206 undergraduate business students; their mean age was 21.2 years, and 43 percent were female. The second group consisted of 142 part-time graduate business students (i.e., evening MBAs), nearly all of whom held full-time jobs. Their mean age was 31.7 years, and 44 percent were female. The present study used these data in addition to data collected from the same two groups in 1984–85 (Powell & Butterfield, 1989) and 1976–77 (Powell & Butterfield, 1979).

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The 1984–85 sample consisted of 201 undergraduate business students with a mean age of 20.9 years (57 percent were female) and 127 part-time MBA students with a mean age of 29.0 years (42 percent were female). The 1976–77 sample consisted of 574 undergraduate business students with a mean age of 20.7 years (30 percent were female) and 110 part-time MBA students with a mean age of 28.0 (18 percent were female). Each respondent in the 1999 and 1984–85 samples completed the Short BSRI (Bem, 1981) both for him- or herself and for a good manager. The Short BSRI contains ten items characteristic of the masculine sex role stereotype, ten items characteristic of the feminine sex role stereotype, and ten filler items not associated exclusively with either stereotype. The masculine items are: defend my own beliefs, independent, assertive, strong personality, forceful, have leadership abilities, willing to take risks, dominant, willing to take a stand, and aggressive. The feminine items are: affectionate, sympathetic, love children, eager to soothe hurt feelings, compassionate, understanding, warm, tender, sensitive to the needs of others, and gentle. The filler items are: moody, conceited, conscientious, reliable, jealous, tactful, truthful, secretive, adaptable, and conventional. Items were rated on a seven-point scale, ranging from ‘‘never or almost never true’’ (1) to ‘‘always or almost always true’’ (7). Each respondent in the 1976–77 sample completed the Original BSRI (Bem, 1974) both for him- or herself and for a good manager. The Original BSRI included twenty items designated as masculine that were independently judged by both females and males to be more desirable in American society for a man than a woman and twenty items designated as feminine that were similarly judged to be more desirable for a woman than a man. It contained all of the items in the Short BSRI but contained twice as many items in each category. Only those items appearing in the Short BSRI were used in the present study. Masculinity and femininity items in the Original BSRI were selected for the Short BSRI to maximize both the internal consistency of the masculinity and femininity scales and the orthogonality between them (Bem, 1981). Also, some of the femininity items in the Original BSRI with relatively low social desirability ratings were excluded from the Short BSRI to make the overall social desirability of the masculine and feminine items more similar. For further discussion of the development of the Original BSRI and Short BSRI, see Bem (1974, 1981) and Powell and Butterfield (1989). Masculinity and femininity ‘‘self-scores’’ were calculated for each respondent as the average of scores on the masculine and feminine items in his or her self-description. Coefficient alpha was 0.85 for the masculinity self-score and 0.87 for the femininity self-score. Median masculinity and femininity scores on the Short BSRI were calculated for the combined 1999, 1984–85, and 1976–77 samples. Undergraduate males, undergraduate females, graduate males, and graduate females were weighted equally for the purposes of calculating these

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median scores (Bem, 1981). Each respondent was then classified into an androgynous, masculine, feminine, or undifferentiated ‘‘self-group’’ according to his or her self-description as shown below. Masculinity and femininity ‘‘good manager scores’’ were calculated from each respondent’s description of a good manager using the same procedure as for the self-description. Coefficient alpha was 0.74 for the masculinity good manager score and 0.86 for the femininity good manager score. The good manager description was classified as androgynous, masculine, feminine, or undifferentiated according to the median masculinity and femininity self-scores, that is, relative to the same medians used to classify respondents into self-groups, to allow direct comparisons of how respondents described a good manager and themselves. Thus, each respondent was classified into a ‘‘good manager group’’ as follows: Femininity ‘‘self-score’’ or ‘‘good manager score’’ Above median Below median

Masculinity ‘‘self-score’’ or ‘‘good manager score’’ Below median Feminine Undifferentiated

Above median Androgynous Masculine

It was possible that the results of the study would be at least in part a function of the differing percentages of women at each time period. To address this possibility, we used a random sample of respondents at each time period and level (undergraduate and part-time graduate) to equalize the percentage of women across time periods within each level. The sampling procedure is summarized first for undergraduates and then for graduates. The average percentage of undergraduate women across the three time periods was 43 percent. However, the percentage of undergraduate women was lower than 43 percent in 1976–77 (30 percent), higher than 43 percent in 1984–85 (57 percent), and equal to 43 percent in 1999. Thus, for 1976–77, we used all of the undergraduate women and a random sample of the undergraduate men. For 1984–85, we used all of the undergraduate men and a random sample of the undergraduate women. For 1999, we used all of the undergraduate women and men in the sample. The average percentage of graduate women across the three time periods was 35 percent. However, the percentage of graduate women was lower than 35 percent in 1976–77 (18 percent) and higher than 35 percent in 1984–85 (42 percent) and 1999 (44 percent). Thus, for 1976–77, we used all of the graduate women and a random sample of the graduate men. For 1984–85 and 1999, we used all of the graduate men and a random sample of the graduate women. Further analyses were conducted on these samples.

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RESULTS Table 7.1 presents good manager group and self-group distributions for undergraduate business students and part-time graduate business students sampled in each of the three periods of data collection. Table 7.2 presents mean masculinity and femininity good manager scores and self-scores for the same groups of students. Although the emphasis of this study was on changes in descriptions of a good manager over time, self-descriptions are reported for purposes of comparison. These two tables comprehensively display the newly obtained results of the present study as well as the results of the two earlier studies (Powell & Butterfield, 1979, 1989). Because (1) the median self-scores used to determine good manager group and self-group distributions were calculated for the combined samples across all time periods and (2) the sampling procedure resulted in the loss of some subjects at various time periods, the good manager group and self-group distributions for 1984–85 and 1976–77 differ from those reported previously by Powell and Butterfield (1979, 1989). Further, because many comparisons were made across time (six comparisons for each type of distribution in Table 7.1, twelve comparisons for each type of score in Table 7.2), the possibility existed for a study-wise Type 1 error. To minimize this possibility, a Bonferroni-type adjustment was implemented, whereas a more stringent test of significance was used for each comparison to keep the level of significance across all comparisons at a reasonable level (Tabachnick & Fidell, 1989, p. 52). Specifically, each Chi-square test in Table 7.1 used a significance level of 0.01. In addition, one-way ANOVAs reported in Table 7.2 used the Bonferroni multiple comparison test at a significance level of 0.01. Since four comparisons were made at a time for each group of subjects (masculinity and femininity good manager scores and self-scores), the significance level for each comparison was equivalent to approximately 0.01/4, or 0.0025. A significance level of 0.01 was used for comparisons within the 1999 sample that are not reported in the tables. We shall review the results for the 1999 sample first and then compare these results with those from earlier samples. Results for the 1999 Sample Both undergraduate business students and part-time graduate business students viewed a good manager as possessing predominantly masculine characteristics. Considering good manager group distributions as seen in Table 7.1, a good manager was described as masculine by 44.1 percent of undergraduate males, 52.3 percent of undergraduate females, 57.5 percent of graduate males, and 55.8 percent of graduate females; additional analyses indicated that all of these proportions were above random (p < 0.01). In contrast, a good manager was described as feminine by only 8.5 percent of undergraduate males,

TABLE 7.1.

Good Manager Group and Self-Group Distributions Good Manager Group Distribution 1976–77

Sample

N

152

Undergraduate business students Total Androgynous 103 Masculine 212 Feminine 18 Undifferentiated 62 395
26 ¼ 15:84* Males Androgynous 58 Masculine 121 Feminine 10 Undifferentiated 36 225
26 ¼ 9:91 Females Androgynous 45 Masculine 91 Feminine 8 Undifferentiated 26 170
26 ¼ 9:50

1984–85

Self-Group Distribution 1999

1976–77

1984–85

1999

%

N

%

N

%

N

%

N

%

N

%

26.1 53.7 4.6 15.7

38 100 4 11 153

24.8 65.4 2.6 7.2

61 98 14 33 206

29.6 47.6 6.8 16.0

101 65 11.5 114 395
26 ¼ 25:91*

25.6 16.5 29.1 28.9

48 44 36 25 153

31.4 28.8 23.5 16.3

75 44 46 41 206

36.4 21.4 22.3 19.9

25.8 53.8 4.4 16.0

22 54 2 9 87

25.3 62.1 2.3 10.3

34 52 10 22 118

28.8 44.1 8.5 18.6

63 46 43 73 225
26 ¼ 15:96*

28.0 50.4 19.1 32.4

24 34 11 18 87

27.6 39.1 12.6 20.7

41 26 16 35 118

34.7 22.0 13.6 29.7

26.5 53.5 4.7 15.3

16 46 2 2 66

24.2 69.7 3.0 3.0

27 46 4 11 88

30.7 52.3 4.5 12.5

38 19 72 41 170
26 ¼ 23:21*

22.4 11.2 42.4 24.1

24 10 25 7 66

36.4 15.2 37.9 10.6

34 18 30 6 88

38.6 20.5 34.1 6.8

153

Part-time graduate business students Total Androgynous 15 Masculine 38 Feminine 0 Undifferentiated 4 57
26 ¼ 9:89 Males Androgynous 11 Masculine 23 Feminine 0 Undifferentiated 3 37
26 ¼ 7:44 Females Androgynous 4 Masculine 15 Feminine 0 Undifferentiated 1 20
24 ¼ 4:79

26.3 66.7 0 7.0

22 71 2 19 114

19.3 62.3 1.8 16.7

21 70 3 29 123

17.1 56.9 2.4 23.6

13 16 15 13 57
26 ¼ 4:27

22.8 28.1 26.3 22.8

25 33 28 28 114

21.9 28.9 24.6 24.6

25 48 29 21 123

20.3 39.0 23.6 17.1

29.7 62.2 0 8.1

12 47 2 13 74

16.2 63.5 2.7 17.6

13 46 3 18 80

16.3 57.5 3.8 22.5

7 12 11 7 37
26 ¼ 5:46

18.9 32.4 29.7 18.9

14 26 12 22 74

18.9 35.1 16.2 29.7

16 34 14 16 80

20.0 42.5 17.5 20.0

20.0 75.0 0 5.0

10 24 0 6 40

25.0 60.0 0 15.0

8 24 0 11 43

18.6 55.8 0 25.6

6 4 4 6 20
26 ¼ 7:17

30.0 20.0 20.0 30.0

11 7 16 6 40

27.5 17.5 40.0 15.0

9 14 15 5 43

20.9 32.6 34.9 11.6

Note: Chi-square values apply to the comparison of the distributions for the 1976–77, 1984–85, and 1999 samples. *p < 0.01.

TABLE 7.2.

Mean Good Manager Scores and Self-Scores Good Manager Scores

Sample

1 (1976–77)

Significant Contrastsa

4 (1976–77)

5 (1984–85)

6 (1999)

Fa

4.86

5.15

5.17

13.83*

5.29

5.26

5.42

2.20

4.98

5.33

5.19

7.21*

5.15

5.01

5.21

1.60

1<2

4.71 5.48

4.92 5.58

5.15 5.70

9.67* 2.62

1>3

5.14 5.17

5.07 5.09

5.15 5.04

0.30 0.54

2.24 1.12

5.13 5.16

5.08 4.86

5.17 4.93

0.28 2.04

4.02 1.86

5.15 5.19

5.07 5.53

5.11 5.23

0.08 1.75

3 (1999)

5.82

5.60

9.18*

4.87

4.73

4.96

3.48

5.54

5.78

5.49

5.32*

4.71

4.98

2.72

5.87 4.76

5.74 4.93

5.90* .97

5.55 4.71

5.41 4.62

4.93* 2.22

5.48 4.67

5.41 4.66

5.68 4.79

5.39 4.54

Femininity 4.85 Females Masculinity 5.57 Femininity 4.89 Part-time graduate business students Total Masculinity 5.69 Femininity 4.87 Males Masculinity 5.67 Femininity 4.88 Females Masculinity 5.74 Femininity 4.86 a

Fa

2 (1984–85)

Undergraduate business students Total Masculinity 5.55 Femininity Males Masculinity

Self-Scores

1 < 2, 2>3

1 < 2, 2>3

Significant Contrastsb

4 < 5, 4<6

4<5

4<6

F-values apply to the comparison of the mean scores for the 1976–77, 1984–85, and 1999 samples. Pairwise mean scores were compared using the Bonferroni multiple comparison test (p < 0.01). Column numbers are used to designate the type of score and sample. *p < 0.01.

b

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4.5 percent of undergraduate females, 3.8 percent of graduate males, and no graduate females; all of these proportions were below random (p < 0.01). Considering good manager scores as seen in Table 7.2 and consistent with these results, masculinity good manager scores were higher than femininity good manager scores for all groups (p < 0.01, results not reported). Good manager group distributions (Table 7.1) did not differ according to gender for either undergraduates (w23 ¼ 3.11, p > 0.01) or graduates (w23 ¼ 1.83, p > 0.01). Also, self-group distributions did not differ according to gender for graduates (w23 ¼ 5.45, p > 0.01). However, self-group distributions differed according to gender for undergraduates (w23 ¼ 23.00, p < 0.01); undergraduate females were more likely to classify themselves into the feminine self-group (34.1 percent) than undergraduate males (13.6 percent). The gender difference in self-group distributions for undergraduates was due to femininity self-scores (Table 7.2) being higher for females (M ¼ 5.70) than males (M ¼ 5.21, t204 ¼ – 4.40, p < 0.01); masculinity self-scores did not differ for undergraduate females (M ¼ 5.15) and males (M ¼ 5.19, t204 ¼ 0.38, p > 0.01). As a result, undergraduate females tended to describe a good manager as less like themselves than undergraduate males did, specifically in feminine characteristics. Comparison of Results for the Three Samples Good manager group distributions (Table 7.1) differed between the 1999, 1984–85, and 1976–77 samples for undergraduate business students (w26 ¼ 15.84, p < 0.01). The proportion of undergraduates who described a good manager as masculine increased from 53.7 percent in 1976–77 to 65.4 percent in 1984–85 and then decreased to 47.6 percent in 1999. Consistent with these differences, undergraduates’ masculinity good manager scores (Table 7.2) were higher in 1984–85 (M ¼ 5.82) than in 1976–77 (M ¼ 5.55) or 1999 (M ¼ 5.60); undergraduates’ femininity good manager scores did not differ over time. Thus, in support of the hypothesis, undergraduates viewed a good manager as possessing less masculine characteristics in 1999 than in 1984–85. Contrary to the hypothesis, undergraduates tended to view a good manager as possessing similar amounts of masculine characteristics in 1976–77 and 1999. Good manager group distributions (Table 7.1) did not differ over time for part-time graduate business students (w26 ¼ 9.89, p > 0.01), although the proportion of graduates who described a good manager as masculine decreased from 66.7 percent in 1976–77 to 62.3 percent in 1984–85 and 56.9 percent in 1999, and the proportion of graduates who described a good manager as undifferentiated increased from 7.0 percent in 1976–77 to 16.7 percent in 1984–85 and 23.6 percent in 1999. However, graduates’ masculinity good manager scores (Table 7.2) declined over time (M ¼ 5.69 in 1976–77 to M ¼ 5.41 in 1999); graduates’ femininity good manager scores did not vary over

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time. Thus, in support of the hypothesis, graduates viewed a good manager as possessing less masculine characteristics over time.

DISCUSSION Have the times changed regarding the relationship between gender stereotypes and managerial stereotypes? Results for the 1999 sample, when compared with results for the 1984–85 sample (Powell & Butterfield, 1989) and the 1976–77 sample (Powell & Butterfield, 1979), suggest that the answer to this question is both yes and no. Despite the considerable increase in the proportion of women managers over this period of time (from 21 percent in 1976 to 46 percent in 1999) and the emergent call for a greater emphasis on feminine characteristics in management, men and women of varying age, education, and work experience still described a good manager as possessing predominantly masculine characteristics. However, the preference for masculine characteristics decreased between 1984–85 and 1999 for undergraduate business students. Further, the preference for masculine characteristics decreased between 1976–77 and 1999 for parttime graduate business students. Thus, the hypothesis that a good manager would be seen in 1999 as possessing less masculine characteristics than in earlier years was generally supported; perhaps the increased proportion of women managers is beginning to have an effect. In summary, a comparison of results from all three samples suggests both persistence and change in the nature of managerial stereotypes over time. Why have managerial stereotypes persisted in placing primary emphasis on masculine characteristics? Powerful forces serve to perpetuate existing stereotypes, whatever group of people is being stereotyped and whatever the content of its stereotype may be (Hamilton & Sherman, 1994; Hilton & von Hippel, 1996; Fiske, 1998). In the case of managerial stereotypes, men and women who are choosing a career track may not seek to be managers if they do not see themselves as fitting the prevailing stereotype of managers. In addition, organizations may only select applicants for entry-level managerial positions whom they see as adhering to managerial stereotypes. Further, organizations tend to exert strong pressures on their members to conform to ways acceptable to other members, particularly those in power. Despite the remarkable progress of women in attaining managerial positions over the last three decades, the proportion of women who have made it to the very top positions in organizations, that is, broken through the glass ceiling, remains small. Recall that the proportion of women in corporate officer positions in Fortune 500 companies, although minuscule in the 1970s (Epstein, 1975), is still only 13 percent (Catalyst, 2000a). Women’s impact on managerial stereotypes may not be felt until more of them are in the top ranks of management. As long as predominantly masculine characteristics

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are highly valued in the top management ranks, all individuals who enter the management ranks at any level will be expected to act accordingly. Thus, forces of self-selection, organizational selection, and organizational socialization all contribute to managerial stereotypes acting as self-fulfilling prophecies (Darley & Fazio, 1980; Merton, 1948) and reinforce a belief in the good manager as masculine. Why have managerial stereotypes changed in the direction of placing less emphasis on masculine characteristics? According to both the bookkeeping and conversion models of stereotype change, stereotypes are likely to change in the presence of massive amounts of disconfirming information (Rothbart, 1981). Some evidence (Butterfield & Grinnell, 1999) suggests that women bring a different set of personal characteristics to the managerial role than men. Since the proportion of women in management positions has approached that of men, female managers may feel that their increased strength in numbers gives them more license to be themselves without having to conform to traditional managerial stereotypes. If female managers do not exhibit predominantly masculine characteristics when they are being themselves, they may be contributing as exemplars (Smith & Za´rate, 1992) to a long-term change in managerial stereotypes. In addition, the increased call for feminine leadership (Grant, 1988; Helgesen, 1990; Loden, 1985; Rosener, 1990, 1995) suggests that organizations benefit when their managers display a high amount of feminine characteristics. Today’s workplace is characterized by an increased emphasis on self-management, empowerment, continuous improvement, and organizational learning (Cooper & Lewis, 1999). It has been suggested that organizations that are continually able to transform themselves will have the best chance of survival in the new millennium. Being a good manager has become less about competitiveness, aggression, and task orientation and more about good communication, coaching and people skills, and being intuitive and flexible, all stereotypically feminine characteristics (Cooper & Lewis, 1999). Some managers, whatever their gender and other personal characteristics may be, may have responded to these changing demands, thereby further disconfirming the belief in a good manager as masculine. However, the decreased emphasis on masculine characteristics in managerial stereotypes over time did not necessarily imply an increased emphasis on feminine characteristics. Indeed, the endorsement of feminine characteristics by the two groups of respondents varied little over time. Instead, the more experienced, part-time graduate business students, most of whom were working full-time and likely to focus on their own jobs and work context, described a good manager as possessing significantly less masculine characteristics over time. As a result, although such respondents still tended to prefer a masculine manager overall, they were tending to display an increasing preference for an undifferentiated manager, or one low in both feminine and masculine characteristics. In addition, undergraduate business students in the 1999 sample,

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most of whom had little full-time work experience and may have been relying more on expectations than reality, described a good manager as possessing less masculine characteristics than those in the 1984–85 sample. These results suggest that different groups of respondents may have been receiving similar messages but from different sources about what a good manager looks like. Undergraduate business students may have become particularly aware of the increase in the proportion of women in management between 1984–85 and 1999 from observing their parents and elders as well as from the public media. Since there was a gender difference in self-descriptions, with women more inclined to assign themselves to the feminine self-group than men, female undergraduates may have thought that having more women in management would mean that a good manager is less masculine, if not more feminine. In contrast, part-time graduate business students were closer to business realities and did not differ according to gender in self-descriptions. They were more in a position to observe the influence of the continued male domination of the top ranks of management, which may have suppressed any inclinations that female managers at lower levels might have had to exhibit a greater amount of feminine characteristics than when their numbers were fewer. Extension of this research to include respondents at different managerial levels is recommended to provide insight into whether a good manager is seen in more masculine terms by managers at higher levels.

LIMITATIONS AND CONCLUSIONS The limitations of this replication study should be noted. Butterfield and Grinnell (1999) concluded from a review of research on managerial stereotypes over three decades that context is extremely important in mitigating the effects of gender stereotypes. For example, factors such as the duration of managers’ interactions with their subordinates, the level of success they have experienced in their jobs, and the nature of their managerial assignments affect the extent to which managers are viewed in gender-stereotypical terms. One drawback of the present study was that it lacked context. Extension of this line of research into specific organizational settings in which the influence of contextual effects can be examined is recommended. However, although context is an issue, graduate business students have experience and knowledge about the work setting that their undergraduate counterparts lack. This could explain why views of a good manager differed between the two types of respondents. A further limitation of this study is that it relied on responses of student samples. However, this was not as serious a drawback. Similar data were collected in the past from actual managers in three insurance companies (Powell, 1993), with results indicating an overall preference for masculine characteristics as in the present and previous studies of business students (Powell & Butterfield, 1979,

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1989). Although it is important to examine the views of practicing managers, their views of a good manager were likely to be consistent with those of part-time graduate business students, most of whom either already held or expected to hold managerial positions. Also, the views of undergraduate business students are of interest because of their implications for career choice. As in earlier samples, undergraduate females in the 1999 sample see a good manager as less like themselves than undergraduate males. Given this perception, these women may be less inclined to pursue managerial careers than men with the same educational background, leading to a restricted supply of female applicants from which organizations may select entry-level managers compared with the supply of male applicants. Finally, this study did not examine the cognitive and social mechanisms by which stereotypes develop and change. It suggested that consistent with the bookkeeping, conversion, and exemplar-based models of stereotype change (Rothbart, 1981; Smith & Za´rate, 1992), the increased proportion of women in management and the increased call for feminine leadership in the workplace may have led to the decreased emphasis on masculine characteristics in managerial stereotypes. However, we did not collect the full data that would be necessary to demonstrate such a causal connection. Additional research on the mechanisms by which managerial stereotypes are developed and modified that directly tests prevailing theories of stereotype formation and change (e.g., Fiske, 1998; Hamilton & Sherman, 1994; Hilton & von Hippel, 1996; Rothbart, 1981; Smith & Za´rate, 1992; Weber & Crocker, 1983) is recommended. In conclusion, the question of what constitutes a good manager continues to be of interest both to organizational scholars and the general public. If the proportion of women in top management positions becomes more similar to the proportion of men in such positions or further evidence is accumulated about the advantages of feminine leadership to organizations, managerial stereotypes may continue to change in the direction of placing less emphasis on masculine characteristics. However, for the time being, managerial stereotypes continue to emphasize a belief of ‘‘think manager—think masculine.’’ NOTE Adapted from Gary N. Powell et al., ‘‘Gender and Managerial Stereotypes,’’ Journal of Management 28(2) (2002): 177–93, by permission of the publisher. Copyright # Elsevier Inc.

REFERENCES Ashforth, B. E., & Humphrey, R. H. (1995). Labeling processes in the organization: Constructing the individual. In L. L. Cummings & B. M. Staw (Eds.), Research in organizational behavior (Vol. 17, pp. 413–461). Greenwich, CT: JAI Press.

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Bartol, K. M. (1999). Gender influences on performance evaluations. In G. N. Powell (Ed.), Handbook of gender and work (pp. 165–178). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Bass, B. M., Avolio, B. J., & Atwater, L. (1996). The transformational and transactional leadership of men and women. Applied Psychology: An International Review, 45, 5–34. Bem, S. L. (1974). The measurement of psychological androgyny. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 42, 155–162. Bem, S. L. (1975). Sex role adaptability: One consequence of psychological androgyny. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 31, 634–643. Bem, S. L. (1981). Bem sex role inventory: Professional manual. Palo Alto, CA: Consulting Psychologists Press. Bem, S. L., & Lenney, E. (1976). Sex typing and the avoidance of cross-sex behavior. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 33, 48–54. Brenner, O. C., Tomkiewicz, J., & Schein, V. E. (1989). The relationship between sex role stereotypes and requisite management characteristics revisited. Academy of Management Journal, 32, 662–669. Broverman, I. K., Vogel, S. R., Broverman, D. M., Clarkson, F. E., & Rosenkrantz, P. S. (1972). Sex role stereotypes: A current appraisal. Journal of Social Issues, 28(2), 59–78. Butterfield, D. A., & Grinnell, J. P. (1999). ‘‘Re-viewing’’ gender, leadership, and managerial behavior: Do three decades of research tell us anything? In G. N. Powell (Ed.), Handbook of gender and work (pp. 223–238). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Carli, L. L., & Eagly, A. H. (1999). Gender effects on social influence and emergent leadership. In G. N. Powell (Ed.), Handbook of gender and work (pp. 203–222). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Catalyst. (2000a). Census of women corporate officers and top earners. New York: Catalyst. Catalyst. (2000b). Cracking the glass ceiling: Catalyst’s research on women in corporate management 1995–2000. New York: Catalyst. Cooper, C. L., & Lewis, S. (1999). Gender and the changing nature of work. In G. N. Powell (Ed.), Handbook of gender and work (pp. 37–46). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Darley, J. M., & Fazio, R. H. (1980). Expectancy confirmation processes arising in the social interaction sequence. American Psychologist, 35, 867–881. Davidson, M. J., & Cooper, C. L. (1992). Shattering the glass ceiling: The woman manager. London: Paul Chapman. Deaux, K., & Kite, M. (1993). Gender stereotypes. In F. L. Denmark & M. A. Paludi (Eds.), Psychology of women: A handbook of issues (pp. 107–139). Westport, CT: Greenwood. Deaux, K., & LaFrance, M. (1998). Gender. In D. T. Gilbert, S. T. Fiske, & G. Lindzey (Eds.), The handbook of social psychology (4th ed., Vol. 1, pp. 788–827). Boston: McGraw-Hill. Epstein, C. F. (1975). Institutional barriers: What keeps women out of the executive suite? In F. E. Gordon & M. H. Strober (Eds.), Bringing women into management (pp. 7–21). New York: McGraw-Hill. Fiske, S. T. (1998). Stereotyping, prejudice, and discrimination. In D. T. Gilbert, S. T. Fiske, & G. Lindzey (Eds.), The handbook of social psychology (4th ed., Vol. 2, pp. 357–411). Boston: McGraw-Hill. Grant, J. (1988). Women as managers: What they can offer to organizations. Organizational Dynamics, 16(3), 56–63.

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Hamilton, D. L., & Sherman, J. W. (1994). Stereotypes. In R. S. Wyer Jr., & T. K. Srull (Eds.), Handbook of social cognition (2nd ed., Vol. 2) Applications (pp. 1–68). Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Heilman, M. E. (1983). Sex bias in work settings: The lack of fit model. In L. L. Cummings, & B. M. Staw (Eds.), Research in organizational behavior (Vol. 5, pp. 269–298). Greenwich, CT: JAI Press. Heilman, M. E. (1995). Sex stereotypes and their effects in the workplace: What we know and what we don’t know. Journal of Social Behavior and Personality, 10(6), 3–26. Heilman, M. E., Block, C. J., Martell, R. F., & Simon, M. C. (1989). Has anything changed? Current characterizations of men, women, and managers. Journal of Applied Psychology, 74, 935–942. Helgesen, S. (1990). The female advantage: Women’s ways of leadership. New York: Currency Doubleday. Hilton, J. L., & von Hippel, W. (1996). Stereotypes. In J. T. Spence, J. M. Darley, & D. J. Foss (Eds.), Annual review of psychology (Vol. 47, pp. 237–271). Palo Alto, CA: Annual Reviews. Klatzky, R. L., & Anderson, S. M. (1988). Category-specific effects in social typing and personalization. In T. K. Srull, & R. S. Wyer Jr. (Eds.), Advances in social cognition (pp. 91–101). Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Korabik, K. (1999). Sex and gender in the new millennium. In G. N. Powell (Ed.), Handbook of gender and work (pp. 3–16). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Loden, M. (1985). Feminine leadership, or how to succeed in business without being one of the boys. New York: Times Books. Merton, R. K. (1948). The self-fulfilling prophecy. Antioch Review, 8, 193–210. Morrison, A. M., & Von Glinow, M. A. (1990). Women and minorities in management. American Psychologist, 45, 200–208. Nieva, V. F., & Gutek, B. A. (1980). Sex effects on evaluation. Academy of Management Review, 5, 267–376. Powell, G. N. (1993). Women and men in management (2nd ed.). Newbury Park, CA: Sage. Powell, G. N. (1999). Reflections on the glass ceiling: Recent trends and future prospects. In G. N. Powell (Ed.), Handbook of gender and work (pp. 325–345). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Powell, G. N., & Butterfield, D. A. (1979). The ‘‘good manager’’: Masculine or androgynous? Academy of Management Journal, 22, 395–403. Powell, G. N., & Butterfield, D. A. (1989). The ‘‘good manager’’: Did androgyny fare better in the 1980s? Group and Organization Studies, 14(2), 216–233. Powell, G. N., & Graves, L. M. (2003). Women and men in management (3rd ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Rosener, J. B. (1990). Ways women lead. Harvard Business Review, 68(6), 119–225. Rosener, J. B. (1995). America’s competitive secret: Utilizing women as a management strategy. New York: Oxford University Press. Rothbart, M. (1981). Memory processes and social beliefs. In D. L. Hamilton (Ed.), Cognitive processes in stereotyping and intergroup behavior (pp. 145–181). Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Schein, V. E. (1973). The relationship between sex role stereotypes and requisite management characteristics. Journal of Applied Psychology, 57, 95–100.

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Schein, V. E. (1975). Relationships between sex role stereotypes and requisite management characteristics among female managers. Journal of Applied Psychology, 60, 340–344. Schein, V. E., & Mueller, R. (1992). Sex role stereotyping and requisite management characteristics: A cross cultural look. Journal of Organizational Behavior, 13, 439–447. Schein, V. E., Mueller, R., & Jacobson, C. (1989). The relationship between sex role stereotypes and requisite management characteristics among college students. Sex Roles, 20, 103–110. Schein, V. E., Mueller, R., Lituchy, T., & Liu, J. (1996). Think manager—think male: A global phenomenon? Journal of Organizational Behavior, 17, 33–41. Smith, E. R., & Za´rate, M. A. (1992). Exemplar-based model of social judgment. Psychological Review, 99, 3–21. Spence, J. T., Helmreich, R., & Stapp, J. (1975). Rating of self and peers on sex role attributes and their relation to self-esteem and conceptions of masculinity and femininity. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 32, 29–39. Tabachnick, B. G., & Fidell, L. S. (1989). Using multivariate statistics (2nd ed.). New York: HarperCollins. Tajfel, H., & Turner, J. C. (1986). The social identity theory of intergroup behavior. In S. Worchel, & W. G. Austin (Eds.), Psychology of intergroup relations (2nd ed., pp. 7–24). Chicago: Nelson-Hall. U.S. Department of Labor, Bureau of Labor Statistics. (1983). Handbook of labor statistics: 1983. Washington, DC: Government Printing Office. U.S. Department of Labor, Bureau of Labor Statistics. (1985). Employment and earnings, 32(1), 36, Table A-22. U.S. Department of Labor, Bureau of Labor Statistics. (1999). Employment and earnings, 46(12), 33, Table A-19. Weber, R., & Crocker, J. (1983). Cognitive processes in the revision of stereotypic beliefs. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 45, 961–977. Williams, J. E., & Best, D. L. (1990). Measuring sex stereotypes: A multination study (rev. ed.). Newbury Park, CA: Sage.

8

Gender and Race-Related Stereotypes in Management Joan E. Riedle

Some suggest that the ‘‘traditional’’ gender stereotypes and roles did not develop until the Victorian age. Whether an accurate supposition or not, the Victorian age was certainly the time when Sigmund Freud first explicitly expressed stereotypes about masculinity and femininity.1 Freud described women as vane, envious, narcissistic, masochistic; preferring to be passive, overly emotional, dependent; and having a weak sense of right from wrong.2 His ideas were further codified in the writings of Helene Deutsch, who defined masculine as active and feminine as passive.3 Without question, the Freudians offered a strongly negative view of normal women and gave such beliefs the appearance of scientific credibility. Empirical attempts to clarify the masculine and feminine stereotypes followed, with the 1970 project by Inge Broverman, Donald Broverman, Frank Clarkson, Paul Rosenkrantz, and Susan Vogel being a highly influential example.4 Broverman et al. asked mental health professionals to describe either a normal adult woman, a normal adult man, or a normal adult person. Their survey instrument presented a series of 122 bipolar adjectives (e.g., aggressive— not aggressive), and respondents selected the pole which they felt better fit the category of person. Because the authors were examining gender stereotypes, their discussion focused on the thirty-eight traits on which men and women were placed on opposite poles. Of those traits, they found that normal men and persons shared twenty-nine desirable characteristics that women lacked (e.g., aggressive, independent, not emotional, objective). Normal women and persons shared only eleven desirable characteristics that men lacked (e.g., talkative, tactful, gentle, aware of the feelings of others). Thus twenty-nine of a normal woman’s thirty-eight feminine characteristics were socially undesirable when observed in an adult person. It is noteworthy that Broverman et al.’s male and female respondents described normal women similarly. Shortly after the Broverman et al. project, Virginia Schein applied a similar survey method to a study of managers, with 300 male insurance executives

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describing either men in general, women in general, or a successful middle manager.5 Schein’s participants rated how characteristic each of ninety-two traits was of the person being described. Schein’s numerical response scale allowed her to correlate the ratings for the various categories of person. The ratings for men and managers showed impressive similarity (r ¼ 0.81), with men and managers sharing sixty characteristics that women lacked (e.g., emotionally stable, aggressive, leadership ability, self-reliant). The ratings for women and managers did not correlate significantly (r ¼ 0.10), with women and managers but not men sharing only eight characteristics. The complete list of traits shared by women and managers included understanding, helpful, sophisticated, aware of feelings of others, intuitive, neat, not vulgar, and having humanitarian values. Schein’s results imply that men would be at a marked advantage when applying for a management position. In being male, men would be assumed to have sixty of the sixty-eight requisite characteristics and would only have to prove they possessed the missing eight. Women, obviously, would have to overcome a much greater perceived deficit. Thus, the early empirical work on gender stereotypes presented a bleak picture for women in general and women managers in particular. Schein’s 1973 sample had included only male respondents.6 In 1975 she replicated her project with a sample of women managers from a variety of insurance companies.7 A significant correlation was found in the perceptions of men in general and managers (r ¼ 0.54) and in the perceptions of women in general and managers (r ¼ 0.30), though the second correlation was significantly lower. Respondents with fewer than five years of tenure perceived little to no similarity between the characteristics of women and those of managers (r ¼ 0.17). Men and managers but not women were reported to share thirty-nine traits, whereas women and managers but not men shared only fourteen. Overall, these results from female respondents are a bit more positive about women in general, particularly with regard to characteristics related to emotionality (emotionally stable and steady) and rational thinking (logical, analytical thinking, and consistent), but the pattern is still discouraging. Schein concludes that sex role stereotypes foster the view that women are less qualified than men for management positions and that both male and female managers are likely to make employment decisions in favor of men. Masculine is the model for success in management, especially in the minds of men.

THINK MANAGER—THINK MALE Work on gender stereotypes in management has continued since the 1970s, and although the picture has moderated somewhat, women have not come to be viewed as having qualifications comparable to those of men. Some of the work on gender stereotypes has explored the perceived masculinity and femininity of managers; that work is addressed in the chapter by Gary Powell,

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Anthony Butterfield, and Jane Parent (reprinted in this volume).8 The focus of the present chapter will be the thirty years of replications and extensions of the Schein methodology. O. C. Brenner, Joseph Tomkiewicz, and Schein conducted a fifteen-year follow-up of Schein’s original project.9 The number of women managers had increased greatly during that time span; perhaps attitudes about women in management had improved. In their 1989 study, the responses of 173 women were contrasted to those of 420 men from a variety of manufacturing and service firms. Responses from male participants indicated a strong correlation between the characteristics of men in general and successful middle managers (r ¼ 0.72), but no relationship between the traits of women in general and successful middle managers (r ¼ –0.01), replicating the findings from fifteen years prior. Responses from women participants, however, indicated an encouraging change of views. For the women respondents, the correlations between men and successful middle managers (r ¼ 0.59) and between women and successful middle managers (r ¼ 0.52) were both strong and equally significant. Interestingly, women and men were found to agree on the characteristics that make a good manager (r ¼ 0.95). If women and men agree on what it takes to be a successful middle manager and men do not believe that women in general have those characteristics, then it appears that the source of any changes rests in women’s perceptions of women in general; by 1989 women saw women in general as possessing many of the traits necessary for success in middle management. Brenner et al. conclude that given the views of men have changed so little, a strong case can be made for continuing affirmative action efforts for initial entry-level positions and for extending those efforts to upper levels. The persistence of men’s stereotyped attitudes could severely limit women’s abilities to advance into positions of power and influence. (It is noteworthy that Brenner and colleagues did not find a pattern related to age or tenure of the respondent, nor do most of the studies that follow.) A question that readily comes to mind when reading the Schein and the Brenner et al. studies concerns the choice of the terms women ‘‘in general’’ and men ‘‘in general.’’ Are women (and men) generally interested in management positions? Might a respondent who feels women ‘‘in general’’ do not possess the characteristics needed to become a manager still recognize that many women do? Jennifer Deal and Maura Stevenson asked introductory psychology students to indicate whether ninety-one of Schein’s traits were characteristic or not characteristic of either a successful manager, a successful male manager, or a successful female manager.10 Male and female participants agreed more on the characteristics of managers (forty-two of sixty) and male managers (forty-eight of sixty) than on the characteristics of female managers (thirteen of sixty). For example, male participants were likely to describe female managers as bitter, nervous, passive, quarrelsome, and uncertain, whereas female participants were likely to describe female managers as assertive, competent, emotionally stable, and industrious. Given perceptions of managers and male managers were

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similar across the sexes, and only the perceptions of male respondents were highly negative of female managers, the authors concluded that negative perceptions of female managers are largely a function of the sex of the perceiver. With this study, the pattern of male respondents showing greater bias regarding women in management is strengthened and the relevance of the prior findings to women managers is clarified. Does it matter if we know about the effectiveness of the job holders? Madeline Heilman, Caryn Block, and Richard Martell addressed this issue by having respondents describe the attributes of six categories of persons: women in general, men in general, women managers, men managers, successful women managers, and successful men managers.11 They had 224 male managers each rate one of those persons on forty-two of Schein’s original traits. The traits had been previously grouped into seven work-relevant categories (work competence, activity/potency, emotional stability, independence, rationality, concern for others, and hostility toward others). Five of those categories were considered to be stereotypically masculine: competent, active, emotionally stable, independent, and rational. Of those masculine trait categories, women managers were rated more positively than women in general on all five, women managers were rated less positively than men managers on all but independence, and successful women and men managers differed only on rationality. Thus, participants recognized that women managers are distinct from women in general and the word successful did much to improve the respondents’ assumptions about women managers. Sadly, all was not positive, even for the successful women managers. Successful women managers and women managers were thought to display less concern for others than women in general, and successful women managers and women managers were thought to show more hostility than women in general. It appears that the characterization that resulted for successful women managers included ‘‘strongly negative qualities indicative of a hostile-toward-others, ‘bitch’ caricature of the high-powered career woman.’’12 This evaluative ambivalence was not replicated in perceptions of men managers, particularly men managers attributed with success. On the six masculine traits, men managers did not differ significantly from men in general, consistent with the prior findings that men as a group are perceived to have the skills requisite for management positions, and those same traits were rated as more characteristic of successful men managers than of men in general. Successful men managers were also more concerned with others than men managers or men in general, and successful men managers and men managers both showed less hostility toward others than men in general. Thus, successful men managers were given a consistent and desirable description. The authors conclude that job-relevant information can serve to lessen the stereotype process, given that the term successful resulted in more positive impressions of both women and men. Information that legitimates a leader has previously been shown to be beneficial to women13 and provides a promising lead for addressing potential bias.

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The preceding studies have explored the traits needed for success in middle management. Women have made significant progress in securing middlemanagement positions in recent decades but remain severely underrepresented at the executive level. It seems feasible that women aspiring to executive positions are perceived as even more in violation of sex role expectations than those looking at middle management and consequently, the path to the upper echelon remains blocked. The attributes needed for success in upper management positions were explored by Richard Martell, Christopher Parker, Cynthia Emrich, and Marnie Swerdlin Crawford.14 Participants included 132 male middle- or senior-level managers, who described either men middle managers, women middle managers, successful men middle managers, or successful women middle managers on four attributes deemed essential for success in executive positions. Those attributes included being a change agent, having managerial courage, having leadership ability, and being results-oriented. Successful managers were judged to be stronger on all four executive attributes than those not designated as successful. Men managers were judged to be stronger than women managers on being agents for change and on managerial courage. Successful men managers and successful women managers did not differ on leadership ability, but when success was not specified men managers were thought to have more leadership ability than women managers. Thus, in Martell et al.’s study, the specification successful attenuated perceived gender differences only on the executive characteristic of leadership and explicit verification of managerial success did less to eliminate stereotyping than had been expected. The authors acknowledged that the gender stereotyping effects in the study were small to moderate but argued that ‘‘small amounts of sex bias are sufficient to seriously stunt the upward mobility of women managers,’’15 and that ‘‘it is with good reason that women believe that the prevalence of sex stereotypes continue to impede their upward mobility.’’16 Richard Martell and Aaron DeSmet criticized the works described for having focused on trait-like measures of leadership and not on actual leadership behaviors.17 They employed a set of fourteen behavioral categories (delegating, inspiring, intellectual stimulation, mentoring, modeling, monitoring, networking, problem solving, rewarding, supporting, upward influence, consulting, planning, and team building) which were presented with fixed behavioral anchors. Participants included 151 managers who described either male middle managers and female middle managers or male successful middle managers and female successful middle managers, by indicating the percentage likely to effectively demonstrate each leadership behavior. Male respondents indicated that male managers (regardless of success designation) were more likely than female managers to display behaviors related to delegating, inspiring, intellectual stimulation, and problem solving. They also expected male managers to network more than female managers, but this difference disappeared if the female managers were designated as successful. Furthermore, they expected

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female managers to consult more than male managers, but this difference disappeared when successful was specified. Interestingly, male and female managers were not thought to differ in team building, but successful male managers were thought to engage in that activity more than successful female managers. Female respondents indicated that female managers were more likely to display behaviors related to inspiring, mentoring, problem solving, rewarding, and supporting, whereas male managers were more likely to delegate. Furthermore, though both female managers and successful female managers were perceived as consulting more than male managers, the difference was more stark for those designated as successful. Overall, male and female respondents did not stereotype on the behaviors of modeling, monitoring, planning, and upward influence, male respondents favored male managers on five behaviors and female managers on one, female respondents favored female managers on six behaviors and male managers on one. Martell and DeSmet suggest that theirs is one of the first studies to demonstrate female bias against males.18 An alternative and somewhat more positive wording might be to describe their findings as an example of same-sex or ingroup favoritism.19 Gender stereotypes in management and leadership positions have received extensive study, but Lisa Boyce and Ann Herd extended the work into the very specific, male-dominated domain of the military.20 These authors suggest that cadets are ‘‘strongly steeped in the attitudes, norms, and traditions within the academy walls.’’21 Students at a military service college, including 635 men and 140 women, participated. Doing so involved rating how characteristic each of Schein’s ninety-two traits was of either women in general, men in general, or successful officers. For male cadets, the descriptions of officers and of men in general correlated significantly (r ¼ 0.41), whereas those for officers and women in general did not (r ¼ – 0.11). For female cadets, the correlation between officers and men in general approached significance (r ¼ 0.25), and that for officers and women in general was significant (r ¼ 0.30). Overall, male and female respondents agreed that successful officers and men in general but not women shared five characteristics (authoritative, self-reliant, feelings not easily hurt, frank, and not submissive), and successful officers and women in general but not men shared four (cheerful, kind, neat, and sympathetic). An additional analysis considered the perceived effectiveness of the cadets on a scale of military performance. Boyce and Herd had expected but did not find that the successful female cadets would gender-type the officer job as requiring feminine characteristics (consistent with the same-sex favoritism found in Martell and DeSmet).22 Responses from female cadets judged above average in their military performance showed a slightly stronger correlation between the characteristics of officers and men in general (r ¼ 0.37) than between officers and women in general (r ¼ 0.29), but both were significant. Contrary to expectations, responses from female cadets judged below average in military performance showed no correlation between ratings for officers and

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men in general (r ¼ – 0.01), but a significant correlation for officers and women in general (r ¼ 0.34). The finding that the less successful female cadets were the ones to feminize the leadership role may explain their lack of success, as they would strive to display a feminine leadership style but be judged by others employing a masculine standard. It is also apparent that the correlations in this study were generally lower than in previous studies; apparently even men ‘‘in general’’ are somewhat lacking in the traits needed for success as a military officer. Overall, it appears that think manager—think male is still strongly evidenced in the perceptions of men but more weakly evidenced in the perceptions of women. Furthermore, when leadership is defined behaviorally, female respondents may actually judge women to be better leaders. Additional studies have addressed whether similar patterns of bias exist outside of the United States and within the United States but across racial groupings.

THINK MANAGER—THINK MALE AS A GLOBAL PHENOMENON Research on stereotypes of managers has been extended through a variety of cross-nationality comparisons. Virginia Schein and colleague Ruediger Mueller had management students in Germany, Great Britain, and the United States respond to Schein’s original set of ninety-two adjectives, each describing either women in general, men in general, or successful middle managers.23 Male respondents in all three countries showed the typical pattern of bias, with the characteristics of men in general and managers correlating significantly and those for women in general and managers having virtually no similarity. Women from Germany showed almost as much bias as the men, women from Great Britain also sex-typed but saw women in general as having a few more relevant characteristics, and women from the United States did not sex-type the position of manager. Similarly, Virginia Schein, Ruediger Mueller, Teri Lituchy, and Jiang Liu extended the work to China and Japan.24 Males from both countries demonstrated sex typing similar to that in the United States. Unlike recent findings from the United States but similar to those from Germany, women from China and Japan saw little resemblance between women and managers. These findings led Schein to conclude in 2001 that think manager—think male is a global phenomenon, particularly among males and despite the many historical, political, and cultural differences that exist among countries.25 She suggests that with women’s greater participation in management in the United States, improved attitudes of women toward women in management have emerged, and the same may follow in the views of American men and citizens of other countries. Unfortunately, given that men in most countries continue to be the decision makers who control advancement into upper management, the rate of increase in women’s participation may be slow.

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THINK MANAGER—THINK WHITE To determine if the managerial stereotype was actually a white managerial stereotype, comparisons of the traits characteristic of whites in general, African Americans in general, and successful middle managers were explored by Joseph Tomkiewicz, O. C. Brenner, and Tope Adeyemi-Bello.26 A sample including 305 white male managers and 120 white female managers from manufacturing and service firms completed their survey. The characteristics of whites in general and successful middle managers were found to correlate significantly (r ¼ 0.54), whereas those for African Americans in general and successful middle managers did not (r ¼ 0.17). (The response patterns for male and female participants were similar.) Thus, it appears that we may not only think manager—think male but also think manager—think white. Joseph Tomkiewicz and O. C. Brenner note that Hispanics are the fastestgrowing segment of the American population and are projected to surpass the number of African Americans by 2010.27 Management students (110 males and 122 females, race unspecified) described either Hispanics in general, whites in general, successful Hispanic managers, or middle managers in general. The descriptions for whites and middle managers (r ¼ 0.80) and Hispanics and middle managers (r ¼ 0.35) both showed significant relationships, though the correspondence for Hispanics and managers was significantly lower. Furthermore, male respondents indicated more similarity of Hispanics and middle managers (r ¼ 0.47) than did female respondents (r ¼ 0.21). Given that the characteristics of Hispanics in general were perceived to have rather marginal overlap with those of middle managers, it is somewhat surprising that the ratings for successful Hispanic managers and middle managers were markedly similar (r ¼ 0.86). The designation successful had a pronounced positive effect, particularly on the perceptions of female respondents. It again appears that information that legitimates a manager (such as the designation successful) has the power to overcome otherwise powerful stereotypes.

DESCRIPTIVE VERSUS PRESCRIPTIVE NORMS Gender stereotypes generate expectations for behavior; expected behaviors are referred to as norms. Norms can be descriptive—what we feel men and women actually or typically do; norms can be prescriptive—what we believe men and women should do. The preceding studies used wordings that fit with descriptive norms, most frequently asking what men and women are like, sometimes what percent was likely to demonstrate a characteristic, other times asking if a trait was characteristic or not. The distinction between descriptive and prescriptive norms, and the level of gender stereotyping associated with each, were explored by Sabine Sczesny in the context of leadership.28 Deborah Prentice and Erica Carranza further develop the concept of prescriptive norms

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in both the broad context of American society and the specific context of Princeton University.29 Sczesny asked 215 German management students to describe one of five categories of persons (leaders in general, women, men, female leaders, or male leaders) on twenty person-oriented and twenty task-oriented leadership characteristics.30 (An additional group of respondents generated a self-description.) The descriptive norm was assessed by having respondents indicate what percent of the group they were describing possessed a characteristic and the prescriptive norm by asking how important they thought the characteristic was for a member of that group. Comparisons of women, men, and leaders in general were thought to be global in nature, whereas those of female leaders, male leaders, and leaders in general were considered more specific. Descriptively, Sczesny found that leaders in general were thought to be more likely to possess taskoriented skills (65.9 percent) than person-oriented skills (45.9 percent) but prescriptively, the two sets of skills were rated as equally important. Furthermore, when asked if they had thought of a man, a man and a woman, or a woman when describing a leader, 55.6 percent had thought of a man and 44.5 percent had pictured men and women; no respondent thought exclusively of a female leader. Descriptively, Sczesny’s male and female respondents reproduced what could here be termed a think leader—think male pattern.31 With regard to the more global women and leader in general comparisons, both men and women described women as having stronger person-oriented skills and weaker taskoriented skills than leaders; the same was true for the more specific woman leader and leader in general comparisons. Person and task skills were thought to be equally important to men and leaders in general and to men leaders and leaders in general. Thus, the traditional gender stereotypes were strongly evidenced in the descriptive norms. That both male and female respondents expressed equal support for traditional stereotypes is not surprising, when one remembers that German women and men have both been shown to endorse traditional biases.32 Sczesny described the prescriptive responses as more androgynous.33 A variety of gender differences emerged (e.g., male respondents thought taskrelated skills were markedly less important for women in general than for men or leaders in general), but the differences were small and the overall patterns were not consistent with the gender stereotypes. In this way, the prescriptive norms were less gender stereotyped than those expressed descriptively. Sczesny concludes that gender stereotypes may have a greater influence on descriptive norms (what a person is actually like) than on prescriptive norms (what a person should be like). A different and perhaps more thorough understanding of gender-related prescriptions comes from the work of Prentice and Carranza, who also introduce the idea of gender-related proscriptions.34 The projects discussed to this point have focused primarily on the positive traits people are supposed to have

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by virtue of their gender; this study also considered sex-typed negative traits. Prentice and Carranza suggest that many characteristics are prescribed by our culture; they are desirable and expected characteristics. Other characteristics are proscribed by our culture; they are undesirable and prohibited characteristics. Furthermore, the level of prescription and proscription can vary depending on the sex of the person. As depicted in box 1 of Table 8.1, gender intensified prescriptions are desirable characteristics that are more desirable in one of the sexes than for the typical person, whereas gender-intensified proscriptions are viewed as more undesirable in either men or women than for persons in general. Gender-relaxed prescriptions are good traits that are less expected from one sex than from the typical person, and gender-relaxed proscriptions are undesirable characteristics that are more tolerated from one sex. In Prentice and Carranza’s first data set, respondents described persons in American society.35 Participants rated how desirable each of 100 traits was for TABLE 8.1. Gender Prescriptions and Proscriptions as Defined and Identified by Prentice and Carranza (2002)

Socially Desirable Socially Undesirable

Socially Desirable Socially Undesirable

Socially Desirable Socially Undesirable

More Desirable for the Specified Sex

Less Desirable for the Specified Sex

Gender-intensified prescription

Gender-relaxed prescription

Gender-relaxed proscription

Gender-intensified proscription

More Desirable for the Female Sex

Less Desirable for the Female Sex

Warm & kind (n ¼ 16) Friendly (n ¼ 11)

Intelligent (n ¼ 27) Active (n ¼ 23)

Yielding (n ¼ 10) Emotional (n ¼ 8)

Rebellious (n ¼ 6) Intimidating (n ¼ 8)

More Desirable for the Male Sex

Less Desirable for the Male Sex

Business sense (n ¼ 18) (n ¼ 0)

Happy (n ¼ 18) Enthusiastic (n ¼ 7)

Rebellious (n ¼ 8) Domineering (n ¼ 1)

Emotional (n ¼ 12) Shy (n ¼ 6)

Note: The examples in the second and third boxes are of traits more strongly prescribed or proscribed for the specified sex than for the person in general. The first trait in each box was offered for comparisons ‘‘in America’’ and the second trait for comparisons ‘‘at Princeton.’’ The number of traits in each category (n) is indicated.

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male, female, and gender-unspecified persons (generating prescriptions and proscriptions) and how typical each trait was of males and females (generating descriptions). The set of traits included seventy-five positive and twenty-five negative gender-correlated attributes. In their second data set, respondents described a male undergraduate at Princeton (which the authors maintain is a very male-dominated environment), a female undergraduate at Princeton, and a person at Princeton. Participants again rated desirability and typicality of 100 traits, but the set of traits was modified to fit a college scenario. Prentice and Carranza found that the prescriptions and proscriptions for men and for persons in American society were more similar than those for women and persons.36 Their respondents indicated that it was less desirable for a woman but not more desirable for a man to be intelligent and mature, to have common sense and a good sense of humor, to be concerned for the future, principled, efficient, clever, worldly, and persuasive, and to defend beliefs than it was for a person to have these qualities. Similarly, they indicated that it was less desirable for a man but not more desirable for a woman to be happy, helpful, enthusiastic, optimistic, creative, and devoted to a religion than it was for a person to have these qualities.37

Prescriptions and proscriptions for male undergraduates and persons at Princeton were even more similar than in the first data set (they did not differ on any intensified prescription and differed on only one relaxed proscription) and more similar than those for female undergraduates and persons. (Sample items from both data sets are available in boxes 2 and 3 of Table 8.1.) Apparently think person—think male is still the norm in America and think person—think male is the rule at Princeton. Descriptive norms were also assessed by Prentice and Carranza through their ratings of the typicality of each trait.38 Although most traits that differed in socially desirable for the sexes (prescriptive norms) also differed in perceived typicality (descriptive norms), there were exceptions. In particular, ten of the twenty-seven relaxed prescriptions for women in America (intelligent, mature, common sense, concern for future, principled, efficient, rational, disciplined, clever, and worldly) were thought to be equally typical of women and men. Five of the twenty-three relaxed prescriptions for women at Princeton (intelligent, active, competent, articulate, and overachieving) did not differ in typicality. Apparently many nonstereotypical characteristics needed by women to function in what are increasingly common nontraditional roles are now perceived to be typical of women in general. Women were described as having the qualities prescribed by traditional gender roles and many of those required by nontraditional roles, so their prescribed characteristics and descriptive traits did not match, and their descriptive norms were less stereotypical. Men have less disjunction between their stereotypical and actual roles, so their prescriptive and descriptive norms were more consistent. In addition, many positive traits did not

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differ in desirability for the sexes but were perceived as more typical of women, with the end result being an overall more positive description of women. It is noteworthy that sex of participant did not enter into any significant results. Violations of stereotypes can take multiple form, according to Prentice and Carranza, and those violations elicit different responses.39 Violations of gender-intensified prescriptions are punished, as happens to women who are not interested in having children and men who are not decisive. Violating a gender-intensified proscription involves failure to comply with both a gender norm and a social desirability norm and receives a more extremely negative response, as occurs for men who display feminine qualities and women who behave arrogantly. Violations of the relaxed prescriptions and proscriptions may elicit rewards, provided one does not simultaneously violate other aspects of the gender stereotype. Thus, women may be goal-oriented if also well-groomed; men may be warm and kind if also goal-oriented. Prentice and Carranza conclude that the descriptive aspects of the gender stereotype may lead to the perception that women are unqualified for stereotypically masculine positions, thus agreeing with Sczesny that descriptive norms can be quite traditional.40 They also conclude that prescriptive norms may result in disparate treatment, as when women who violate prescriptions are responded to with hostility. Prentice and Carranza’s participants appear to have painted a markedly more positive picture of women and for women than did Sczesny’s.41 Although men and the generic person shared more characteristics than women and the generic person in both studies, Prentice and Carranza’s participants gave an overall more socially desirable description of the women. The two studies differ in many ways. Prentice and Carranza employed American college students with various majors as respondents and couched their studies in the context of American society and Princeton University; Sczesny employed German management students who evaluated the traits relative to leaders. Prentice and Carranza also made a point to bring in the desirability and typicality of negative traits, which Sczesny did not. Although it is not clear which factors led to the differences in their findings and conclusions, the following research studies make the case that aspects of the persons being researched, aspects of the context in which they are making their decisions, and the interaction of personal and contextual factors could all moderate level of gender bias.

CONTEXTUAL FACTORS AND POSSIBLE SOLUTIONS Through what mechanisms does gender actually affect selection decisions? Elissa Perry, Alison Davis-Blake, and Carol Kulik explore both contextual and cognitive explanations for gender segregation, and conclude in favor of the interaction of the two.42 Contextual factors may include the demographic composition of the applicant pool and the workforce. For example, applicants often learn about jobs

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from similar (same-sex) others who are already in those jobs, leading the gender composition of the applicant pool to stay stable; individuals tend to hire and promote others similar to themselves, leading the gender composition of incumbents to stay stable. Contextual factors also involve the structure and size of the organization. For example, large firms tend to have more formal structures and ladders, and formal job ladders are often separated by gender with women’s job ladders offering less mobility. Contextual factors may relate to the power of key interest groups, both within and outside of the organization. For example, when affirmative action officers have little power (within the company) gender segregation tends to persist, and when an organization’s hiring practices are not exposed to external scrutiny (little power from outside the company) there is often less gender integration. Perry et al. surmise that these contextual factors likely inhibit the career progress of women.43 Gender stereotypes are central to the cognitive perspective. According to Perry et al., the cognitive perspective argues that organizational decision makers are imperfect evaluators whose judgments about applicants and position holders can be biased by societal factors. Evaluators employ a jobholder stereotype (or schema) that should include attributes essential for effective performance. Jobholder stereotypes may be developed from repeated observations of similar events, and if the holders of those jobs are of one sex, gender may become part of the stereotype. Furthermore, the content of the jobholder stereotype may be explicitly taught or socialized, leading to an expectation that the jobholder will be of a specific sex or will have specific gender-related attributes (e.g., warm and caring). A job applicant who displays many of the attributes requisite to the jobholder stereotype will be perceived as highly qualified. If the jobholder stereotype includes that the candidate should be female, females will be advantaged in the hiring process; if the jobholder stereotype includes that the person should be warm and caring, females will again be advantaged because we consider those attributes to be more typical of women.44 Perry et al. contend that the best explanations for gender segregation involve the interaction of cognitive and contextual factors, stating that ‘‘decision makers’ propensity to use gender as a basis for selection and promotion decisions varies across organizational contexts.’’45 They offer a variety of predictions as to when gender stereotypes are likely to be activated.





Gender is more likely to be included in a decision maker’s jobholder stereotype (cognitive) when the applicant pool is of primarily one gender (contextual), and gender-associated jobholder stereotypes are more likely to be activated (cognitive) if the job applicants are primarily of one sex (contextual). Gender is more likely to be part of the stereotype for a leader (cognitive) when most occupants of leadership positions are of one sex (contextual), and gender-associated jobholder stereotypes are more likely to be activated (cognitive) if the job incumbents are primarily of one sex (contextual).

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The number of job titles within an organization (contextual) may relate to the level of stereotyping (cognitive). Stereotypes tend to develop with repeated observation. Perry et al. surmise that if each job has a different title, then observers are encouraged to think of those positions as unique. If the holders of these very specific job titles tend to be of one sex, or if a position only has one occupant, then the observer is encouraged to gender-type the position. The jobholder stereotype is more likely to include gender (cognitive) when a formal job ladder is in place (contextual). Thus, in hierarchical organizations with many job titles and formal structures, gender stereotyping is more likely. The jobholder stereotype is less likely to include gender (cognitive) if leaders formally express a desire to hire and promote persons of both sexes (contextual).

Perry and colleagues recommend the standardization of personnel functions as a method of reducing the use of gender-associated stereotypes.46 Organizations may change decision makers’ stereotypes through education and incentives. Gender-neutral terms may be used in job descriptions (e.g., supervisor is more gender neutral than manager). Accountability of the decision maker may reduce reliance on gender stereotypes, so monitoring of the decision-making process may reduce gender stereotyping. Furthermore, reliance on gender stereotypes tends to be greater in situations with time pressure and work overload (e.g., Martell).47 More detailed and specific examples of the interaction of contextual and cognitive factors are provided by Sabine Sczesny and Ulrich Ku¨hnen;48 by Alice Eagly, Steven Karau, and Mona Makhijani;49 and by Robin Ely.50 Sczesny and Ku¨hnen provide evidence that a decision maker’s intentional efforts to control for the effects of gender stereotyping may result in overcorrection (contrast effects), such that women are inappropriately favored.51 In effect, participants who are aware of the nondesirable effects of stereotyping sometimes overcompensate. Participants in Sczesny and Ku¨hnen’s study evaluated a candidate for a leadership position. The candidate was either male or female and was dressed in either a masculine or feminine manner. Respondents evaluated their candidate on leadership competence and indicated whether they would recommend hiring the person. Some respondents were required to memorize a nine-digit number while processing the information about the candidate (high cognitive work load), and others were not (low cognitive work load). When working under a light load, such that personal concerns about stereotyping could be attended to, women were favored. However, when working under a heavy load such that participants were cognitively stressed, men were favored. It is an unfortunate reality that today’s corporate decision makers, managers, and supervisors seldom have light work loads, which means that stereotyping disadvantaging women is likely.

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Clearly, work load becomes another important contextual factor. An additional aspect of Sczesny and Ku¨hnen’s project added greater detail on the interaction of work load and personal factors. Many different classes of stereotypes can affect impressions, and concerns with limiting their impact may vary. As noted earlier, Sczesny and Ku¨hnen also manipulated the gender-stereotypical physical appearance of the job candidates.52 Most people do not have personal concerns with regard to managing stereotypes in this area and cognitive load was not found to moderate its effects; generally the masculine appearing candidates were attributed with more leadership competence. (The one exception was that female participants also attributed the femininely dressed female candidate with this characteristic.) Thus, Sczesny and Ku¨hnen provide evidence that cognitive factors (awareness of which stereotypes are socially undesirable) interact with contextual variables (work load). Eagly, Karua, and Makhijani conducted a meta-analysis on leadership studies to determine if one sex was actually more effective in leadership roles and if there were conditions (contextual factors) that tended to produce differences in effectiveness.53 In the process, they compared theories that focus on cognitive factors as predictors of perceived effectiveness, such as stereotypes regarding the sex of the appropriate jobholder, with those that emphasize contextual factors, such as whether leadership in the particular position has been defined in masculine, feminine, or androgynous terms. Leadership effectiveness may depend on the match of these various factors, such that in androgynous positions women and men may be equally effective but in sex-typed positions (which would activate gender stereotyping) the incumbent of the expected sex would be advantaged. Thus, Eagly et al. appear to argue for the interaction of cognitive and contextual factors as posed by Perry and colleagues.54 Considering the aggregate of studies reviewed, Eagly et al. conclude that male and female leaders do not differ in effectiveness.55 However, that general conclusion obscured a more complex pattern involving the above-mentioned contextual factor. In leadership roles that were male-dominated and involved working with male subordinates, specifically the military, male leaders were judged to be markedly more effective. Several other types of organizations were found to slightly favor female leaders, those being government and social service agencies, educational institutions, and to a lesser extent, business settings. Furthermore, men fared better in entry-level leadership positions and women in middle-level positions. Eagly et al. interpret this latter finding as consistent with prior reports that lower-level management often relies heavily on technical skills, whereas middle management relies more on relationship skills. Clearly gender was not unimportant in the organizations and groups studied, as gender when combined with leadership context moderated effectiveness. The importance of male-dominated roles as a contextual factor is similarly illustrated in the findings of Ely.56 Ely explored gender as a social construction.57 Specifically, she examined how women’s proportional representation in the upper management levels of an

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organization affects the stereotypical nature of their professional roles. Thus, her study provides an additional example of contextual factors (proportional representation) interacting with cognitive factors (gender stereotyping of roles). Ely explored level of sex typing in the perceptions of women lawyers, who were employed as associates in either male-dominated (5 percent or fewer female partners) or sex-integrated (15 percent or more female partners) law firms. Although much of Ely’s project focused on qualitative interview responses, participants also rated themselves, professional women, professional men, and what it takes to be successful in their firm on thirty-six behavioral and psychological attributes. The ratings for professional men and women correlated more strongly in the sex-integrated firms than in the male-dominated, as did the ratings for professional women and what it takes to be successful. Furthermore, women in sex-integrated firms were more able to integrate masculinity and femininity, seeing their femininity as a source of strength and competence. It appears that a more androgynous stereotype was evidenced in the sex-integrated firms. Ely acknowledged that her study did not clarify whether the combination of masculine and feminine traits that was accepted in sex-integrated firms for female attorneys would be equally embraced for males, but she clearly documented the interaction of cognitive factors (gender stereotypes) and context (sex integration of the firm). Evidently, if we are to lessen the impact of gender stereotypes in management and other leadership positions, a variety of factors must be considered as must their possible interactions. Gender is more likely to be included in the jobholder stereotype if the applicant pool is of only one sex and if the job incumbents are of one sex, and those conditions are more likely to exist when job titles are very narrow. Organizations can take steps to change jobholder stereotypes, to make jobholder stereotypes more gender-neutral, and to discourage the use of gender stereotypes in hiring. Organizations can lessen the effects of gender stereotypes by including information that legitimates the jobholder (e.g., recognize the individual’s successes) and by allowing decision makers to consider applicants under circumstances of low work load. Organizations that do not involve the military and are not heavily male-dominated will be more successful at making such changes. A multitude of findings suggest that having females involved in decision making greatly improves the chances of women being perceived as eligible candidates; certainly organizations can take steps to maintain and increase the involvement of females on selection committees. The early work on gender stereotyping in the United States painted a bleak picture for women in management, and the same is true for more recent studies about women in some specific contexts and from a variety of countries. Furthermore, even in the United States, racial stereotypes may hinder the advancement of Hispanics and African Americans. The picture is not all negative, however, when one considers the options for lessening the impact of these stereotypes by altering the many contextual factors with which they are known to interact.

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NOTES 1. Miriam Lewin, ‘‘The Victorians, the Psychologists, and Psychic Birth Control,’’ in Miriam Lewin, ed., In the Shadow of the Past: Psychology Portrays the Sexes (New York: Columbia University Press, 1984), pp. 39–76. 2. Miriam Greenspan, How Psychotherapy Fails Women and What They Can Do about It: A New Approach to Women and Therapy (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1985), p. 92. 3. Helene Deutsch, The Psychology of Women: A Psychoanalytic Interpretation (New York: Grune and Stratton, 1944). 4. Inge K. Broverman, Donald M. Broverman, Frank E. Clarkson, Paul S. Rosenkrantz, and Susan R. Vogel, ‘‘Sex-Role Stereotypes and Clinical Judgments of Mental Health,’’ Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology 34 (1970): 1–7. 5. Virginia E. Schein, ‘‘The Relationship between Sex Role Stereotypes and Requisite Management Characteristics,’’ Journal of Applied Psychology 57 (1973): 95–100. 6. Ibid. 7. Virginia E. Schein, ‘‘Relationships between Sex Role Stereotypes and Requisite Management Characteristics among Female Managers,’’ Journal of Applied Psychology 60 (1975): 340–44. 8. Gary N. Powell, D. Anthony Butterfield, and Jane D. Parent, ‘‘Gender and Managerial Stereotypes: Have the Times Changed?’’ Journal of Management 28 (2002): 177–93. 9. O. C. Brenner, Joseph Tomkiewicz, and Virginia E. Schein, ‘‘The Relationship between Sex Role Stereotypes and Requisite Management Characteristics Revisited,’’ Academy of Management Journal 32 (1989): 662–69. 10. Jennifer J. Deal and Maura A. Stevenson, ‘‘Perceptions of Female and Male Managers in the 1990s: Plus C ¸ a Change . . . ,’’ Sex Roles 38 (1998): 287–300. 11. Madeline E. Heilman, Caryn J. Block, and Richard F. Martell, ‘‘Sex Stereotypes: Do They Influence Perceptions of Managers?’’ in Nancy J. Struthers, ed., Gender in the Workplace [special issue], Journal of Social Behavior and Personality 10 (1995): 237–52. 12. Ibid., p. 249. 13. Janice D. Yoder, Thomas L. Schleicher, and Theodore W. McDonald, ‘‘Empowering Token Women Leaders: The Importance of Organizationally Legitimated Credibility,’’ Psychology of Women Quarterly 22 (1998): 209–22. 14. Richard F. Martell, Christopher Parker, Cynthia G. Emrich, and Marnie Swerdlin Crawford, ‘‘Sex Stereotyping in the Executive Suite: Much Ado about Something,’’ Journal of Social Behavior and Personality 13 (1998): 127–38. 15. Ibid., p. 136. 16. Ibid., p. 137. 17. Richard F. Martell and Aaron L. DeSmet, ‘‘A Diagnostic-Ratio Approach to Measuring Beliefs about the Leadership Abilities of Male and Female Managers,’’ Journal of Applied Psychology 86 (2001): 1223–31. 18. Ibid. 19. Henri Tajfel, Human Groups and Social Categories: Studies in Social Psychology (London: Cambridge University Press, 1981). 20. Lisa A. Boyce and Ann M. Herd, ‘‘The Relationship between Gender Role Stereotypes and Requisite Military Leadership Characteristics,’’ Sex Roles 49 (2003): 365–78.

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21. Ibid., 367. 22. Ibid. 23. Virginia E. Schein and Ruediger Mueller, ‘‘Sex Role Stereotyping and Requisite Management Characteristics: A Cross Cultural Look,’’ Journal of Organizational Behavior 13 (1992): 439–47. 24. Virginia E. Schein, Ruediger Mueller, Terri Lituchy, and Jiang Liu, ‘‘Think Manager—Think Male: A Global Phenomenon?’’ Journal of Organizational Behavior 17 (1996): 33–41. 25. Virginia E. Schein, ‘‘A Global Look at Psychological Barriers to Women’s Progress in Management,’’ Journal of Social Issues 57 (2001): 675–88. 26. Joseph Tomkiewicz, O. C. Brenner, and Tope Adeyemi-Bello, ‘‘The Impact of Perceptions and Stereotypes on the Managerial Mobility of African Americans,’’ The Journal of Social Psychology 138 (1998): 88–92. 27. Joseph Tomkiewicz and O. C. Brenner, ‘‘The Relationship between Race (Hispanic) Stereotypes and Requisite Management Characteristics,’’ Journal of Social Behavior and Personality 11 (1996): 511–20. 28. Sabine Sczesny, ‘‘A Closer Look beneath the Surface: Various Facets of the Think-Manager—Think-Male Stereotype,’’ Sex Roles 49 (2003): 353–63. 29. Deborah A. Prentice and Erica Carranza, ‘‘What Women and Men Should Be, Shouldn’t Be, Are Allowed to Be, and Don’t Have to Be: The Contents of Prescriptive Gender Stereotypes,’’ Psychology of Women Quarterly 26 (2002): 269–81. 30. Sczesny, ‘‘A Closer Look.’’ 31. Ibid. 32. Schein and Mueller, ‘‘Sex Role Stereotyping and Requisite Management Characteristics.’’ 33. Sczesny, ‘‘A Closer Look.’’ 34. Prentice and Carranza, ‘‘What Women and Men Should Be.’’ 35. Ibid. 36. Ibid. 37. Ibid., p. 272. 38. Ibid. 39. Ibid. 40. Sczesny, ‘‘A Closer Look.’’ 41. Prentice and Carranza, ‘‘What Women and Men Should Be’’; Sczesny, ‘‘A Closer Look.’’ 42. Elissa L. Perry, Alison Davis-Blake, and Carol T. Kulik, ‘‘Explaining Genderbased Selection Decisions: A Synthesis of Contextual and Cognitive Approaches,’’ Academy of Management Review 19 (1994): 786–820. 43. Ibid. 44. Ibid. 45. Ibid., p. 787. 46. Ibid. 47. Richard F. Martell, ‘‘What Mediates Gender Bias in Work Behavior Ratings?’’ Sex Roles 35 (1996): 153–69. 48. Sabine Sczesny and Ulrich Ku¨hnen, ‘‘Meta-Cognition about Biological Sex and Gender-stereotypic Physical Appearance: Consequences for the Assessment of Leadership Competence,’’ Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin 30 (2004): 13–21.

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49. Alice H. Eagly, Steven J. Karau, and Mona G. Makhijani, ‘‘Gender and the Effectiveness of Leaders: A Meta-Analysis,’’ Psychological Bulletin 117 (1995): 125–45. 50. Robin J. Ely, ‘‘The Power of Demography: Women’s Social Constructions of Gender Identity at Work,’’ Academy of Management Journal 38 (1995): 589–634. 51. Sczesny and Ku¨hnen, ‘‘Meta-Cognition about Biological Sex.’’ 52. Ibid. 53. Eagly et al., ‘‘Gender and the Effectiveness of Leaders.’’ 54. Perry et al., ‘‘Explaining Gender-Based Selection Decisions.’’ 55. Eagly et al., ‘‘Gender and the Effectiveness of Leaders.’’ 56. Ely, ‘‘The Power of Demography.’’ 57. Ibid.

9

Impact of Gender on Leadership Shelly Grabe and Janet Shibley Hyde

As is reviewed elsewhere in this volume (e.g., Chapter 7), women made tremendous gains in leadership within organizations from the 1970s to the 1990s. According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, women held half of all management, professional, and related occupations in 2004.1 Despite these gains, women continue to be sparsely represented at higher levels of organizations and are extraordinarily rare in top managerial positions of businesses and corporations.2 In this chapter we discuss the role of gender in leadership positions in the context of gender role socialization. We begin by briefly reviewing traditional theories and styles of leadership to provide a framework for an extensive review of gender similarities and differences in leadership. We follow that with a discussion of how social role theory may help one understand gender differences in leadership roles. Finally, we propose an alternative model of leadership characterized by a nonhierarchical and cooperative framework.

TRADITIONAL THEORIES AND STYLES OF LEADERSHIP Traditional models of leadership that have been given the most attention by researchers are hierarchical in nature and therefore tend to focus on the role and achievements of the leader, with little attention paid to group processes.3 For example, trait theories of leadership tend to emphasize attributes of leaders such as intelligence and action-oriented judgment,4 whereas behavior theories focus on measurable definitions of leadership (e.g., goal attainment).5 Transformational leadership theories reflect a more collaborative view of group process in that leadership is enacted to inspire members of the group being led.6 The review in this chapter will focus on research that has been conducted within the framework of these traditional theories because almost all empirical research has been based in them.

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Researchers in the area of leadership focus on specific styles of leadership within the theories just laid out. The bulk of research on leadership styles that was conducted prior to 1990 distinguished between two approaches to leadership: taskoriented style, defined as a concern with accomplishing assigned tasks by organizing task-relevant activities, and interpersonally-oriented style, defined as a concern with maintaining interpersonal relationships by tending to others’ morale and welfare.7 A smaller number of studies distinguished between leaders who behaved democratically as opposed to autocratically. Democratically oriented leaders allow subordinates to participate in decision making, whereas autocratically oriented leaders tend to discourage such participation from subordinates.8 These styles of leadership can be loosely mapped onto gender stereotypes to the extent that women are traditionally viewed as more interpersonal and cooperative than men and men as more authoritative and directive than women. A shift in focus by several leadership researchers in the 1980s and 1990s led to the study of new types of styles.9 In particular, there has been recent focus on transformational versus transactional leadership. Transformational leadership is defined by an interest in serving as a role model and empowering followers. Transformational leaders tend to innovate to develop followers’ full potential and thereby contribute more to their organization.10 Researchers have contrasted transformational leaders with transactional leaders, who appeal to subordinates’ self-interest by establishing exchange relationships with them.11 This type of leadership involves managing in the more conventional sense of clarifying subordinate responsibilities, rewarding them for meeting objectives, and correcting them for failing to meet objectives. In addition to these two styles, researchers distinguish a laissez-faire style as that marked by a general failure to take responsibility for managing.

THE ROLE OF META-ANALYSIS IN RESEARCH ON LEADERSHIP AND GENDER The work of Alice Eagly and colleagues has provided the most comprehensive source of scholarship on gender differences in leadership. In particular, Eagly and colleagues have conducted synthesized reviews and meta-analyses in the areas of leadership style, effectiveness, emergence of leaders, evaluation, and motivation. Meta-analysis is a method used to review or survey research literature, and it applies statistical methodology to the task of integrating relevant research. Meta-analysis is a technique designed to permit researchers to evaluate the empirical evidence on a particular question by systematically cumulating data from numerous studies. In meta-analytic work, an effect size, d, is calculated to reflect the difference between the two groups of interest—in this case, women and men.12 The use of meta-analytic techniques in the area of leadership research has allowed researchers to estimate the overall magnitude of gender

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differences and compare them to other known gender differences. Given the depth and scientific rigor of the meta-analytic investigations that Eagly and colleagues have conducted on gender differences in leadership, this chapter will focus on the results reported in these quantitative reviews as opposed to the review of individual studies within the area. Therefore, the review of gender differences and similarities that follows is based on systematic and quantitative integrations of relevant research on several aspects of female and male leadership. The comprehensive use of quantitative methods permitted us to examine the extent to which there were notable gender differences in several aspects of leadership and compare the gender differences in one area of leadership (e.g., effectiveness) to another (e.g., evaluation). The effect sizes reported in this review are summarized in Table 9.1. The use of quantitative review methods also has allowed researchers to examine the extent to which gender differences were consistent across studies within each review. In other words, inconsistencies between studies could be examined to identify potential variables that moderated the gender difference in leadership roles. Thus, when relevant, the following review will discuss variables that differentially predict gender differences in leadership.

ARE THERE GENDER DIFFERENCES IN LEADERSHIP? REVIEW OF META-ANALYTIC RESULTS Before gender became a focus of study within the leadership literature, most research was conducted on task-oriented versus interpersonally oriented styles; however, as increasing numbers of women enter leadership roles, researchers have begun to question whether differences exist between women and men in various aspects of leadership. The following review will take a comprehensive look at a number of ways women’s and men’s leadership may be similar or different and conclude with suggestions regarding leadership that moves away from a traditional focus on aspects of masculinity. Leadership Style Many studies have explored the leadership styles of women and men to determine whether they carry out leadership roles differently. To investigate whether the styles that have been the traditional focus of research (task-oriented style versus interpersonally-oriented style; democratic versus autocratic) differed by gender, Eagly and Johnson conducted a meta-analysis of the 162 available studies that had compared women and men on these styles.13 Their comprehensive review of the literature between the years of 1961 and 1987 found that styles were somewhat gender stereotypic in laboratory experiments that used student participants and in assessment studies that investigated the leadership styles of people not selected for occupancy of leadership roles (e.g., samples of

TABLE 9.1.

Summary of Mean Effect Sizes for Reviewed Meta-Analyses

Leadership Dimension Assessed Traditional leadership style (Eagly and Johnson, 1990) All types of leadership Interpersonally oriented style (assessment setting) Interpersonally oriented style (laboratory setting) Democratic versus autocratic style (assessment setting) Democratic versus autocratic style (laboratory setting) Democratic versus autocratic style (organizational setting)

d

Positive scores indicate stereotypic differences. 0.03 0.25 0.37 0.08 0.19 0.21 Positive scores indicate males scored higher than females.

Contemporary leadership style (Eagly et al., 1991) Transformational style Individualized consideration Management by exception Contingent reward Laissez-faire


0.10
0.23 0.27
0.13 0.16 Positive scores indicate males scored higher than females.

Effectiveness in leadership (Eagly et al., 1995) Overall effectiveness Effectiveness excluding military Effectiveness rated by judges Effectiveness rated by subordinates Effectiveness rated by other leaders Effectiveness when assessed by ability Effectiveness when assessed by satisfaction Effectiveness when assessed by motivation Effectiveness when assessed by performance


0.02
0.12
0.12
0.19 0.07 0.28
0.16 0.01 0.05

Emergence of leaders (Eagly and Karua, 1991) Overall emergence Task leadership Unspecified leadership Social leadership <20-minute interaction

Interpretation of d

Positive scores indicate males scored higher than females. 0.32 0.41 0.29
0.18 0.58 (continued)

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TABLE 9.1. (Continued) Leadership Dimension Assessed More than one meeting held Tasks with high social complexity Tasks with low social complexity

d 0.09 0.55 0.23

Positive scores indicate males scored higher than females.

Evaluation of leaders (Eagly et al., 1992) Overall evaluation Autocratic leadership style Roles occupied mainly by men Roles occupied equally by men and women

0.05 0.30 0.09
0.06 Positive scores indicate males scored higher than females.

Motivation to lead (Eagly et al., 1994) Overall motivation Competitive games Competitive situations Assertive role Imposing wishes Standing out from the group Authority figures Routine administrative functions

Interpretation of d

0.22 0.31 0.15 0.27 0.19 0.12
0.17
0.09

employees). In general, the authors found that the average weighted effect size across all types of leadership style was slightly but significantly stereotypic (d ¼ 0.03, representing a very small effect by Cohen’s criteria;14 a positive sign was given to stereotypic differences (e.g., women more interpersonally oriented), and a negative sign to counterstereotypic differences). Thus, the overall findings suggest similarities in leadership style. To test whether gender differences in leadership style varied based on the setting, the authors divided the studies into organizational, laboratory, or assessment settings. Interestingly, they found that in the assessment and laboratory settings women tended to manifest relatively interpersonally oriented (d ¼ 0.25 and d ¼ 0.37, respectively) and democratic styles (d ¼ 0.08 and d ¼ 0.19, respectively) in comparison to men, who tended to exhibit task-oriented and autocratic styles. In contrast, gender differences were more limited in organizational studies assessing managers’ styles: The only demonstrated difference between female and male managers was that women adopted a somewhat more democratic or participative style and a less autocratic or directive style than did men (d ¼ 0.21). Male and female managers in organizational contexts did not differ in their tendencies to use interpersonally oriented and task-oriented styles.

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Thus, although overall gender-related difference in leadership styles across all contexts were close to zero, more notable gender differences in leadership style only emerged in certain situational contexts, but those differences are still relatively small. Finally, it appears the most consistent finding from this review was that on average, female leaders adopted a relatively democratic and participative style consistent with the female gender role. In a more recent study examining contemporary leadership styles, Eagly, Johannesen-Schmidt, and van Engen examined research that compared women and men on transformational, transactional, and laissez-faire leadership styles.15 The meta-analysis of forty-five studies examining gender-related differences in these leadership styles found that on average, female leaders were slightly more transformational than male leaders in their leadership (d ¼
0.10). In this review, the authors selected studies using the most widely employed measure of transformational and transactional leadership—the Multifactor Leadership Questionnaire (MLQ).16 Predicted gender-related differences were also found when the transformational and transactional scales of the MLQ were broken down into their respective subscales. For example, women scored higher than men on the transformational subscale of individualized consideration (d ¼
0.23). Men scored higher than women on one of the transactional subscales: management by exception-passive (d ¼ 0.27), whereas women scored slightly higher on the contingent reward subscale (d ¼
0.13). Men also scored higher on laissez-faire leadership (d ¼ 0.16). The overall comparisons on transformational leadership, as well as its subscales, show significantly higher scores among women than men, whereas men obtained significantly higher scores on management by exception and laissez-faire styles. However, it should be noted that using Cohen’s categories for classifying average effect sizes (0.20 ¼ small, 0.50 ¼ moderate, 0.80 ¼ large), these are all considered ‘‘small’’ effects that suggest that although there are differences in leadership styles between women and men, they are not great. Transformational leadership may be favored by women because it allows them to avoid a traditionally masculine approach characterized by exercising hierarchical control and agentic leadership behavior.17 The transformational style may therefore allow women to address the conflict that may be introduced when conforming to their leader role is inconsistent with their gender role. Similarly, Eagly and colleagues suggested that transformational leadership may be congenial to women because the relatively communal behaviors characteristic of this style help female leaders deal with the special problems of lesser authority and legitimacy that they face to a greater extent than their male counterparts. Furthermore, women may employ contingent reward behaviors, which include noticing and praising subordinates’ good performance, more than men because they foster positive, supportive work relationships. Interestingly, the authors found that the reported gender differences in leadership style were moderated by setting and publication year. In particular, the authors found the smallest differences in business settings (d ¼
0.07), as

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opposed to governmental (d ¼
0.11) or educational settings (d ¼
0.21). Furthermore, when publication year was taken into account, findings revealed that the gender difference reported in transformational style went more strongly in the female direction in recent years. Over time, perhaps women have perceived less pressure to conform to a traditionally masculine style of leadership and have experienced more freedom to lead in a manner with which they are comfortable. In summary, transformational leadership, as well as the contingent reward aspects of transactional leadership, may provide a particularly comfortable context for women’s enactment of competent leadership. Although this approach to leadership may be effective in men as well, it may be more critical for women than men to display their competence in a manner that is explicitly supportive of subordinates and the organization as a whole. Effectiveness of Leaders Another rich area of research that examines gender-related differences in leadership is the investigation of the relative effectiveness of men and women who occupy leadership roles in groups or organizations. Eagly, Karau, and Makhijani quantitatively reviewed seventy-six studies that compared women and men managers, supervisors, officers, department heads, and coaches.18 Within the leadership research reviewed, effectiveness was measured by subjective ratings anchored by poor leader and outstanding leader. When all studies in the literature were aggregated, female and male leaders did not differ in effectiveness (d ¼
0.02, 95 percent confidence interval contained zero). However, although the overall finding indicated men and women were equivalent in effectiveness, that generalization was not appropriate in all organizational contexts. In particular, follow-up analyses indicated that findings from studies that investigated military organizations differed from the rest. When military organizations were excluded from analyses, the weighted mean effect size indicated that female leaders were rated as slightly more effective than male leaders (d ¼
0.12). Thus, when a particularly masculine setting was removed (i.e., military), the results suggested that overall, women are perceived to be more effective as leaders in remaining contexts. Interestingly, there also was evidence that effective leadership by women and men varied as a function of raters and measure. For example, judges as well as subordinates favored women in their ratings (ds ¼
0.12 and –0.19, respectively), whereas four other categories of raters (leaders, supervisors of leaders, peers of leaders, and mixed or unclear) favored men (ds ¼ 0.07 to 0.31). In regard to type of measure, men were viewed more favorably than women when ability was assessed (d ¼ 0.28) relative to measures of effectiveness and motivation (ds ¼
0.01 and 0.01, respectively). Women also were rated more favorably than men when satisfaction measures were compared (d ¼
0.16). There were no gender differences on performance measures (d ¼ 0.05). However, the

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magnitude of these effect sizes did not hold when the authors removed outlier studies, suggesting that reliable conclusions cannot be drawn from these findings. The magnitude of the overall effect size also was moderated by the traditional masculinity of the role and the sex of the subordinates. Comparisons of leader effectiveness favored men more and women less to the extent that the leadership role was male-dominated and that the subordinates were male. Recall that if military studies are included, there was no overall gender difference. The remaining small and insignificant difference is important because it suggests that despite barriers and possible challenges in leadership, women who serve as leaders are in general succeeding as well as their male counterparts. Similarly, despite the reviewed meta-analytic findings reviewed earlier that suggest that female leaders appear to behave somewhat differently than male leaders, these findings suggest that they appear to be equally effective. Furthermore, even though the data suggest that men may excel in some areas and women may excel in others, there appears no empirical reason to believe that either gender possesses an overall advantage in effectiveness. Emergence of Leaders Given that men and women appear to vary on several leadership dimensions, it also seems important to know whether gender-related differences exist in the initial emergence of leaders. For example, if emerging as a leader within a group is less about performance and more about factors such as lifestyle advantages (e.g., fewer family obligations), it would be likely that men gain leadership roles in organizational settings more often than women. In a metaanalysis of seventy-five studies examining the emergence of leaders in initially leaderless groups, Eagly and Karua showed that in both laboratory and field studies, men emerged as leaders more frequently than women across different types of leadership (d ¼ 0.32), but that a number of situational variables moderated this tendency.19 As expected, men emerged more frequently than women on task (d ¼ 0.41) and unspecified (d ¼ 0.29) measures of leadership, whereas women emerged more frequently than men on leadership when it was assessed with social measures (d ¼
0.18). For additional analyses, the authors combined the task and unspecified studies and examined variables that moderated the gender difference when the studies were combined (d ¼ 0.32). Interestingly, male leadership was particularly likely in short-term groups and in groups carrying out tasks that did not require complex social interaction. Specifically, the tendency for men to emerge as leaders decreased to the extent that leadership was assessed after a longer period of social interaction (d ¼ 0.58 if less than twentyminute interaction, d ¼ 0.09 if more than one meeting was held). Thus, male leadership was more prevalent in sessions of twenty minutes or less than in longer sessions that consisted of more than one meeting. As time and interaction progress, group members likely gain information about attributes other

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than gender and this additional knowledge may establish expectations about members’ contribution, thereby diminishing the importance of expectations based on stereotypes of gender.20 In contrast, women emerged as social leaders slightly more than men. Specifically, the tendency for men to become leaders lessened when tasks required complex social interaction (d ¼ 0.55 for high complexity, d ¼ 0.23 for low complexity); tasks that did not require complex interaction yielded a strong tendency toward male leadership. Presumably, women’s positive interpersonal contributions became relevant to leadership tasks requiring negotiation and extensive sharing of ideas. Overall, these findings underscore that societal gender roles influence leadership behavior. The reported gender differences in leadership emergence might be explained in part by gender-role tendencies for men to be oriented to the group task, whereas women tend to be more oriented toward facilitating social behaviors. The major finding in this quantitative review was that gender differences in emergent leadership depended largely on the type of leadership measured—in the overall analysis the emergent difference was relatively small. One basis for interpreting the average effect sizes for leader emergence is to compare them with average effect sizes produced by other quantitative reviews, especially those already reported in the other areas of leadership reviewed. Recall that Eagly and Johnson’s review of gender differences in leadership style found near zero mean effect sizes for interpersonal and task styles, but a mean of 0.22 for the tendency of women to adopt a more democratic and participative style than men do. This review suggests small to moderate tendencies for men to emerge as overall leaders and a small tendency for women to emerge as social leaders. Evaluation of Leaders Because gender stereotypes may cause behavior to be interpreted differently for female leaders, considering the issue of leadership evaluation also is important. Eagly, Makhijani, and Klonsky’s synthesis of 147 experiments that examined evaluations of female and male leaders whose behavior had been made equivalent by the researchers found that evaluations were less favorable for female than for male leaders, as indicated by a small weighted effect size (d ¼ 0.05) that significantly differed from 0.00 (which indicates no difference).21 However, although people seem to evaluate female leaders slightly more negatively than equivalent male leaders, the bias for female leaders to be devalued was larger in specific contexts. Female leaders were devalued relative to their male counterparts when they adopted equivalent leadership styles that were stereotypically masculine (i.e., style was autocratic and directive) as well as when their evaluators were men. In contrast, female and male leaders were evaluated favorably when they adopted equivalent leadership styles that were traditionally feminine (i.e., democratic or interpersonally oriented). The finding that devaluation of women in leadership roles was stronger when leaders occupied

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male-dominated roles and when their evaluators were men suggests that women’s occupancy of highly male-dominated leadership roles produces a violation of people’s expectations about women. Male evaluators may experience female leaders as a more threatening intrusion because leadership is traditionally a male domain. The authors also found that the tendency to favor men over women was larger when the dependent variable was the leader’s competence or rater’s satisfaction with the leader rather than the perception of leadership style. Thus, the measures that were more purely evaluative (i.e., competence or satisfaction) yielded stronger evidence of the devaluation of women’s leadership. When specific leadership style was the moderator, two of three styles examined (interpersonal orientation and potency) did not produce gender differences. However, women were perceived as more task-oriented than men. This perception, contrary to what would be expected, may reflect a tendency to view women’s behavior as more extreme when it conflicts with the female stereotype. The autocratic leadership style produced significantly more favorable evaluations of male than female leaders (d ¼ 0.30), but only trivial differences were found for roles occupied mainly by men (d ¼ 0.09) than for those occupied equally by men and women (d ¼
0.06). There was a greater tendency to favor male leaders in male-dominated leadership positions of business and manufacturing than in organizational contexts not involving business or manufacturing. These results highlight that men’s styles may be less consequential in that their leadership is not questioned and they therefore enjoy greater latitude to carry out leadership in a variety of styles. In summary, the extent to which people are biased to evaluate female leaders less favorably may reflect a form of prejudice, whereby leadership behavior enacted by women is often evaluated less favorably than the equivalent behavior enacted by men. Thus, the extent to which women may encounter negative reactions when they behave in a clearly agentic way may constrain their leadership style. Therefore, it may be partly out of a result of the pressure to not exert agentic behavior that females exhibit more communal, collaborative, and less hierarchical behaviors than men when they lead. More seriously, devaluation of female leaders may suggest that women encounter very serious barriers to leadership roles and advancing to higher levels within organizations. Motivation to Perform Leadership Roles The finding that women were slightly less likely to emerge as leaders has a probable variety of causes that potentially include the different leadership styles that we reviewed. However, it may also be argued that among these causes, women on average are less motivated to meet the requirements of the managerial role to the extent that it is traditionally defined in masculine terms. Research on gender stereotypes suggests that men, compared with women, are believed to have personalities that are described by Bakan’s term agentic and

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that are characterized by aggressive, assertive, ambitious, dominant, forceful, and leader-like qualities.22 This agentic emphasis is reflected in most of the subscales of the Miner Sentence Completion Scale (MSCS), which is the standard measurement test for assessing motivation to manage.23 The subscales of the MSCS named Competitive Games, Competitive Situations, Assertive Role, Imposing Wishes, and Standing Out from the Group all reflect a traditional masculine profile. In contrast to the agentically oriented subscales, two additional subscales, Authority Figures and Routine Administration, have quite a different focus. Individuals who score high on the Authority Figures subscale are comfortable in a subordinate role in relation to their supervisors. Scoring high on Authority Figures would indicate that one may be especially good at maintaining relationships with supervisors, whereas scoring high on Routine Administration indicates a willingness to carry out everyday administrative activities—both traits that are more associated with the female stereotype. In sum, the majority of the subscales of the MSCS are defined in terms of stereotypically masculine qualities, whereas only two of the subscales emphasize aspects of the managerial role that might be considered more stereotypically feminine. In a synthesis of fifty-one studies that examined gender differences in individuals’ motivation to manage, Eagly, Karau, Miner, and Johnson found that men had higher motivation to manage than women on the overall MSCS scale (d ¼ 0.22).24 As predicted, men also scored higher than women on the five agentically oriented subscales: Competitive Games (d ¼ 0.31), Competitive Situations (d ¼ 0.15), Assertive Role (d ¼ 0.27), Imposing Wishes (d ¼ 0.19), and Standing Out from the Group (d ¼ 0.12). In contrast but in line with expectations, women scored higher than men on the Authority Figures (d ¼
0.17) and Routine Administration Functions (d ¼
0.09) subscales. Thus these findings suggest that it would be unwise to infer from the overall effect size that men are generally more motivated to lead than women. Rather, it appears that men may be more motivated to lead in contexts or organizations in which they are well matched by agentic requirements of the managerial role, whereas women are more motivated when the leadership role involves characteristics that have been traditionally viewed as more consistent with a female gender stereotype. However, when interpreting the effect sizes in this particular review, it should also be noted that the findings were gathered from research conducted on relatively homogenous samples of respondents (i.e., business school students) in relatively controlled settings (i.e., classrooms). Therefore, these findings may not generalize. Furthermore, given that the selection of respondents in this area of research is from populations of business managers and business students, studies conducted in the general population may yield even smaller effect sizes. Eagly and Johnson’s findings (reviewed earlier) that male managers were somewhat more autocratic and directive in their leadership styles than females seems compatible with some results of the current meta-analysis. In particular, men’s higher motivation on the Assertive Role and Imposing Wishes subscales and women’s higher motivation on the Authority Figures and Routine

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Administrative Functions subscales supports the 1990 results that suggest men take a more command-and-control leadership style. It also is important to consider women’s lesser motivation on some dimensions in light of Eagly et al.’s later findings that suggested that women were devalued, relative to men, for leadership behavior that was stylistically masculine, especially if it was autocratic or directive. Experience with devaluation or discrimination may deter women from being motivated to adopt the more directive and assertive managerial features that are reflected in the MSCS assessment. However, the overall mean effect size was small; women’s lesser motivation does not necessarily mean that they are less effective. Despite the generally masculine definition of the traditional business manager role, women showed a stronger motivation in relation to some aspects of the role. In summary, the results from the five meta-analyses reviewed here suggest that gender differences, when they exist, are quite small and often trivial (see Table 9.1 for a summary) and that situational and organizational variables often moderated the gender-related differences that were obtained. Nevertheless, the reported gender-related differences may reflect prejudice directed toward female leaders who adopt more masculine styles when such styles are viewed as violations of the norms associated with the female role. In the next section we discuss in more detail how gender socialization and gender role theory may help one understand the differences and similarities in leadership among women and men.

SOCIAL ROLE THEORY Social roles are generally defined as socially shared expectations that apply to persons who occupy certain social positions or are members of a particular category.25 Gender role theory maintains that people develop expectations for their own and others’ behavior based on their beliefs about the behaviors that are appropriate for men and women.26 Similarly, people develop expectations about behavior that is appropriate for leaders within an organizational setting.27 Within such settings, expectations regarding gender and leadership will interact and sometimes conflict. The potential contradiction in roles may help explain differing behavior in male and female leaders. The idea that leaders are perceived simultaneously in terms of their gender and their organizational role is consistent with the more general concept of gender-role spillover, which is ‘‘carryover into the workplace of gender-based expectations for behavior.’’28 Gender-role spillover has different consequences for women than for men. In situations where expectations are informed by gender roles in organizational settings, the consequence may be that women are not regarded as generic managers but as female managers or women bosses. By fulfilling people’s expectations concerning leadership, women violate conventions concerning appropriate female behavior.

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The existence of different expectations for men’s and women’s attributes and social behavior has been consistently documented in research on gender stereotypes.29 Men are expected to express high degrees of agentic qualities, including being independent, masterful, assertive, and competent. Women are expected to possess high levels of communal attributes, including being friendly, unselfish, concerned with others, and emotionally expressive. These gender role expectations are assumed to arise from the distribution of women and men into different specific social roles in natural settings—especially family and occupational roles. The distinctive agentic content of the male gender role is assumed to derive especially from men’s typical roles in the society and economy. The distinctive communal content of the female gender role is assumed to derive especially from the domestic role as well as from occupational roles occupied disproportionately by women (e.g., secretary, nurse, teacher). Role theory assumes that gender differences in social behavior are partly caused by people’s tendency to behave consistently with their gender roles. To the extent that gender roles exert some influence on leaders, female and male occupants of the same leadership role may behave differently (i.e., genderrole spillover). Thus, according to this argument, there is a likely influence of gender roles on leadership behavior, especially to the extent that one would be evaluated harshly for stepping outside of the prescribed gender role in an effort to be an effective leader. This social role analysis thus departs from the traditional reasoning that male and female leaders who occupy the same role display the same behaviors.30 As Eagly and colleagues maintained throughout their reviews, prejudices may result when there is perceived incongruity between the female gender role and typical leader roles. In particular, the reviews highlighted that women were less autocratic and directive, were rated as less effective when ability and performance were assessed, were slightly devalued as leaders in relation to men, and were less likely to emerge in contexts of task leadership. However, these differences were small in magnitude. Moreover, women also were more interpersonally oriented, democratic, and transformational—all characteristics that apparently bode well for leadership given the overall finding that women were evaluated as more effective than men despite exhibiting styles that may be traditionally less valued in organizational contexts. Ultimately, the results from the meta-analytic work of Eagly and colleagues draws attention to the fact that discussion of gender differences in leadership may be potentially overblown and that the differences, when they exist, are relatively small.

FEMINIST LEADERSHIP AS AN ALTERNATIVE MODEL One criticism of traditional styles of leadership is that they have been examined within models of leadership that have been developed primarily by men and focus on individuals rather than groups.31 Thus, the research reviewed

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here was based on models of leadership that are hierarchical. New approaches to leadership have been offered by several feminist authors with the suggestion that important principles of feminism can contribute positively to alternative models of leadership. However, a leadership style that conforms to the way women are expected to behave based on their gender role is not the same as leadership that is feminist. Although a concise and agreed-on definition of feminist leadership does not exist, a new model of feminist leadership emerged from discussions that were held as part of the Feminist Leadership Initiative in the Society in the Psychology of Women (August 2002 through August 2003). This model conceptualizes leadership as a social process that moves away from describing the traits of leaders—one that can encompass the diversity of women’s experiences while simultaneously reflecting the goals of feminism. This model would focus on creating an inclusive setting in which members work collaboratively, encourage broad participation, shared decision making, and an appreciation of diverse work styles. Leaders would promote open discussion and democratic participation, share resources, and help ‘‘subordinates’’ by empowering rather than exploiting them. Additional important principles to consider in proposing a feminist leadership model include reducing power hierarchies and addressing sources of oppression. In particular, this includes a need to explore how race, culture, class, and other individual, group, and social systemic differences interact with gender to affect the experience of group members. In this way, feminist leadership needs to be more than prioritizing the advancement of women and the dismantling of gender inequality; feminist leadership should consider different cultural experiences and be informed by gender, race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, and class. Differences must be not only tolerated but given equity in regard to how they inform values, behaviors, and decision making within an organizational context. Thus, to enact feminist leadership, leadership must be conceptualized as constantly negotiating the shared context, goals, and interactions among all members of an organization. In a hierarchical structure (which is not inherently cooperative or consensus-driven) it is highly unlikely that there will be much encouragement for decisions to be made collaboratively or for empowerment to be an objective. Thus, feminist leaders need to work within or challenge the hierarchies that characterize most organizations. It is quite possible that this proposed form of leadership also would be good for organizations. For example, a Catalyst study indicated that companies with higher representation of women in senior management positions financially outperformed companies with proportionately fewer women at the top.32 Although there is no evidence that women in this study led in a feminist manner, the traditional leadership styles that the meta-analyses suggested were more common of women (e.g., interpersonal orientation) lend hope to crediting a feminist model as a legitimate model of leadership that has benefits for individuals and organizations.

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We recognize that all approaches to leadership are value based—even if the values are not explicitly stated (e.g., hierarchical). Feminist leadership challenges the hierarchies of status and power embedded in traditional leadership by enacting feminist values of deconstructing power hierarchies and establishing more egalitarian relationships. It recognizes that diverse individuals bring different skills, abilities, and values that allow them to contribute in different ways and is inherently collaborative and process-oriented. Furthermore, a feminist understanding of leadership aims to integrate understandings of multiple forms of oppression (e.g., sexism, racism) and resist the effects of these oppressions. When leadership is approached as collaborative, with multiple people involved not as followers but as cooperative leaders themselves, leadership can create social change.

NOTES 1. U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Women in the Labor Force: A Databook (2005); retrieved July 21, 2005, from www.bls.gov/bls/databooknews2005.pdf. 2. Catalyst, Women in the Fortune 500 (February 2, 2005); retrieved July 21, 2005, from www.catalystwomen.org/pressroom/press_releases/2-10-05%20Catalyst%20Female% 20CEOs%20Fact%20Sheet.pdf. 3. J. C. Rost, Leadership for the Twenty-First Century (Westport, CT: Praeger, 1993). 4. H. Gardner, Leading Minds Anatomy of Leadership (New York: Basic Books, 1995). 5. B. Bennis and B. Nanus, Leaders: The Strategies for Taking Charge (New York: Harper and Row, 1985). 6. K. B. Boal and R. Hooijberg, ‘‘Strategic Leadership and Research: Moving On,’’ Leadership Quarterly 11 (2000): 515–49. 7. R. F. Bales, Interaction Process Analysis: A Method for the Study of Small Groups (Cambridge, MA: Addison-Wesley, 1950). 8. V. H. Vroom and P.W. Yetton, Leadership and Decision-Making (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1973). 9. B. M. Bass, Leadership and Performance beyond Expectations (New York: Free Press, 1985). 10. B. M. Bass, Transformational Leadership: Industry, Military, and Educational Impact (Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 1998). 11. B. J. Avolio, Full Leadership Development: Building the Vital Forces in Organizations (Thousands Oaks, CA: Sage, 1999). 12. L. V. Hedges and I. Olkin, Statistical Methods for Meta-Analysis (Orlando, FL: Academic Press, 1985). 13. A. H. Eagly and B. T. Johnson, ‘‘Gender and Leadership Style: A MetaAnalysis,’’ Psychological Bulletin108 (1990): 233–56. 14. J. Cohen, Statistical Power Analysis for the Behavioral Sciences, 2nd ed. (Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 1988). 15. A. H. Eagly, M. C. Johannesen-Schmidt, and M. L. van Engen, ‘‘Transformational, Transactional, and Laissez-Faire Leadership Styles: A Meta-Analysis Comparing Women and Men,’’ Psychological Bulletin 129 (2003): 569–91.

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16. B. J. Avolio, B. M. Bass, and D. I. Jung, ‘‘Re-Examining the Components of Transformational and Transactional Leadership Using the Multifactor Leadership Questionnaire,’’ Journal of Occupational and Organizational Psychology 72 (1999): 441–62. 17. J. D. Yoder, ‘‘Making Leadership Work More Effectively for Women,’’ Journal of Social Issues 57 (2001): 815–28. 18. A. H. Eagly, S. J. Karau, and M. G. Makhijani, ‘‘Gender and Effectiveness of Leaders: A Meta-Analysis,’’ Psychological Bulletin 117 (1995): 125–45. 19. A. H. Eagly and S. J. Karau, ‘‘Gender and the Emergence of Leaders: A MetaAnalysis,’’ Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 60 (1991): 685–710. 20. R. J. Webber and J. Crocker, ‘‘Cognitive Processes in the Revision of Stereotypic Beliefs,’’ Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 45 (1983): 961–77. 21. A. H. Eagly, M. G. Makhijani, and B. G. Klonsky, ‘‘Gender and Evaluation of Leaders: A Meta-Analysis,’’ Psychological Bulletin 111 (1992): 3–22. 22. D. Bakan, The Duality of Human Existence: An Essay on Psychology and Religion (Chicago: Rand McNally, 1966). 23. J. B. Miner, ‘‘Sentence Completion Measures in Personnel Research: The Development and Validation of the Miner Sentence Completion Scale,’’ in H. J. Bernardin and D. A. Bownas, eds., Personality Assessment in Organizations (New York: Praeger, 1985), pp. 145–76. 24. A. H. Eagly, S. J. Karau, J. B. Miner, and B. T. Johnson, ‘‘Gender and Motivation to Manage in Hierarchic Organizations: A Meta-Analysis.’’ Leadership Quarterly 5 (1994): 135–59. 25. B. J. Biddle, Role Theory: Expectancies, Identities, and Behaviors (New York: Academic Press, 1979). 26. A. H. Eagly, Sex Differences in Social Behavior: A Social-Role Interpretation (Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 1987). 27. J. S. Phillips and R. G. Lord, ‘‘Schematic Information Processing and Perceptions of Leadership in Problem-Solving Groups.’’ Journal of Applied Psychology 67 (1982): 486–92. 28. B. A. Gutek and B. Morasch, ‘‘Sex-Ratios, Sex-Role Spillover, and Sexual Harassment of Women at Work,’’ Journal of Social Issues 38 (1982): 55–74. 29. A. H. Eagly and V. J. Steffen, ‘‘Gender Stereotypes Stem from the Distribution of Women and Men into Social Roles,’’ Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 46 (1984): 735–54. 30. R. M. Kanter, Men and Women of the Corporation (New York: Basic Books, 1977). 31. B. Lott, ‘‘Introduction to Models of Diverse Feminist Leadership: Reconciling the Discourses on Leadership and Feminism,’’ in J. Chin, ed., Feminist Leadership: Visions and Diverse Voices (Washington, DC: American Psychological Association, in press). 32. Catalyst, New Catalyst Study Reveals Financial Performance for Companies with More Women at the Top ( January 26, 2004); retrieved July 21, 2005, from www .catalystwomen.org/pressroom/press_releases/2004Fin_Per.pdf.

10

Tokenism Theory: What Happens When Few Women Work with Many Men Mary B. Hogue and Janice D. Yoder

The world of work is changing. More women than ever before have entered the workforce, and increasing numbers of working women are entering jobs that have traditionally been thought to be the rightful domain of men. Whereas in the past, working women primarily remained teachers, nurses, or secretaries, many now are choosing careers as physicians, construction workers, and CEOs. This change has made it so that women often find themselves outnumbered by men in the workplace, and women who choose to work in male-dominated fields or who find themselves outnumbered by men at work experience obstacles to successful performance. Such obstacles can include a lack of recognition of their achievements or difficulty being perceived as qualified to do the job. These barriers and others can significantly limit women’s actual job performance, and various lines of reasoning have been developed to explain the barriers to success faced by women. Some explanations for performance limitations may focus on how well the requirements of the job fit women or how well women fit the demands of the job. Social psychological explanations would look to the context, positing that the gendered nature of work leads women and men to operate in very different contexts with some work environments being more congenial to male workers. The complexity of the problem is such that each explanation is partly right, but no explanation alone provides a complete understanding. In the late 1970s in her groundbreaking book Men and Women of the Corporation, Rosabeth Moss Kanter proposed tokenism theory to bridge the gap between these two approaches.1 Her theory allowed knowledge from the domains of psychology and sociology to be combined to provide a fuller picture of the multifaceted difficulties faced by women who work primarily with men. By taking a social psychological approach to the interpersonal relations within work groups, Kanter has provided a more comprehensive means for examining women’s work experiences. Her approach incorporates the more micro-level

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individual psychological processes with the more macro-level group structure approach. In developing tokenism theory, Kanter analyzed the on-the-job experiences of ‘‘token’’ women working with a ‘‘dominant’’ group of male sales managers in a Fortune 500 company. She discovered that these women experienced performance barriers that were not experienced by their male co-workers, and she attributed these women’s negative experiences to their proportional representation as less than 15 percent of their workgroup. In her seminal conceptualization of tokenism theory, Kanter explained the processes through which reduced representation leads to certain perceptual distortions that bring about predictable negative outcomes. Although the number of women in the workforce is increasing and the number of women in low- and even mid-level management positions also is rising, some fields (especially higher-paying fields) as well as higher levels of organizational positions remain filled primarily by men. This segregation leads women working throughout male-dominated fields and in top-level management to often find themselves tokens in their workgroups, so although the overall workforce is changing, many workplaces remain segregated. Consequently, tokenism theory is an especially useful tool to understand the negative experiences that continue to plague many working women. Since its inception, Kanter’s theory has received considerable empirical support and has undergone important refinements, all of which have clarified our understanding of how group composition can affect the experiences of group members. As a social psychological approach, tokenism theory incorporates both the micro-level perceptual processes of group members as well as the macro-level contextual factors that impact and are a product of individual perceptual processes. In this chapter, as we discuss tokenism theory, we will explain the perceptual and interactional processes that occur when women constitute a significant minority of group membership. Our explanation will include a discussion of both the literature that supports and clarifies token effects and the modifications that have been made to Kanter’s theory. We begin with a discussion of her original line of reasoning.

TOKENISM THEORY Over a period of five years in the early 1970s, sociologist Kanter interviewed and observed employees at a large industrial supply company. Her research and conclusions were presented in Men and Women of the Corporation.2 Specifically, Kanter focused on the experiences of a very small group of women sales managers working in a male-dominated department. Her case study consisted of analyses of interview data from twenty women in a 300-person sales force at a multinational Fortune 500 corporation as well as analyses of interview data from their colleagues and supervisors. She discovered that the experiences of the

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twenty women were very similar to those of one another and very different from those of their male co-workers. For example, she found that women (but not men) reported that they had been told that their job performance could affect the organizational prospects of other women in the company, and she further discovered that as a group, women (but not men) reported being excluded from important career-building activities, such as invitations to out-of-town business meetings. Kanter’s research led her to conclude that these women were performing their jobs under very different conditions than those faced by their male co-workers. To explain how the women’s experiences came to be so similar to one another’s and so different from those of the male sales managers, Kanter developed tokenism theory. Essentially, Kanter’s theory is a structural theory of group composition that explains how perceptions and interactions are affected by the numerical proportions of demographically distinct group members. According to Kanter, one significant determinant of achievement for individuals within groups is the ratio of minority to majority group membership. Using a continuum to describe group composition, Kanter explained that groups can be at one end virtually uniform, with all members demographically similar. At the other end, they can be balanced, containing members of all social types. When groups are skewed to the extent that the imbalanced ratio of majority to minority members is eighty-five to fifteen or greater, minority group members are called tokens. At this ratio, rather than being perceived and treated as individuals, tokens tend to be perceived and treated as symbols of the category that distinguishes them from the majority. Token status leads many women to work longer hours with increased effort (often resulting in job burnout) or conversely, to withdraw from performance attempts (often leading to reduced job performance and compromised career aspirations). Significant numerical underrepresentation affects perceptual processes, which in turn affect interaction processes and performance. To better understand how the negative consequences of tokenism occur, we examine the perceptions that arise in demographically skewed work groups.

PERCEPTUAL PROCESSES As just stated, significant numerical underrepresentation affects perceptual processes, interaction processes, and ultimately performance. Tokenism theory holds that group structure, specifically the proportional representation of different demographic groups, impacts group-related perceptions. When a particular demographic category is present but rare in a given group, this rarity leads to three types of perceptual distortions. The first is visibility, in which group members’ attention is drawn more easily to notice demographically rare individuals who readily appear to be different from most group members. Second, assimilation occurs when group members perceive tokens’ attributes as

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fitting preexisting beliefs or stereotypes associated with their demographic category. Finally, contrast is the exaggeration of group differences that results in in and outgroup perceptions holding the dominant group as the ingroup and tokens as outsiders. Information from social cognition theory readily can be used to explain these perceptual distortions. At work, as in our daily lives, we encounter so much information that we are unable to fully process all of it. Thus we selectively attend to incoming information that will receive further processing. This is the beginning of meaning making that is assigned to the information; it is the initial stage in one’s attempt to make sense of a situation. Attention is drawn by many things. When demographically dissimilar individuals are together, that dissimilarity captures group members’ attention. It becomes a basis for understanding what to expect in the situation. Attention is drawn to tokens because their numbers make them stand out, and once attention is captured, an inference is made as to the importance of the attention-grabbing feature. Women and men represent two demographically dissimilar categories. This draws attention, but attention is only the beginning of perception. Ultimately, perception is the interpretation of the information to which we attend. When women and men work together, gender will become a salient cognitive category used to interpret information.4 When the gender category is activated by attention drawn to the significantly reduced number of women in a situation, because they are different from the majority and because the majority is a number great enough to constitute at least 85 percent of the present group, the token women will not be perceived as belonging. In such a situation, a token woman will be thought of merely as a ‘‘woman.’’ She will not be viewed to be a ‘‘sales manager,’’ an ‘‘executive,’’ or a ‘‘carpenter.’’ These are attributes that do not fit her category but rather better fit the male category. Once each individual is identified with the appropriate category, category membership becomes the basis of understanding in the situation. Once group members are identified as fitting a particular category, they are believed to possess all attributes and characteristics held in that category and not to possess the attributes and characteristics in the opposing category.5 Categorization makes it likely that token women will be perceived as belonging to, fitting, and even being representatives of the female stereotype, a stereotype that holds that women are communal and supportive. This is a perception that is in contrast with the male stereotype that men are agentic and competent.6 Such stereotypical beliefs lead men in solo situations to be viewed as macho father figures, an idea that stands in opposition to the view of women solos working with a group of men. These women are seen as playing the role of mother, secretary, or bitch.7 Stereotypes can have profound effects on perceptions, but these effects cannot occur unless the stereotype is activated. Some environments seem to be better at categorization and stereotype activation, a process that leads to the belief that members of a particular category have more in common with one

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another and less in common with members of other categories.8 These perceptual phenomena occur for men who notice, stereotype, and contrast themselves against token women. They also occur for women tokens, who are more aware of themselves as women in the situation and of the negative stereotypes associated with their group and feel a heightened responsibility for representing their sex.9 When this is applied to Kanter’s three perceptual processes, we see that especially in a gendered environment such as work, attention is drawn to token women, and the visibility of these women makes it more likely that gender schemas will be activated. Once activated, all characteristics, attributes, and behaviors of token women will be interpreted consistently with the activated stereotype. Moreover, this will lead group members’ perceptions to be drawn to similarities among the women, and an exaggeration of the believed differences between the women and the men in the group will occur.10 Once these between-group distinctions provide a means for comparing aptitudes and capabilities, members of both groups infer that those in the majority are better suited, are more deserving, and belong more than tokens do. Because members of the dominant group determine the culture of the group, both groups will perceive tokens as not fitting the culture. These perceptual distortions lead to negative work outcomes.

INTERACTION AND PERFORMANCE PROCESSES In her original conception of tokenism theory, Kanter suggested that token group membership will create performance pressures on tokens, which will affect their work negatively. To better explain token effects on interactions and performance, we return to the three perceptual processes that Kanter specified: visibility, assimilation, and contrast. Within a work group, these processes affect both dominants and tokens. Dominant Group Members Visibility The attention of dominants is drawn more keenly to tokens, but it is drawn to the fact that the tokens are women, not to their achievements. When dominant group members’ attention is not focused on tokens’ achievements and when dominant group members are in a position to evaluate the performance of tokens, they tend to give tokens lower performance evaluations and not as keenly recognize token women’s talents as compared with the evaluations given to women when women constitute a larger proportion of a work group.

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This effect was demonstrated in a field study examining the relationship between sex proportion and the performance evaluation of 3,014 high-ranking officers in the Israeli Defense Forces. The performance of female officers was rated lower than that of male officers when the female officers were tokens, but female officers’ performance was rated higher than male officers’ performance when women constituted a larger proportion of the work group.11 Another field study, this time examining data from 453 Canadian federal female and male managers, found that compared with the performance evaluations men gave to token women, men gave significantly higher performance evaluations to women who worked in groups that were not skewed to the extent that the women were tokens.12 Because the attention of men who are charged with evaluating the performance of token women is drawn to the category membership of the token women, they can miss instances of successful performance, and when this occurs, the effect disadvantages token women as compared either with dominant men or with nontoken women. Assimilation Negative token effects clearly arise from visibility, but they accompany the perceptual and interactional processes of assimilation as well. When tokens’ attributes are distorted to fit preexisting stereotypical beliefs, role encapsulation occurs, during which others view tokens as only suitable to stereotype-consistent jobs.13 Token women are not seen as individuals with differing characteristics and abilities, but are viewed and treated as homogenous symbols of the female category. Viewing tokens as women rather than workers allows members of the dominant group to believe that they understand what behaviors to expect from the token women who have grabbed their attention, and they treat them accordingly. The activated female stereotype leads dominant men to believe not only that women are communal rather than agentic but also that they should be communal rather than agentic. This belief affects dominant group members’ behavior in predictable ways. Because being a representative of the female category does not fit with being a member of the leader stereotype, for example, token women are less likely to be selected as group leaders and will have a difficult time acting as leaders when appointed.14 Furthermore, because token women are perceived as representing women in general, group satisfaction often is low when lone women are present.15 This may occur because the female stereotype does not include the expectation of task competence, especially in a traditionally maletyped job. Moreover, assimilation of token women into the female stereotype can lead men to counteract women’s success at work through what has been referred to as benevolent sexism.16 For example, when a male co-worker expresses concern for a woman’s safety or suggests that perhaps he should help her with a difficult task, his seemingly helpful behavior in actuality limits her ability to successfully perform all aspects of her job. So even when stereotyping leads to

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apparently chivalrous behavior by men, women’s performance can be negatively affected. Contrast Stereotype activation and use also is implicated in the third perceptual distortion discussed by Kanter. Contrast occurs when group members’ perceptions are drawn to believed differences between demographic groups, and it, too, has a significant impact on group interactions. The contrast of tokens with dominant group members frequently leads the majority to form seemingly impenetrable boundaries that marginalize tokens from informal supports that otherwise might assist their performance and promotion.17 During such informal interactions as spending break time together, meeting on the golf course, or even chatting at the water cooler, career-assisting information frequently is shared. Not only are tokens left out of career-enhancing social activities, but by ignoring tokens and boosting one another, dominants also strengthen their own in-group cohesiveness. Kanter documented that the presence of token women works to increase solidarity among dominant men. For example, when a man prefaces a statement with ‘‘I probably shouldn’t say this in mixed company,’’ this simultaneously emphasizes the culture of the dominant group and highlights that the woman is an outsider. Being treated as a marginalized ‘‘other’’ leaves tokens feeling isolated.18 Actual isolation limits the career-enhancing opportunities of token women, but felt isolation limits tokens in other ways. Token Group Members It is not only the behaviors of dominant group members that impact token women’s job performance. The perceptual distortions of dominant group members have direct and negative effects on token women’s job performance, but research also shows that token women are subject to the same perceptual distortions that dominant men have. Furthermore, token women’s work behaviors also are affected by their own perceptions. Visibility Token women seem to understand the effects of visibility on the perceptions and behaviors of dominant group members. In fact, the women in Kanter’s original study reported feeling the need to work harder to have their achievements noticed, told of situations in which their abilities were overshadowed by their physical appearance, and also discussed the added pressure of trying not to perform so well that they might threaten their male co-workers.19 Feeling this pressure to do just well enough but not too well may be one reason that token women are more likely to report feeling increased stress and role overload, to perceive exploitation, and to report sexual harassment.20 Because token women

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must devote energy toward balancing their level of success and managing elevated stress arising from their distinctiveness, they often find their energies for achievement depleted. Assimilation Tokens, sometimes explicitly and other times implicitly, are aware both that they are viewed as representatives of women in general and that their success or failure will be viewed as indicative of expectations for the future success or failure of all women who follow. This can create enormous pressure for a token, and it could explain why tokens often find it easier to conform to expectations rather than challenge others’ stereotypical beliefs.21 If token women believe that they are not expected to do well at their jobs or even that they are not expected to attempt certain jobs, such conformity limits job choice, career aspirations, and career progression. This conformity often keeps women out of higher-paying fields or keeps them from attempting to achieve higher positions within their companies. The feeling that one does not fit or is not suited to a work situation can lead token women to experience stress.22 It also can have profound effects on the job satisfaction, job choice, and organizational commitment of token women, and it even affects their expectations of performance in and acceptance by their work groups. Effects on tokens’ expectations were demonstrated in a laboratory experiment in which female and male participants were asked to take part in two problem-solving tasks, the first independently and the second with a group whose composition was manipulated by the experimenters so that some participants anticipated being tokens and others did not. After being provided with written information about their future partners (information about personality traits and demographic characteristics), participants were asked a series of questions about their expectations for the future group experience. Women who anticipated being gender tokens (especially those with low confidence in their own task ability) were more likely than nontoken women and more likely than token men to want to change to a different group, to want to change the gender composition of their own group, and to expect to be stereotyped by others. These results suggest that women need not actually be tokens to be affected by tokenism. Mere anticipation of tokenism (along with low self-confidence) can be sufficient to induce negative tokenism effects.23 A related argument concludes that being in the minority can generate stereotype threat among stigmatized groups.24 Stereotype threat arises when one fears being viewed through the lens of a negative stereotype, especially in a valued domain.25 The fear inherent in stereotype threat can be one’s concern for the impression others will have of her or him or concern one has for maintaining her or his own positive self-image.26 Stereotype activation makes it so that being outnumbered is threatening for members of the token group, especially when performance is important (as it is at work). Feelings of threat

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negatively affect the tokens’ expectations for their future performance, often leading to decrements in actual future performance as well. Concern that one is not expected to perform well can make an individual not attempt a particular task, or such fear can actually reduce performance when the individual attempts to function in the environment that induces stereotype threat. Research has shown that women’s expectations of token status can lead them to attempt to either change to a group in which they will not be tokens or change their own group structure so that they will not be tokens. Further research shows that if such structural changes are not possible, token women’s actual performance will be negatively affected by stereotype threat arising from their token status. Contrast Thus far, we have discussed how the perceptual distortions of visibility and assimilation affect the perceptions and behaviors of token women, but the third distortion, contrast, affects token women as well. Recall that when individuals are categorized, their category membership is contrasted against those in an opposing category. This results in decreased opportunities for token women. If a situation is such that men dominate, a culture will be created that will reward male but not female attributes. This pattern was demonstrated in a study of the first female students allowed into West Point Academy.27 These women described the fact that fraternization policies had been put in place ostensibly to discourage dating, but those policies served to isolate the women from any informal interactions with men, even those that might aid their performance. Not only were the women formally isolated, but they stood out as different from the men, and men had always been successful at West Point. Men were expected to be aggressive and competitive, but women were different. Because they were not the same, there was no expectation of aggression, competitiveness, or even success for the women. Another study showed how contrast effects occurred for employees at a summer attraction assigned to one of three groups. In one group, two men worked in a gift shop with sixteen women. In another, one woman worked with six men in an isolated food stand. The third group was at a gender-balanced main food location. Unlike a traditionally male-typed military academy, these workers found themselves in the more gender-neutral job of concession worker. When employees were asked to describe their experiences at the end of the summer, the lone token woman reported experiences different from the reports of her coworkers. The token woman reported that she never felt that she fit with her work group, and she was observed spending as much of her break time as possible away from her work site. Her daily experience was such that she always was viewed in comparison with the men with whom she worked. In her work unit, three other workers were men; therefore the culture that developed was better suited to the dominant group. This woman quit at the end of the summer.28

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It is clear from field studies and laboratory experiments alike that the perceptual distortions of visibility, assimilation, and contrast have negative consequences for token women. By connecting individual perceptual processes with social interaction processes, Kanter provided a more comprehensive means to understanding the performance-damaging experiences of many women attempting to take advantage of the doors that have been opened to them during and since the beginning of the women’s movement of the 1970s. Through Kanter’s theory, women no longer are blamed for the trouble they experience. However, Kanter’s original conceptualization of tokenism theory was insufficient to provide a full explanation of token experiences.

REFINING THE THEORY Gender and Tokenism In her original conceptualization of token theory, Kanter suggested that the tokenism processes previously discussed would affect any demographic group representing less than 15 percent of total group composition. Although considerable research has been compiled to support her arguments for women tokens, there is solid evidence that the same is not necessarily true for underrepresented men. Tokenism processes for women have been demonstrated across a wide array of occupations and manipulative experiments. For example, research with military cadets found that women were readily visible, even in uniform; that in basic training, women scored higher than men on tests measuring psychological stress; that women felt socially isolated and disapproved of by peers; and that women reported role conflicts between masculinized expectations for cadets (e.g., ‘‘command’’ voices) and stereotypes for themselves as women (e.g., fragile).29 Similar tokenism effects have been confirmed in women in the fields of police officer, construction worker, firefighter, corrections officers in male prisons, physicians, academics, and executives.30 The women in each of these studies reported some form or even multiple forms of the negative outcomes associated with visibility, assimilation, and contrast, but the same was not necessarily true for men. For example, in an interview study, researchers found that women but not men in elite positions (e.g., company president or CEO) reported barriers to career progression such as being excluded from informal networks with male peers, an exclusion that hindered women’s job performance.31 Another study of executives compared women executives’ perceptions and expectations with those of more subordinate women, then did the same for men.32 These researchers found that compared with subordinate women, female executives reported lower satisfaction with future career opportunities and expected to encounter more promotion obstacles, such as not fitting into the organization’s culture. These

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differences were not found when data between subordinate and executive men were compared. The reason could be that women (but not men) executives and executive (but not subordinate) women expected more future obstacles because their experiences as they climbed the executive ladder already had been fraught with obstacles. This reasoning is supported by a survey of human resource managers in 304 organizations.33 This survey showed that 72 percent of nontraditional managers reported that what they perceived to be the top barrier to their advancement was that traditional (white male) managers were already in place, and they believed that this limited the promotion of women and people of color because those in power are more comfortable interacting with their own kind. There is more direct evidence that negative effects do not necessarily transpire for token men. Recall from the previously mentioned studies of executives that the perceptions and expectations of male executives differed from those of female executives. A follow-up study found that the actual career progressions of men differed from those of women as well.34 In contrast to token women executives who were more likely to report not fitting into the organizational culture and difficulty getting developmental assignments, male executives were more likely to report that developmental opportunities were handed to them and that mentoring significantly facilitated their career success. Clearly, the expectations and experiences of token men do not necessarily mirror those of token women. A closer examination of male token effects shows that for white men in the female-dominated fields of nurse, social worker, librarian, and teacher, their own perceived masculinity and work attitudes may be threatened, but these men often are advantaged with pay and promotion.35 Contrasting attitude data have been collected to show that token male flight attendants expressed the favorable work attitudes of job satisfaction and organizational attachment.36 In general, though, no data have been found to oppose the conclusion that men’s pay and promotion are positively affected by token status because men’s pay typically is advantaged when they work in femaledominated fields.37 Research seems to clearly indicate that although men may experience some of the negative psychological outcomes of token status, their actual achievements are not affected negatively in the ways that women’s are. Given this mixed bag of outcomes for men, what has been called men’s glass escalator (as opposed to women’s glass ceiling) seems to reflect universal male advantage rather than benefits attributed to simple numeric proportion.38 In our society, white men are typically advantaged over members of other groups. The fact that these men do not fall victim to the same negative effects that women face when in a token position suggests that it is more than simple numerical underrepresentation that brings about harmful token effects. The outcomes Kanter thought were due to proportions alone really result from the combination of token proportions with stigmatized status, most commonly operationalized as being female in a male-dominated and masculinized context.39

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Status and Tokenism The addition of the status explanation to tokenism theory allows us to better understand why negative tokenism effects occur for women but do not fully occur for men. Status is the relative social position that accompanies certain characteristics and guides behavior, even when we are not explicitly aware of it.40 In our society, women’s status tends to be lower than that of men.41 Because social status reflects the hierarchical position of individuals within a group, it influences the perceived value of each group member relative to the others. As a status characteristic, gender conveys information about the value, worth, and capabilities of women relative to men as well as the behaviors (subordinate or dominant) that are appropriate for each group.42 Determinations of status lead to expectations for ability. Within a task situation, such as those at work, higher-status individuals are believed to be more able to successfully perform the group’s task. Such status construction becomes circular. Higher status group members are believed to be better able to perform, and then they are provided more opportunities to behave in ways that will lead to success, thereby fulfilling the original prophecy that these individuals are more valuable in the group.43 For example, high-status group members are allowed to (and in fact are expected to) behave instrumentally, whereas low-status individuals are expected to be more communal. When group members observe dominant group members making task contributions and actively engaged in the task then see those dominants successful in their behavior, group members’ status beliefs are confirmed. Because they are perceived in the group (by dominant members and by themselves) as less valuable, women are given and attempt fewer task contributions. Instead, they are expected to provide support for those who are actively engaged in the task. When they and other group members observe token women performing low-status behaviors, again, status beliefs are confirmed. So, in the same way that the female stereotype specifies not only that women are but also that they should be communal, low-status beliefs do the same. Not only are low-status group members expected to be less successful at the task, but because they are less valuable, they should be less successful and therefore given fewer opportunities for success. If a woman who holds a normatively lower position is also a token with the spotlight on her, then not only is the female stereotype activated but its accompanying low-status expectations are simultaneously activated so that multiple low-status expectations are applied to her. The expectation will be that she is less competent than the high-status members of the dominant group. It will not be appropriate for her to perform well, so her performance will be more harshly judged. Her achievement and advancement will be both inappropriate for her status and perceived as a challenge to the status of the men in the dominant group. Role encapsulation, keeping her in a subordinate position, along with boundary heightening, which strengthens the distinction between

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high- and low-status group members, will allow men to feel more secure in their high-status positions. If not for the expectations that arise when one’s low-status position becomes salient, the negative effects of tokenism would not occur. Mere reduced representation can make a group member more visible, but being in the spotlight will not be threatening to a person who is expected to perform well. Increased stress arises when a person is in the spotlight only if the spotlight is shining on decreased performance expectations. Similarly, the negative consequences of assimilation are not solely due to stereotype activation and the resulting perceptual processes. The negative outcomes of assimilation occur when the activated stereotype contains low-status expectations, such as the unsuitability of the token for high-status power, privilege, or reward. When men are tokens and the male stereotype is activated, it contains high-status expectations, such as increased competence and value, two attributes associated with power, privilege, and reward. This stereotype activation does not handicap a man in the same way that activation of the female stereotype can handicap a woman. And finally, contrast processes would be unnecessary if not for status beliefs. Dominant men would have no need to contrast themselves so severely against token women if not for status-related outcomes. To not lose their power or to keep the reward that accompanies a high-status position, men must be distinct from lowstatus tokens. Thus, it is not underrepresentation alone that brings negative token effects but the combination of being a low-status person and rare in a group that leads to negative outcomes. Race/Ethnicity and Tokenism Gender is not the only demographically related status characteristic. Race/ ethnicity also conveys status information.44 Research extending demonstrated tokenism patterns beyond gender to race/ethnicity is minimal, though, and may be culturally specific. Available data, however, seem to support the status argument. For instance, a study of African American elite leaders found evidence of depression and anxiety as well as loss of black identity, multiple demands, felt isolation, and pressure to confirm one’s competence.45 The subjective experience of distinctiveness is especially strong among African Americans who commonly find themselves in positions as solos, an extreme form of tokenism. Studies of women firefighters demonstrated that differing stereotypes for African American and white women can each lead to role entrapment, but in qualitatively different ways for each group. Black women reported being overburdened in response to their stereotype as self-sufficient in contrast to white women, who described being underburdened as a result of their stereotype as fragile.46 Again, this is a status-related effect. Women firefighters are often gender tokens privileged by their race/ethnicity in their firehouses in contrast to African American women firefighters, who typically are relegated to token status based on both their subordinated race/ethnicity and gender. Given that the

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fundamental basis for tokenism effects is status difference between tokens and dominants, further research exploring how race/ethnicity-status combines with numeric underrepresentation is warranted.

REDUCING TOKEN EFFECTS When women represent less than 15 percent of a work group, their numeric underrepresentation combined with their lower status leads to perceptual distortions that bring about predicable negative outcomes. To better understand how to counter this process, some researchers have moved away from the simple documentation of negative effects and toward explorations of methods to facilitate tokens’ success. Given Kanter’s emphasis on proportions, the most obvious solution became increasing numbers themselves. The benefit of increased numbers remains unclear. Research in this area is mixed with some reporting more favorable outcomes when proportions exceed 15 percent and contrasting research highlighting intensified boundary heightening in the face of intrusive numerical increases.47 The inconclusiveness in this literature may well rest in the clearly established understanding that tokenism effects themselves are more complex than simple proportional representation. If negative token effects arise through numeric underrepresentation of lowstatus group members, then raising the status of women tokens should alleviate those effects. To test the hypothesis that raised status could counteract negative token effects, in a laboratory experiment researchers assigned gender token women to lead one of three groups.48 Women leaders of all-male groups performing a masculine-typed task were (1) simply appointed to be leader; (2) appointed and trained beforehand (i.e., provided with task-relevant knowledge); and (3) appointed, trained, and legitimated by credible organizational personnel (a male experimenter). Legitimating is one means of allowing normatively lower-status women to be perceived as fitting a high-status position. Only the leaders of groups who were appointed, trained, and legitimated were able to facilitate group performance, suggesting that higher-status dominant men perceived it to be appropriate to be led by token women who were trained and legitimated. This finding suggests that it may be possible to override negative token effects within a context of skewed proportions. Another line of research attempting to ameliorate token effects has followed successful tokens, comparing them to both less successful tokens and similarly successful dominants. Successful tokens reported relying on good track records, nurturing relationships, proactive management of their own career, mentoring, and developmental job assignments.49 At times these women were perceived by themselves and others as belonging to the higher-status group. Rather than being seen merely as women, they were viewed as workers, in which case they no longer supported or identified with their still disadvantaged out-group of origin. Such findings are disturbing but not surprising, especially given our

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understanding of the felt need of high-status group members to be identified as such so that they are able to receive the power and privilege that accompanies such a position. Anecdotal individual boundary crossing fails to challenge societal structures that place women in a subordinate position relative to men, so the core of tokenism theory as a structural theory grounded in both numeric group structure as well as societal status structure remains. To more fully understand the complexity of harmful token effects, further research is necessary. Specific incidents of status change can be found, cited, and even studied; however, the structure of society is not altered. That means that the inferior position of women and the perceptions created by that status structure are not altered in any way that would generalize from those specific instances. Instead, tokens who overcome are anomalies, and special cases do not undermine the stereotypes that are developed and strengthened with each confirmation of the existing status structure.

THE PROMISE OF TOKENISM THEORY At its inception during the revival of the women’s activism in the 1970s, tokenism theory was a monumental concept. Until then, many believed that women, by virtue of their sex, were not suited to certain positions. They were not thought capable of performing certain jobs. The prevailing belief was one of individual accountability. Through her research and the theory she developed, Kanter explained that job performance is not fixed by one’s demographic characteristics. She argued that job performance is largely determined by work environment, going on to suggest that all workers, even those in the same work group, do not perform their jobs under identical circumstances. This took the focus away from victim blaming toward an understanding that could provide different solutions. The focus shifted from ‘‘What is it about women that limits their success at work?’’ to ‘‘What is it about the work environment that prevents women from succeeding and how does this prevention occur?’’ Reframing the problem in this way allows more creative solutions to be developed. The solution is not to prevent the unsuccessful individual from attempting different types of work. Rather, the solution is to structure work environments in such a way that all workers are able to succeed. Those who find themselves few of a kind among a majority of others, especially when the few are lower status than the majority, are working in a context very different from that of most workers. For high-status dominants and lowstatus tokens, the context activates perceptual processes like visibility, assimilation, and contrast that make token achievement more difficult. Consequently, workplace discrimination (e.g., difficulty being hired, receiving biased evaluations, wage disparities, and reduced respect) becomes a product of the combination of the system and those within it. This remains a monumental concept because it implies that the achievement of subordinated social categories such

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as women, racial and ethnic minorities, and people with disabilities is not decided simply by their own fixed demographic characteristics. Instead, tokenism theory suggests that achievement can be dynamically altered as social structures change because changes in social structure affect changes in perception, which in turn lead to different behavioral outcomes. The persisting promise of tokenism theory lies in its intersection of individualistic psychological processes (e.g., perceptual effects) with broader sociological approaches (e.g., the effects of group structure) into the more social psychological approach we have discussed. Such an integrated approach allows for better awareness of the processes that lead to the discrimination faced by women who work in male-dominated fields or work groups. Only through this better understanding can such discrimination be effectively thwarted. NOTES 1. Rosabeth Moss Kanter, Men and Women of the Corporation (New York: Basic Press, 1977). 2. Ibid. 3. Janice D. Yoder, ‘‘Rethinking Tokenism: Looking beyond Numbers,’’ Gender and Society 5 (1991): 178–92. 4. Susan T. Fiske and Shelley E. Taylor, Social Cognition, 2nd ed. (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1991); Cecilia L Ridgeway, ‘‘Interaction and the Conservation of Gender Inequality: Considering Employment,’’ American Sociological Review 5 (1997): 218–35. 5. Fiske and Taylor, Social Cognition; Ridgeway, ‘‘Interaction and Conservation.’’ 6. Amanda B. Diekman and Alice H. Eagly, ‘‘Stereotypes as Dynamic Constructs: Women and Men of the Past, Present, and Future,’’ Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin 26 (2000): 1171–88. 7. Kay Deaux and Brenda Major, ‘‘Putting Gender into Context: An Interactive Model of Gender-Related Behavior,’’ Psychological Review 94 (1987): 369–86. 8. Fiske and Taylor, Social Cognition; Delia S. Saenz, ‘‘Token Status and Problem-Solving Deficits: Detrimental Effects of Distinctiveness and Performance Monitoring,’’ Social Cognition 12 (1994): 61–74. 9. Asya Pazy and Israela Oron, ‘‘Sex Proportion and Performance Evaluation among High-Ranking Military Officers,’’ Journal of Organizational Behavior 22 (2001): 689–702; Patricia G. Devine, ‘‘Stereotypes and Prejudice: Their Automatic and Controlled Components,’’ Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 56 (1989): 5–18. 10. Saenz, ‘‘Token Status and Problem-Solving Deficits.’’ 11. Pazy and Oron, ‘‘Sex Proportion and Performance Evaluation.’’ 12. Monique Lortie-Lussier and Natalie Rinfret, ‘‘The Proportion of Women Managers: Where Is the Critical Mass?’’ Journal of Applied Social Psychology 32 (2002): 1974–99. 13. Kanter, Men and Women of the Corporation. 14. Jennifer Crocker and Kathleen M. McGraw, ‘‘What’s Good for the Goose Is Not Good for the Gander: Solo Status as an Obstacle to Occupational Achievement for Males and Females,’’ American Behavioral Scientist 27 (1984): 357–69; Janice D. Yoder,

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Thomas L. Schleicher, and Theodore W. McDonald, ‘‘Empowering Token Women Leaders: The Importance of Organizationally Legitimated Credibility,’’ Psychology of Women Quarterly 22 (1998): 209–22. 15. Crocker and MacGraw, ‘‘What’s Good for the Goose Is Not Good for the Gander.’’ 16. Peter Glick and Susan T. Fiske, ‘‘The Ambivalent Sexism Inventory: Differentiating Hostile and Benevolent Sexism,’’ Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 70 (1996): 491–512. 17. Kanter, Men and Women of the Corporation. 18. Joanna L. Young and Erika Hayes-James, ‘‘Token Majority: The Work Attitudes of Male Flight Attendants,’’ Sex Roles 45 (2001): 299–319. 19. Kanter, Men and Women of the Corporation. 20. Pamela B. Jackson, Peggy A. Thoits, and Howard F. Taylor, ‘‘Composition of the Workplace and Psychological Well-Being: The Effects of Tokenism on America’s Black Elite,’’ Social Forces 74 (1995): 543–57; Janet Rosenberg, Harry Perlstadt, and William R. Phillips, ‘‘Now that We Are Here: Discrimination, Disparagement, and Harassment at Work and the Experience of Women Lawyers,’’ Gender and Society 7 (1993): 415–33. 21. Jackson et al., ‘‘Composition of the Workplace and Psychological Well-Being.’’ 22. David J. Maume and Paula Houston, ‘‘Job Segregation and Gender Differences in Work-Family Spillover among White-Collar Workers,’’ Journal of Family and Economic Issues 22 (2001): 171–89. 23. Laurie L. Cohen and Janet K. Swim, ‘‘The Differential Impact of Gender Ratios on Women and Men: Tokenism, Self-Confidence, and Expectations,’’ Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin 21 (1995): 876–84. 24. Michael Inzlicht and Talia Ben-Zeev, ‘‘Do High-Achieving Female Students Underperform in Private: The Implications of Threatening Environments on Intellectual Processing,’’ Journal of Educational Psychology 95 (2003): 796–805. 25. Claude M. Steele, ‘‘A Threat in the Air: How Stereotypes Shape Intellectual Identity and Performance,’’ American Psychologist 52 (1997): 613–29. 26. Inzlicht and Ben Zeev, ‘‘Do High-Achieving Female Students Underperform in Private.’’ 27. Janice D. Yoder and Jerome Adams, ‘‘Women Entering Nontraditional Roles: When Work Demands and Sex-Roles Conflict: The Case of West Point,’’ International Journal of Women’s Studies 7 (1984): 260–72. 28. Janice D. Yoder and Laura M. Sinnett, ‘‘Is It All in the Numbers? A Case Study of Tokenism,’’ Psychology of Women Quarterly 9 (1985): 413–18. 29. Yoder et al., ‘‘Empowering Token Women Leaders.’’ 30. E. Marlies Ott, ‘‘Effects of the Male-Female Ratio at Work: Policewomen and Male Nurses,’’ Psychology of Women Quarterly 13 (1989): 41–57; Clara Greed, ‘‘Women in the Construction Professions: Achieving Critical Mass,’’ Gender, Work, and Society 7 (2001): 181–96; Janice D. Yoder and Patricia Aniakudo, ‘‘Outsider within the Firehouse: Subordination and Difference in the Social Interactions of African American Women Firefighters,’’ Gender and Society 11 (1997): 324–431; Janice D. Yoder, and Lynne L. Berendsen, ‘‘Outsider within the Firehouse: African American and White Women Firefighters,’’ Psychology of Women Quarterly 25 (2001): 27–36; Lynn Zimmer, Women Guarding Men (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1986); Liliane Floge and Deborah

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M. Merrill, ‘‘Tokenism Reconsidered: Male Nurses and Female Physicians in a Hospital Setting,’’ Social Forces 64 (1986): 925–47; Carlotta J. Young, Doris MacKenzie, and Carolyn W. Sherif, ‘‘In Search of Token Women in Academia,’’ Psychology of Women Quarterly 4 (1980): 508–25. 31. Sally Ann Davies-Netzley, ‘‘Women above the Glass Ceiling: Perceptions on Corporate Mobility and Strategies for Success,’’ Gender and Society 12 (1988): 339–55. 32. Karen S. Lyness, and Donna E. Thompson, ‘‘Climbing the Corporate Ladder: Do Female and Male Executives Follow the Same Route?’’ Journal of Applied Psychology 85 (2000): 86–101. 33. Catalyst, Women in Corporate Leadership: Progress and Prospects (New York: Catalyst, 1996). 34. Lyness and Thompson, ‘‘Climbing the Corporate Ladder.’’ 35. Christine L. Williams, ‘‘The Glass Escalator: Hidden Advantages for Men in the Female Professions,’’ Social Problems 39 (1992): 253–67. 36. Young and Hayes-James, ‘‘Token Majority.’’ 37. Michelle J. Budig, ‘‘Male Advantage and the Gender Composition of Jobs: Who Rides the Glass Elevator?’’ Social Problems 49 (2002): 258–77. 38. Williams, ‘‘The Glass Escalator.’’ 39. Yoder, ‘‘Rethinking Tokenism.’’ 40. Theodore W. McDonald, Loren L. Toussaint, and Jennifer A. Schweiger, ‘‘The Influence of Social Status on Token Women Leaders’ Expectations about Leading MaleDominated Groups,’’ Sex Roles 50 (2004): 401–9. 41. Edwin P. Hollander, ‘‘Leadership, Followership, Self, and Others,’’ Leadership Quarterly 3 (1992): 43–54. 42. Murray Webster and James E. Driskell, ‘‘Status Generalization: A Review and Some New Data,’’ American Sociological Review 43 (1978): 220–36. 43. Ridgeway, ‘‘Interaction and Conservation.’’ 44. Ibid. 45. Jackson et al., ‘‘Composition of the Workplace and Psychological Well-Being.’’ 46. Yoder and Berendsen, ‘‘Outsider within the Firehouse.’’ 47. E. Marlies Ott and Hubert M. Blalock, ‘‘Status Inconsistency, Social Mobility, Status Integration, and Structural Effects,’’ American Sociological Review 32 (1967): 790–801. 48. Yoder et al., ‘‘Empowering Token Women Leaders.’’ 49. Lyness and Thompson, ‘‘Climbing the Corporate Ladder.’’

11

Power, Control, and Gender: Training as Catalyst for Dysfunctional Behavior at the U.S. Air Force Academy Jamie L. Callahan

It is easier and more common to treat symptoms than to find and address underlying causes of problems. This axiom holds true not only for medicine but also for organizational interventions. The recent attempts by the U.S. Air Force (USAF) to respond to allegations of sexual assaults at the USAF Academy (USAFA) is an example of treating symptoms at the expense of ignoring underlying causes. In this chapter, I analyze the symptoms of dysfunction at the USAFA to uncover the potential causes of the problems. Early in 2003, national media outlets began reporting about sexual assaults at the USAFA. Throughout 2003 and even extended through summer 2005, allegations of assaults, cover-ups, investigations, and USAF corrective actions filled the news. Many expressed disbelief that such a scandal would ignite at the USAFA, the elite proving ground for the USAF. As a female USAFA graduate, however, I was surprised that it had taken so long to become public. A scandal that has not yet been as widely publicized is the rate of eating disorders among USAFA cadets. Recent media reports have highlighted that the U.S. military is having problems with overweight soldiers (CNN, 2005), at least half of whom had engaged in unhealthy weight loss strategies, such as bulimic behaviors, in an attempt to meet weight requirements. Eating disorders have been a hidden problem at the USAFA since the 1980s when a study revealed that the rate of bulimia among female cadets was three times the national average among college students. I contend that the existence at the USAFA of these two problems—sexual assaults and eating disorders—is related. Although the current sexual assault scandal has been widely interpreted as an organizational culture that perpetuates violence against women, the reality is that the likely underlying catalyst for the scandal affects both women and men. I suggest that the sexual assault and eating disorder problems experienced at the USAFA find their roots in cadet training practices that deprive individuals of personal control. Thus, in this chapter, I

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describe how these training practices contribute to creating an atmosphere that leads to dysfunctional behaviors by both male and female cadets. Current actions to address the presenting problem of sexual assault have included replacement of senior leadership and a flurry of awareness training programs. Although they are visible and appeasing, these types of responses are reactionary and fail to address the underlying catalyst that fosters the dysfunctional behavior. This underlying catalyst is the practice of rendering new cadets powerless in a process of stripping individuals’ old identities to remold them in the image of an elite USAF officer. This deprivation of power or control causes some cadets to seek avenues in which they can exert control. Though there are many potential outlets, both positive and negative, to exert control, two visible and devastating negative outlets may arise directly from the deprivation of power that occurs in early cadet socialization training. Male cadets may attempt to exert control over female cadets, and female cadets may attempt to exert control over their own bodies. In the sections that follow, I provide an overview of my qualifications to offer an interpretive perspective of the context and some background on the USAFA context. I offer an interpretation of dysfunctional behaviors as gendered responses to power deprivation in cadet training, and I conclude with implications for research and practice.

BACKGROUND My current interest was triggered by the sexual assault scandal and aftermath at the USAFA in recent years. Because of my personal experience as a USAFA cadet, I instinctively felt that the corrective actions reported in the media—such as replacing leaders, offering awareness training, and segregating men and women —would not resolve the complaints regarding sexual assaults. I believed the problem was much deeper but had not thoughtfully reflected on the possible underlying cause of the assaults. I began to more systematically reflect on my experiences and more closely monitor media reports regarding the academy to gain a better understanding of the current context. I have a unique perspective regarding the situation at the USAFA. As a female graduate of the academy, I have personal experiences with the culture and practices of the context. As a professor of human resource development, I also have been trained as a social scientist. Because this chapter is a result of my exploration of self in the USAFA, I first must offer some context for my analysis of the academy. To that end, it is important for the reader to be able to visualize who I am. As I write this article, I stand just under five feet, two inches, weigh approximately 118 pounds, and wear a U.S. size 4 petite that is slightly big for me; I weighed exactly the same when I was a senior cadet at USAFA. However, because I was considered too close to my maximum weight allowance at that

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time, my squadron monitored my weight on a regular basis. To this day, I remember the comment made by one of my male squadron mates as I waited to be weighed in one day, ‘‘You know, Jamie, you’d be really cute if you would just lose five or ten pounds.’’ Today, almost twenty years later, I finally realize that I am not and was not fat; nevertheless, the psychological scars are still there. I can also speak to issues of sexual harassment. Although I was fortunate to have never been assaulted, I knew quite a few female cadets who said that they had been assaulted. Some reported it, some did not; some left, some stayed. On the other hand, I realize now that sexual harassment was such a fundamental part of the training routine that at the time, I didn’t even realize it was occurring. Following examples cited by Dunivin in ‘‘There’s Men, There’s Women, and There’s Me: The Role and Status of Military Women,’’ I was just trying to be one of the guys and fell into a routine of unquestioning acceptance. Part of getting rid of an individual’s identity to mold a new one includes stripping the identity of sexuality. In the process of stripping one’s sexual identity, practices are used that can easily be associated with sexual harassment. For example, pushing the men by referring to them as ‘‘girls’’ or ‘‘pussies’’ or using explicitly sexual terms to label uniform parts or to measure cadence for marching in formation. Oddly, until I separated from the USAF and completed my doctoral work, I never considered these common behaviors sexual harassment.

THE USAFA Integrity first, Service before self, Excellence in all we do. —Core values of the USAFA

Military service academies in the United States (Army, Air Force, Navy, Coast Guard) are undergraduate institutions that typically have approximately 4,000 cadets. The caliber of applicants and the rigor of academics at these institutions have earned them the reputation of being public Ivy League universities. Cadets are required to take a minimum of eighteen credit hours per semester, to hold nonpaying squadron jobs, and to participate in mandatory extracurricular or intercollegiate activities. Unlike most college students, they have only approximately six weeks of vacation time per year (two weeks at Christmas, one week for Spring Break, and three weeks of summer vacation). The core mission of the institution is to educate, train, and inspire young men and women to become leaders of the USAF, dedicated to becoming career officers who give a lifetime of selfless service to the nation. To initiate this process, cadets are socialized into the USAFA through Basic Cadet Training (BCT). When freshmen (otherwise known as doolies, derived from the Latin dulia which means ‘‘slave’’) arrive at the USAFA to begin BCT (or Beast), they enter a system in which personal characteristics are minimized.

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Their civilian clothing is replaced with a uniform; men’s hair is shaved and, until very recently, women’s hair was cut short. Civilian glasses and contact lenses are replaced with black, horn-rimmed, ‘‘birth control glasses.’’ Doolies in BCT may not go anywhere outside the squadron area alone, march at attention at all times, and participate in a series of activities designed to instill in them a warrior spirit and to teach them how to behave within the USAFA experience. In June 2003, the USAFA commandant indicated that ‘‘We’re trying to get everyone to talk and think like warriors.’’ Interestingly, the Fowler Panel noted that BCT’s real purpose was to create cohesiveness among team members of different socioeconomic statuses, classes, races, and genders but that many cadets felt that the system was meant to break the will of new cadets to remold them into a military image. This denotes a difference between espoused theory and theory in use regarding the purpose of BCT; it is quite likely that the tacit theory is what influences the development of the organizational culture.

GENDERED RESPONSES TO TRAINING PRACTICES In Western society, women are socialized to feel successful if they are attractive and feminine like runway models; in other words, women are judged by their appearance and thinness. Men, on the other hand, are socialized to be masculine warriors, ready to engage in combat. Thus, prior to arriving at the USAFA, cadets have already been socialized by broad cultural influences associated with gender roles. Once arriving at the academy, cadets enter a basic training program designed in part to fundamentally alter their individual sense of identity. This practice is meant to initiate the cadet into desired cultural norms that reinforce what can be called a combat, masculine warrior image. Thus, influence transitions from the socius to the psyche and then back to the socius (see Table 11.1). This section discusses how this chain of influence impacts both male and female cadets. Culture is transmitted in multiple ways, one of which is training associated with socialization. An organization’s existing culture influences the nature and contents, both implicit and explicit, of socialization training. In turn, new TABLE 11.1.

Chain of Socius-Psyche Influence

Male cadets Female cadets

Pre-BCT (Socius)

BCT (Psyche)

Post-BCT (Socius)

Combat masculine warrior (CMW) Attractive feminine model (AFM)

Loss of control ¼ sexual assault Loss of control ¼ eating disorder

CMW reinforced CMW and AFM in conflict

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members are introduced to the culture through socialization training and help maintain that culture. Individuals pay attention to others’ actions and their consequences and make decisions about their own actions based on the consequences of others.’ In this way, implicit understandings of accepted cultural practices are generated—what is rewarded and what is punished. In the case of the USAFA, BCT plays a vital role in the transmission of cultural expectations, many of which are tacit. Culture is maintained because social practices tend to be inserted into routines, often unconsciously, through our responses and reactions to events occurring around us. The repetition of practices over time and space creates routines that help individuals navigate their daily lives. Disruption of those routines can be traumatic; concentration camps, battle under fire, and religious conversions are given by sociologists as examples of situations in which existing routines are shattered and replaced with new ones. Those who are able to find some means of control in their lives are the ones who survive this ‘‘resocialization’’ process. This concept of the consequences of breaking routines and resocializing is particularly enlightening for the USAFA because the initial training experience for new cadets involves shattering old routines to break down old identities and instill new USAF identities. By removing power from the new cadets, that power is strengthened in external figures. An external locus of control is indicated in cases of eating disorders; in other words, individuals feel that others have greater power over their actions or decisions, and as a result, they seek alternative outlets to experience a sense of control. Although the problem is indeed associated with the organizational culture, as suggested by the Hall memorandum and the Fowler panel, the patterns of action have been directed at addressing only the explicit problem at hand instead of exploring the tacit reasons for the existence of the problem. The Female Experience This cultural norm for women to be attractive, feminine models influences girls before they even come to the USAFA. This is a difficult norm to uphold while in BCT and during the academy experience in general. A common phrase directed at female cadets while I was in training was that they suffered from CHD—Colorado hip disease—even when they were well within weight limits. Unlike their civilian counterparts, female cadets wear uniforms that are not particularly stylish, contend with stringent weight standards with limited access to healthy low-calorie foods, and face regular hostility from male cadets who don’t believe women should be allowed to attend the USAFA. Due to the nature of BCT, young women may feel that they have lost control over their personal lives. Research suggests that eating disorders, such as bulimia, are responses to powerlessness that frequently occur in women who have an external locus of control. Another key factor in the occurrence of eating

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disorders is dissatisfaction with appearance, such that those who believe they are not thin enough are likely to manifest abnormal eating behaviors. One of the goals of BCT is to create combat warriors; the USAFA Public Affairs newsletter, titled Warrior Focus, highlights the combat, masculine warrior culture of the USAFA. To adopt this image of a combat, masculine warrior, and therefore fit within the USAFA culture, women must unlearn almost two decades of socialization and adopt a persona that is counter to what they have been taught equates to success. In addition, they must combat forces that continue to encourage them to meet the attractive, feminine model cultural norms. As a result, women battle both a sense of loss of control during BCT and, especially after BCT, a heightened pressure to meet both masculine and feminine cultural norms. Military women in general have a significantly higher rate of eating disorders, especially bulimia, than their civilian counterparts. Freshmen female cadets at USAFA experience bulimia three times more often than female freshmen at other colleges. Furthermore, evidence suggests that these conditions are not preexisting but that contextual military factors cause the eating disorder. These contextual factors may include the deprivation of control in BCT, stringent weight standards, and negative perceptions of the dominant (male) group. The Male Experience Unlike women, who are socialized to be attractive, feminine models, men are socialized to be more like combat, masculine warriors; this is especially true for men in the military. In general, men are seen as successful based on their achievements instead of their personal appearance. Furthermore, Western (particularly American) culture tends to objectify women and ‘‘frequently views sexual intercourse as an act of masculine conquest.’’ A fear that one does not meet these standards of masculinity may result in acts of sexual aggression toward women. Studies of fraternities also have suggested that group dynamics of fraternity culture encourage sexual coercion; although there are no fraternities per se at the USAFA, cadets commonly believe that they are part of one big fraternity, and at the very least, individual squadrons easily take on characteristics of fraternities. Thus, male cadets are socialized to believe that achieving sexual intercourse is a sign that they meet the standards of the combat, masculine warrior culture upheld by the USAFA. Experiences that begin in BCT reinforce the cultural perception that men are supposed to be dominant, achievementoriented, powerful, and masculine. As with female cadets, male cadets also experience a climate created in part by the USAFA training system in which cultural perceptions may lead to dysfunctional behaviors—for women, the dysfunction is bulimia, and for men, it is sexual aggression. But also like the women, male cadets experience another factor that may cause their dysfunctional behavior. Since the 1940s, repeated research has

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indicated that rape is often the result of a need for control, particularly over women. If BCT removes a sense of personal control from cadets, this research suggests that they will seek an outlet in which to express control as a response. If negative sanctions do not result from sexual aggression, theory and research indicate that such behavior is likely to continue. Thus, initial socialization training may influence dysfunctional behaviors in two ways—through the psyche and the socius. First, through the psyche, by removing a sense of personal control, cadets seek avenues to reestablish control; men may demonstrate dominance over women, and women may demonstrate dominance over their own bodies. Second, through the socius, by reinforcing cultural expectations regarding a combat, masculine warrior, cadet training increases a climate that accepts male (sexual) aggression and creates cultural conflict for women who attempt to meet standards for both men and women.

IMPLICATIONS Although adjustments to the larger organizational and societal culture would certainly stem the problem with dysfunctional behaviors by both male and female cadets, a key overlooked starting point to facilitate such a culture shift is the initial socialization training (BCT) new cadets experience. There is a need to reassess the purpose of the current USAF and USAFA and adapt training strategies accordingly. Although many positive changes have been made over the years, they do not seem to be made in a strategic way, and the underlying premise of the training continues to be based in military training culture hundreds of years old. Training designers at the USAFA need to strategically reassess BCT (and perhaps the entire four-year training sequence) and ask questions such as:




What kinds of missions is the USAF most likely to face? Do our current practices create physically and psychologically healthy USAF officers capable of operating in missions faced by the USAF today? How can we best prepare USAF officers (both male and female) to accomplish those missions?

The missions that U.S. armed forces often face in the twenty-first century are of a peacekeeping nature. It is very likely that the training needed to be successful in this type of mission is very different from the training needed in more traditional combat missions. Analyses of peacekeeping missions in Somalia and the Balkans suggest that the skills necessary to keep peace differ from those needed to win wars and that military forces tend to get in trouble because when under stress, they resort to combat skills. Thus, training to enhance a combat, masculine warrior image may disadvantage soldiers in a major scope of military operations.

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Additionally, I submit that the combat, masculine warrior mission is a small percentage of the entire operations of the USAF. Even in wartime, the USAF tends to be much more removed from the need for such a cultural image than the services that are more likely to engage in hand-to-hand combat. Perhaps this very removal from a traditional military frontline combat role instigates a stronger push toward creating a warrior spirit among USAFA cadets and officials. Whereas other service academies have modified many more of their practices to be more inclusive and less overtly combat, masculine warrior in their cultures, the USAFA has lagged. Yet the USAF seems to have more problems with issues that stem from the attempt to create such a combat image. Is it possible that the USAF is trying harder to project such an image to account for the perception that it is the most antiseptic branch of combat arms? Regardless of the cultural push for a warrior culture, the USAFA has an opportunity to stem some of the dysfunctional behaviors that manifest due to control issues. Instead of holding sexual harassment and sexual assault training, training designed to increase cadets’ sense of personal control is more likely to influence the broader problems occurring at USAFA and improve cadet performance. In fact, the types of training provided to cadets currently may actually be more damaging to women in several ways. First, increasing awareness of the problem without providing strategies and opportunities to make effective change may be very frustrating. Women bear the brunt of both the sexual assault dysfunctional behavior by male cadets and their own problems with eating disorders. There is little that the women can do to change the culture. They are typically given strategies to avoid getting assaulted; this merely removes them from being part of and accepted by the larger community to which they want to belong. Second, female cadets in the class of 1993 were taught how to more appropriately wear make-up and to avoid drinking alcohol when socializing with male cadets because ‘‘boys will be boys.’’ Recommendations from the 2003 Fowler panel also include admonitions for women to avoid situations that may be threatening by limiting exposure to alcohol consumption (by self or others). This suggests that guidance provided to female cadets in 1993 is consistent with guidance given to current cadets. On the surface, this type of training may seem benign or even beneficial, but it may foster cultural stigma for female cadets. Dunivin notes that women ‘‘fit in’’ with the USAF by becoming one of the guys. By not socializing with male cadets, female cadets risk even more alienation from the culture than they already experience. Alienation may actually increase the risk of assault!

APPLICATIONS Human resource development (HRD) professionals in particular can play a key role in the remediation of the USAFA situation. Trained in organization

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development and training, HRD professionals can help an organization conduct strategic assessments for broad-scale organizational development and to subsequently create strategically aligned training to facilitate organizational goals. Furthermore, the USAFA may prove to be a learning case for the HRD profession for addressing issues of social justice within and across organizations. HRD professionals can influence the practice of social justice within the USAFA, and as a result of their actions, they can influence other organizations with similar cultural dysfunctions. Specifically, the following actions provide a useful starting ground to begin to resolve the dysfunctions at the USAFA:








Assemble a team of both male and female professionals from both military and nonmilitary backgrounds who have organizational evaluation and diagnosis experience. Conduct an organizational diagnosis that uses a systemic-based model to assess underlying strengths and weaknesses of the USAFA without making assumptions about what needs to be fixed. An example of such a model is the Schwandt dynamic organizational learning systems model. Although I have suggested that training is a key underlying catalyst for dysfunction at the USAFA, jumping immediately to address that issue without further indepth analysis will likely result in the same surface symptom treatments currently taking place. Once data-based presenting problems are identified, resolutions should be developed strategically by incorporating voices from military and cadet personnel at the USAFA.

CONCLUSION The Fowler panel noted that BCT was an important indoctrination point that influenced the climate for potential sexual assaults. Some of the fundamental cultural changes that the panel recommended would address issues of unhealthy behaviors by both male and female cadets. These recommended changes, however, are embedded within the text of the report and are not highlighted in the recommendations section; they would be complex, expensive, and time-consuming and have not been the observable focus of action by USAF leadership. Changes to BCT are likely to meet with stiff resistance. Already alumni are complaining that changes to date at the USAFA and the first-year training have eroded the heritage and tradition of the institution. Although my own exploration of this issue has theorized about a potential overlooked cause for both sexual aggression and eating disorders, it has not been tested. It should be. Studies in the future should explore the relationship between issues of control and, at the very least, risk factors for sexual aggression and eating disorders.

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More in-depth analyses could be accomplished by identifying those who have experienced such dysfunctional behaviors and then determining their locus of control. If control does seem to be a factor influencing dysfunctional behavior, training could be initiated to address issues of power and control and outcomes could later be assessed. The issues of sexual assault and eating disorders at USAFA are indeed connected to culture and climate. However, the creation and maintenance of that culture and climate occurs in part through BCT; thus, training may be a common source of these unhealthy and dangerous behaviors. By changing the nature of power deprivation in BCT and by providing training to mitigate negative effects of loss of control, I contend that the USAFA will achieve much greater success in reducing both sexual assaults and eating disorders.

REFERENCES Adams-Curtis, L. E., & Forbes, G. B. (2004). College women’s experiences of sexual coercion: A review of cultural, perpetrator, victim, and situational variables. Trauma, Violence, and Abuse, 5(2), 91–122. Anonymous. (1988). Bulimia rampant among Air Force Academy women. Minerva: Quarterly Report on Women and the Military, 1(2), 9. Argyris, C., & Schon, D. A. (1974). Theory in practice: Increasing professional effectiveness. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. Billson, J. M. (1994). Society and self: A symbolic interactionist framework for sociological practice. Clinical Sociology Review, 12. Bowden, M. (2000). Black hawk down: A story of modern war. New York: Penguin Books. Dalgleish, T., Tchanturia, K., Serpell, L., Hems, S., de Silva, P., & Treasure, J. (2001). Perceived control over events in the world in patients with eating disorders: A preliminary study. Personality and Individual Differences, 31(3), 453–460. Dunivin, K. O. (1994). Military culture: Change and continuity. Armed Forces and Society, 20(4), 531–547. Dunivin, K. O. (1988). There’s men, there’s women, and there’s me: The role and status of military women. Minerva: Quarterly Report on Women and the Military, 6(2), 43–68. Fowler, T. K. (2003). Report of the panel to review sexual misconduct allegations at the U.S. Air Force Academy. U.S. Air Force Academy (Ed.), U.S. Air Force Academy. Fraser, L. (2000). Don’t eat, don’t tell. Available online at www.alternet.org/story/10005 (accessed August 28, 2004). Giddens, A. (1979). Central problems in social theory: Action, structure and contradiction in social analysis. Los Angeles: University of California Press. Kamoche, K. (2000). Developing managers: The functional, the symbolic, the sacred and the profane. Organization Studies, 21(4), 747. Kerzhnerman, I. (2003). The significance of general locus of control beliefs, weight-specific locus of control beliefs and restraint in predicting binge eating behaviors in an eating disordered population. Unpublished manuscript, Drexel University.

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Martin, P. Y., & Hummer, R. A. (1989). Fraternities and rape on campus. Gender and Society, 3(4), 457–473. McNulty, P. A. (2001). Prevalence and contributing factors of eating disorder behaviors in active duty service women in the Army, Navy, Air Force, and Marines. Military Medicine, 166(1), 53–58. Peterson, A. L., Talcott, G. W., Kelleher, W. J., & Smith, S. D. (1995). Bulimic weightloss behaviors in military versus civilian weight-management programs. Military Medicine, 160(12), 616–620. Rada, R. T. (1978). Clinical aspects of the rapist. New York: Grune and Stratton. Schewe, P. A., & O’Donohue, W. (1996). Rape prevention with high-risk males: Shortterm outcome of two interventions. Archives of Sexual Behavior, 25(5), 455–471. Schwandt, D. R., & Marquardt, M. J. (2000). Organizational learning: From world-class theories to global best practices. New York: St. Lucie Press. Slade, P. (1982). Towards a functional analysis of anorexia nervosa and bulimia nervosa. The British Journal of Clinical Psychology/The British Psychological Society, 21(3), 167–179. Sprengelmeyer, M. E. (2004). AFA tradition focus of panel: Lively debate marks session of oversight committee. Rocky Mountain News. Turner, J. H. (1991). The structure of sociological theory (5th ed.). Belmont, CA: Wadsworth. Tylka, T. L. (2004). The relation between body dissatisfaction and eating disorder symptomatology: An analysis of moderating variables. Journal of Counseling Psychology, 51(2), 178–191. Waller, G. (1998). Perceived control in eating disorders: Relationship with reported sexual abuse. International Journal of Eating Disorders, 23, 213–216. Weida, J. A. (2003). Commander’s guidance 06–5: Agenda for change progress. Warrior Focus. Welch, M. R., & Page, B. M. (1979). Sex differences in socialization anxiety. Journal of Social Psychology, 47, 17–23.

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Gendered Ethics and Law in Cases of Corporate Executive Crimes and Punishments Mary Lenzi

Do female and male CEOs execute their leadership roles similarly? Do they pay themselves and receive recompense from the law and society in a gender-neutral way? Before the current ‘‘tribunal’’ of business, ethics, and law, CEOs appear judged more according to stereotypes of men and women in power than according to any genderless ideal. One still wonders why a female CEO, Martha Stewart, cannot lie like a male CEO, Kenneth Lay, and ‘‘get away with it’’: The rise and fall of male and female CEOs show critical gender differences in development of their personalities and corporations. Specifically, I examine whether their gender played a similar role in their wrong actions, cover-ups, indictments, convictions, and legal sentencing.1 Generally, the analysis employs philosophical ethics and moral psychology to examine and evaluate the role gender plays in the personal professional development of corporate executives and in their respective types of corporations, the homemaking life versus the energy industries. Martha Stewart, founder and former CEO of Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia, was indicted for obtaining and acting on a private tip from her stockbroker about future price changes in her personal stock in ImClone and then lying to federal investigators when directly questioned about these actions.2 Kenneth Lay, founder and former CEO of Enron, three years after the collapse of that company,3 was federally indicted on eleven charges of fraud, conspiracy, and insider trading offenses ( July 8, 2004). His trial and sentencing have been drawn out. On May 25, 2006, Lay’s five-month-long trial ended. He was convicted on ten charges and his sentencing will be decided on September 11, 2006. With these test cases, I provide alternative analyses of the role gender plays in culture, ethics, and law that may result in better choices and fairer consequences for corporate executive males and females in the future. These analyses will further show the implications for countless people (employees, shareholders, and society) as stakeholders dependent on corporate executive effectiveness and ethics.

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For simplicity, relevant factors in this debate appear from A through G as follows: A: American corporate activities (ethics, laws, and outcomes) B: Bosses’ behavior C: CEOs’ cover-ups D: Deception and detection E: Executives exposed F: Failings of CEOs; fallout in both corporate and public worlds G: Gender and groupthink In its five-part analysis, this chapter explores the me´lange of these factors, according to theories and interpretations of the ego and individual gender, group dynamics and psychology, social forces and morality, and culture and law. Overall, the formative factor of one’s gender, psychologically, historically, and culturally, is evident in leaders of corporations as in society. As in society, gender is not the only cause of the differences, however. My analysis of gender will be subsumed under the more general analysis of ‘‘groupism’’ versus ‘‘egoism,’’ or what could be viewed as ‘‘cultism’’ versus individual ‘‘exceptionalism.’’4 The strategy here is to engage readers in the ongoing dialectic of dialogue—analyzing and debating opposing and complementary arguments and viewpoints. Such dialectic is more than merely theoretical: It uncovers inconsistencies, conflicts, and controversy in individual cases of male or female CEOs, arguably because these strains prevail in the U.S. corporate subculture. This ongoing dialectic of gender continues to shape and determine our beliefs, judgments, and actions in our daily lives and work. DIALECTICAL ETHICS AND CORPORATE CULTURE When corporate entities and their executives do business, standards of right and wrong, helpful and harmful legal parameters, business codes, and standard practices are in place. The following excerpts from a televised interview in which Kenneth Lay (K.L.) and the commissioner of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) participated illustrate the point: K.L. claimed, ‘‘I have faith in the market when we get the rules right.’’ Interviewer: But the rules aren’t right. Commissioner Pat Wood [FERC] remarked, ‘‘Every market needs a cop in order to insure competitiveness.’’ K.L.: ‘‘That’s what our antitrust laws are all about. If people are abusing the marketplace, if they’re colluding, if there’s conspiracy, then in fact there are ways to handle that.’’5

Nevertheless, these so-called rules were insufficient: They remain indeterminate and open to individual interpretation and changing contexts.6 The

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corporate entity and its subsidiary structures emerge and transform in response to rapidly changing ways of doing business in the national and multinational corporate world. As will be shown, equally important are the public business personae of the CEOs as gendered persons and corporate figureheads. Public systems of law and social morality must continually be revised to modify, check, and balance the historical and cultural effects of gender typing in the CEOs’ corporate successes and failings. From the personal perspective, Confucius would say that people prosper when they ‘‘enjoy their enjoyments and profit from their profits.’’ Alternatively, when corporate greed and power become ends in themselves, enjoyment of work, profit, and money turns to misery. The CEO mastery of the corporate self and others (the corporation) may turn into self-enslavement; profiteering may turn into losses, social isolation, and even imprisonment. We need to examine how the mere fact of one’s gender determines individual roles and expectations, whether affecting or causing the disparities in achievement and outcomes, enjoyment and anguish from the goods and harms borne from executive leadership and performance. From the social perspective of the CEO, ‘‘above all, do no harm,’’ is an ancient, commonly held Hippocratic (medical) ethic that should apply to corporations and CEOs. To be attentively engaged with and responsive to others are critical attributes of the good person and the good CEO. For by so being, one can better foresee and avoid harming others. Again, CEOs’ gender may play a significant formative role in decision making to prevent harm and loss for those dependent on their effective, ethical leadership. The ethics of personal and corporate character development seem preferable, or at least complementary, to the customary social contract theory of business ethics.7 This implied or explicit contract entails the social and legal coordination of (genderless) rational, self-interested individuals obligated under contractual arrangements in business as in other areas of society and government. Next, in the evaluation of top executives’ ethics, I show that CEOs use multiple ethical systems and business factors to make decisions and assess consequences. Furthermore, hidden gains and losses resulting from CEO decisions and transactions are all subject to conflicting categories of appraisal. For instance, how does a corporate executive weigh short- versus long-term profits and penalties and public and legal oversight? How do CEOs reason about eventual exposure of their personal morality, as well as business deeds and misdeeds, especially given the increased likelihood of having criminal charges brought against them as individuals? First, general ethical and legal systems are appropriate in evaluating the character and illegal actions of CEOs as corporate leaders. Specifically, however, my analysis also maintains that the prevailing psychology and social morality of gender typing are crucial in shaping corporate executive morality, wrongdoing, and punishment. To exemplify the ambiguities and potential conflicts in any ethical analysis of the cases in question, I merely note some of the ordinary maxims: know thyself, might makes right, only the strong survive, the golden rule, nothing in excess, the golden mean, quid pro quo, and help one’s friends, harm

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one’s enemies. In the end, one might contend that CEOs remain beholden to the bottom line of profit making, regardless of their gender or the means employed. Second, genderless systems of government and the law apply equally to all citizens, but they also must adapt to regulate the changing business world. On one hand, though they may be corporate CEOs, all individuals, regardless of gender, race, or creed, are deemed equal under the law. Governmental and legal systems rely heavily on the ethics of justice, which social contract theory presumes to be genderless. Contract theories and frameworks, which are disparate in form and application, range from theories of fair redistribution of economic benefits and burdens in society to the extremes of libertarianism and free-market capitalism. Except to prevent fraud and coerced contracts, no intervention in the marketplace is justifiable, according to the latter.8 In my analysis, these theories and structures are insufficient to inform, shape, and control CEOs’ moral development. Constitutional government, laws, and business codes of ethics can only provide necessary frameworks for corporate executive decisions. As such, they cannot mandate virtuous business leadership. Because character is an inward condition of the self, and action an outward expression, noble character in a CEO or business leader cannot be imposed from the outside. Significantly, gender identity also is both an inward and outward state of being oneself. External systems, such as codes, laws, and gender typing merely impose standards and expectations for CEOs and corporations. In The Protestant Work Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism (1904), social theorist Max Weber suggested that rigorous attempts at rationalization, in the present cases, through rules and gender typing, might result in the decline rather than the progress of reasonable ethical values and social freedom. Third, any virtues and vices must rest on mutual trust and reciprocity. By one definition, ‘‘the corporation is a voluntary association maintained through contractual arrangements.’’9 Contractual trust then becomes the social glue that ensures the ethics and reliability of business contracts. Without it, parties to such contracts would instead have to resort to the use of force to compensate for deficient character and morality. Truthfulness is the foundation of trust in the corporate contractual world. Lying and deception become key factors in the charges and cases against Stewart and Lay. The differing legal charges, the intent and content of their lies and the consequences of lying seem to reflect gender stereotypes.10 Finally, as I will show, though all aforementioned systems of ethics, business, and law espouse genderless policies, gender still plays a leading role in the personal and professional development of men and women in power, as in the cases of Stewart and Lay.

CASE COMPARISONS AND CONTRASTS Before their criminal indictments, Martha Stewart (b. 1941) was founder and CEO of Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia (1993–2003), and Ken Lay (b. 1943)

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was Enron’s first chair and CEO (1986–2001). Despite noticeable parallels in their corporate positions, their different actions, indictments, and convictions continue to cause controversy along gender lines. The controversy stems not only from Stewart’s and Lay’s individual gender but also from the gender of those judging and observing their cases as they unfold. First, we must determine whether Stewart and Lay experienced differential treatment in the federal judicial system, including the sentencing for their wrongdoing. According to the legal fact sheets, federal charges for Stewart included obstruction of justice, conspiracy, and false statements.11 Stewart’s appellate lawyers denied the last charge. Moreover, the major issue in the Court of Appeals was ‘‘whether the prosecution must prove that one knew that a false statement was criminal.’’12 The Court of Appeals dismissed her case in January 2006; as of May 26, 2006, Stewart has filed another appeal to overturn her conviction on civil insider trading charges. In the Stewart case, the finer distinctions of legal interpretation and other ambiguities of business law are at stake regarding truth telling (see later discussion in this chapter). Unlike Lay, Stewart was not indicted for insider trading. According to the letter of the law, insider trading occurs when someone profits from selling stock after obtaining ‘‘material, nonpublic information from a company ‘insider,’ namely an official, or someone who has access to data that could move the stock.’’13 Stewart’s indictable dealings, resulting from dining conversations with her stockbroker about the sale of her ImClone stock (notably not her own corporation’s stock, as in the case of Enron executives), managed to prevent a personal loss of a mere $45,673. On that same day, ‘‘December 27, 2001, more than 7.7 million shares were traded and the price fell from $63.49 at the opening of trading to $58.30 at the close.’’14 Whereas Stewart’s individual transactions had relatively little negative effect on others, Lay and other Enron executives were accused of bankrupting investors, raiding retirement funds, and culling corporate coffers. Despite the greater seriousness of the charges and guilty convictions against Lay, he has not been sentenced at the time of this writing. Meanwhile, Stewart, contrary to the wishes of the judge and her lawyer, chose to serve jail time in advance of the Appellate Court decision. While Stewart was serving time at the female federal prison, given the sexist label of Camp Cupcake, her daughter, Alexis, explained that her mother wanted to get back to her work and put this mess behind her: For Stewart, ‘‘her life is her company.’’15 Even Sigmund Freud would concur: For someone ‘‘to be well’’ means ‘‘to live and work well’’ (lieben und arbeiten). Work, and Stewart’s love of it, gave focus and purpose to her life. As her case plays out, the sixty-three-year-old Stewart conveyed to the public that she just wanted to get back to the ‘‘good life,’’16 not merely one of finely designed homes and ornamental gardens but one characterized by a good job with money to perpetuate her self-sufficiency and fulfillment long into retirement. Unlike Lay, Stewart voluntarily served jail time, so she could return (more) cleanly to her former status as a leader in the home industry. Such a strong interconnection between Stewart’s private and public life supports my analysis of gender’s role in the intertwined personal and public schema of business.17

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When Lay was CEO, Enron defrauded the public out of billions of dollars, perhaps because he exerted control over the country’s energy policies and supplies. Lay, sitting in high political places on state and federal boards, directly influenced the power and gas industry, advising both Bush presidents. In his long corporate and political career, Lay enjoyed the status of a ‘‘brave new world’s’’ economic ideologue and cult leader. Armed with a doctorate in economics and extensive academic and corporate experience, beginning as an economist with Exxon and culminating in a leading role on the FERC, Lay preached and practiced the economic liberalization model of nonregulation of gas and electricity monopolies, on which Enron also was modeled. Think tanks and academia, notably Harvard Business School, praised the ‘‘Enron model’’ of doing economics in business and politics.18 To begin in the middle, I tentatively pose these basic questions regarding the role and effect of gender in the two cases. Given disparities before the law and in the courts—the quick sentencing and the continuing intense public scrutiny of Stewart, versus the secretive, drawn-out course of Lay’s trial and sentencing—did gender influence the differing courses of their cases and outcomes? Alternatively, were any differences due to the finer distinctions of past and new corporate laws? Did differences result from the varying crimes for which Stewart and Lay were originally charged? Because Lay’s case has not completely played out in the legal system at this point, no apt closure or definitive conclusions are possible. This history is still being made and hence ripe for ongoing analysis and interpretation.

GENDERED BIOGRAPHIES OF CEOS Specifically to illustrate my claim of corporate gender bias, I must briefly examine the biographies of Stewart and Lay. Both have high-profile business personae. The public perceives both as aloof, logical, calculating business people: They seemed not to attend enough to their workers, their company’s shareholders, and society’s stakeholders; they attend, instead, to themselves, their profits, and businesses. Both wrongly capitalized on their personae: Stewart on her celebrity cult image and Lay on his insider political status. Given these similarities, one rightly questions why their legal proceedings and outcomes have unfolded quite differently over many years (2001–2006). The ethics and institutions of democratic justice, construed as embodying gender neutrality and equality before the law, appear inadequate. Neither Stewart nor Lay learned and acquired leadership virtues by respecting generic (genderless) abstract duties, laws, and codes, or by means of social shame or approval, or by lawful monetary rewards and punishment. Due to the weight of gender difference, I contend that these same systems of moral development can compromise or diminish one’s humaneness.

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First, as background, I find that in capitalistic society, capital attains independence and has its own individuality, whereas living persons can become dependent on capital to the point of sacrificing their individuality.19 One could also see individuals sacrificing others by maximizing their own capital. In either case, one’s humaneness is compromised, if not sacrificed. The law itself illustrates this rationale. Legally corporations are deemed persons under federal law. In the 1970s, the Civil Rights Code added corporations to the list of persons having civil rights and protection. Although corporations are genderless in theory and before law, their in-the-flesh CEOs are male and female, and, as a result, incur different consequences and appraisal of their actions. Their personal professional development differs and also mirrors gender differences in their corporate personalities and organizations. I must still demonstrate the claim that the development of personal–capital connections is the extension of oneself, as CEO, outward into the corporation. Stewart, as a college student and then as an educated, intellectual woman and young wife worked as a model to earn money. Nevertheless, she developed her brand of the brainy beauty. Stewart, like another female, Gloria Steinem (founder and former chief editor of Ms. Magazine), had humble origins. Both, however, attended an exclusive ‘‘Seven Sister’’ school, Barnard and Smith, respectively. Both modeled professionally, capitalizing on their good looks. After becoming a mother, Stewart stopped modeling and followed in her father-inlaw’s profession by becoming a stockbroker, which she quickly abandoned after some financial setbacks. As a result, Stewart found her profession in homemaking, starting a catering business in her basement, and the rest is history.20 Now, we can consider whether Stewart had equal opportunities as a female of her generation to be a self-determining woman and professional businessperson. Rather, was not the norm that such a woman would be supported by her interpersonal family relationships and emotional domestic attachments? Stewart’s self-development and the growth of the Martha Stewart brand name and business are noticeably different from the career paths of males in her life. For instance, Stewart was a wife, mother, and entrepreneur in home economics, a field more primed for female leadership than oil and gas industries or stock brokerage firms. As apparent from the men in Stewart’s life, her stockbroker father-in-law and lawyer husband, the normal course of professional male development seems more determined by culture and history. Male education, training, social conditioning, and career opportunities encourage them to assume leadership in law and business. In contrast to Stewart, Lay followed the more traditional, typically male track to success. His steady, direct path to the top of his industry in energy appeared unimpeded by any domestic relationships. The story of Lay, as the former Enron CEO, diverges from that of his female CEO counterpart. Along gender stereotypic lines, Lay merged his business and political power, unlike Stewart, who merged home economics with a megacorporate business. Stewart

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was a domestic guru, a home network icon, with a cult following of female devotees—housewives and mothers. Lay was a public force who had powerful friends like the Bush family and business connections to the U.S. Energy Commission and public oil and gas industries. The globally connected Lay was on the 1990 Houston Economic Summit of Industrialized Nations, which hosted former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. Unlike Stewart as CEO of her corporation, Lay certainly attained a wider sphere of interlocking national and international political influence and economic power. Some philosophical background may serve well in evaluating these gendered biographies. Reviewing the eighteenth-century Age of Reason provides a pertinent historical foil for this CEO gender analysis. French philosopher JeanJacques Rousseau put forth different male-female theories of virtues and moral education, in the education of the brother and sister in Emile (1762). Females are to learn patience, charm, subservience, moderation, flexibility, and resilience. Males are taught courage, wisdom, self-respect, strength of will, and independent, self-sufficient thinking and behavior. Turning to the desirable traits for the moral business personality, however, one can see the need to appropriate a combination of both male and female virtues, or perhaps a common set of virtues for both genders, for example, to integrate flexibility with strength of will, resilience with wisdom, and moderation with courage and integrity. Ideally, such integration of virtues, paired with ingenuity, inventiveness, and the pursuit of excellence in one’s work would shape the successful, virtuous personality in corporate business.21 My analysis reveals other significant gender differences in CEO personalities and their corporate configurations. These may account for new twists in the nature and cover-up of their respective corporate wrongdoing.

THE NATURE OF GENDERED CEO CRIMES: TRUTH, CONCEALMENT, DISCLOSURE First, I resume the saga of Stewart with particular regard to the rationale underlying the criminal legal charges of her deception and lying to federal investigators. Lawyers for Stewart have claimed that the government has employed diversionary tactics in the past and evidently in its timing and logistics of the case against her. 1. Stewart’s lawyers argued that the charges against her were made ‘‘because the Department of Justice is attempting to divert the public’s attention from its failure to charge the politically connected managers of Enron and WorldCom.’’22 Given her lawyers’ rationale, one may infer further that the government employed this diversionary tactic in the Stewart case for reasons similar to those used in bolstering the case for the U.S. invasion and occupation of Iraq.23

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2. Stewart’s lawyers also asked whether the federal government doggedly pursued the case against her ‘‘because [Stewart] is a woman who has successfully competed in a man’s business world by virtue of her talent, hard work and demanding standards.’’24 The presupposition is that being demanding and ambitious in her line of work is more of a deficit for a powerful executive female than for a male. Rather than being admired for her commanding personality, Stewart has become infamous (at times despised) for her perfectionist personality. Yet she would prefer to ascribe this trait to her strong drive for business excellence and success, and perhaps it accounts for this same success. In her letter to U.S. Judge Miriam Goldman Cedarbaum ( July 15, 2004), Stewart revealed, ‘‘I was often chided for being a ‘perfectionist’ by my competitors, peers, and the press, but the way we looked at our business was that we were ‘teachers’ and what we taught had to be based in fact, truth and ‘highest standards of perfection.’ ’’25 On this particular point, four editorial asides are in order. 1. Note these underlying distinctions regarding the various standards of ‘‘truth’’: truth under the law and in legal investigations, in contrast to the ‘‘truth’’ of the ‘‘teacher,’’ as adopted in the educational line of her work. Stewart deemed that being demanding about the standards of truth was necessary for operating Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia, founded on teaching successful living. Perhaps we are to assume further that these standards of truth would differ from those used in other industries, such as Enron’s corporation and other professions. 2. One can evaluate the morality and consequences of Stewart’s perfectionist personality in the social, corporate world. Though someone like Stewart may be earnest in teaching, by controlling and directing oneself from within, one may still be unable to control external forces to which any human personality is subject. Hence, to identify and tolerate one’s own limitations in confronting those of others and of the external world would constitute necessary and beneficial self-knowledge for any professional corporate executive as well. 3. The basic rationale of her appellate lawyers strongly implies that sexism is a constraining factor in the case for Stewart.26 Moreover, gender typing if not outright sexism most likely lies beneath the surface, because historically stereotypic gender roles underlie our social and cultural underpinnings, whether or not we are conscious of their influence or effects. Viewing this editorial commentary in light of the appellate proceedings and facts in the Stewart trial, her lawyers further proclaimed: It is truly extraordinary when you have perjury committed at a trial—both by an outspoken juror and by a key government witness. First, we have a

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man who lied his way onto the jury by falsely denying his prior arrest for a gender-based crime. Then a key government witness—himself a highranking employee of a law enforcement agency who functioned as part of the prosecution team—commits flagrant perjury on the stand.27

There seems to be enough lying going around for everyone on both sides to participate. However, the more long-lasting destructive lie overlaying these charges is that of gender-equity between corporate males and females. Interestingly, the news report just referenced included the following passage, which sets up another rationale. 4. Allegedly, the Securities and Exchange Commission seems to be using ‘‘the Stewart case to significantly expand its ability to charge people with insider-trading abuses.’’28 The commission then is using a female CEO as its sacrificial lamb in its crackdown on future executive misdeeds. ‘‘In an informal Website poll, a majority of over 64,000 readers said the government was not being too hard on Stewart.’’29 Herein are two equivocal forces: Residing alongside gender typing is an abiding core belief that given the ideals and system of U.S. constitutional democracy, most citizens expect that males and females will be treated fairly. In particular, Americans hold that the law must judge all individuals as equals, despite the diverse outcomes for those charged with similar crimes in the system. Lay’s wrongdoings, to which I now turn, typify at the executive level male behavior regarding truth telling and cover-ups in the guise of Enron’s complex business arrangements. Because ‘‘many of the accounting and legal issues . . . were vetted by outside experts, that could make it more difficult for prosecutors to convince a jury that the executives acted with intent to defraud.’’30 Consequently, any legal or ethical analysis entails variable, contentious interpretations. One must read behind the lines of the virtual ledger sheets at Enron and its affiliates. Lay maintained he was out of the loop of the goings on at Enron, even though the facts suggested otherwise: Oct. 23, 2001 stands out as a particularly bad day for Ken Lay. As word circulated that [Enron] . . . was under investigation for balance-sheet shenanigans, the CEO tried to pull Enron’s stock out of a tailspin by arranging a special conference call with analysts: ‘‘We’re not trying to conceal anything,’’ he told them. ‘‘I’m disclosing everything we’ve found.’’ After laying down the phone, Lay gathered Enron’s employees via a live web cast and teleconference, and tried to reassure them too. ‘‘Our liquidity is fine,’’ he said of the company that was about to flame.31

The two faces of Lay’s business personae are clearly seen and voiced through both sides of Enron—insiders (Enron ‘‘analysts’’), and outsiders (thousands of investors and employees).

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In a similar fashion, defense lawyers for Stewart claimed, ‘‘Martha Stewart has done nothing wrong. The government is making her the subject of a criminal case designed to further expand the already unrecognizable boundaries of the federal securities laws.’’32 However, a critical difference between their cases is obvious in the elaborate political and economic intricacies of ‘‘accounting’’ that Lay and Enron affiliates employed. Stewart was a novice in these regards. This distinction also seems gender-related. Because the corporation remains primarily a male subculture, a female CEO has fewer material and business connections with other female executives and government officials to pull off the intricate scheme of outsourcing and virtual business and accounting arrangements invented and implemented by Enron. In a related strain of this argument, New Age cover-ups can appear worse than the actual crimes of the CEOs involved. Truth has become virtualized, electronically fantasized, submerged, or lost in convoluted business arrangements and partnerships. Hypocrisy, the lack of any authentic connection between one’s image and words can be more heinous than one’s deeds, and the appearance of wrong actions more culpable than their actuality. One may define the difference by assessing, comparing, and contrasting the consequences of their corporate executives’ misdeeds with the public fallout from Enron versus that from Stewart’s corporation. Regardless of these alternative accounts, the ethical and legal rationale of lawyers in the Stewart or Lay cases could both be argued apart from any stereotypic gender analysis or by resorting to gender stereotypes. To illustrate this paradoxical point, his lawyers could similarly contend that Lay (like Stewart) is being targeted or scapegoated due to the government’s diversionary tactics—to distract the public from fraudulent corporate activities increasingly practiced since the 1990s as a way of doing big business at home and abroad.

MORAL PSYCHOLOGY AND SOCIAL MORALITY OF GENDER Moral Psychology The public’s responses of love and hate, fear and admiration, seem meted out differently for rich, powerful men than for women. Therefore, I must examine the requisite background research and findings in gender psychology. Harvard moral psychologist Carol Gilligan opens her groundbreaking book, In a Different Voice: Psychological Theory and Women’s Development, with a scene from Chekhov’s The Cherry Orchard. We find the success story of the businessman Lopchin, a ‘‘self-made man,’’ whose father and grandfather had both worked on this cherry orchard, which he purchased from its female owner, due to her money problems. After buying the woman’s estate, he cuts down the cherry orchard to replace it with vacation homes, reasoning that others like him ‘‘will see a new life. [The businessman prays: ‘Lord, thou gavest us immense

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forests, unbounded fields and the widest horizons, and living in the midst of them we should indeed be giants’] . . . at which point the woman interrupts him saying, ‘You feel the need for giants—They are good only in fairy tales, anywhere else they only frighten us.’ ’’33 Similarly, we too might view CEOs as giants whom we admire and fear: We little people are beholden to them, and, like other dependent people, we are deeply ambivalent in loving and despising them for what they are and have become, what they have and own in excess, and what they have done with their success. For instance, when asked ‘‘why people hated her,’’ Stewart replied that she would like to think that she was no different than anyone else with respect to people hating or loving her, yet realized that perhaps she was hated because she was perceived as ‘‘a perfectionist,’’ ‘‘arrogant,’’ and ‘‘extremely rich.’’34 In light of this psychology of gender, I may hypothesize that the bigger these giants grow, the more the public lusts for them to stumble, to fall, often cutting them down to normal-sized people, sometimes destroying themselves and their own good in the long run. I tentatively identify this repetitive history as an indication of a leveling syndrome. Gilligan found that ‘‘what emerges in these voices is a sense of vulnerability that impedes . . . women from taking a stand, what George Eliot [the male pen name chosen by this female novelist] regards as the girl’s ‘susceptibility’ to adverse judgments by others which stems from her lack of power and consequent inability ‘to do something in the world’ ’’ (p. 66). As overcompensation, these females assume and act as if they must do every task to perfection. This ideal of perfectionism causes a backlash against contemporary women, such as Stewart and Senator Hillary Clinton (whom some detest due to her political power). For performing well in their respective professions, these women are harshly leveled and even debased. Could Stewart ever have known or anticipated that perfecting her own voice and trade late in middle age would ultimately cause her to be cut down, deemed criminal in the eyes of the court and in public opinion? That is, Stewart did not merely achieve the pinnacle of corporate executive success; instead, she also reached the point of serving jail time, home and work confinement, and parole until March 2007. However, ironically also because of gender, she continues to have many followers who are loyal to her brand and cause. The last part of this chapter examines why she and her corporation gained new advocates after her ordeal with the courts and choice to serve jail time to clear her name. While Lay continued to live the lie, free, trying to sweep Enron’s damages under the rug and passing guilt onto other corporate associates, Stewart decided to go to prison for lying to the wrong people—overly demanding federal prosecuting investigators. Why? Because a female CEO cannot lie like a male and get away with it? To illustrate this point, when directly asked, ‘‘It isn’t true that you’re the closet Secretary of Energy?’’ Lay replied, ‘‘I’m not the closet anything.’’35 In other words, Lay claimed he felt no need to hide his wide range of

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national and international economic influence over the energy industry. In fact, his actions and style of public interactions speak otherwise: With his employees, shareholders, and the public as stakeholders in the energy industry, Lay was not forthcoming with explanations of his leading role in the fall of Enron. Tentatively, we may reason that Stewart, unlike her CEO male counterpart (Lay), had failed to learn how not to speak about lies or alleged crimes to official legal authorities. Though this distinction may constitute some degree of legal difference in courts of law, how much does or will it figure into their moral guilt and innocence? Perhaps Stewart simply has better morals than some of her CEO peers, and her initiative in choosing jail time demonstrates her moral fiber, or at least moral scruples. This claim, however, requires scrutiny. First, one could argue that a woman CEO who wants to be treated equally in corporations and under the law should learn to act more like a male CEO. Such assimilation is required for women to attain the social goal of genderless justice. Gender blindness seems fundamental, not only for realizing fair opportunities and freedom but for the good of individuals and society. Thus, once women liberate themselves from their stereotypical feminine virtues of charm, selflessness, and nurturance, they can be freer to become equal members of society, industry, and history. Those homey virtues of care—docility, patience, and passivity—are most successful in the private space of love and family, but apparently not in the public and business domains. Women then may effectively assimilate to the male spaces of the common culture and public domain by means of equality in education and in the workplace. Thereby they become ‘‘normed’’ in ‘‘maleness,’’ which is viewed as the standard of success outside the home, in business and in politics. Yet when such accommodation and assimilation to male standards lead to women’s noticeable success, such equality can backfire. Consequently, the old sexism and fear of the other reemerge at a higher or different level of awareness. Existentialist feminist philosopher Simone de Beauvoir (The Second Sex, 1949) described female reality and image as ‘‘the Other’’: One group places itself as the One against the Other. According to this scheme of the sexes, others (females) need not be viewed as or treated the same as those in one’s group (males). This dynamic of otherness can explain groupism and determinations of insiders and outsiders with regard to the gender of corporate executives, their crimes, and punishments. Morality of the group or people in question must be examined in conjunction with these moral psychological claims. Lay may be more admired and feared than Stewart and, consequently, more hated or severely punished in the end due to his gender. As a male CEO he was more capable and better connected; thus, he was better able to merge his corporation and political prowess. Having close connections to U.S. presidents and the Department of Energy, Lay attained greater political and economic power and control. Because of Lay’s prominent stature and range of influence, his activities adversely affected many more people and sectors over a longer time (the stock market, employee funds, and pensions), than did Stewart’s wrong actions.

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Social Morality Businesses and their executives are, like the rest of society, embedded in a much larger world with its own ethics, norms, and practices. Perhaps due to the growing appropriation of humans and corporations by mass communication technology and globalization, leaders in business as in politics have become iconic figureheads.36 In his psychoanalytic theories, Freud identified the dynamics of the group, as a certain esprit de corps, generated and sustained by the group ego. Different virtues and vices are deemed necessary for leaders versus followers, as different members of the group. Countervailing passive and aggressive forces work toward decentering self and group, as in business, government, and the military. Increasing privatization and subcontracting, which split up the groups, removing them from the control of centralized power and group leadership, provide current evidence supporting Freud’s ideas. Even a cursory look at the fractured fact sheets that detail Enron’s conglomerate build-up reveals a breakdown into subgroupings of all sorts. Especially notable is the infamous Arthur Andersen LLP and other off-balance-sheet corporate partnerships. Social psychology further supports the thesis that gender affects the moral and legal evaluation of CEO crimes and punishment. French sociologist E´mile Durkheim claimed: ‘‘Society [is] a psychic being that has its own particular way of thought, feeling, and action, differing from that peculiar to the individuals who compose it.’’37 Furthermore, he proposed that morality is itself a ‘‘social reality,’’ a ‘‘social product’’: ‘‘It is the authoritative judgment of one’s group.’’38 Human morality is a rationalistic, individualistic, legalistic set of rules and rule following. As such, morality sets up patterns of prescribed and proscribed behavior, overall producing habit, regularity, and constancy: ‘‘Throughout the diversity, human particular duties are everywhere the same’’ (pp. 32–33). As Durkheim further argued, ‘‘A spirit of discipline socially coordinates individuals and groups alike,’’ and such a learned ‘‘discipline’’ is one of the most basic elements of morality (p. 33). Yet as individuals, they may object that all discipline is restraint on behavior, a denial of self-determination, and even of doing business. Moreover, such individually variable attachments to social groupings entail a hierarchy normed among the diverse groupings and membership in which the self is invested. For Durkheim, the three main groupings are family, state, and humanity (p. 74). These three are above other subgroupings, such as gender, class, race, profession, job, and religion. If one adopts this rationale, it remains difficult to pick one morality for the group, another for the person, and a third for gender. One might object there should be another (supervening) morality, which works for the good of all and applies universally and objectively. Returning to ongoing corporate cases, group followers and leaders alike can become either self-sacrificial lambs or predatory wolves. So, too, the ‘‘fall guy’’ may be a powerful leader, as when in January 2002 a former Enron executive committed suicide, either to save face and avoid further disgrace or to escape

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inner guilt. However, individual truth sayers often suffer an equally terrible fate. A notable exception is whistle-blower Sherron Watkins, an former Enron vice president who was named Time’s Person of the Year for 2002. From the other side of public perception, that of infamy, note the rapid fall of Lay’s corporate social personality from ‘‘Wall Street hero into public enemy number one.’’ ‘‘In the Enron hearings’ biggest week so far, the man who wasn’t there [was] . . . Time’s Person of the Week.’’39 The title of the BBC News Business Report, ‘‘Kenneth Lay: A Fallen Hero,’’ mirrored the precipitous fall of the Enron conglomerate in the guise of its leader.40

REPERCUSSIONS FOR CORPORATE MANAGEMENT ETHICS, LAW, AND SOCIETY To assess the repercussions of these CEO crimes and punishment, we must remember their roots. From 1995 through 2001, Forbes named Enron the ‘‘most innovative company.’’ Lay announced that his corporate ‘‘we’’ would ‘‘like to think of ourselves as the Microsoft of the energy world. . . . Enron multiplied its market capitalization more than nine-fold in a decade, became the U.S.’s seventh biggest company and the world’s largest energy trading firm.’’41 The eventual unfolding of the Enron conglomerate overturned the old saying, ‘‘what’s good for General Motors is good for America.’’ Instead, in retrospect, what was good for Enron was not good for America and especially bad for Enron, its chief executives, employees, investors, and the public’s stakeholders in the oil and gas supply industries. Enron’s belief and persuasive power about the need to sustain open markets and trade energy futures just like other commodities caused The Economist to describe the firm as an ‘‘evangelical cult’’ with Lay as the ‘‘messiah.’’ After Enron’s 2001 collapse and ‘‘crucifixion’’ by the public and former followers of its leaders, the fate of the messianic Lay became uncertain. Despite the legal odds stacked against him, Lay still maintains publicly, ‘‘I want to see Enron survive.’’42 Despite the long legal battles, in his July 2005 attempt at pleabargaining, Lay displayed good faith in vowing to pay $4 million from his own profits to Enron’s depleted employee pension funds. Likewise, Stewart also may claim rebirth for herself and her corporation. Alternatively, is it more likely that the group may survive the demise of its leaders? Realistically, after being imprisoned and caught up in legal proceedings and appeals, how can these former giants (as CEOs) use their leadership expertise and former power to help their corporations survive? On one side of this dialectic, one wonders whether it is a question of her corporation surviving Martha Stewart or of Martha Stewart surviving her image, now tarnished by a federal conviction of criminal guilt and imprisonment. On the other side, it would seem odd that Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia (or the Oprah Winfrey Show) would survive without either one of these females at the helm.

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Despite CEOs’ beliefs that they are worth more than the sum of their employees’ value, if the corporation can effectively separate itself from its tarnished leaders, it may reinvent itself in a new business. For example, Arthur Andersen Accounting has been reborn as Accenture. The myth of the phoenix resonates in the revival of such businesses that continue to rise out of their ashes. Stewart can reemerge due to expertise in her business and her many followers, as Lay too may someday accomplish due to his corporate expertise, political connections, and seasoned finesse. Returning to our psychoanalytic line of reasoning, Freud claimed that God did not create humans in His own image, but that humans created God(s) in theirs. Analogously, we may presume that Enron or Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia did not remake the public in its image. Instead the public—stakeholders of society, labor, and the marketplace—fashioned corporations and leaders in their own image. Martha Stewart, the brand and being, has undergone a makeover and redemption. The new CEO, Susan Lyne, is strikingly similar in appearance to Stewart herself. As CEO surrogate for the paroled Stewart, Lyne is working with television moguls and Donald Trump in reversing Stewart’s role from victim of the legal system to born-again queen of the good home life. (Stewart appeared in the fall 2005 line-up with two television series and a radio channel, The Apprentice: Martha Stewart was canned by Donald Trump in 2006 and subsequently canceled by the television network, but her daily talk show Martha and Martha Stewart Living Channel on Sirius Satellite Radio continue to be successful.) Another noteworthy development in the Stewart story is the merger between K-Mart and Sears. With K-Mart’s $11.5 billion buyout of Sears on November 24, 2004, inmate Stewart ‘‘made $32.7 million without lifting a finger. So does crime really pay? How can a woman behind bars be experiencing such a reversal of fortune?’’43 Apparently, Americans rally around the downtrodden in interesting ways, for example, when they embrace Stewart as the comeback kid. She is no ordinary American or common criminal, but an ex-con of the highest stock. In comparison to the Stewart case thus far, male stereotyping may prove to affect Lay’s case and its aftermath more adversely in his corporate revivalism. First, one could argue that the public and the courts treated Stewart quite leniently and summarily. They did not judge her wrongdoing harshly because she is a female queen in the home industry with a devoted grassroots following. On the contrary, due to a grassroots swelling of malaise and thirst for revenge against politically powerful male CEOs, citizens may perceive someone like Lay as swindling the public wholesale where it hurts most—in oil and gas supplies and workers’ pensions, vital goods in daily life and work. The gender card may continue to influence their developing legacies, particularly in their personal fates and future business ventures. Second, I may appropriate my analyses drawn from moral psychology and social morality of gender, groupism, and exceptionalism. For in the dialectic and dynamic opposition of insiders and outsiders, male CEOs like Lay apply different standards to insiders (corporate and political leaders on their side, in

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the elite group) than outsiders (employees, stockholders, average citizens in society). In contrast, in the life and corporation of Stewart, typical outsiders to the big business subculture of capital generation and mass production, namely, homemakers and mothers, identified vicariously with and enjoyed the rise and success of Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia. Stewart’s corporation entered personally into their homes daily. In contrast, Lay’s political dealings and business transactions often took place behind closed doors with his inner circle of presidential friends and corporate associates. I now turn to a different but important long-term implication of profiting from one’s corporate crimes and poor management practices. In this regard, first note these salient facts: In the past, 1940–1960s CEOs have made 40 to 50 times more than their laborers. By the 1990s, they earned 400–500 times more than their employees did. Broadly speaking, the effect of this widening gap between executive and employee compensation, with no caps set at either the top or bottom (apart from the government requirement of minimum hourly wage), has been decreasing income for the bulk of workers at the same time executive income has soared.44

Ethically speaking, compensation for top executives of both sexes should remain proportionate to the corporation’s real assets and holdings, as is typically the case in European and Japanese corporations. In reality, money in hand is worth more than the virtual potential stuff of the CEOs’ dreams of future payoffs. They must balance their heightened sensibility with their actual power. Instead of acting on their power perceived through their own filters and those of insiders, CEOs should consider the others outside the corporate subculture who depend on them. If they did this, the ratio of CEO pay to that of their employees would better reflect CEOs’ input and the productivity stemming from sound fiscal practices and socially responsible leadership. In a broader social context, both consumerism and corporate greed may stem from common social expectations. Insiders and outsiders alike, the consumer and the corporate elite may share a belief in ever-increasing capital and renewable goods from an imagined fount of limitless market expansion and unchecked consumerism.45 In these regards, the CEO’s gender seems less relevant than what I have found elsewhere in this inquiry. For instance, female CEOs and business executives Stewart, Gloria Steinem, and Oprah Winfrey may incorporate themselves, and amass and spend their wealth in gendertypical ways; yet male and female corporate executives are similarly subject to these genderless beliefs in endless capital and goods. The foregoing evaluation has demonstrated different influences on gender formation and typing in the nature of male or female CEO crimes and consequences. I may reasonably conclude that (1) human nature—moral and gender psychology; (2) nurture—moral education, acculturation, and social

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morality; and (3) political society—law, economic policies, and regulations must all work together to persuade CEOs to submit to rules of just behavior, fair exchange, and cooperative business interactions. If, as discussed in the beginning, Freudian psychoanalysis was correct in claiming happiness is ‘‘to live and to work well,’’ then the role and functionality of the state and its institutions—family, education, business, and the courts, can be judged as more or less fulfilling their functions when we may live and work well together in society. However, institutions, such as businesses, will ensure that universal desires for happiness are met only if they are set up justly. The best methods by which justice, fairness, and liberty are able to achieve the broad ends of happiness remain indefinite, to be determined by the culture and its subcultures, such as corporations and legal systems. To address gender typing, which is embedded in business subcultures and in society, contemporary feminism has generated its own branches of ethics, psychology, economics, history, and philosophy.46 In particular, the field of gender ethics centers on empathy and responsibility for oneself and others. Instead, however, the fields of business and law have historically preferred the social contract theory of ethics as the main framework for just contracts. As argued, Stewart, Lay, and their respective corporations developed and were also shaped and judged by larger cultural and ethical systems of gender typing of males and females in business and in power. Consequently, both the law and the public have perceived and treated these CEOs differently. In retrospect, which ethical framework would have better suited the CEOs in question? Which will be more appropriate for top executives in the future?

CONCLUSION Before 2001, Americans treated their fraudsters with even more leniency than the Europeans. However, changes to the federal sentencing guidelines in 2001 and 2003 [Sarbanes-Oxley Act 2002] have raised the stakes. . . . Since George Bush set up a corporate fraud task force in July 2002, the workload of the Department of Justice (DOJ) has soared. Federal prosecutors have charged some 700 defendants in around 300 cases of alleged fraud, including over 30 chief executives [who represent 10 percent of CEOs].

One could object that they have not accomplished much in terms of legal settlement and sentencing in these cases.47 Furthermore, long, costly government litigation against individual executives is not the best way to correct abuse of power in U.S. corporations. Unlike Stewart, Lay has not yet been sentenced. Not until May 25, 2006, was his Houston trial complete, perhaps because the burden of proof required

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the prosecution to show evil intent in his case. Regardless of whether these CEOs were criminally negligent or innocent, ignorant, self-deceived, or simply amoral in their executive decisions, their gender differences as CEOs, evident also in their respective corporations (the good, home life versus public energy industries), are unavoidable but not considered blameworthy. Though similar in their record money-making abilities and elitism, Stewart and Lay differ in their gendered corporate crimes and consequences. Moreover, I have argued that they are loved and hated, admired and feared according to gender typing and expectations of men and women wielding power in politics and business. Despite the facts stacked against them and the ensuing legal judgments for or against them, as former CEOs, both Stewart and Lay still appear firmly committed to their own innocence for what they did or did not do while heading their businesses.48 As they proclaim, they had their reasons for their actions, derived from what they deemed were acceptable goals. At any rate, they believe themselves and their decisions generally trustworthy. Perhaps they trusted that their decisions were good and necessary at the time, given their CEO leadership role. The ethics of analysis and the law have judged them differently. Apparently, the CEOs lacked the relevant psychological and moral self-awareness connections about their own genders, corporate characters, and self-images, in contrast with those originating or imposed from the outside. Fortunately, U.S. constitutional government is one of checks and balances, as are other key institutions of society and business. Harmful transactions of rogue CEOs and freewheeling, out-of-control marketplaces are checked, corrected, and balanced, as are government laws and policies. The years and sentences to come may continue to manifest this dynamic.49 The pendulum may swing back to the center, fairer and more balanced than the past for both male and female corporate executives.50 On May 25, 2006, as this volume went to press, Kenneth Lay was found guilty on all charges in Houston, Texas, Enron’s former home quarters—six counts of guilty by the jury for security fraud, conspiracy, and insider trading, and four more convictions by the judge for personal banking fraud. (Jeffrey Skilling too was convicted on 19 out of 28 charges.) The judge will determine Lay’s sentence on September 11, 2006, 5 years after fateful 9/11, and the collapse of Enron. NOTES I thank Martha Drummond and our editor, Margaret Karsten, for their editing suggestions. 1. Controversy ensued over the differing defense pleas and legal sentences for the Fastows (former husband-and-wife corporate executive team for Enron). Their court cases were argued according to gender differences and roles: Mrs. Fastow claimed undue hardship for their children if she was sentenced to jail. 2. See ‘‘Securities and Exchange Commission Bars Peter Baconovic from the Stockbroker Business,’’ UPI, August 30, 2004.

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3. C. Thomas, ‘‘The Rise and Fall of Enron,’’ Journal of Accountancy Online (April 2002); Arlette Wilson and Walter Campbell, ‘‘Enron Exposed: Why It Took so Long,’’ Business and Economic Review 49(2) (2003): 6–10. 4. See Mary Lenzi, ‘‘Freud: The Mind/Body of the Eroticist,’’ British Journal of Psychoanalytic Studies 1(3) (1999): 315–26; Sigmund Freud, Group Psychology and Analysis of the Ego (New York: Liveright, 1921); Peter Gay, The Freud Reader (London: Norton, 1988). 5. ‘‘Blackout,’’ PBS Frontline, March 27, 2001; available online at pbs.org/frontline (accessed on September 1, 2004). 6. See J. D. Rest, M. Narvaez, and S. Thoma, Post-Conventional Moral Thinking: A Neo-Kohlbergian Approach (Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 1999); Patricia H. Werhane, Moral Imagination and Management Decision Making (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999); Terri L. Herron and David L. Gilbertson, ‘‘Ethical Principles vs. Ethical Rules: The Moderating Effect of Moral Development on Audit Independence Judgments,’’ Business Ethics Quarterly 14(3) (2004): 499–502. 7. See Patricia H. Werhane, Persons, Rights, and Corporations (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1985); Lynn Sharp Paine, ‘‘Managing for Organizational Integrity,’’ Harvard Business Review (March/April 1994): 106–17; Robert C. Solomon, A Better Way to Think about Business: How Personal Integrity Leads to Corporate Success (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999). 8. John Rawls, A Theory of Justice, rev. ed. (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1999); John Rawls and Erin Kelly, eds., Justice as Fairness: A Restatement (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2001); Susan Moller Okin, Justice, Gender, and the Family (New York: Basic Books, 1989); Robert Nozick, Anarchy, State, and Utopia (New York: Basic Books, 1977); Will Kymlicka, ed., Local Justice: How Institutions Allocate Scare Goods and Necessary Burdens (Newbury Park, CA: Sage, 1992); Michael J. Sandel, Liberalism and the Limits of Justice, 2nd ed. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996). 9. See James Gaa, ‘‘Introduction to the Special Edition on Accounting Ethics,’’ Business Ethics Quarterly 14(3) (2004): 349–54. 10. For feminist philosophies of trust and truth telling, see Annette Baier, ‘‘Trust and Antitrust,’’ Ethics 96 (1985–86): 231–60; Nel Noddings, Caring: A Feminine Approach to Ethics and Moral Education (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984); Onora O’Neill, Bounds of Justice (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000). 11. See ‘‘Securities and Exchange Commission Bars Peter Baconovic.’’ 12. Robert G. Morvillo and John J. Tigue, lawyers for Martha Stewart: ‘‘Trial Update,’’ June 4, 2003. 13. Keith Naughton, ‘‘Martha Breaks Out,’’ Newsweek (March 7, 2005): 44. 14. Morvillo and Tigue, ‘‘Trial Update,’’ June 10, 2003. 15. Larry King Live, interview, November 14, 2004. 16. Martha Stewart, press conference, September 15, 2004. 17. Though Stewart’s confinement to home and office were to end in mid-August 2005, because she violated certain home restrictions, her home confinement was extended three weeks. Her parole ends in March 2007. 18. Briony Hale, ‘‘Kenneth Lay: A Fallen Hero,’’ BBC News, January 24, 2002, available online at news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/1779445 (accessed on September 1, 2004). 19. Heidi Hartmann, ‘‘The Unhappy Marriage of Marxism and Feminism,’’ in James Sterba, ed., Social and Political Philosophy (Belmont, CA: International Thomson, 1995), pp. 364–76.

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20. See ‘‘Martha Stewart, Multi-Media Lifestyle Entrepreneur,’’ Martha Stewart Biography, Academy of Achievement, A Museum of Living History, available online at www.achievement.org (accessed on September 1, 2004). 21. Stephen Barr, ‘‘Women in Senior Executive Service Consider Themselves Influential, Study Finds,’’ Washington Post ( June 2, 2004): B2. Note that the modest rise of women in business management does not parallel rising female incomes and purchasing power. According to the Society for Women in Business Management (2004 Report), women comprise 14 percent of America’s upper management, holding positions as chief financial officers. However, women make 95 percent of their household purchases. Female dominance in purchasing is not reflected in the very small percentage of female managers and corporate executives. 22. ‘‘Stewart Convicted on All Charges,’’ CNN Money Report (March 5, 2004). 23. After the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the United States, the United States attacked Afghanistan in an attempt to dismantle Al Qaeda and find Osama bin Laden. Failing in this effort, the United States constructed its case based on faulty evidence and interpretations of Iraq’s nuclear capabilities and attacked that nation without establishing actual connections between it and Al Qaeda. 24. Jake Ulick, ‘‘Martha Indicted, Resigns,’’ CNN Money Report ( June 4, 2003). 25. Stewart’s letter to The Honorable Miriam Goldman Cedarbaum, U.S. District Judge, Southern District of New York, July 15, 2004; emphasis added. 26. Walter Dellinger, appellate lawyer for Stewart: ‘‘Trial Update,’’ July 16, 2004. 27. Morvillo, Abramowitz, Grand and Silberberg, P.C., ‘‘Reply Memorandum of Law in further support of Martha Stewart’s Motion for New Trial pursuant to Federal Rule of Criminal Procedure 33,’’ April 14, 2004: 1–10; Robert Morvillo and John Tigue, ‘‘Trial Update: Press Statement,’’ June 4, 2003; Dellinger, ‘‘Trial Update Statement.’’ 28. Keith Naughton, ‘‘Martha Breaks Out,’’ Newsweek (March 7, 2005): 44. 29. Ulick, ‘‘Martha Indicted, Resigns.’’ 30. Carrie Johnson, ‘‘Former Enron CEO to Face Criminal Charges,’’ Washington Post ( July 7, 2004). 31. Julie Rawe, ‘‘The Case against Ken Lay,’’ Time Magazine ( July 19, 2004). 32. Morvillo and Tigue, ‘‘Trial Update: Press Statement.’’ 33. Carol Gilligan, In a Different Voice: Psychological Theory and Women’s Development (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1982), p. 5. Also see Eva Feder Kittay and Diana Meyer, Women and Moral Theory (Savage, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 1987); Eva B. Cole and Susan Coultrap-McQuin, eds., Explorations in Feminist Ethics (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1992); Virginia Held, Feminist Morality (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993); Alison Jaggar, ‘‘Caring as a Feminist Practice of Moral Reason,’’ in Virginia Held, ed., Justice and Care: Essential Readings in Feminist Ethics (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1995). 34. Stewart’s letter to Cedarbaum, pp. 1–2. 35. Follow-up interview, May 22, 2001, for PBS Frontline: ‘‘Blackout,’’ March 27, 2001, available online at www.pbs.org/frontline (accessed on September 1, 2004). 36. See Jim Collins, ‘‘The Misguided Mix-Up of Celebrity and Leadership,’’ 2001 Annual Essay, Corporate Social Responsibility, available online at www.csrwire.com (accessed on September 20, 2005); Michael Macoby, The New Corporate Leaders: The Gamesman (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1976).

250

Legal, Psychological, and Power Issues

37. Emile Durkheim, Moral Education: A Study in the Application of the Sociology of Education (New York: Free Press of Glencoe, 1961), p. 65. 38. Ibid., pp. 90–91; 86–87. 39. Frank Pellegrini, ‘‘Person of the Week: Kenneth Lay,’’ Time Online Edition (February 8, 2002), www.timeonlineedition.com (accessed on September 1, 2004). 40. Hale, ‘‘Kenneth Lay: A Fallen Hero.’’ 41. Ibid. 42. Ibid. 43. Newsweek (November 29, 2004): 40. 44. Naughton, ‘‘Martha Breaks Out.’’ 45. This, at least, is the argument of other analysts, including Paul Lawrence and Nitin Nohria in Driven: How Human Nature Shapes Our Choices (New York: Wiley, 2001); Paul Lawrence, ‘‘The Biological Base of Morality?’’ in The Ruffin Series No. 4 (2004), pp. 59–79; John De Graaf, Affluenza: The All-Consuming Epidemic (San Francisco: Berrett-Koehler, 2001); Mary Lenzi, ‘‘Plato and Echo-Feminism,’’ chapter 6 in Judith Presler and Sally Scholz, eds., Peacemaking: Lessons from the Past, Visions for the Future (Amsterdam and Atlanta, GA: Rodopi Press, 2000), pp. 90–104; Friedrich Nietzsche, ‘‘To the Teachers of Selfishness,’’ in Walter Kaufman, ed. and trans., The Portable Nietzsche (New York: Viking Penguin Press, 1982). 46. Marianne A. Ferber and Julie A. Nelson, eds., Beyond Economic Man: Feminist Theory and Economics (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993). 47. ‘‘Bosses behind Bars,’’ The Economist ( June 12, 2004): 59–60. See also ‘‘Cracks in the Crackdown: A Spitzer Loss May Signal a Shift for White-Collar Crime,’’ Newsweek ( June 20, 2005): 46; and ‘‘Does the Punishment Fit?’’ Newsweek ( July 25, 2005): 18; see Robert Solomon, ‘‘Victims of Circumstances? A Defense of Virtue Ethics in Business,’’ Business Ethics Quarterly 13 (2003): 43–62. 48. Morvillo and Tigue, ‘‘Trial Update Press Statement.’’ See Paul Krugman, ‘‘Enron and the System,’’ New York Times, Op-Ed (March 4, 2004); Allan Sloan, ‘‘Lay’s a Victim? Not a Chance,’’ Newsweek ( July 19, 2004): 50. 49. Washington Post ( July 25, 2005): Given New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer’s continuing crackdown, ‘‘a noticeable randomness, or, at any rate imprecision has developed since Stewart’s quick-paced legal sentencing.’’ Subsequent convictions and reversals of the courts ( June–July 2005) indicate contrary results: Either the punishment more than fits the corporate crime, or not at all. The already complex concepts of executive wrongdoing and befitting punishment have become more muddled. For instance, Bernie Ebbers, former CEO of WorldCom, though initially harshly convicted, has launched a serious legal appeal, especially in light of the U.S. Supreme Court’s overturning a conviction ( June 2005) for Arthur Andersen’s unusual accounting practices in the Enron debacle. See Alison Jaggar, ed., Living with Contradictions: Controversies in Feminist Social Ethics (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1994). 50. Lynn Sharp Paine, Value Shift: Why Companies Must Merge Social and Financial Imperatives to Achieve Superior Performance (New York: McGraw-Hill, 2003); Marvin T. Brown, Corporate Integrity: Rethinking Organizational Ethics and Leadership (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005); Carolyn Kay Brancato and Christian A. Plath, Corporate Governance Handbook 2005: Developments in Best Practices, Compliance, and Legal Standards (Conference Board, 2005).

Index

Page numbers followed by f or t indicate figures or tables. Affirmative action, 19–20; beneficiaries’ negative self-view of competence, 11–12; and beneficiaries’ views of self-competence, 10–13; implications for work settings, 18–19; nature of, 1–2; nonbeneficiaries’ negative reactions, 14–15; perception of, 3; program models, 2; purpose, 1–2; reactions of those who feel unfairly bypassed, 13–15; and work behavior, 12–13 affirmative action (incompetence) stigma, 3–4; empirical evidence of, 4–6; inferring, 8–9; persistence of, 6–8 affirmative action policy type, 15–17 African American leaders, 211 African American managers, 170 Agency and leadership, 192–93, 195 Aggression, workplace: controlling, 64–67; terminology, 60; vs. violence, 59 (see also violence) Air Force. See U.S. Air Force Academy Arthur Andersen, 242, 244 assimilation: of dominant group members, 204– 5; of token group members, 206–7 autocratic leaders, 184, 193–94 Back, Elena, 103–4 Baron-Cohen, S., xiii behavior theories of leadership, 183 Bem, S. L., 146–47 bookkeeping model (stereotype change), 145 Brennan, William, 105

bulimia, 222. See also eating disorders bullying, 60, 61 Butterfield, D. A., 147 Bystander Ethnic Harassment scale, 31–32 Carranza, Eric, 170–74 category membership, 202. See also tokenism theory Chappell, D., 65 chief executive officer (CEO) crimes and punishments: corporate culture, dialectical ethics, and, 230–32; truth, concealment, and disclosure, 236–39. See also Lay, Kenneth; Stewart, Martha chief executive officer (CEO) crimes and punishments, gendered ethics and law in, 229–30, 246–47; case comparisons and contrasts, 232–34; moral psychology, social morality of gender, and, 239–45; repercussions for corporate management ethics, law, and society, 243–46 Civil Rights Act of 1964, Title VII of, 104–7, 109, 110, 112, 113 Clinton, Bill, 120 consumerism, 245 contraceptives, insurance coverage for, 112–14 contrast (group differences), 202, 205, 207–8 Conversion model (stereotype change), 145 Corporate culture, dialectical ethics and, 230–32

252 Corporate executive crimes. See chief executive officer (CEO) crimes and punishments Corporate management ethics, 243–46 Craig, Mary, 106–7 DeMartino, V., 65 democratic leaders, 184 Department of Labor (DOL) regulations: suggested revisions to, 127–36. See also under Family and Medical Leave Act Disability(ies): insurance coverage for, 105; pregnancy compared with, 105, 108–10 Discrimination: vs. harassment, 28–30. See also Pregnancy discrimination; Racial/ethnic discrimination Diversity and aggression, 64 Doc Childre, 51 domestic violence, 51, 63; definition, 67–68; myths and realities, 68; services for victims of, 65–66, 69; as workplace concern, 67 Durkheim, E´mile, 242 Eagly, Alice, 184, 188–91, 193–95 eating disorders at U.S. Air Force Academy, 217, 221–22, 225, 226 Ely, Robin J., 177–78 emotional abuse, 60; defined, 61 employee assistance programs, 66–67 employee benefit plans, 105. See also health insurance Enron, 229, 243. See also Lay, Kenneth Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), 102–5, 113 Erickson v. Bartell Drug Co., 112–13 Ethics: corporate management, 243–46; dialectical, and corporate culture, 230–32; gendered (see Chief executive officer (CEO) crimes and punishments) ethnic harassment (EH), 27, 40–41. See also harassment; Racial/ethnic harassment Ethnic Harassment Experiences scale, 31–33 ethnicity: vs. race, 27; tokenism and, 211–12. See also racial/ethnic harassment Executive Order 11246, 1 family and medical leave, states with laws mandating, 137n.13 Family and Medical Leave Act of 1993 (FMLA), 119, 136; and definition of ‘‘serious health condition,’’ 127–30; DOL’s interpretation and enforcement of, 119–21;

Index drawbacks and criticisms of, 111–12, 120; employers’ right to send employees for second opinion, 130–32, 136; enforcement statistics, 121; percentage of employers finding compliance with FMLA difficult, 125, 125t; percentage of employers finding no noticeable effect of, 124–25, 124t; pregnancy and, 110–12, 114; purpose, 110–12, 119; suggested revisions to DOL regulations, 127–36; survey findings on impact of, 121–27 Family and Medical Leave Act of 1993 (FMLA) leave: allowing employers to require light duty as an alternative to, 135–36; characteristics of leave takers, 122, 123, 123t; reasons for longest, 124, 124t ‘‘Feminine leadership,’’ call for, 143, 144, 157 feminist leadership, 195–97 freud, Sigmund, 163, 233, 242, 244, 246 frustration-aggression hypothesis, 63 gender and managerial stereotypes, 143–48, 151–59, 152t, 154t; and call for ‘‘feminine leadership,’’ 143, 144, 157; when they are likely to be activated, 175–76. See also chief executive officer (CEO) crimes and punishments gender and race-related stereotypes in management, 163–64, 171; contextual factors and possible solutions, 174–78; ‘‘think manager–think male,’’ 146, 164–69; ‘‘think manager–think white,’’ 170 gender categories, 202 gender differences: in incivility, 54; in workplace violence, 60. See also Women gender harassment, 56 gender prescriptions and proscriptions, 170–74, 172t. See also U.S. Air Force Academy gender-role spillover, 194 General Electric v. Gilbert, 105–6, 108 Gilbert. See General Electric v. Gilbert Gilligan, Carol, 239–40 group membership, 244–45. See also tokenism theory Hallmark Cards, 129, 131 harassment, 25, 60; background, 25–26; challenges facing researchers, 36–38; vs. discrimination, 28–30; future directions for research, 39–41; multiple forms of, 33–36; occupational status and, 37–38; organizational climate and, 35–36, 39–40;

Index semantic distinctions, 26–28; from superiors vs. peers/subordinates, 37. See also racial/ ethnic harassment; sexual harassment health care providers of employees, information employers can obtain from, 130–32 health insurance plans, 105, 112–13 hiring, targeted, 2 hispanic managers, 170 homicide, 59–60. See also Violence hostile environment sexual harassment, 73 human resource development (HRD) professionals, 224–25 Hyde, Janet, xiii incivility, workplace, 53–54; defined, 53; escalation to sexual harassment, 56–58; factors related to escalation of, 53 incompetence stigma. See Affirmative action (incompetence) stigma in-group/out-group perceptions, 202 insiders vs. outsiders, dialectic and dynamic opposition of, 244–45 insurance. See Health insurance plans intermittent leave: curbing the abuse of, 133–35. See also Family and Medical Leave Act interpersonally oriented style of leadership, 184 Johnson, Lyndon B., 1 Kanter, Rosabeth Moss, 199–201, 203, 205, 208, 213 Labor Department. See Department of Labor (DOL) regulations; Family and Medical Leave Act laissez-faire leadership, 184, 188 Latino managers. See Hispanic managers Lay, Kenneth (K.L.), 232–36, 238–41, 243–47 leaders: effectiveness, 186, 189–90; emergence of, 186, 190–91; evaluation of, 191–92, 197 leadership, traditional theories of, 183–84 leadership and gender: feminist leadership, 195–97; meta-analytic results on gender differences in leadership, 185–94, 186t; role of meta-analysis in research on, 184–85. See also gender and managerial stereotypes; Gender and race-related stereotypes in management; Leadership styles leadership roles, motivation to perform, 192–94, 197

253 leadership styles, 184; gender differences in, 185, 187–89 (see also Leadership and gender) Lyne, Susan, 244 Maldonando, Jessica, 109–11 managerial stereotypes. See chief executive officer (CEO) crimes and punishments; gender and managerial stereotypes; gender and race-related stereotypes in management Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia. See Stewart, Martha medical leave. See Family and medical leave military: gender stereotypes in, 168–69; token women in, 207, 208. See also U.S. Air Force Academy mobbing, 60 morality. See chief executive officer (CEO) crimes and punishments; ethics murder. See homicide; violence norms, 170; descriptive vs. prescriptive, 170–74 Nydegger, R., 58–59, 62, 64 otherness, dynamic of, 241 outreach programs, 2 Parks, Rosa, xi passive-aggressive behavior, 61 Perry, Elissa, 174–76 plus factor programs, 2 posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), 34 Powell, G. N., 147 power, control, and gender, 221. See also U.S. Air Force Academy preferential vs. merit-based selection. See affirmative action pregnancy: commitment to work following, 103–4; employees’ ‘‘potential for,’’ 107; Family and Medical Leave Act and, 110–12, 114 pregnancy discrimination, 101–15; causes, 102; court cases, 103–9, 112–15; economic trends and, 102; employee absence and, 114; expectations of job performance and, 114; stereotypes and, 112, 114–15 Pregnancy Discrimination Act (PDA), 105–6; defining the prohibitions under, 106; purposes, 106 pregnancy discrimination complaints, number of, 102

254 pregnancy discrimination law, 102–3; development of, 103–15 pregnant employees, termination of, 108 pregnant women who work, assumptions about, 101, 103 Prentice, Deborah, 170–74 quid pro quo sexual harassment, 73 quotas, 2 race: vs. ethnicity, 27; tokenism and, 211–12. See also gender and race-related stereotypes in management Racial Acts, Crimes, and Experiences Survey, 32 Racial/ethnic discrimination (RED), 29; definition, 28, 29 racial/ethnic harassment (REH), 25, 27; definition, 28–29; incidence, correlates, and measures of, 26t, 31–33 Racial Ethnic Harassment Scale, 32 racial harassment (RH), 27, 40–41. See also Harassment racialized sexual harassment (RSH), 35 racialized Sexual Harassment Scale, 32 Ragsdale v. Wolverine World Wide, 120, 132–33 rape. See sexual coercion re-socialization process, 221 role encapsulation, 210–11 Rousseau, Jean-Jacques, 236 safety, workplace, 106–7 safety plan, personalized, 66, 69–70 Schein, Virginia, 163–65, 169 Sczesny, Sabine, 170–71, 174, 176–77 seductive behavior, 56 self-examination programs, 2 self-monitoring, 62 sex discrimination, 103; definition, 106 sexual attention, unwanted, 56 sexual bribery, 56 sexual coercion, 56, 222–23; at Air Force Academy, 217–18, 224–26 sexual discrimination (SD), 28 Sexual Experiences Questionnaire (SEQ), 55–57 Sexual Experiences Questionnaire, Department of Defense (SEQ-DoD), 32, 55 sexual harassment (SH), 25, 28–29, 54–56; at Air Force Academy, 219; costs of, 74; defined, 54–55; discussions about, 74; escalation

Index from incivility to, 56–58; ethnic/racial minority experiences of, 30–33; guidelines for victims of, 74; nature of, 73–74; policy review, 75; policy statement on, 72–75; recommended corrective action, 75; typologies of, 56, 73; what is isn’t, 74. See also harassment sexual harassment (SH) complaint procedure, 75; informal advice and consultation, 75 Sexual harassment (SH) complaints: false, 75; resolutions of formal, 76–77; resolutions of informal, 76; retaliation against employees for making, 74 sexual imposition, 56 Smith, Howard, 104 socialization training, 220–21. See also U.S. Air Force Academy (USAFA), Basic Cadet Training social role theory, 194–95 status. See under tokenism Steele, Shelby, 3 stereotype change, models of, 145 stereotypes, 10–11, 36–38, 144–45, 202–3; defined, 144 stereotype threat, 206–7 stereotyping, 143 Stevens, John Paul, 105 Stewart, Martha, 229, 232–41, 243, 244, 247 stigma of incompetence. See affirmative action (incompetence) stigma targeted hiring, 2 Task-oriented style of leadership, 184 ‘‘Think manager–think male,’’ 146, 164–69; as global phenomenon, 169 ‘‘Think manager–think white,’’ 170 Thomas, Clarence, 3–4 Threat Assessment Team, 65, 68–70 token effects, reducing, 212–13 token group members, 205; assimilation, 206–7; contrast, 207–8; visibility, 205–6 tokenism: gender and, 208–9; race/ethnicity and, 211–12; status and, 210–13 tokenism theory, 199–201; interaction and performance processes and, 203–8; perceptual processes and, 201–3; promise of, 213–14; refining, 208–12 token men, 209 trait theories of leadership, 183 Transactional leaders, 184, 188

Index transformational leadership, 183, 184, 186, 188 Troupe, Kimberly Hern, 108, 111 Trump, Donald, 244 Type A personality, 62–63 U.S. Air Force (USAF), 217–19, 223, 224 U.S. Air Force Academy (USAFA), 217–20; Basic Cadet Training (BCT), 219–23, 225, 226; eating disorders at, 217, 221–22, 225, 226; female experience at, 221–22; gendered responses to training practices, 217–18, 220–26, 220t; male experience at, 222–23; sexual assaults at, 217–18, 224–26; sexual harassment at, 219 Venturelli, Celena, 114–15 violence, definitions, 58–59

255 violence, workplace, 58–61; causes, 62; controlling, 64–67; explanations and suspected reasons for, 61–64; high-risk jobs, 60; inspection of company for, 72; investigating complaints of, 71–72; nature of, 70; organizational factors and, 63–64; personality variables linked to, 62; policy on, 70–72; predictors of, 51–52, 62–63; prevention, 65, 66; reporting, 70–71; social factors related to, 63–64 visibility, 201; of dominant group members, 203–4; of token group members, 205–6 warrior image and warrior culture, 223–24. See also U.S. Air Force Academy women: affirmative action and incompetence stigma, 5–9, 11–13; ‘‘token’’ (see Tokenism). See also gender

About the Editor and Contributors

Margaret Foegen Karsten is Professor in the Department of Business and Accounting and Coordinator of the Print Business Administration Distance Program at the University of Wisconsin-Platteville, where she teaches management and human resource management courses. She developed a Management, Gender, and Race course and has taught it for many years. Her books include Management, Gender, and Race in the 21st Century (2005) and Management and Gender: Issues and Attitudes (1994), in addition to over twenty other professional publications. She has presented at many national and regional conferences, has received several grants, and has held various administrative positions. Her current research interests include career paths of executive women and the impact of intellectual distance between students and professors on learning. Tamara A. Bruce is a doctoral student in the Industrial/Organizational Program at Michigan State University. She received her bachelor’s degree in psychology from Smith College. A former member of the Women’s Health Sciences Division of the National Center for Posttraumatic Stress Disorder in Boston, she continues to be interested in the impact of harassment on mental and physical well-being. Her current research focuses on the intersection of multiple forms of discrimination, including racial, sexual, and sexual orientation harassment. D. Anthony Butterfield is Professor of Organizational Behavior in the Department of Management at the Isenberg School of Management, University of Massachusetts-Amherst. He received his doctorate in organizational psychology from the University of Michigan. His research interests center on issues of leadership and gender, and his work with colleague Gary Powell has appeared in many journals, books, and conferences in both management and psychology.

258

About the Editor and Contributors

Jamie L. Callahan is Assistant Professor in the Educational Human Resource Development Program at Texas A&M University. Her primary research interests focus on emotion management and its relationship to organizational learning, leadership, and culture in a variety of public, nonprofit, and for-profit settings. Donna Castan˜eda is Associate Professor in the Psychology Department of San Diego State University–Imperial Valley Campus. Her research focuses on issues of gender, culture, and sexuality in close relationships; sexual risk behavior among Latinas; and structural aspects of service delivery systems in provision of health services to Latino communities. She is presently engaged in cross-national research examining the HIV/AIDS prevention needs of Mexican women working in the maquiladora industry at the U.S.–Mexican border. Eros R. DeSouza is Professor in the Psychology Department at the University of Illinois. During the summer of 1992, he was a fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences, Stanford University, and in 1999 became a State Farm Insurance fellow for incorporating technology into instruction. DeSouza has many publications on gender issues in prestigious journals. Presently, his main research focus is on the study of bullying and sexual harassment from a psychological, legal, and cross-cultural perspective. Joan E. Gale is an equity partner in the Labor and Employment practice group of Seyfarth Shaw LLP and works in the Chicago office. Co-chair of the firm’s Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA) Task Force, Gale is a frequent speaker on the FMLA and has handled several FMLA cases. Her practice is exclusively dedicated to representing management in employment matters and is split nearly equally between litigation and advice and counseling. Shelly Grabe currently holds a postdoctoral fellowship position at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. She received her training from Michigan State University and the Universities of Missouri and Washington. Her research interests are in the area of the psychology of women and include an examination of how the treatment of women’s bodies as objects contributes to the process of marginalization of women via threats to their psychological well-being. Shelly is a member of the Society for the Psychology of Women and the Society for the Psychological Study of Social Issues. She has taught a course on the Psychology of Women and is currently teaching Basic Statistics at the University of Wisconsin. She is a recent recipient of the Ruth L. Kirschstein National Research Service Award for her research on women’s body objectification. Michelle C. Haynes is currently a sixth-year doctoral student in social psychology at New York University. Her research interests focus on social, cognitive, and motivational biases as they affect organizational settings. Currently she is

About the Editor and Contributors

259

pursuing various lines of research, including the extent to which attributional rationalization contributes to sex bias in the workplace and the formulation and consequences of beliefs about affirmative action programs. Madeline E. Heilman is Professor of Psychology at New York University. For over twenty years she was Coordinator of the Industrial/Organizational Psychology program, which is now part of the University’s Social Psychology program. After earning her doctorate from Columbia University in 1972, for eight years she was a member of the faculty at Yale’s School of Organization and Management. She also spent the 1998–99 academic year as Visiting Professor at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Business. An author and coauthor of over sixty published articles, she has been on the editorial boards of the Journal of Conflict Resolution, Organization Dynamics, and Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes. Heilman currently serves on the boards of the Journal of Applied Behavioral Science, the Journal of Applied Psychology, and the Academy of Management Review. Her research has focused on sex bias in work settings, the dynamics of stereotyping, and the unintended consequences of preferential selection processes. Mary B. Hogue is Assistant Professor of Human Resource Management at Kent State University. She earned her doctorate in industrial/organizational psychology from the University of Akron. Her research examines the impact of gender and status on work experiences. Janet Shibley Hyde, the Helen Thompson Woolley Professor of Psychology and Women’s Studies at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, received her education at Oberlin College and the University of California, Berkeley. She has taught a course in the psychology of women since 1973, first at Bowling Green State University, then at Denison University, and now at the University of Wisconsin. Her research interests are in the psychology of women, human sexuality, and gender role development. Author of the textbook Understanding Human Sexuality, she is a past president of the Society for the Psychology of Women and is a Fellow of the American Psychological Association. She has received many other honors, including the Heritage Award from the Society for the Psychology of Women for career contributions to research on the psychology of women. Mary Lenzi is Assistant Professor of Philosophy at the University of Wisconsin– Platteville. She received her bachelor’s degree from Bryn Mawr College and her doctorate from the University of Pennsylvania in 1989. She teaches courses in the history of philosophy, theoretical and applied ethics, political philosophy, and feminist philosophy and has published articles on these topics. Currently she is coediting a book, Problems for Democracy, in the Philosophy of Peace series.

260

About the Editor and Contributors

Julie Manning Magid is Assistant Professor of Business Law at the Kelley School of Business, Indiana University. Her courses focus on law, ethics, and business. Currently, her primary areas of research include underdeveloped areas of Title VII and emerging areas of business law. She has a particular interest in interdisciplinary approaches to these issues. Rudy Nydegger, a Professor at Union College and at the School of Management in the Graduate College of Union University, is Chair of the Faculty and of the Graduate College Executive Committee. His previous faculty positions were at Rice University and Baylor College of Medicine. Rudy has written many articles in peer-reviewed journals, has served on editorial boards of the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology and the Management Development Forum, and was an ad hoc reviewer for several other journals. In 2002, his paper ‘‘Managing Computer Programming Teams’’ won the Best Paper Award at the European Applied Business Research Conference in Rothenberg on der Tauber, Germany. Nydegger has been actively involved in the Psychological Association of Northeastern New York and the New York State Psychological Association, serving in many leadership positions, including president, of both. The former organization named him the recipient of its Distinguished Psychologist Award, and the latter presented him with its Distinguished Service Award. Carmen A. Paludi Jr. is Senior Scientific Advisor for a major defense company. He has held positions in government, industry, academia, and private consulting, including those at Air Force Research Laboratory, Sanders Associates, the MITRE Corporation, Maden Tech Consulting, Integrated Devices Sciences, New Hampshire Technical College, and the Advanced Electronics Technology Center–University of Massachusetts. Besides technical expertise, he brings nearly thirty years of technical and program management experience to Human Resources Management Solutions, where he is Principal Staff Consultant. He is the author of over twenty technical journal articles and numerous presentations to national and international conferences, panels, and technical meetings. He has served on many working groups throughout his career, including several at the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the Office of the Secretary of Defense. Michele Paludi is the author/editor of 23 college textbooks and over 130 scholarly articles and conference presentations on sexual harassment, psychology of women, and career development. Her book Ivory Power: Sexual Harassment on Campus (1990), received the 1992 Myers Center Award for Outstanding Book on Human Rights in the United States. Paludi was one of six U.S. scholars selected to serve on the U.S. Department of Education’s Sub-panel on the Prevention of Violence, Sexual Harassment, and Alcohol and Other Drug Problems in Higher Education, which she chaired. She was a consultant to and a member of former New York Governor Mario Cuomo’s Task Force on Sexual

About the Editor and Contributors

261

Harassment. An expert witness for court proceedings and administrative hearings on sexual harassment, Michele is President of Human Resources Management Solutions. She is currently a School of Management faculty member at the Graduate College of Union University. Jane D. Parent has over thirteen years of management experience in the fields of cost analysis, marketing, and finance working for such companies as Grumman Aerospace (currently Northrop-Grumman), United Technologies, National Semiconductor, and Siemens, AG. Drawing on her business experience, Jane is currently doing research in the area of individual adaptation to organization changes, individual and team empowerment, and management trends in organizations. Gary N. Powell is Professor of Management and Ackerman Scholar at the University of Connecticut. He received his doctorate in organizational behavior from the University of Massachusetts–Amherst, and his research interests focus on gender and diversity issues in the workplace. Powell is the editor of Handbook of Gender and Work, coauthor of Women and Men in Management (3rd ed.), and author of Managing a Diverse Workforce: Learning Activities (2nd ed.). Joan E. Riedle is Professor of Psychology at the University of Wisconsin– Platteville. Her academic interests are in the areas of gender stereotypes, sex-role socialization, and ethical issues in social dilemmas. She has been honored by the University of Wisconsin–Platteville and by the National Academic Advising Association for excellence in academic advising. Janice D. Yoder is Professor of Psychology of the University of Akron. She earned her degree in social psychology at the State University of New York, where her work with Ed Hollander on leadership and Bob Rice with cadets at West Point focused her interests on women in nontraditional occupations and tokenism theory. She won the university’s and college’s teaching awards at the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee, is a Fellow in the American Psychological Association, and served in various positions for the Society for the Psychology of Women (APA Division 35), including president in 2000–2001. Her textbook Women and Gender: Transforming Psychology, is expected to be released in its third edition in summer 2006.

Gender, Race, and Ethnicity in the Workplace

Gender, Race, and Ethnicity in the Workplace Issues and Challenges for Today’s Organizations

VOLUME 3

Organizational Practices and Individual Strategies for Women and Minorities

EDITED BY

Margaret Foegen Karsten

PRAEGER PERSPECTIVES

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Gender, race, and ethnicity in the workplace: issues and challenges for today’s organizations / edited by Margaret Foegen Karsten. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-275-98802-3 (set: alk. paper)—ISBN 0-275-98803-1 (v. 1: alk. paper)— ISBN 0-275-98804-X (v. 2: alk. paper)—ISBN 0-275-98805-8 (v. 3: alk. paper) 1. Diversity in the workplace—United States. I. Karsten, Margaret Foegen HF5549.5.M5G46 2006 658.3008—dc22 2006010950 British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data is available. Copyright # 2006 by Margaret Foegen Karsten All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced, by any process or technique, without the express written consent of the publisher. This book is included in the African American Experience database from Greenwood Electronic Media. For more information, visit www.africanamericanexperience.com. Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 2006010950 ISBN: 0-275-98802-3 (set) 0-275-98803-1 (vol. 1) 0-275-98804-X (vol. 2) 0-275-98805-8 (vol. 3) First published in 2006 Praeger Publishers, 88 Post Road West, Westport, CT 06881 An imprint of Greenwood Publishing Group, Inc. www.praeger.com Printed in the United States of America

The paper used in this book complies with the Permanent Paper Standard issued by the National Information Standards Organization (Z39.48-1984). 10 9 8

7 6 5 4 3 2

1

Ideas and opinions expressed in the chapters of volumes 1, 2, and 3 of Gender, Race, and Ethnicity in the Workplace are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect views of the set editor or the publisher.

In gratitude to all the women of strength—colleagues, relatives, and friends both living and deceased—who have influenced my life.

Contents

Acknowledgments

ix

Introduction

xi

Margaret Foegen Karsten

1. Cross-Cultural Communication in the Diverse Workplace: A New Frontier for Managers

1

John F. Kikoski and Catherine Kano Kikoski

2. Dirty Business: Women Managing Sexual Objectification in the Workplace

43

Britain A. Scott and Sidney W. Scott

3. Best Practices in Diversity Management

69

Kecia M. Thomas and Jimmy L. Davis

4. The Diversity Journey at Shell

85

Catherine A. Lamboley

5. Career Planning: Toward an Inclusive Model

99

Claretha H. Banks

6. Gender, Race, and Role Model Status: Exploring the Impact of Informal Developmental Relationships on Management Careers

117

Audrey J. Murrell and Thomas J. Zagenczyk

7. Alternative Approaches to Mentoring in the New Millennium Suzanne C. de Janasz

131

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8.

Contents

Impact of Social Networks on the Advancement of Women and Racial/Ethnic Minority Groups

149

Monica L. Forret

9.

Women Are on the Same Team … and Other Important Business Rules

167

Gail Evans

10.

Double Jeopardy Survival: Insights and Lessons Learned in Organizational Battlefields

185

Michele V. Gee

11.

Developing Men and Women Leaders: The Influence of Personal Life Experiences

199

Laura M. Graves, Patricia J. Ohlott, and Marian N. Ruderman

12.

Interrupting the Persistence of Gender Inequities in Loosely Coupled Systems: Effective Management Processes to Address the Lack of Institutional Support for Work/Life Issues in Academic Careers

213

Louise F. Root-Robbins

13.

Managerial Women, Minorities, and Stress: Causes and Consequences

237

Margaret Foegen Karsten

Index

273

About the Editor and Contributors

281

Acknowledgments

I gratefully acknowledge the University of Wisconsin-Platteville for granting a sabbatical leave that ultimately led to this project and Nicholas Philipson, senior editor, Business and Economics at Praeger, for all his assistance. Furthermore, I thank the contributors for the ideas and insights they shared in their chapters. Dealing with them to complete this set has been a pleasure. Finally, I want to express appreciation to Mary Christoph Foegen for her counsel; J. H. Foegen for instilling in me the desire to write; and my immediate family: children in their birth order, John, Kathryn, and Amy, and my husband, Randy, for their support as I completed two major writing projects in eighteen months. Margaret Foegen Karsten March 2006

Introduction

Two generations have grown to adulthood since sweeping federal laws were passed to end employment discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex, and national origin and to ensure that women and men were paid equally for doing the same or substantially similar jobs. Why, then, is it still necessary—even compelling—to have a diverse group of practitioners, academics, and theorists in business, psychology, and related disciplines address issues related to gender, race, and ethnicity in the workplace? Three reasons, not in order of importance, are money, power, and ethics. Women in management and the professions supposedly experience a $2 million lifetime income disparity vis-a`-vis their male counterparts.1 Economists indicate that white women experience a 7 percent wage penalty for each child they have.2 Though no wage penalty is attached to motherhood for black women, they unfortunately tend to be paid significantly less than whites. Though the sexes have reached numerical parity in management overall, scarcely more than a handful of women lead the powerful Fortune 500 firms in the United States. As of this writing, only one is a woman of color. And 95 percent of top executives in U.S. corporations are white males, though no appreciable difference exists in the percent of women and men who aspire to become chief executives.3 If those facts are not persuasive enough, consider that from 2000 through the first half of 2001, twenty-five cases filed with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission involved egregious racial harassment—the use of nooses reminiscent of lynching.4 Not in out-of-the way rural areas, the sites of such despicable incidents were cities such as San Francisco and Detroit. Those are only the overt acts; columnist Leonard Pitts commenting on the death of civil rights advocate Rosa Parks in 2005 said, ‘‘Racism that was once brazen enough to demand a black woman’s bus seat is covert now, a throw-the-rock-and-hide-your-hand charade, its effects as visible as ever, its workings mostly hidden.’’5

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How long will it take before repugnant incidents and effects—blatant and subtle—are abolished? When will future U.S. citizens wonder why publications in the early twenty-first century found it necessary to create lists of the top fifty women or blacks in major firms? Those from cultures characterized by extreme time consciousness, a strong streak of individualism, and a desire to pursue promotions into the pinnacles of power have become impatient with the slow pace of change. Incrementalists might urge them to learn from those of other cultural traditions that social change occurs slowly and that forty to fifty years, though a large portion of any person’s life, is very little time in the context of social institutions that have existed for centuries. Others are not convinced that change must be slow. They argue that any additional time is too long to wait for those who have been deprived of full participation in and equal benefits of their work in this society. Corporate downsizing notwithstanding, the United States may again face a shortage of highly skilled professionals. Baby Boomers, born between 1946 and 1964, are starting to retire in record numbers and will be replaced by the much smaller Baby Bust and Generations X and Y. Record numbers of women are in the labor force already, so they will not be a ready supply of additional labor, but women and people of color who are currently marginalized and underutilized may be.6 Twenty-five percent of U.S. firms do not have diversity programs.7 Of those that do, only about one-third succeed; 20 percent fail.8 This abysmal track record does not promote positive relations among people of various races and ethnicities. The road to a multicultural workplace is uneven and full of potholes; temporary spikes in dysfunctional conflict are to be expected. Miscommunication and misunderstanding even among people of similar backgrounds can result in serious organizational problems. Without honest, open face-to-face dialogue, which presupposes self knowledge such that people can explain who they are, their worldviews, and the factors, including ethnicity and race, that have shaped them, U.S. firms face trying times. Progressing from different starting points on the continuum ranging from monolithic to pluralistic to multicultural organizations will be challenging. Stereotypes and the debate over the extent to which gender differences in behavior exist and their causes affect the enthusiasm with which workplace diversity is embraced. A 2005 Catalyst study showed that although few managerially relevant behavioral differences exist between the sexes, men are still viewed as more likely to ‘‘take charge’’ and women to ‘‘take care’’ of situations and people.9 The consequences of such deeply embedded false mindsets are horrendous for women pursuing upward mobility, yet they are as likely to believe the stereotypes as men. A steady stream of contrary information must be presented to root out stereotypes if gender parity is to be a reality by 2019, as the optimistic Committee of 200, an elite group of powerful U.S. women, forecasts.10 Otherwise, predictions of those who say gender equity will not occur for another 475 years may prove more accurate.11

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Equity may not be achieved quickly if behavioral variations are primarily attributed to innate sex-based differences. Despite profuse apologies, former Harvard president Lawrence Summers, who resigned from that position on June 30, 2006, unleashed a controversy the previous spring by suggesting that the shortage of female science professors may be due to such distinctions. This rationale alarmed people who believe that nurture or socialization has far more to do with occupational choice than any internal differences, which they maintain are insignificant. Baron-Cohen, who studies differences in empathizing and systematizing human brains that he believes are hard-wired but that appear in both women and men thinks the situation of those studying biological differences has improved since the 1960s and 1970s. In those days, serious researchers who recognized the role of socialization but wanted to study the impact of biology on sex differences in behaviors were ‘‘accused of oppression and of defending an essentialism that perpetuated inequalities between the sexes.’’ Baron-Cohen argues that now the ‘‘pendulum has settled sensibly in the middle of the nature-nurture debate.’’12 His assessment is disputed by other researchers, notably Janet Hyde. Her meta-analysis revealed that gender-related behavioral differences long assumed to exist may not or may be highly exaggerated. She found few differences between the sexes and still fewer that were relevant to leadership or management in her studies of gender similarities.13 False assumptions nonetheless persist and harm both sexes. Women who are not perceived as nice may be penalized in important selection and evaluation decisions; men may be perceived incorrectly and may see themselves as incapable of nurturing.14 Implications of many other factors based on which humans experience different workplace opportunity and treatment could have been explored; these volumes address only gender, race, and ethnicity for reasons of relative brevity. The socially constructed term race is used reluctantly, recognizing that it is not synonymous with skin color, differs from ethnicity, and may be unrelated to objective reality. The human race truly is the only one that exists. Over the past two generations, much progress has been made. Things have changed, yet some issues in vogue today—such as ‘‘on-’’ and ‘‘off-ramps’’ for those who wish to step out of the fast track to provide care or get more education15—are essentially concerns from a quarter century ago that have been repackaged significantly. A shortage of ideas for creating harmonious diverse workplaces in which all employees flourish is not the problem. We know what to do; now we must figure out how to do it. Ways to implement greater organizational equity must be considered carefully after they have been interiorized and are given high priority. Evaluation, accountability, and follow-up also are crucial to long-term success of equal opportunity efforts. Consequences of failing in this endeavor could be dire. Some believe corporations are immune from the short-lived social disintegration and racial tension following Hurricane Katrina in 2005, but they may be deluded. Growing gaps between haves and have-nots in the United States, if not remedied, could

xiv

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result in chaos affecting all institutions, including businesses. Though many blacks have increased their incomes, their wealth trails that of the majority group.16 Native Americans are virtually off the radar in terms of management of major firms, but the underlying leadership principles of some tribal nations are consistent with contemporary management theories, such as stewardship and servant leadership. Continuing to marginalize these and other racial and ethnic minorities is costly and must end. This comprehensive set examines the status of women and racial/ethnic minorities and discusses challenges they face and the psychological, sociological, and legal contexts in which change must occur. It then suggests actions that organizations and individuals can take to deal with such challenges.

VOLUME 1 Volume 1 sets the stage for in-depth treatment of causes and consequences of workplace and leadership inequity. Perspectives of those who feel disconnected from or outside of the Eurocentric corporate mainstream in the United States, such as Asian Americans, Native American women, and black and white women are explored. Employment statistics pertaining to a spectrum of racial and ethnic minorities and to women are analyzed, as are those focused more narrowly on subgroups of Latinas. Disaffection is expressed poignantly in the stories of those whose backgrounds would uniquely qualify them to make culturally rich, if thus far unrecognized and unrewarded, contributions to workplace management but for artificial barriers. This illustrates the amount of progress that must be made before those with different but equally valid and valuable perspectives become full partners in societal and business leadership. Chapters in Volume 1 range from theoretical reflections on leadership to pragmatic analyses of employment statistics. The volume begins with conceptual discussions of leadership that draw on but go beyond experiences of diverse groups, including African American executives and entrepreneurs, skilled tradeswomen who perform managerial functions daily, Asian Americans, and Native American women. Advocated are flexible, holistic, situational leadership approaches that ‘‘give voice’’ to the marginalized, ‘‘give back’’ to the community, add value to society, and distance themselves from either/or dichotomies. As a group, contributors largely reject hierarchical leadership but reach no consensus about what must replace it. Such agreement may be impossible if leadership depends on the circumstances. Leader effectiveness may demand both meticulous preparation through the study of related disciplines and a simultaneous willingness to ‘‘let go’’ and creatively combine a kaleidoscope of possibilities in new, different ways. The most fitting leadership analogy may be that of the artist whose painting-in-process evolves on an ever-changing canvas, suggested by Adler.

Introduction

xv

Though technically not managers, skilled craftswomen who eschew the title fulfill leadership roles and engage in traditional management functions of planning, organizing, directing, and controlling. The lack of attractiveness of management as an occupation is not an obstacle that the Glass Ceiling Commission of the 1990s envisioned but is nonetheless problematic. For most skilled tradeswomen, promotions to management would entail less flexible schedules, relative job insecurity associated with nonunionized supervisory positions, and short-term pay cuts due to necessary but unpaid overtime. Thus the short-run lack of incentives for tradeswomen to cross over to management may perpetuate occupational segregation at higher levels. Such occupational segregation is the topic of later chapters in Volume 1. Contributors differ markedly in their views of this problem and related concepts. For example, Kim decries occupational segregation for its inefficiency in the use of human resources in a meritocracy where rewards are to be based on performance rather than on uncontrollable factors. Rosette, on the other hand, questions the existence of meritocracy due to unearned privilege, which gives advantages to some based on race, ethnicity, or gender.

VOLUME 2 Many legal, judicial, psychological, and sociological forces affect the treatment and advancement prospects of employees and executives based on their gender, race, and ethnicity. This volume discusses selected laws related to equal employment opportunity, affirmative action programs, and the relationship of the relatively neglected topics of racial and ethnic harassment to the more widely researched issue of sexual harassment and of the latter to workplace incivility (rudeness) and violence. The impact of stereotypes, socialization, and power-related concerns on the disenfranchised also are presented. Twenty-five percent of human resource managers surveyed attribute sexual harassment lawsuits to failed romantic relationships in the workplace.17 This worries some employers enough to ask the parties to sign so-called love contracts to release their firms from liability for harassment when or if the relationship ends. Unlike harassment, incivility, or violence, however, workplace romances may have a positive side, improving morale and satisfaction of the participants, possible charges of favoritism from co-workers notwithstanding. Romantic workplace relationships are addressed in Volume 2. Though office romance may have unanticipated favorable effects on those directly involved, many laws and programs designed to rectify employment inequity have unintended harmful effects. For example, affirmative action has been wildly successful at opening previously closed doors for women and minorities— particularly white women—but also has led to consequences that some fear have hampered additional progress.

xvi

Introduction

Furthermore, other equal employment opportunity–related programs focus on superficial problems and fail to discern (let alone address) their root causes. For example, Nydegger and coauthors point out in Volume 2 that workplace incivility and sexual harassment sometimes occur together. Rudeness at work, however, has been virtually ignored. Later, Callahan indicates that sexual harassment training implemented to deal with sexual assault by males in one branch of the military disregards the fact that its higher incidence and an increase in eating disorders among females in the same branch could be caused by perceived loss of personal control due to institutionalized resocialization practices. In the first chapter of Volume 2, Heilman and Haynes argue that affirmative action may have unintended consequences that should be dealt with. The effects of the Pregnancy Discrimination Act of 1978 (PDA), intended or otherwise, could not be adequately assessed or addressed for many years due to different judicial interpretations. Not until enactment of the Family and Medical Leave Act in 1993 (FMLA) did the debate subside. At issue was whether the PDA required employers to provide minimum jobprotected leave when a woman was physically incapacitated during childbirth and recovery. In some jurisdictions, women could be fired for absenteeism associated with complications of pregnancy or time off for childbirth if their employers lacked temporary disability insurance. Those interpreting the PDA narrowly argued that pregnant women had to be treated only as well or as poorly as ‘‘nonpregnant persons’’ who were disabled for a time, assuming that their employers offered insurance or had other temporary disability policies. Even then, the controversy was resolved only for employees who met eligibility standards and worked for firms covered by the FMLA. Those employed by organizations not required to comply with the FMLA still may have to contend with such interpretations if their state laws provide no additional protection. The FMLA allows all eligible employees, regardless of sex, unpaid, jobprotected leave in an attempt to dispel gender stereotypes about responsibilities for caregiving. Some employees, however, fear their career commitment will be questioned if they take FMLA leave; others cannot afford to do so. Ironically, the FMLA, which was to protect employees’ job rights when they needed time off work for caregiving, may deter employees—particularly women wishing to bear children—from job changes needed to advance in their careers because of its restrictive eligibility requirements. Stereotypes about the career commitment of pregnant women harm all employed women. Such mindsets, though incorrect, readily extend to all in the same general category when they are grouped together based on one uncontrollable factor instead of viewed as individuals. More than forty years after the Harvard Business Review published ‘‘Are Women Executives People?’’18 and over twenty-five years after ‘‘Women and Men as Managers: A Significant Case of No Significant Difference’’ appeared in Organizational Dynamics,19 the perception (though not the reality) of a link

Introduction

xvii

between management and masculinity persists. Several contributors deal with these stereotypes and the difficulty in eradicating them despite evidence that any true gender differences in leadership are small and situational.20 Such stereotypes may be all but intractable until women, who now represent half of all managers, professionals, and administrators, are no longer numerical tokens in the executive suite. Tokenism is another subject examined in this volume. Though much empirical evidence describes the organizational consequences of tokenism for women, the few existing studies on the impact of racial and ethnic minorities are narrow. More should be conducted. Those researching women who are tokens believe the same concepts may apply to minorities and have seen positive results among token women in powerful positions when the organization employing them purposely legitimated their authority. Any token group has far less power than the dominant class, but power can also be systematically taken from the numerical majority as is done in the military to resocialize recruits. Callahan’s previously mentioned chapter illustrates how power and control of one’s own life are systematically removed from both male and female air force cadets, resulting in dysfunctional consequences as both strive to regain it. An important distinction is that the women cadets seem to bear the brunt of the negative impact; not only do they experience eating disorders at a higher rate than other female college freshmen as they seek to control their bodies, but they also are targets of sexual assault by men cadets who react to being stripped of power by asserting control over women. Whether they are military recruits or powerful corporate CEOs, women and men still seem to be evaluated differently. This occurs despite the notion that U.S. institutions including the judiciary are gender-neutral and fair. Those who do not conform to intensified gender-related prescriptions for behavior, which are especially strong stereotypical expectations based on gender, are punished harshly.21 On the other hand, infractions of those violating relaxed gender-based proscriptions, or behaviors considered inappropriate for any U.S. adult but less so for males, may be dealt with less severely.22 Though the final verdict is still out at this writing, these findings may be relevant in the respective cases of Martha Stewart and Ken Lay of Enron, discussed in the last chapter of Volume 2.

VOLUME 3 Organizational and individual strategies for dealing with challenges faced by people of color and women based on case studies, personal reflections, and research are presented in Volume 3. Face-to-face interpersonal communication is proposed as the new frontier in which the promised benefits of diversity management will be delivered as individuals begin to know and trust one another. Other chapters dealing with diversity focus on the path Shell Oil U.S. took to become a model firm in terms of not only cultivating a heterogeneous

xviii

Introduction

workforce but also using each employee’s unique talents fully and best practices in diversity management, which include built-in accountability, top executive support, and aggressive promotion of diversity during recruitment. Today’s diverse workforce consists of about equal percentages of women and men. As the percent of sexual harassment cases filed by men increases, some might think harassment policies should be gender-neutral, but the authors of ‘‘Dirty Business,’’ a chapter in Volume 3, disagree. They discuss why sexual objectification of women—even if it occurs off the job—has devastating effects on the workplace, what can be done to change the culture that perpetuates objectification, and who should be involved in effecting such widespread organizational change. Another change in the workforce with implications for women and minorities involves career planning models. Vestiges from a bygone era that assume uninterrupted vertical movement within one company must be replaced by models with multiple career paths featuring flexible on- and off-ramps, lateral moves, and continuous learning. Crucial to career advancement of women and racial/ethnic minorities is the cultivation of social capital through developmental opportunities. Those who have lower positions or have been historically underrepresented may need to temporarily gain legitimacy by reflecting that of more powerful organizational members. Role modeling, another avenue for development, deserves more study. Being perceived as and serving as role models also may affect women and minorities positively. New forms of developmental relationships, such as a network of mentors, may be appropriate for a workplace in which demands for knowledge quickly outpace capabilities of any human, regardless of gender, race, or intellectual endowment. Other alternatives to the master-apprentice model are needed to ease the burden on executive women and minorities who are expected to help others advance but whose ability to sponsor prote´ge´s is limited due what has been dubbed a time famine.23 Some options are virtual-, peer-, and co-mentoring, and mentors-for-hire. If research supports the importance of developmental relationships for women and people of color, so does the life experience of contributors to this volume. Evans advocates greater use of peer mentoring and coaching and defines networking as ‘‘putting people together’’ for business reasons. Gee lists networking along with self-knowledge and reflection as strategies for dealing with gendered racism. Though the business literature focuses on developmental relationships and activities occurring at work, one’s personal life also can enhance leadership. Too often, personal life is assumed to detract from work, but that occurs only if resources are assumed to be limited. To the extent that multiple roles are energizing,24 the net result of personal experiences that teach skills transferable to the workplace may be positive, especially for those who have lacked equal access to company-sponsored development programs historically.

Introduction

xix

Equal access and treatment are necessary but insufficient to create employment equity if certain groups face unequal limitations.25 All organizations, including those in higher education, must seriously consider personal and professional needs and realities of the employees they seek to attract and retain when formulating work-life policies and programs to minimize disparities in constraints. Perceived inequities may create stress. Thus, people of color and women are more likely than white male counterparts to encounter gender- and racerelated stressors. Glass and concrete ceilings, manifestations of individual and institutional racism, and historical traumas deep enough to wound the soul represent unequal constraints. The resilience some people of color and women exhibit in coping successfully with profound challenges or stressors is remarkable. It may lead to unparalleled gains in hardiness, self-efficacy, self-esteem, and empathy, qualities that can only help in future personal and professional endeavors. However, not all those in the workplace who have been harmed by ‘‘isms’’ related to gender, race, or ethnicity are gifted with such resilience. They must not be abandoned, nor must their possible future contributions as employees or executives be dismissed. Rather, organizations must fully commit not only to stress-reduction strategies but also to creation of an environment that optimizes the talents of all. NOTES 1. E. Murphy, Getting Even: Why Women Don’t Get Paid Like Men—And What to Do about It (New York: Touchstone, 2005). 2. S. A. Hewlett, ‘‘Executive Women and the Myth of Having it All,’’ Harvard Business Review 80 (2002): 66–74. 3. J. S. Lublin, ‘‘Women Aspire to Be Chief as Much as Men Do,’’ Wall Street Journal (2004, June 23): D2. 4. A. Bernstein, ‘‘Racism in the Workplace: In an Increasingly Multicultural U.S., Harassment of Minorities Is on the Rise,’’ Business Week (2001, July 30): 37–43, 64–67. 5. L. Pitts, ‘‘Rosa Parks: She Taught Us the Power of One,’’ Wisconsin State Journal (2005, Oct. 31): A6. 6. S. A. Hewlett and C. B. Luce, ‘‘Off-Ramps and On-Ramps: Keeping Talented Women on the Road to Success,’’ Harvard Business Review (March 2005): 43–46, 48, 50–54. 7. T. Joyner, ‘‘Ethnicity, Gender Bias Remain Common at Work,’’ Wisconsin State Journal (2005, April 15): C9. 8. S. Rynes and B. Rosen, ‘‘A Field Survey of Factors Affecting the Adoption and Perceived Success of Diversity Training,’’ Personnel Psychology 48 (1995): 247–71. 9. Catalyst, Women ‘‘Take Care,’’ Men ‘‘Take Charge’’: Stereotyping of U.S. Business Leaders Exposed (New York: Catalyst, 2005). 10. M. Llewellyn-Williams, The C200 Business Leadership Index 2004: Annual Report on Women’s Clout in Business (Chicago: Committee of 200, 2001–2004).

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11. D. L. Corsun and W. M. Costen, ‘‘Is the Glass Ceiling Unbreakable? Habitus, Fields, and the Stalling of Women and Minorities in Management,’’ Journal of Management Inquiry 10 (March 2001): 16–25. 12. S. Baron-Cohen, ‘‘The Essential Difference: The Male and Female Brain,’’ Phi Kappa Phi Forum 85(1) (2005): 23. 13. J. S. Hyde, ‘‘The Gender Similarities Hypothesis,’’ American Psychologist 60 (2005): 581–92. 14. Ibid. 15. Hewlett and Luce, ‘‘Off-Ramps and On-Ramps: Keeping Talented Women on the Road to Success,’’ 43–46, 48, 50–54. 16. D. Hajela, ‘‘The Color of Money Still Divides Blacks and Whites,’’ Wisconsin State Journal (2005, January 18): D1, D9. 17. Society for Human Resource Management, ‘‘Workplace Romance Survey (item no. 62.17014),’’ Alexandria, VA: SHRM Public Affairs Department. 18. G. Bowman, N. Worthy, and S. Greyser, ‘‘Are Women Executives People?’’ Harvard Business Review ( July–August 1965): 15–28, 164–78. 19. S. M. Donnell and J. Hall, ‘‘Men and Women as Managers: A Significant Case of No Significant Difference,’’ Organizational Dynamics (Spring 1980): 71. 20. Hyde, ‘‘The Gender Similarities Hypothesis.’’ 21. D. A. Prentice and E. Carranza, ‘‘What Women and Men Should Be, Shouldn’t Be, Are Allowed to Be, and Don’t Have to Be: The Contents of Prescriptive Gender Stereotypes,’’ Psychology of Women Quarterly 26 (2002): 269–81. 22. Ibid. 23. L. A. Perlow, ‘‘The Time Famine: Toward a Sociology of Work Time,’’ Administrative Science Quarterly 44 (1999): 57–81. 24. R. Barnett and G. Baruch, ‘‘Social Roles, Gender, and Psychological Distress,’’ in R. Barnett, L. Biener, and G. Baruch, eds., Gender and Stress (New York: Free Press, 1987), pp. 122–41. 25. L. Bailyn, Breaking the Mold: Women, Men, and Time in the New Corporate World. (New York: Free Press, 1993).

1

Cross-Cultural Communication in the Diverse Workplace: A New Frontier for Managers John F. Kikoski and Catherine Kano Kikoski

Don’t be cynical about the American experiment because it has only now begun. —Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

Could the new frontier of diversity management be the ‘‘ordinary,’’ much overlooked area of face-to-face communication? In the past, much effort in this important cause was focused on what may be called the macro of diversity—increasing awareness of the changing demographics of America and its workplaces, the pros and cons of affirmative action and initial efforts to extend existing laws affecting it, and more recently, efforts to retain equal employment opportunity laws and programs. Also included in the macro level of dealing with diversity, which is above the individual level, are the negative effects of discrimination and social injustice, which diminish organizational effectiveness, and new, more positive organizational restructuring and administrative innovations to ‘‘value differences’’ and ‘‘celebrate diversity’’ with an eye toward better ‘‘managing diversity.’’ Perhaps it is time to shift the focus of diversity management to the micro or to individuals and their relationships—to the hum-drum ordinary face-to-face communication and conversation conducted each day between individuals and among members of small groups or teams about matters both mundane and complex. Could it be that here, in one of the areas least studied by scholars of management yet most engaged in by managers, is the new frontier of the diverse workplace? What does this mean to managers? The big question may not be ‘‘Are workplaces ready for diversity?’’ but ‘‘Is your workplace ready for diversity at the elementary level of work accomplishment—the face-to-face?’’ This chapter proposes to address this question by examining the cultural paradigms—the values, nonverbal and verbal behaviors of the major demographic groups in the United States and its workplaces—white males, women, African Americans, Hispanics, and Asian Americans. Becoming aware of

2

Organizational Practices and Individual Strategies

each group’s cultural paradigm is essential to mutually effective communication among gender, ethnic, and racial groups. Doing so can also help reduce the misunderstandings and misinterpretations that limit the synchronized, unconscious behavior that is required for effective common action in groups. This chapter also proposes an applied communication theory—reflexive communication—that can help access the uniqueness of each individual and create common ground. If there is an ethic to this chapter, it is that the only antidote to stereotyping and discrimination is to come to know each other as individuals. DEMOGRAPHICS AND U.S. SOCIETY: INTO THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY In the late twentieth century, the overwhelmingly white America of Norman Rockwell’s Saturday Evening Post with few minorities unexpectedly and rather rapidly disappeared. In the 1970s, approximately one American in eight was black, Hispanic, or Asian American; this ratio was one in four in the 1990s and will be one in three by 2010. By 2050, one American in two will be black, Hispanic, or Asian American.1 The same discernible trend is evident in the workforce. From 1980 to 2000 to 2020, whites in the workforce are forecast to drop from 81.9 to 73.1 to 65 percent and by 2050, to 53.4 percent. Blacks in the labor force will increase from 10.2 to 11.8 to 13.3 percent, and by 2050 to 14.1 percent. Asian Americans will rise from 2.3 to 4.7 to 7.3 percent, and by 2050 to 10.9 percent. Hispanics will most dramatically increase from 5.73 to 10.9 to 16 percent and by 2050 to 23.7 percent.2 Demographically, America and its workforce are changing at meteoric speeds. During the late twentieth century, legal (and illegal) immigration also hit levels not reached since the 1900s: New York City, for example, had more foreign-born residents by 1989 than at any time since 1910.3 Examining this rapid demographic shift, The Economist observed: ‘‘People of 30 and older will increasingly have the experience of growing up in one kind of country and growing old in another. In some parts of the U.S., Americans will thus share the experience of new immigrants simply by staying at home.’’4 One demographer commenting on these developments forecast: ‘‘If current conditions continue the United States will become a nation with no racial or ethnic majority during the 21st century.’’5 Kurt Vonnegut was presciently right.6 A NEW CHALLENGE FOR MANAGERS: FACE-TO FACE COMMUNICATION IN THE MORE DIVERSE WORKPLACE In some contexts—in offices, businesses, bureaucracies, educational establishments, etc.—knowing the order of talk required is a part of one’s social competence as an adult. —John Shotter

Cross-Cultural Communication in the Diverse Workplace

3

Face-to-face communication is the most frequent of a manager’s activities, but perhaps the least analyzed by management scholars.7 In a classic study, Henry Mintzberg found that managers engage in face-to-face communication for about 78 percent of their workday—far more than any other activity.8 Even in the informational era, one high-technology company replete with IT hardware reported that ‘‘up to 80 percent of the information exchange within it takes place through personal dialogue.’’9 However, often, such interpersonal communication was not clearly understood, as another study discovered: ‘‘Half the time what the manager thought what he was giving as instructions or decisions was being treated as information or advice.’’10 Even in the relatively simple monocultural white male organizations of the twentieth century, interpersonal communication in the workplace was among the most common yet least effective activities in a manager’s day. Managers know that Shotter is right: ‘‘Knowing the order of talk’’ is important to organizational effectiveness. Linguists have concluded that communication tends to be more effective among those who share common traits, such as gender, race, ethnicity, or culture—elements of ‘‘fit’’—than those who do not.11 Other research finds that heterogeneous groups experience less effective face-to-face communication and more difficulty in performing tasks than homogenous groups.12 Diversity researcher Taylor Cox Jr. arrived at a similar conclusion: There is reason to believe that the presence of cultural diversity does make certain aspects of group functioning more problematic. Misunderstandings may increase, conflict and anxiety may rise, and people may feel less comfortable with membership in the group. These effects may combine to make decision making more difficult and time-consuming. In certain respects, then, culturally diverse workgroups are more difficult to manage effectively than culturally homogenous workgroups.13

From his experience in the workplace, black American executive Edward W. Jones Jr. reported: One of the phenomena that develops in every corporation is a set of behavioral and personal norms that facilitates communication and aids cohesiveness. Moreover, because this ‘‘informal organization’’ is built on White norms it can reinforce . . . black-white differences . . . and thus reject and destroy all but the most persistent blacks. The informal organization operates at all levels in a corporation and the norms become more rigid the higher one goes in the hierarchy. While this phenomenon promotes efficiency and unity, it is also restrictive and very selective. It can preclude promotion or lead to failure on the basis of ‘‘fit’’ rather than competence.14

Problems with the ‘‘order of talk’’ or ‘‘fit’’ are not limited to black Americans. They also are experienced by women. Deborah Tannen, author of the

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best-selling book You Just Don’t Understand: Men and Women in Conversation, concluded that: There are gender differences in ways of speaking, and we need to identify and understand them. Without such understanding we are doomed to blame others or ourselves—or the relationship for the otherwise mystifying and damaging effects of our contrasting conversational styles. . . . This book shows that many frictions arise because boys and girls grow up in what are essentially different cultures, so talk between women and men is cross-cultural communication.15

If frictions generated by gender differences can arise among boys and girls, brothers and sisters, husbands and wives, mothers and fathers who live their lives from birth to death in the same homes, what frictions may develop in the workplace? Here relative strangers from culturally diverse backgrounds encounter one another for the first time. It may be with good reason that proactive managers are realizing that they need to learn more about each other’s communication styles, cultural values, and nonverbal as well as verbal behaviors— the stuff of effective and successful communication. How might managers begin to address the micro workplace issues that arise due to Shotter’s ‘‘order of talk,’’ Jones’s lack of ‘‘fit,’’ and Tannen’s ‘‘frictions?’’ Cultural paradigms may offer one answer.

CULTURAL PARADIGMS Cultural paradigms may be defined as a combination of the cultural values and communication styles of the major demographic categories or cultural groups in the American workforce—white males, females, African Americans, Hispanics, and Asian Americans.16 The term cultural paradigm or communication paradigm henceforth may be used interchangeably to describe the unconsciously shared values and the verbal and nonverbal behaviors that guide individuals from differing demographic categories in their face-to-face communication interactions with others. All individuals unconsciously operate according to their own communication paradigms, which generally seem natural until they encounter another individual whose communication behavior unconsciously flows from a differing cultural paradigm. At such times we become aware of our own cultural paradigm, and our interactions with others become conscious, uncomfortable, and even strained. Each cultural paradigm encompasses an array of verbal and nonverbal behaviors that are subconsciously synchronized and may differ from one American subculture to another. Culture and subculture will be used interchangeably in this chapter to treat groups that live in and contribute to a rich, overarching, and common American culture and community.

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The two channels for face-to face communication are nonverbal and verbal communication. Research indicates that most communication is nonverbal. Scholars have concluded that between 65 percent and 90 percent of interpersonal communication occurs nonverbally.17 The channels for nonverbal communication include (1) gaze or eye contact behavior; (2) kinesics, or body movements; (3) proxemics or the spatial distance individuals unconsciously stand or sit from one another; (4) touch; and (5) the paralanguage, or vocal tones and rhythms by which one speaks. One major purpose of this chapter is to help managers become aware of the cultural paradigms of the major demographic groups to more effectively communicate with their colleagues in the workplace. In the coming era, it may be imperative for managers to proactively understand the values as well as the nonverbal and verbal behaviors by which individuals from different demographic groups communicate if they are to manage effectively. Managers may not necessarily communicate or manage uniformly and similarly—as they have in the past. As one observer put it, ‘‘The labor force is going to look and be different. The challenge, then, is in learning how to manage this difference. And the manager who can successfully do so will be as indispensable to corporate management as working capital.’’18 Valuing Cultural Differences; Valuing the Individual Using only the lens of culture can lead to stereotyping. Dealing with culture alone can logically lead to generalizations such as ‘‘whites are . . . ,’’ ‘‘blacks are . . . ,’’ ‘‘women are . . . ,’’ which simply are not true. The briefest of contacts with individuals from any of these subcultures indicates how unique and different each of us is. However, culture does provide the vista, the broad context from which each one of us has come. Culture (or subculture) may provide the general context, but it does not account for each person’s unique individuality. Each individual embodies the specific sum of his or her personal life experience, as well as other influences that include but are not limited to gender, ethnicity, race, education, social class, occupation, region, and religion. Mediating factors such as length of residence in the United States and level of acculturation also may need to be considered. This chapter in no way suggests that any of the cultural paradigms described below are dicta, but merely rough guides that are to be held lightly in view of the individual before us. A personal experience may make our point. We will never forget a round table discussion at a scholarly conference we attended. The topic was race, and at the end of a long session the only African American who was present finally spoke for the first time to her white colleagues. She stated that she had listened attentively for ninety minutes to everything that had been said by her colleagues about black culture in general. She had only one point to make to her colleagues: ‘‘But I am more than that.’’

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The Difficulty and the Necessity to Talk Perhaps one other topic needs to be addressed—the frequent difficulty of entering into conversation about gender, race, ethnicity, and culture. There are times when such conversations may evoke pride or denial, assertion, or accusation. Such emotional reactions are understandable because these topics can be the source of personal identity, a larger group membership, as well as a temporal tradition that extends prior to as well as after one’s own existence. One scholar observed: ‘‘Ethnicity can be equated along with sex and death as a subject that touches off deep unconscious feelings in most people.’’19 Furthermore, there may be the risk of being labeled racist or sexist for the mere suggestion that different subcultures exist in the greater American community and that some groups of people may tend to behave differently because of them. However, one wonders if such issues can create a double bind? On one hand, avoiding such conversations can create a situation for managers whereby they are passively managed by diversity. On the other hand, could it be that only by acquiring the knowledge and skills to communicate across differing subcultural paradigms and having those conversations that managers can actively manage diversity and surmount the problems of misinterpretation and miscommunication that it can bring.20 Could it now, in the twenty-first century, be time to begin to converse about gender, race, culture, and ethnicity literally, matter-of-factly, and rationally, especially in the workplace? Black journalist Ellis Cose suggests that such discussions tend to be difficult, for they generally happen as ‘‘shouts or as whispers’’— shouters often are likely to be experiencing such pain ‘‘that spectators tune them out,’’ whereas whisperers could be so intimated by the truth of the topic that ‘‘they avoid saying much of anything at all.’’21 The Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. recognized the virtue of dialogue in his famous ‘‘Letter from Birmingham Jail.’’ He wrote: ‘‘Too long has our beloved Southland been bogged down in a tragic effort to live in monologue rather than dialogue.’’ He then called for negotiation with the Birmingham authorities to negotiate through dialogue and conversation—to achieve justice.22 This chapter proposes neither shouting nor whispering but addressing the issues that gender, race, ethnicity, and culture race in the workplace matter-offactly and in calm, respectful voices. What might be some of these misperceptions or misinterpretations that culture can cause? Table 1.1 compares some of the most central values and behaviors of women, African Americans, Hispanics, and Asian Americans with one of the key white male values— hyperindividualism—as well as some differing nonverbal and verbal behaviors that can create cultural misunderstandings. Knowledge and understanding of these differing paradigms and styles of communication may enable managers to transcend differences and bring about more effective understanding. In the twenty-first century, the U.S. workforce will be comprised of even more individuals with differing communication styles

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TABLE 1.1. Values and Behaviors of Five American Cultural Paradigms Paradigm

Values

White women

Connectedness

White males

Hyperindividualism

Blacks

Community

White males

Hyperindividualism

Hispanics

Personal relationships

White males

Hyperindividualism

Asian Americans

Hierarchy

White males

Hyperindividualism

Behaviors Maintain more eye contact in conversation; stand/sit closer together Maintain less eye contact in conversation; stand/sit farther apart Look at another when talking/ Look away when listening Look away from another when talking/at another when listening Prefer to establish relationships before doing business Prefer to ‘‘get right down to business’’; relationship (if any) only after doing business Ambiguous, subtle interpersonal communication; more meaning derived from body language than words; value indirectness Words ‘‘mean what they say’’; most meaning comes from words themselves; little from nonverbals; value directness

and cultural paradigms. As this century unfolds, the ability to deal with a more diverse workforce will become an asset of increasing importance to managers and their organizations.

THE WHITE MALE COMMUNICATION PARADIGM We speak their language, read their novels, pledge allegiance to the political system they founded, and continue to be motivated by the ideals they inscribed in the Declaration of Independence. It is appropriate to begin by treating this demographic group, since it was the English or Anglo-Saxons who settled the continent of America, and thereby established the society, culture, and institutions that later attracted immigrants by the millions to become Americans.23 The white Anglo-Saxon Protestants (WASPs), like every ethnic or racial group, are diverse. Initially inclusive only of those who were English or of English descent, the category now includes Americans who identify themselves as of German, Dutch, Scots-Irish, Scottish, Welsh, and/or Scandinavian descent.24

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Because white males or (more precisely) WASP males established this society’s institutions, it is natural that they dominated its leadership. This may be seen through the prism of the presidency: Every president from George Washington through George W. Bush has been a WASP male, with the partial exception of New England boarding school and Harvard-educated John Kennedy, who may be termed a (Catholic) or WASC male.25 It was not until the 1960s and 1970s that WASP domination of America and its institutions began to fade and the term WASP male began to disappear from use and be replaced in the 1980s by a newer term—white male—as non-WASP males also began to realize the promise of America by ascending to its heights. The post–World War II expansion of the American economy was so great that the supply of WASP males was inadequate to meet demand. Simultaneously, the GI Bill opened the gates of higher education to many Catholic, Eastern and Southern European, and Jewish males for the first time. So, by the 1960s and 1970s these individuals, of whom Italian American Lee (originally Lido) Iacocca, the first non-WASP CEO of a major U.S. auto company, is a good example, had sufficient career experience to begin assuming high-ranking positions in corporate America. In so doing, these white males assimilated, largely conformed to, and enriched the WASP male communication paradigm that remains the core template for values and verbal and nonverbal behaviors in America’s organizations. On this point, anthropologists Edward T. Hall and Mildred Reed Hall concluded: Despite its ethnic diversity, the U.S. has managed to absorb bits and pieces of many cultures and weave them into a unique culture that is strikingly consistent and distinct. . . . While the United States has absorbed millions of people from countries around the globe, the core culture of the United States has its roots in northern European or Anglo-Saxon culture . . . this dominant or mainstream business culture is the norm to which people with other cultural backgrounds are expected to conform, particularly in large corporations.26

Few may be aware of it, but approximately half of Americans are descendants of its early European settlers. As one statistical demographer concluded, ‘‘In 1990, 49 percent of the American population was attributable to the settler and Black populations of 1790 and 51 percent to immigration after that date.’’27 So in terms of ideals, culture, and simple numbers, it may be appropriate that this treatment of subcultural diversity begins with the demographic group that today is called white male. White Male Values If any values are predominant in U.S. organizations today, they are WASP or white male values. They may seem common, for they are the mainstream values that are unconsciously taken for granted in American society.28 They include hyperindividualism, self-control and limited expression of feeling,

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industry and work, achievement and success, self-reliance and self-sufficiency, practicality over theorizing, and doing over thinking and being. As listed here (and as will be true with other demographic groups), these values are not necessarily prioritized in any order of significance. Only some can be addressed in this chapter. Hyperindividualism White males (as well as U.S. citizens generally) are not just individuals, they are hyperindividuals. Parents in the United States are almost unique in asking their young children what color candy, balloons, or food they want. Americans learn to be individuals at an early age.29 All Americans also know that their country was founded to protect their right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness—as individuals. While applauding team players, white males value those who can make tough decisions and amount to something—on their own. Industry and Work Americans work hard, as French visitor Alexis de Tocqueville observed.30 Today, they still work more hours than any other workers in the world, especially managers, who are the ‘‘best-educated and best-paid.’’31 They continue to value the story of an individual who has risen from ‘‘rags to riches’’ (or at least to middle-class status) through hard work. Americans do not respect people born to great wealth who remain idle rather than achieve. Rather, they respect those who, like the Rockefellers or Kennedys, work hard at other causes. Americans commonly speak of ‘‘working’’ on relationships and love, hobbies, and recreation with standards for achievement in each. Achievement and Success Careers are seen as individual trajectories toward achievement and success. Individuals should work hard to succeed, for life’s justification lies in its accomplishments. Americans still believe in the secular version of sociologist Max Weber’s ‘‘Protestant Ethic,’’ according to which earthly attainment could be a sign that one is religiously ‘‘saved.’’ Today, Americans believe that hard work and personal responsibility lead to earthly and secular success and the esteem of others. Self-Control and Limited Expression of Emotions White males are known for their self-control and limited expression of emotions. As did their English cultural forbearers, men should ‘‘maintain a stiff

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upper lip,’’ bear pain, and ‘‘take it like a man.’’ One also should repress the public expression of emotions. This value is reflected in the iconic image of the laconic frontiersman or silent cowboy who, after months on the frontier or trail, expresses little emotion and says little because he has little to say. Though this value has been breaking down, and it is more permissible for males to publicly express emotion (or even cry), the expectation remains that they should do so rarely, and certainly less often than women.

White Male Nonverbal Communication Proxemics Whether or not we are conscious of it, our subculture determines our proxemics—our customary use of space. In the mainstream white male business culture, managers typically stand about eighteen to thirty inches from one another—which is typically farther apart than many women or Hispanics. However, when white males approach one another, they tend to stop at greater distances than when they approach women. A white male manager who feels that a Hispanic colleague is aggressive because he has approached or is standing too close may not know and therefore misinterprets the impact of Hispanic proxemics.32 Both managers may not only be advantaged, but may be better able to manage than be managed by cultural diversity. Eye Contact and Gaze Patterns Eye contact and gaze patterns may play an underappreciated role in conversation. As is true of every demographic group, white males have their own typical eye contact patterns. While listening, white males tend to look at the speaker much of the time. When speaking, they tend to look away from listeners much of the time, making eye contact with them to emphasize an important point or when beginning or ending a statement to signal turn-taking. At such times, white males tend to momentarily glance away from listeners and then reestablish eye contact to signify the start or completion of a statement.33 Such eye contact also nonverbally cues listeners that it is their turn to talk. Some black Americans whose eye contact pattern may differ unknowingly could miss such a nonverbal cue and unintentionally hamper their chances for advancement. Kinesics Kinesic behavior refers to body posture, gesture, or movement. Kinesic behavior also sends powerful messages of which individuals may not always be aware. White males tend to have open and expansive body postures and movements that occupy more space than may be typical of women. Males also

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tend to swing their arms farther away from their bodies, lean backward more, and have open and relaxed body postures than is the tendency for women. Such male body postures and movements nonverbally convey messages of dominance and power. In addition, the white male norm is to gesture with restraint—more than Asian Americans or women, but less than Hispanics. Hands and the upper forearm are used for clipped, limited motions, whereas arms are rarely used to gesture. To gesture outside of these norms may be considered unfitting, and to gesture less may be considered uptight.34 Touch The norm among white male managers is to touch rarely or not at all. White males touch more than Asians, but less than Hispanics. Generally, excessive touching among white males is viewed as aggressive and discomforting.35 Low Context Another characteristic of the white male communication paradigm is a tendency to be low context. That is, white males tend to place more value on verbal than nonverbal communication. Words ‘‘mean what they say,’’ and white males are likely to pay more attention to verbal (or low context) communication and less attention to nonverbal or (high context) communication than, for example, some Hispanics or Asian Americans.36

White Male Verbal Communication Agonistic Verbal Communication The white male style of verbal communication is rooted in the Western male model of discourse in the search for truth that Socrates practiced at his Academy in ancient Athens. There he asked questions of his students, listened to their responses, and then challenged and sometimes spiritedly debated with them. Later, in the early days of medieval universities, the highest academic status was awarded only after an agonistic (or combative) thesis-antithesis ritual. Students and teachers gathered in a church in the evening after worship hours. The candidate would climb the pulpit to proclaim his thesis (‘‘I believe . . .’’) and then defend it against critics with their antitheses. Only after the candidate had strenuously defended his thesis against all opponents in the intellectual hand-to-hand combat of debate would a vote be taken of those assembled. Only the victorious candidates were invited to join their teachers as equals. Today’s universities continue this agonistic practice of asking students to declare their thesis, which they must defend against those who pose antitheses before allowing only the most capable to assume the status of teacher.

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The practices of Socrates and medieval universities embody male communication even today. Men tend to communicate more about general principles and abstractions in public and impersonal arenas and less about feelings and attending to others. Men’s talk tends to reflect the public settings that males have dominated and that call for the direct expression of theoretical and conceptual content in the service of task achievement.37 This could be why men interrupt to control the back-and-forth by challenging others and dominating and often rerouting the flow of conversation.38 For millennia, only white males spoke in public settings. As individuals, they discoursed on general principles that were detached, objective, and impersonal. Their speech tended to be agonistic—that is, forthright and above all combative. The agonistic style came to pervade male-dominated firms. Conventional managerial belief and practice have been that conflict is desirable because it causes employees to question their premises in the search for new solutions. To bring about change, some organizational scholars urged managers to engage in practices that deliberately create anxieties and ‘‘provoke unpleasant emotions in others.’’39 Other scholars reflected this conventional belief when they wrote: ‘‘dialogue can . . . indeed, should, involve considerable conflict and disagreement. It is precisely such conflict that pushes employees to question existing premises and make sense of their experience in a new way.’’40 Males also encouraged one another to speak up and ‘‘say what’s on your mind.’’ WASP or white males should not be voluble. Speech serves a utilitarian purpose, and one should be brief and direct in organizational communication. ‘‘Let’s lay our cards on the table’’ and ‘‘Let’s stop beating around the bush and get to the point’’ are frequently heard expressions. Usually, little time is given to small talk. Generally, after brief pleasantries, the expectation is that the parties should get down to business. In their interactions, white males typically are more direct than some Hispanics or Asian Americans who often place a higher value on sensitivity and relationships in their communication—and hence sometimes are more circumspect and ambiguous. White male managers often have problems with silence. A silence that lasts longer than a minute or so is likely to generate a flurry of responses that range from introducing a new topic to a concession—a typical white male trait of which some Asians, and possibly Asian Americans, may already be aware.41

WOMEN’S COMMUNICATION PARADIGM The status of women has changed more over the past 30 years than in the last 3000. Many reasons exist for this shift, but among the most important are the continuing expansion of the workforce; a move from the industrial to the information economy, which requires more positions of symbolic work than

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physical work; and the feminist movement, which is rooted in the American ideals of human dignity and individual equality. Women’s values have changed, and more have sought higher education and entered the workplace. As a traditional German proverb points out, for thousands of years, women’s’ place was limited to the lifeworld of ‘‘Kinder, Ku¨che, Kirche’’—children, kitchen, church.42 As the twentieth and twenty-first centuries unfolded, women’s sphere of influence expanded, making this proverb less applicable. U.S. women are now employed at nearly the same rate as their male counterparts.43 Given the unfolding of these new dynamics, women and minorities will first accommodate and then create a new ‘‘order of talk.’’ Women’s Values Education This value is evidenced by the fact that the percentage of female students has increased substantially over recent decades.44 Women in greater number seek education for reasons of emancipation. Becoming Emancipated and Independent Women today seek to become self-reliant and responsible for their own future. They pursue independence and responsibility to achieve their goals in life and to participate with significant others in sharing responsibilities and achievement of equality in their relationships. This also entails transcending the more limited roles that circumscribed the lives of their mothers and grandmothers. Realization of One’s Full Human Potential Today’s women seek to realize the goals they set for themselves not just by giving their all to succeed in their professional lives. Many women also seek to realize their full human potential in their personal lives as parents who participate with a significant other to raise a family, if this is the case. Sharing Responsibility for Meeting the Needs of Family Today’s women do not see themselves as the sole source of nurturance and support for their children and families. Rather, the current ethic leans more toward sharing the responsibility for children and family. Not only is this a more egalitarian ideal; given the time and responsibility of a position in the paid workforce, it is pragmatic and necessary.

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Self-Realization of Hopes and Dreams Every goal-oriented person aims at the fulfillment of his or her dreams. A whole person gives her all to achieve the dreams that she has nurtured to attain her potential. As women’s roles and expectations have grown, so have the number and variety of hopes and dreams they seek to realize. Contributors to Society Through their commitment to workplace success, women contribute their efforts to benefit not only their employers but also humanity, particularly the needy and helpless. In this way, women give witness to the commitment most seem to feel toward society. Women’s Nonverbal Communication Eye Contact and Gaze Generally, in the mainstream organizational culture, eye contact indicates attention and interest in what the speaker is saying. Research indicates that women engage in more eye contact than men in face-to-face interaction. Whether in mixed- or same-gender conversations, women are likely to maintain more eye contact than men when speaking or listening to others.45 Women also are more likely than males to lower or break eye contact in uncomfortable or conflict-filled conversations.46 Hence, in such situations, a female colleague who lowers or breaks eye contact may not be sending the message of compliance but merely responding according to the women’s nonverbal paradigm. Research suggests that the popular belief in women’s intuition may have a nonverbal origin. Studies document that women gaze longer at others in conversation than men, and hence seem to be better able to read nonverbal cues, decode and encode nonverbal messages, and understand their meanings than males.47 After reviewing more than sixty studies, one researcher concluded that women were more perceptive interpreters of nonverbal messages than males.48 Facial Expression Women tend to express more emotion through their facial expressions than men, who are more likely to internalize and suppress their emotions. One laboratory study physiologically monitored male and female subjects and photographed their faces as they viewed emotional pictures. Though the male physiological responses were strong, their faces tended to remain expressionless. Although they also strongly responded physiologically, females were more open in expressing their emotions, particularly through their facial expressions.49

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Many women also smile and return smiles more than men. Whereas 67 percent of male subjects returned smiles in one study, 93 percent of women did so.50 Women also laugh more than men. They attentively combine more eye contact, smiles, and conversationally encouraging head nods than men.51 Vocal Qualities The significance of voice as a channel of nonverbal communication is often underestimated. Women’s voices are generally higher-pitched than men’s. According to researchers, women’s higher and more variably pitched voices may be heard as ‘‘unsure intonation patterns.’’ They also found that such women with higher-pitched voices are less likely to be hired as broadcasters.52 Other researchers reported that female and male subjects paid more attention to and recalled more information from male than female speakers.53 Women with higher-pitched voices who report that they are not ‘‘heard’’ in the workplace often are correct. One strategy for women who confront this obstacle may be to speak more softly and lower the pitch of their voices. Verbal Communication Women’s Connected Conversation Women’s conversation differs from men’s. Generally, men’s conversation has been more task- or goal-oriented, whereas conversation about relationships with family, friends, and colleagues has been more central for women.54 Generally women have delighted in conversing, for it enables them to initiate and maintain relationships. In the past, women generally were more limited to the life world of home and family than the public forum of work. Because their traditional work and roles were circumscribed by child care and nurturance, women tended not to voice the public speech of facts and disputation but the private speech of caring and feeling.55 For millennia, women were the muted gender.56 This is no longer true. Today’s women can make their points as forcefully and be as objective in the discussions as men. Since the rise of feminism in the 1970s, a shift in where and how women communicate has occurred. This is particularly true of members of the new generation of women, who are participating in the workforce at higher rates than before. In the past, women’s style has tended to be more polite and considerate. One researcher found that girls as young as four and five used more ‘‘would yous’’ and ‘‘could yous’’ than boys of the same age.57 This research might be less descriptive of young girls’ verbal communication today. Indeed, many women are urged to take assertiveness training to speak more assuredly. Interestingly, assertiveness tends to reduce the information flow from others, whereas women’s considerate or tentative communication enhances it.58 In

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today’s high-velocity, complex environment, discovering which verbal communication style is more congruent with the needs of organizations for information could be vital for success (if not for survival).59 Women’s conversation tends to be more participatory and interactive than men’s, which tends to be more hierarchical and determined. Women who are conversing tend to freely share a two-way dialogue, which generates a flow of new ideas.60 Perhaps women’s more interactive and participatory conversational style also is more consistent with the needs of twenty-first-century organizations for which new thoughts and ideas are paramount.61

AFRICAN AMERICAN COMMUNICATION PARADIGM For nine-tenths of the approximately 400 years that African Americans have lived in the United States, they either were subjected to slavery or the legal discrimination of Jim Crow laws that forbade them from drinking from whiteonly water fountains, let alone applying for jobs.62 Not until the civil rights decade of the 1960s did black Americans gain the formal legal equality to vote. Having first arrived in America in 1619, blacks are among its oldest inhabitants but newest immigrants. Yet in examining their progress, Gregg Easterbrook concluded, ‘‘Black rates of social progress are little different from those previously displayed by white ethnic immigrant groups, which typically required two or three generations to take their places in the establishment. This suggests African Americans should be beginning to take their places in the establishment right now: exactly what is happening.’’63 Three cultural and historical forces have shaped the African American value system: a residual African heritage, almost four centuries of slavery and discrimination, and the internalization of mainstream American values. The residual African heritage embodies the values of community and kinship that were crucial to survival in Africa as well as to overcome the trials of slavery in America. Religion helped blacks overcome slavery experiences and later, discrimination. The strong commitment of black Americans to the core middleclass values of work, education, and achievement enable them to take full advantage of opportunities once unfairly denied them. African American Values Humanism and Relationships Many African Americans place a high value on relationships and have fewer reservations about expressing care and concern for one another. Blacks may express their humanism through their open sharing and affiliative behaviors. In organizations, this often translates into informal and genuine concern for others and maintaining relationships. The value of expressive humanism could

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at times contrast with the white male self-control and restraint of emotion that is more characteristic of mainstream organizational culture. Community and Kinship Shared loyalty to group and bonds of kinship with family are values that most African Americans honor and uphold. It is not blood alone that makes one kin or family. African American families often are extended families, which include individuals who are called cousins or aunts or uncles by bonds of affection rather than ties of blood. The oft-quoted proverb ‘‘It takes a village to raise a child,’’ embodies this value, as does the greater incidence with which African Americans appreciate and refer to community, even in the workplace. The community, and the high regard in which it was held, was an important resource for coping with slavery in the past and is a present resource for overcoming stressors that blacks encounter in a still discriminatory U.S. society. One African American scholar concluded that strong nuclear and extended family support are major factors in upward black mobility.64 Another pointed out that this value has African roots: ‘‘Whatever happens to the individual happens to the whole group, and whatever happens to the whole group happens to the individual. The individual can only say: ‘I am because we are, and since we are, therefore I am.’’’65 In addition to being a person unto him- or herself, in congruence with the individualistic premise ‘‘I think, therefore I am,’’ many African Americans tend to prize relationships and see themselves as part of human networks. Recognizing and supporting this value in the workplace could yield dividends for all concerned. Work, Education, and Achievement Through history, blacks have passionately desired education.66 After the Civil War and the abolition of slavery, the greatest desire of newly freed blacks was for land to farm self-reliantly and for schools to educate both children and adults.67 High school graduation rates of blacks equaled those of whites in the United States for the first time in 1996. Though African Americans begin college with lower Scholastic Aptitude Test scores and grade point averages than whites, when they leave college and enter the real world, top black students more closely approximate career achievements of top white students.68 Whereas black males typically earn 75 percent of the income of white males, the difference is cut in half for black male college graduates, and the earnings of black female college graduates are slightly higher than those of white female peers.69 Religion For centuries, the black church was one of the few institutions that African Ameicans controlled and managed, where blacks could acquire experience

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needed to lead organizations. It is no accident that black men of the cloth like Martin Luther King Jr., Malcolm X, and Jessie Jackson were major leaders of the black community. Religion helped provide the strength and faith for African Americans to survive a discriminatory and painful society. The gospel and spirituals of the black church helped African Americans survive pain and find the solace to move forward. There is no end to the strength that church and faith have provided to black Americans. African American Nonverbal Communication Each human being is complex and multidimensional. Therefore, communication behavior is not only influenced by gender, race, ethnicity, or culture but also by education, region, income, and other factors. This section may provide an opportunity to use black communication patterns to illustrate the complexities that are true of every major demographic group. As is true of all Americans, African Americans, like their community, are diverse. They live in the South and the North, in rural and urban settings. Some are poorly educated and unemployed, and others have earned Ivy League degrees and power elite positions. Some come from generations of grinding poverty, whereas others trace their ancestry to the 10 percent of blacks who were free at the time of the Civil War. Today, black nonverbal communication ranges from patterns exhibited by those who are poor and educationally disadvantaged to those shown by former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and Secretary of State Colin Powell, Secretary of State and former National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, Chairman of the Board and CEO of Merrill Lynch and Company Stan O’Neal, Chairman of the Board and CEO of Time Warner Richard Parsons, and CEO of American Express Kenneth I. Chenault. The nonverbal signals these individuals use tend to be typical of their socioeconomic peers. Eye Contact and Gaze Subject to the normal qualifiers of education, income, and occupation, research indicates that some black Americans may exhibit eye contact and gaze patterns that differ from other groups. The most striking difference may be between black and white patterns of eye contact behavior when speaking or listening.70 These comparative eye contact patterns are as follows: Speaking Whites: Look away from the listener when speaking, except when initiating conversation, emphasizing points, or signaling that it is the listener’s turn to speak. Blacks: Look at the listener when speaking.

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Listening Whites: Look at the speaker when listening. Blacks: Look away from the speaker when listening. Some scholars believe that this eye contact pattern originated during the era of slavery when slaves were discouraged from looking their owners in the eye. Others attribute it to respect for elders and other authority figures. While disciplining children, whites told them, ‘‘You’d better look me in the eye’’ (a sign of respect), and blacks told their children, ‘‘You’d better not look me in the eye’’ (a sign of insolence). Still other studies indicate that these eye contact patterns may be more likely among rural or urban blacks, who may be somewhat lower in the educational or income rankings, and that eye contact patterns among other blacks of higher socioeconomic status (SES) can differ.71 Touch Blacks in the United States tend to touch more than whites.72 Research seems to indicate that some blacks may be members of a high-contact culture, whereas many whites belong to a low-contact culture. As members of a high-contact culture, many blacks touch more than whites, though not as much as Hispanic Americans. Such behavior is exhibited among blacks when they ‘‘give skin’’ or touch hands, especially with members of their in-group on meeting. However, caution is suggested, because such behaviors may be exhibited less by blacks of higher SES or educational status for whom understatement may typically apply. Proxemics Whether standing or seated, the distance between managers may make them feel more or less comfortable. Research seems to indicate that African Americans tend to greet or stand at a somewhat greater distance than other ethnic groups. Comparative studies indicate that blacks interact at the greatest distance, Hispanics (especially Mexican Americans) at the closest, and whites at an intermediate distance.73 In reviewing research findings, one scholar stated that in three-fourths of the studies, ‘‘adolescent and adult Black males interacted at further distances than did adolescent and adult whites.’’ However, the same review found that the small number of studies that controlled for social and economic status determined that ‘‘SES may well be influencing the spatial relations’’ of blacks and whites.74 African American Verbal Behavior Research findings provide some general guidelines for managers about African American verbal communication. However, little research has been

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conducted in this area, and much of what has been done focuses on the least advantaged members of the black community. As is true of any demographic group, more studies need to be conducted among black Americans and other U.S. subcultures to provide the widest and most accurate knowledge base. More important, it is always vital to remember that research findings on the characteristics of various demographic groups should be held lightly. The best understanding is the one we arrive at because of our mutual experience with each other. Therefore, any generalizations should be tentative given the uniqueness of each individual before us. This diversity is reflected in African American verbal and nonverbal behaviors. Some African Americans might speak in an identifiable Black English, while increasing numbers speak English in a manner unidentifiable from any other American of the same region, educational, or economic circumstance. Three overlapping groupings that black scholars have identified among African Americans are those who are: 1. proficient in both Black English and mainstream standard English, 2. fluent in Black English who may have difficulties with mainstream standard English, and 3. fluent in mainstream standard English who may experience problems speaking Black English.75 Such educational, regional, and income variations affect every demographic group treated in this chapter. Seeking to be true to our ethic of reducing discrimination by making unconscious communication behavior explicit, we ask readers to hold what is written lightly in view of the individual before them and create common ground. This section has described the values and nonverbal and verbal communication behaviors that can unknowingly create genuine but subtle barriers to the full participation of those who, more than any other racial or ethnic group, have earned the right to America’s bounty.

HISPANIC COMMUNICATION PARADIGM The term Hispanic is a racial-ethnic category that was created by a decision of a U.S. government agency. In 1978, the Office of Management and Budget decided to categorize as Hispanic those who lived in the United States and who were born in or could trace their ancestry to Puerto Rico, Mexico, Cuba, or any of seventeen other Spanish-speaking countries in Latin America (or Spain).76 Though sharing a common language and cultural heritage, Hispanics, approximately 40 to 50 percent of whom were born outside the United States,77 identify themselves, for example, as Mexican, Puerto Rican, Cuban (who make up nearly 80 percent of U.S. Hispanics), Argentinean, or Uruguayan,78 based on their countries of origin or ethnic communities. Yet

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when asked how important it is for Hispanics to blend into U.S. society, 64 percent said it was very important and 24 percent indicated it was somewhat important.79 The Hispanic population of the U.S. is diverse. Beyond the standard categories of education, income, and occupation, Hispanics also differ by length of time in the United States, degree of acculturation, and English language fluency. They founded cities like San Francisco, Santa Fe, and El Paso in what is now the United States before the American Revolution. Other Hispanics are recent immigrants. Given their recent growth in numbers, Hispanics are only starting to reach the upper echelons of American society. Among those who have are Alberto Gonzalez, attorney general of the United States; Bill Richardson, governor of New Mexico; James Padilla, president of Ford Americas and executive vice president, Ford Motor Company; Carlos M. Gutierrez, an immigrant from Mexico who became chairman and CEO of cereal maker Kellogg Company and was appointed Secretary of Commerce by President George W. Bush; and Maria Elena Lagomasino, chair and CEO of J.P. Morgan. Having surpassed black Americans as the nation’s largest minority group in 2005, the Hispanic wave is just beginning. Hispanic Values Hispanics’ rich value system differs in certain ways from that of the mainstream U.S. organization. Non-Hispanic managers are well advised to become aware of Hispanic values, given their dramatic increase in numbers.80 Collectivism One of the central values for Hispanic managers is collectivism—a sensitivity to and respect for the personal and interpersonal relationships that make up the group or collectivity. Studies of executives from forty counties, as well as Hispanic youths and adults from the United States and Latin America, agree on this point.81 Other important values—such as ‘‘self-worth’’ (or personalismo), ‘‘dignity and respect’’ (or dignidad), ‘‘manliness’’ (or machismo), and ‘‘hierarchy’’—are congruent and supportive of the overarching value of collectivism. Family or Familism The family (familism) is a critically important Hispanic value and manifestation of collectivism. The strong ties among members of nuclear and extended families tend to generate high levels of obligation, loyalty, and reciprocity. This value also provides support and strength to Hispanics. Visiting with family is important and frequent. Though they accept job changes requiring

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geographic moves at similar rates to whites or blacks, Hispanics may take longer to decide whether to do so, particularly if the new location has a low concentration of Hispanics.82 Self-Worth or Personalismo Self-worth or personalismo recognizes the importance of each individual on the basis of his or her intrinsic self-worth. Each individual possesses inherent inner qualities that make that person worthy of respect regardless of worldly success or social status. Personalismo stands somewhat in contrast to the white male value of individual achievement.83 It also may indicate why many Hispanics prefer face-to-face or personal contact rather than the more impersonal communication that is the norm in many mainstream American organizations.84 Dignity (Dignidad) and Respect (Respecto) Dignity or dignidad and respect or respecto also are key values to Hispanics, given the wide gap in traditional Latin American societies between rich and poor, the powerful and powerless, for no one can grant or take away these inner qualities; they intrinsically belong to the person. In the mainstream white male paradigm, dignity and respect resonate with democratic equality as well as admiration for earned achievement. However, as one scholar put it, for Hispanics, ‘‘Respecto is acquired by virtue of being, not by virtue of doing.’’85 Dignidad and respecto also are accorded to those who exhibit courage and fearlessness in the face of death, sexual prowess, or intellectual accomplishment. Philosophers and writers are revered more in Latin America than in the United States. Respect also inheres in hierarchical position; superiors possess respect in organizations due to the position they occupy. Hispanic superiors may expect and demand more respect from subordinates than superiors who adhere to the white male paradigm. However, if the supervisor reciprocates by showing similar respect, the subordinate may become extremely loyal. Manliness or Machismo, Womanliness or Marianismo These two values are the gender-linked variants of the role models expected of adults. Machismo, the better-known value in the United States, refers to ‘‘manliness,’’ or ‘‘being a man’’ via one’s dignity, strength, and courage. One needs to respect each male’s manliness, for not to do so via insensitivity or (worse yet) deliberate intent, would be to engage in a public humiliation or even insult of the highest order. One organizational implication of machismo could be a greater dominance, directiveness, and even authoritarianism in the superior–subordinate relationship.

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According to the value of womanliness or marianismo, marriage, home, and children are the domains and chief concerns of Hispanic women, and work outside the home can be a source of conflict between women (who should be subordinate) and their husbands.86 Self-sacrifice in these areas earns women respect from the community as well as self-respect. According to the value of marianismo, women should defer to men, especially in the area of decision making. However, research indicates that egalitarian (though covert) decision making between husband and wife are much more the norm than may be expected (to save the husband’s ‘‘face’’ or dignity in the eyes of others).87 Womanliness or marianismo may be among the earliest casualties to the acculturation by Hispanic women who appreciate the freedom and choice accorded them by the more egalitarian culture of the United States. Hierarchy Cross-cultural research of executives in forty countries indicates that Hispanic managers score high in what is termed ‘‘power distance’’ or hierarchy.88 Hispanic managers tend to be outwardly respectful and deferential as well as conformist and obedient to their superiors who hold more power. Excessively agreeable behavior by subordinates and the autocratic exercise of power by superiors could be an organizational outcome. As is so often the case, care should be exercised here, because respect for hierarchy could be a weaker value among acculturated Hispanics who have lived and worked in the United States for a period of time. Sensitivity For all of the reasons just cited, Hispanics tend to be sensitive themselves, as well as toward others.89 The value of sensitivity suggests that subtle, facesaving strategies be undertaken by managers, rather than the open (though they may be) constructive criticisms given in the spirit of impartial improvement that are common in mainstream U.S. firms. One Mexican psychologist speculates that two differing ‘‘realities’’ in U.S. and Mexican culture govern the ‘‘truth’’ of interpersonal relationships.90 U.S. culture is characterized by an ‘‘objective reality,’’ which encourages managers to ‘‘tell it like it is,’’ painful though it may be. Mexican culture is characterized by an interpersonal reality according to which one should make another happy, not upset another, or jeopardize another’s dignity. These differing realities might explain why some Hispanics may be more discreet or indirect in response to direct questions. They also may help Anglo managers understand why some Hispanic colleagues may be more likely to move away from the computer keyboard and listen to a person despite an impending deadline. One should always put people first because they have sensitivities.91

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Hispanic Nonverbal Communication High Context The Hispanic culture is a high-context culture, meaning that it is characterized by the expectation that nonverbal behaviors will transmit as much if not more information than words alone.92 However, in the low-context U.S. culture, the verbal channel of communication is considered paramount, for words—specific and concise—‘‘mean what they say.’’ In the high context Hispanic culture, nonverbal signals convey more of the message or meaning, which can be disconcertingly indirect and ambiguous to managers who may not be familiar with this increasingly important U.S. subculture. Eye Contact and Gaze Hispanics tend to avoid direct eye contact because it may be perceived as disrespectful or even confrontational, especially with male or higher status speakers.93 However, as a high-context culture, many nonverbal cues are understood and much communication is received via peripheral or indirect gaze. Hence, although direct eye contact is avoided whenever possible, indirect gaze behavior is engaged in instead. Proxemics Body distances tend to be closer for Hispanics than the eighteen to thirty inches that is comfortably normal for whites in mainstream business culture.94 A white manager may be backpedaling and thereby attempting to maintain his normal body distance (of about an arm’s length or less), whereas a Hispanic manager may be advancing, attempting to do the same. In the first case, the other is interpreted as pushy, and in the second case the other is interpreted as cold. Neither understands the other as both walk away from the conversation with mutually negative feelings.95 One study found that proxemic distances varied as much among Latin Americans as among North Americans.96 Another study concluded that South Americans tended to stand farther from each other than Central Americans.97 Once again, care should always be taken to avoid overgeneralizing about behaviors that tend to be more common about groups than individuals and about some groups than others. Touch Hispanics tend to engage in higher touch than whites. In the workplace, Hispanic males are more likely than whites to shake hands or touch or grasp a colleague’s arm in a friendly gesture—behaviors that may make some white

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male manager uncomfortable or nervous.98 Again, however, caution is in order. One scholar who researched Latin American nonverbal behavior concluded: ‘‘The results indicate that . . . the frequency of contact diminishes, and fewer touch and hold as one travels from Central to South America.’’99 Though common cultural patterns exist, it is better to view the behavior of the person in front of you as an individual. Verbal Communication Establishing Relationships Hispanics tend to have two styles in their verbal communication. With new acquaintances or business associates, they generally are formal, polite, and restrained. Being aware of the need to respect personal sensitivities, Hispanic managers may be more indirect and tactful than white male managers who generally may be more direct and specific in their statements.100 What mainstream U.S. business culture may regard as the normal interplay of differing viewpoints may be interpreted by some Hispanic managers as evidence of conflict. Once trust and friendship have been established, the Hispanic style of verbal communication becomes more informal and even jovial, though always alert to sensitivities and dignity of others. Culture also can influence establishing a business relationship, particularly if each party is unaware of his own or the other’s cultural expectation. Mike and Miguel are midlevel executives from different corporations who are meeting for the first time to do business. Mike, a mainstream white businessman, expects to spend a few perfunctory minutes getting to know Miguel before getting down to business. In his cultural context, private and professional lives are separate. Generally, any personal relationship develops only after and as a result of their business relationship. Mike’s attitude is: ‘‘Business is about money. Time is money. So let’s get down to business.’’ When Miguel, an immigrant Mexican American who is now a U.S. citizen, meets someone the first time, he expects (according to his Hispanic culture) to spend some time getting to know the other person. For him, personal life and work are connected, and possess a higher priority than may be generally the case among ‘‘gringos.’’ Hence, Miguel expects to learn a little about Mike, his background, and his character before, not after, any business relationship. Miguel’s attitude is: ‘‘Business is about money. That is why I need to feel that I can trust Mike before I go further. However, business also is about life, and people are life. So let’s get to know each other.’’ Hence, when these two individuals unconsciously are at odds about the process of initially establishing a business relationship, little hope exists that any business will be done. This scenario could unfold more frequently throughout the United States in the twenty-first century. Every counterpart of these two executives needs to be prepared.

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Silence Whether out of respect for age or due to politeness or hierarchal status or just out of a desire to ponder, Hispanic managers are more likely than their white counterparts to engage in silence in their dealings with others. Silence need not be interpreted as a negative or unfriendly message; Hispanics may often take more time to reflect and respond to queries than mainstream American managers do. Once again, however, one should exhibit care in such areas, for this generalization may apply more fully to some Hispanic subcultures in the United States than others. In the Hispanic community, Mexicans have a reputation for being stoic, whereas Cubans are typically considered to be more assertive.101 THE ASIAN AMERICAN COMMUNICATION PARADIGM Few Americans are aware of the distance Asian Americans have traveled in their journey ‘‘from pariah to paragon.’’102 Chinese Americans first immigrated to the United States during the 1849 California Gold Rush. In the nineteenth century, Chinese Americans were legally precluded from testifying against whites, denied the right to own land, and expelled from American cities. Such painful discrimination contributed to our language the once common but now tragically meaningful phrase, ‘‘Not a Chinaman’s chance.’’ In the twentieth century, Executive Order 9066 placed Japanese Americans in often barren internment camps during World War II. Beginning for Chinese in 1882 and for Japanese in 1924, legal immigration to the United States ended for decades. Yet by 1959, a higher percentage of Chinese Americans than Caucasians were working in professional occupations,103 and by 1940 the average Japanese American was more highly educated than the average white U.S. citizen.104 Asian Americans are a demographically diverse ethnic group. The category ‘‘Asian American’’ includes twenty-five groups from Asian Indian to Vietnamese. However, this chapter will focus only on Americans of Chinese, Japanese, and Vietnamese ancestry. Together, they make up the majority of Asian Americans and also share common Confucian and Buddhist roots and influences on their values and behaviors. Asian American history in the United States can be divided into two waves: immigration before World War II and after the Immigration and Naturalization Act of 1965. In 1960, Asian Americans made up 0.5 percent of the U.S. population; by 2000, they grew eight times to 4.2 percent of the total population and are still growing. By 2050, Asian Americans are forecast to make up almost 10 percent of all Americans.105 The Asian American Value System: Confucianism The teachings of Confucius (551–479 B.C.) left an enduring legacy for most Asian societies, particularly those of China, Japan, Korea, and Vietnam.106

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Though these societies’ cultures vary widely, Confucianism is a common unifying element that may help managers understand behavior patterns of their Asian American colleagues. Confucianism is part philosophical, religious, and political. It also is a body of precepts for daily living and social life and it helped organize Asian societies much as Christianity organized Europe. Though time and acculturation always weakens ties with ancestral homelands, Confucianism offers a useful prism through which to understand Asian American behaviors. Four central principles of Confucianism offer prescriptions for the right conduct of individuals and ethical social behavior. They are: (1) benevolent humanism—putting oneself in another’s position and seeing the world from that perspective; (2) reciprocity (and empathy) in dealing with others—the golden rule, which is common to all codes of ethical behavior; (3) devotion and allegiance to the long-term common good; and (4) discretion and deference in human behavior to achieve harmonious social relationships. Confucian values stress a collectivist approach in that the harmonious equilibrium of the group tends to supersede individual needs, which are to be suppressed. Hierarchy in groups is important, and subordinates and superiors alike practice directness and deference in speech. Collectivist cultures tend to be normatively hierarchical—a younger person should respect an older person; a subordinate should not directly challenge or confront a superior.107 The ideal of consensus is realized via attentive listening and patiently working to bring about harmonious unity.108 Such collectivism sharply contrasts with the individualism that is at the core of American culture.109 The group is primary and endures; the individual is secondary and serves the group. In one example of how collectivism was transplanted to America, scholars discovered that in Japanese American basketball leagues, individually oriented ‘‘hot doggers’’ who shot too much quickly found that their group-oriented teammates repressed their behavior by simply not passing them the basketball.110 In the organizational context, U.S. and Asian behaviors differ: Americans tend to expend much effort in communicating clearly and accurately. Logic is seen as linear, clear, and sequentially leading to a point. One should ‘‘stay on the point,’’ ‘‘get to the point,’’ and not ‘‘beat around the bush.’’ Only communication which corresponds to such a subconscious structure of logic is deemed satisfying. In contrast, consciously communicating ambiguously or in a roundabout manner is common in Asian organizations. This could explain why the more indirect Asian American verbal behavior annoys some mainstream American managers who are frustrated by what they see as its length and ambiguity.111 One scholar suggested that lines and points are metaphors for face-to-face communication in mainstream American culture, whereas for Asian and Asian Americans it is the circle and the curve.112 Managers should use care in applying these characteristics. Because so many Asian Americans have emigrated from their ancestral countries since 1965, their levels of acculturation may differ from those of other Asian Americans who have been in the United States since the mid-nineteenth century.

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Differences also exist within demographic groups, as Korean Americans have the reputation within the Asian community for hard work and a direct communication style. Finally, every cultural generalization should be held lightly in view of the individual before us. Asian American Nonverbal Communication High Context Asian societies are high-context cultures. One estimate holds that only 10 percent of the information in face-to-face communication in Japan is transmitted verbally; the remaining 90 percent is communicated nonverbally.113 Such cultural influences can be relatively long lasting, especially in a social environment with a supportive critical mass. For example, among the two-thirds of Hawaiians who call themselves Asian American, researchers discovered that ‘‘Although assimilation is evident in dress, style of home, and religious affiliation, . . . in norms governing day-to-day interaction, the effects of the culture of origin remain influential.’’114 The waves of emigration from Asian countries since 1965 may keep such influences alive, especially among relative newcomers. Proxemics Asian Americans tend to stand or sit at greater distances from others than major American demographic groups.115 In one study in the United States, when speaking their own languages, Venezuelan students sat thirty-two inches apart while conversing, American students thirty-five inches apart, and Asian students forty inches apart. However, when speaking in English, both Japanese students sat closer and Venezuelan students farther away than their original distances, both approximating the distance of U.S. students.116 One wonders about the impact of acculturation on newer generations of Asian Americans when simply speaking in English has such a profound effect on proxemic behavior. Furthermore, could this experiment that collapsed decades into minutes provide an illustration of how a new and common mainstream communication paradigm could come about? Touch Asian Americans trace their ancestry to low-contact cultures. One crosscultural study concluded that the most touched Japanese students were touched less by friends as well as family than the least touched U.S. student. Some Asians reported extraordinarily low levels (and even the absence) of physical contact with parents after age fourteen. No U.S. students reported such low levels of touch.117 Physical contact in the early stages of a relationship is likely to cause apprehension

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and discomfort among Asian Americans.118 Because noncontact bowing is the norm in Asian cultures, some Asian American immigrants have had to be taught not only how to shake hands but how to do so firmly.119 Asian American Verbal Behaviors Like their nonverbal communication, Asian American verbal communication tends to be indirect and constrained. Reflective of the Confucian values of individual respect for the harmony of the group, researchers found that Chinese and Japanese American parents talk less with their children than white parents. They also tend to be more restrained in their expressions of emotion while communicating verbally or nonverbally.120 Among immigrant families from Asia, a chief complaint of children born in the more egalitarian and expressive U.S. society is that their Asian-born parents talk too little, and when they do, verbal communication tends to be too hierarchically top-down.121 It seems that length of residence and level of acculturation can impact values and communication behaviors in one generation. Silence Few areas differentiate Asian American subculture from its mainstream counterpart more than the use of silence. In the mainstream culture of American managers, silence means awkwardness, discomfort, disinterest, and even rejection. Asian negotiators have learned that if they simply remain silent long enough, Americans often will make desired concessions with no further effort.122 What can a mainstream American manager learn and apply in this situation? One professional working in Hawaii suggested that ‘‘greater acceptance of the positive aspects of silence is necessary when working with Japanese Americans. Within Japanese cultural traditions, a wise person uses silence as well as speech to communicate.’’123 Use of Questions Their uses of questions reflect the central place of harmony and hierarchy in Asian American culture. Given the norm of polite, indirect, and considerate communication, Asian Americans do not tend to ask direct or closed questions that begin with ‘‘Do’’ or ‘‘Did,’’ and which almost require a ‘‘yes’’ or ‘‘no’’ answer.124 When they are asked direct questions, Asian Americans tend to respond indirectly for fear that a direct or honest answer might offend.125 Limited Expression of Emotions True to their cultural norm of interpersonal harmony, Asian Americans are generally less likely to express their emotions than individuals from other subcultures.126 When they do, Asian Americans tend to be less expressive

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and more subtle and understated than members of other racial or ethnic groups.127 Avoidance of Confrontation In the Confucian view, if each person in a hierarchy acts in accord with the norm of harmony, social order is ensured. Asian Americans tend to avoid the directness and openness that can cause conflict. This stance is in marked contrast to the agonistic (or more combative) style of verbal communication that characterizes mainstream organizational culture in America. Even the very structure of Asian languages reflects this sensitivity to hierarchy and indirectness. In Japanese, the frequent utterance of ne (isn’t it?) or ka (to avoid making too definitive a statement) softens statements and converts them from more direct, declarative sentences into less challenging questions.128 The linguistic structure of English is subject-verb, thesis first, with supportive information later. In Chinese, speakers front-end load a sentence with large quantities of supportive data, and then put the main idea toward the end.129 In both Chinese and Japanese, the goal is to lessen dissonance and create an affirming conversation, whereas the tacit Western approach tends to be to be more challenging and even confrontational. As one scholar put it, ‘‘Conversation proceeds not by negation or contradiction as in the West, but by affirmation where the speaker seeks continual affirmation and approval from the listener.’’130

REFLEXIVE COMMUNICATION: FINDING THE COMMON GROUND How do managers transcend the differing values and nonverbal and verbal communication behaviors that are embodied in the communication paradigms we have examined? How do white males, women, African Americans, Hispanics, and Asian Americans find the common ground whereby they can create and maintain the rapid and effortless communication flows that characterize effective groups? One answer is reflexive communication. What Is Reflexive Communication? Reflexive communication assumes that various individuals have differing views of the same reality and therefore may derive differing meanings from the same experience. The mutual understanding that leads to common ground of any situation can only emerge from the mutual construction of a convergent view of that situation or experience. Such convergence is possible only via a specific process of conversation—reflexive communication. The conventional model of face-to-face communication is of an input-output model with a single feedback loop that closes the circle. Reflexive communication reflects and folds back on itself—like a figure eight—which brings

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successively more information back to each conversant.131 It is an active process that is especially useful in situations where more than one understanding or meaning may be derived from one situation or experience. Cultural diversity that differently conditions individuals and complicates interpersonal communication creates one such instance. The theory and practice of reflexive communication rests on four premises and their attendant corollaries. Together, they provide the basis for finding the common ground in the vital area of diversity in America’s organizations. Premise 1: Reality always is viewed form a position or background; as one’s position changes, so does one’s view of reality. Corollary to Premise 1: Reality always is viewed from a position that is the nexus into which flow the general cultural paradigm and the individualspecific experiences that make up that person at that point in time. Premise 2: Mutual understandings of reality becomes progressively clearer with the exchange of different perspectives. Corollary to Premise 2: We come to know human and organizational realities through conversations with each other. Premise 3: Separate, uncommunicated realities divide us. Corollary to Premise 3: The co-creation of realities that are shared provides a common understanding and reality so that common vision, action, and purpose can evolve. Premise 4: Reflexive communication is a process-focused approach. Corollary to Premise 4: This process of communication brings about the folding back of different views, meanings, and positions so that they eventually overlap and begin to converge. Many managers are solution-focused in their approach to problems. Hence, Premise 4 especially may run counter to their mode of operation. Reflexive communication focuses much more on the process than the result of communication. However, a process focus tends to bring to the surface many more multiple views and understandings of situations. Triggering multiple new ideas for looking at a problem generates many new ideas for the construction of new solutions. General Stances Three general stances facilitate reflexive communication: the not-knowing, the curious, and the collaborative stance. Each provides the space for individuals to express and share their perspectives and meanings of situations that otherwise might keep them apart.

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Not-Knowing Stance By leveling the hierarchy, this stance encourages communication by taking the nonexpert position of not-knowing.132 Such a stance with less hierarchy and more collaboration encourages the expression of viewpoints and meanings that otherwise might be suppressed. This stance sends the message that everyone may be equally qualified to suggest new ideas and perspectives on a situation or issue. It also encourages the listener to pay attention to not only the outer conversation about what others are actually saying but also the inner conversation of his or her thoughts and ideas that were triggered by the outer conversation. This criss-crossing continually triggers new meanings that unfold into additional new meanings about the situation.133 Curious Stance In taking the curious stance, one simply expresses one’s ideas in a curious or tentative manner.134 To be dogmatic or assertive may be to hinder the creative process. To be curious or tentative may be to encourage others to take, leave, or develop ideas at will. In so doing, one helps multiply varying perspectives on a problem and encourages the evolved solutions that have been explored and found most fitting by those who will implement them. One takes the curious stance not by making statements but asking questions that might begin with the stems, ‘‘It’s just an idea, but . . .’’ or ‘‘could it possibly be that . . . ?’’ Collaborative Stance The collaborative stance is the result of the not-knowing and the curious stance. The joining of shared ideas and perspectives makes possible the cocreation of new and jointly owned outcomes. Others can be urged to add expressions of joining such as, ‘‘Well, I also find it uncomfortable when no one hears what I’m saying,’’ or ‘‘Somehow, I feel this way, too. And I always thought it happened because I was a woman.’’135

CONCLUSION The United States may be the only country that always has been diverse. Few may be aware that Paul (Revoire) Revere’s father was a French Huguenot newcomer to America, that American Revolution heroine Molly Pitcher actually was a German American known as Maria Ludwig, that naval hero John Paul Jones was a Scot, and that the original surnames of frontier General George Custer, World War I General George Pershing, and President Herbert Hoover were Kuester, Pforshing, and Huever.136

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Similarly, the history of newcomers to the American workplace is one of expanding—historically, waves of earlier immigrants and then-minorities (Jews and Catholics, for example) entered the workforce and, after initial discrimination, worked their way to the top as full participants of executive suites. We suggest that this process is underway again for women and today’s minorities. The United States was originally settled by white Anglo-Saxon Protestant males who (more than the women of the era were permitted) created its culture and established its institutions. One of the most visible proofs is the continuing domination of the presidency, the most powerful executive position in the world, by WASP males—a domination that will most likely end in the twenty-first century. However, the post–World War II economic growth outstripped the pool of WASP males available for management. This economic growth, coupled with the deep-seated American ideals of the dignity and equality of the individual as well as greater educational access led to the entry and ascension of white males of the twentieth century who were Eastern and Southern European, Catholic and Jewish to every workplace level. Today, factors such as ethnicity and religion are of little or no significance in hiring or promotion. Now, in the twenty-first century, women, African Americans, Hispanics, and Asian Americans are following the same trajectory. And the same factors of economic growth that is outstripping the available pool of white males (coupled with the American ideals of equality and education) are operative for them. Progress is always trying, but might there be a responsible party who forecasts downward trends in any area of employment for women and (those who soon will cease being) ‘‘minorities’’—from entry level to CEO? In this environment, the micro becomes more important, as individuals from every demographic group in the United States come to work each day, all day, together. Their differing values and divergent nonverbal and verbal behaviors— precisely because they are unconscious—can complicate face-to-face communication, the most vital of managerial functions on which all others rest. The importance of face-to-face communication is escalating because of every organization’s increasing need for the core resource of this era—information. This chapter has attempted to sketch the general cultural paradigm of each major demographic group so that what is unconscious becomes conscious, and managers can actively influence cultural diversity rather than be passively managed by it. It also has sketched an applied theory of communication—reflexive communication—that can help managers access each other’s individuality and create the common ground. All change, organizational or otherwise, begins with the individual. This fact may be especially true in the area of diversity. Perhaps it is time for managers and scholars to recognize the new frontier.

NOTES Adapted from John F. Kikoski and Catherine Kano Kikoski, Reflexive Communication in the Culturally Diverse Workplace (Westport: Praeger, 1996/1999).

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1. U.S. Bureau of the Census, No. 18, ‘‘Resident Population by Hispanic Origin Status, 1980 to 1992, and Projections, 1193 to 2050,’’ in Statistical Abstract of the United States (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1993); Melissa Therrien and Roberto R. Ramirez, ‘‘The Hispanic Population in the United States: Population Characteristics,’’ in Current Population Reports (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 2001). 2. Mitra Toossi, ‘‘A Century of Change: The U.S. Labor Force, 1950–2050,’’ Monthly Labor Review (May 2002): 15–28. 3. Edward B. Fiske, ‘‘Minorities a Majority in New York,’’ New York Times, March 22, 1991, pp. 81–82. 4. ‘‘Poor Man at the Gate,’’ The Economist, March 16, 1991, p. 9. 5. Martha Farnsworth Riche, ‘‘We’re All Minorities Now,’’ American Demographics (October 1991): 26–29. 6. ‘‘People in the News,’’ Hartford Courant, May 28, 1990, p. A-2 reporting on Vonnegut’s commencement speech at the University of Rhode Island. 7. Catherine Kano Kikoski and John F. Kikoski, The Inquiring Organization: Tacit Knowledge, Conversation, and Knowledge Creation: Skills for 21st Century Organizations (Westport: Praeger, 2004), pp. 7–8. 8. Henry Mintzberg, The Nature of Managerial Work (New York: Harper and Row, 1973), p. 38. 9. Ikujiro Nonaka, Georg Von Krogh, and Ichijo Kazuo, Enabling Knowledge Creation: How to Unlock the Mystery of Tacit Knowledge and Realize the Power of Innovation (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000), p. 131. 10. Tom Burns, ‘‘The Directions of Activity and Communication in a Departmental Executive Group,’’ Human Relations 7(1) (1954): 73–97, especially 94. 11. Fred E. Fiedler, ‘‘The Effect of Leadership and Cultural Heterogeneity on Group Performance: A Test of the Contingency Model,’’ Journal of Experimental Social Psychology 2 (1966): 237–64. 12. Ivan D. Steiner, Group Process and Productivity (New York: Academic Press, 1972). 13. Taylor Cox Jr., Cultural Diversity in Organizations: Theory, Research and Practice (San Francisco: Berrett-Koehler, 1993), p. 39. 14. Edward W. Jones Jr., ‘‘What It’s Like to Be a Black Manager,’’ Harvard Business Review ( July–August, 1973): 108–16, especially 114. 15. Deborah Tannen, You Just Don’t Understand: Men and Women in Conversation (New York: William Morrow, 1990), pp. 17–18; emphasis added. 16. The concept of a ‘‘speech community’’ that utilized ‘‘verbal signs’’ or ‘‘language use’’ was introduced by John Gumperz, ‘‘The Speech Community,’’ in P. P. Gigliolli (ed.), Language and Social Context (Baltimore: Penguin, 1972), pp. 219–31, especially p. 219. 17. Ray Birdwhistell, Kinesics and Context: Essays on Body Motion Communication (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1970), pp. 57–58. Birdwhistell estimated that approximately 30 to 35 percent of a face-to-face message is transmitted verbally and 65 to 70 percent is transmitted nonverbally. See also Edward T. Hall and Mildred Reed Hall, Hidden Differences: Doing Business with the Japanese (New York: Anchor Books/Doubleday, 1987), p. 3. The Halls estimated on the basis of their research that 80 to 90 percent of information conveyed among individuals occurs nonverbally.

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18. Audrey Edwards, ‘‘The Enlightened Manager: How to Treat All Your Employees Fairly,’’ Working Woman 16(1) ( January 1991): 46. 19. Irving Levine, personal correspondence to Monica McGoldrick in Monica McGoldrick, John K. Pearce, and Joseph Giordano, eds., Ethnicity and Family Therapy (New York: Guilford Press,1982), p. 4. 20. Nancy J. Adler, International Dimensions of Organizational Behavior (Boston: Kent, 1986), pp. 77–78. 21. Ellis Cose, The Rage of a Privileged Class: Why Are Middle-Class Blacks so Angry? Why Should America Care? (New York: HarperCollins, 1993), p. 9. 22. See the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr.’s ‘‘Letter from Birmingham Jail,’’ in Martin Luther King Jr., Why We Can’t Wait (New York: New American Library, 1963/1964), pp. 76–95, especially p. 80. 23. Samuel Huntington, Who Are We Now? The Challenges to America’s National Identity (New York: Simon and Shuster, 2004), pp. 36–46. 24. According to the Ancestry 2000 Census 200 Brief of the U.S. Census Bureau, nearly one-third of Americans self-identified themselves as Germans (15.2 percent or 42.8 million) of the U.S. population, English (8.7 percent or 24.5 million), Scottish (1.7 percent or 4.9 million), Dutch (1.6 or 4.5 million), Norwegian (1.6 percent or 4.5 million), Scots-Irish (1.5 percent or 4.3 million), and Swedish (1.4 percent or 4.0 million). Under a broad definition, WASPs total 31.7 percent or 89.5 million of the population of the United States. See Angela Brittingham and Patricia de la Cruz Ancestry 2000: Census 2000 Brief (Washington. DC: Government Printing Office, June 2004), pp. 1–12, especially p. 3. 25. Richard L. Zweigenhaft and G. William Domhoff, Jews in the Protestant Establishment (New York: Praeger, 1982), p. 110. See also Robert Christopher, Crashing the Gates: The De-Wasping of America’s Power Elite (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1989) as well as Huntington, Who Are We Now? 26. Edward T. Hall and Mildred Reed Hall, Understanding Cultural Differences (Yarmouth, ME: Intercultural Press, 1990), pp. 139–40. 27. Huntington, Who Are We Now?, pp. 44–45 citing the work of Campbell Gibson, ‘‘The Contribution of Immigration to the Growth and Ethnic Diversity of the American Population,’’ Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society 136 ( June 1992): 157–75, especially 165 and 169. Campbell cites the 1790 census as enumerating 80.7 percent of the United States population as white and 19.3 percent as black. 28. For other sources on the WASP male or white male cultural paradigm, see Charles Anderson, White Protestant Americans: From National Origins to Religious Groups (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1970); Gary Althen, American Ways: A Guide for Foreigners in the United States (Yarmouth ME: Intercultural Press, 1988); Richard Brookhiser, The Way of the WASP: How It Made America, and How It Can Save It, So to Speak (New York: Free Press, 1991); David McGill and John K. Pearce, ‘‘British Families,’’ in Monica McGoldrick, John K. Pierce, and Joseph Giordano, eds., Ethnicity and Family Therapy (New York: Guilford Press, 1982), pp. 457–79; Margaret Mead, And Keep Your Powder Dry: An Anthropologist Looks at America (New York: William Morrow, 1943); and Edward C. Stewart, American Cultural Patterns: A Cross-Cultural Perspective (Yarmouth, ME: Intercultural Press, 1972). 29. Althen, American Ways, pp. 4–5.

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30. Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America, ed. and abridged by Richard D. Heffner (New York: Mentor/New American Library, 1956), pp. 209–20. 31. Michael Mandel, ‘‘The Real Reasons You’re Working So Hard . . . And What You Can Do about It,’’ Business Week (October 3, 2005): 60–64, 66–70, 73. 32. Edward T. Hall, The Hidden Dimension (New York: Anchor Books/Doubleday, 1966/1969), pp. 114–25. The term proxemics was given currency by Edward T. Hall in ‘‘Proxemics,’’ Current Anthropology 9(2–3) (April–June 1968): 83–107. See also Judith A. Hall, ‘‘Male and Female Nonverbal Behavior,’’ in Aaron W. Siegman and Stanley Feldstein, eds., Multicultural Integrations of Nonverbal Behavior (Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 1985), pp. 195–225, especially pp. 213–17; and Anneke Vrugt and Ada Kerkstra, ‘‘Sex Differences in Nonverbal Communication,’’ Semiotica 50(1–2) (1984): 1–41. See notes 94–97 below on Hispanic proxemics. 33. Ralph V. Exline, ‘‘Explorations in the Process of Person Perception: Visual Interaction in Relation to Competition, Sex, and Need for affiliation,’’ Journal of Personality 31 (1963): 1–20; Michael Argyle, ‘‘New Developments in the Analysis of Social Skills,’’ in Aaron Wolfgang, ed., Nonverbal Behavior: Applications and Cultural Implications (New York: Academic Press, 1993), p. 139; and Adam Kendon, ‘‘Some Functions of Gaze-Direction in Social Interaction,’’ Acta Psychologica 26 (1967): 22–63. 34. Elizabeth Aries, ‘‘Verbal and Nonverbal Behavior in Single-Sex and MixedSex Groups,’’ Psychological Reports 51 (1982): 127–34, especially pp. 132–33; Hall, ‘‘Male and Female Nonverbal Behavior,’’ p. 220. 35. Ibid., pp. 218–19. 36. Hall and Hall, Understanding Cultural Differences, pp. 6–10. 37. Fern Johnson, Speaking Culturally: Language Diversity in the United States (Thousands Oaks, CA: Sage, 2000), pp. 95–107. 38. Lea P. Stewart, Alan D. Stewart, Sheryl A. Friedley, and Pamela J. Cooper, Communication between the Sexes: Sex Differences, and Sex Role Stereotypes, 2nd ed. (Scottsdale, AZ: Gorsuch Scarisbrick, 1990), pp. 51–52. 39. Edgar Schein, ‘‘How Can Organizations Learn Faster? The Challenge of Entering the Green Room,’’ Sloan Management Review 34(2) (Winter 1993): 85–92, especially 88–89. 40. Ikujiro Nonaka, ‘‘The Knowledge-Creating Company,’’ Harvard Business Review 69(6) (November–December 1991): 96–104, especially 104. 41. Joel P. Bowman and Tsugihiro Okuda, ‘‘Japanese-American Communication: Mysteries, Enigmas and Possibilities,’’ Bulletin of the Association for Business Communication 48(4) (December 1985): 18–21, especially 19. 42. For a description of the word lifeworld see Walter J. Ong, Orality and Literacy: The Technologizing of the Word (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1982), p. 42. 43. Toossi, ‘‘A Century of Change,’’ p. 16. 44. Ibid., p. 15. 45. John F. Dovidio and Steve L. Ellyson, ‘‘Patterns of Visual Dominance Behavior in Humans,’’ in Steve L. Ellyson and John F. Dovidio, eds., Power, Dominance and Nonverbal Behavior (New York: Springer-Verlag, 1985), pp. 129–49, especially pp. 139–42; and Judee Burgoon, ‘‘Nonverbal Signals,’’ in Mark L. Knapp and Gerald. R. Miller, eds., Handbook of Interpersonal Communication, 2nd ed. (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 1994), pp. 229–85; especially p. 244.

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46. Nancy M. Henley, Body Politics: Power, Sex and Nonverbal Communication (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1977), pp. 160–67, especially p. 165. 47. Alice H. Eagley, Sex Differences in Social Behavior: A Social Role Interpretation (Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence ErlbaumAssociates, 1987), p. 103; and Burgoon, ‘‘Nonverbal Signals,’’, pp. 242–47. 48. Hall, ‘‘Male and Female Nonverbal Behavior,’’ pp. 200–204. 49. Ross Buck, Robert E. Miller, and William F. Caul, ‘‘Sex, Personality and the Physiological Variables in the Communication of Affect via Facial Expression,’’ Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 30 (1974): 587–96. 50. Henley, Body Politics, p. 165. 51. Eagley, Sex Differences in Social Behavior, p.103; Burgoon, ‘‘Nonverbal Signals,’’ p. 247. 52. Nancy Henley and Barrie Thorne, ‘‘Womenspeak and Manspeak: Sex Differences and Sexism in Communication, Verbal and Nonverbal,’’ in Alice G. Sargent, ed., Beyond Sex Roles (St. Paul, MN: West Publishing, 1977), pp. 201–18, especially p. 207. 53. Kenneth J. Gruber and Jacquelyne Gaebelein, ‘‘Sex Differences in Listening Comprehension,’’ in Sex Roles 5(3) (1979): 299–310, especially 307–9. 54. Elizabeth J. Aries and Fern L. Johnson, ‘‘Close Friendships in Adulthood: Conversational Content Between Same-Sex Friends,’’ Sex Roles 9(12) (1983): 1183–96; Pamela S. Kippers, ‘‘Gender and Topic,’’ Language and Society 16(4) (1987): pp. 543– 57; Fern Johnson, ‘‘Friendship Among Women: Closeness in Dialogue,’’ in Julia T. Wood, ed., Gendered Relationships: A Reader (Mountain View, CA: Mayfield, 1996), pp. 79–94. 55. Ong, Orality and Literacy, p. 112. 56. Dorothy E. Smith, ‘‘A Peculiar Eclipsing: Women’s Exclusion from Man’s Culture,’’ Woman’s Studies International Quarterly 1(4) (1978): 281. 57. Robin Lakoff, ‘‘Language and Woman’s Place,’’ Language in Society 2 (1973): 45–79, especially 57. 58. Harlene Anderson and Harry Goulishian, ‘‘The Client Is the Expert: A NotKnowing Approach to Therapy,’’ in Sheila McNamee and Kenneth J. Gergen, eds., Therapy as Social Construction (London: Sage, 1992), pp. 25–39. 59. Kikoski and Kikoski, The Inquiring Organization, pp. 1–37. 60. Deanna L. Hall and Kristen M. Langellier, ‘‘Story Telling Strategies in Mother-Daughter Communication,’’ in Barbara Bate and Anita Taylor, ed., Women Communicating: Studies of Women’s Talk (Norwood, NJ: Ablex, 1988), pp. 107–26, especially pp. 117–18, 121–25. 61. Kikoski and Kikoski, The Inquiring Organization, pp. 1–37. 62. For other sources on the African American cultural paradigm, see John Hope Franklin, From Slavery to Freedom: A History of Negro Americans, 4th ed. (New York: Knopf, 1974); Thomas Sowell, Ethnic America, a History (New York: Basic Books, 1981), pp. 183–224; Paulette Moore Hines and Nancy Boyd Franklin, ‘‘Black Families,’’ in Monica McGoldrick, John K. Pearce, and Joseph Giordano, eds., Ethnicity and Family Therapy (New York: Guilford Press, 1982); Elaine Pinderhughes, ‘‘Afro-American Families and the Victim System,’’ in Monica McGoldrick, John K. Pearce, and Joseph Giordano, eds., Ethnicity and Family Therapy (New York: Guilford Press, 1982), pp. 84–107; Janet Brice, ‘‘West Indian Families,’’ in Monica McGoldrick, John K. Pearce, and

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Joseph Giordano, eds., Ethnicity and Family Therapy (New York: Guilford Press, 1982), pp. 123–33; Harriet Pipes McAdoo, ‘‘Factors Relating to Stability in Upwardly Mobile Black Families,’’ Journal of Marriage and the Family 40(4) (November 1978): 761–76; Joseph White and Thomas Parham, The Psychology of Blacks, 2nd ed. (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1990); Nancy Boyd Franklin, Black Families in Therapy (New York: Guilford Press, 1989); Robert Hill, The Strengths of Black Families (New York: Emerson Hall, 1971). 63. Gregg Easterbrook, The Progress Paradox: How Life Gets Better while People Feel Worse (New York: Random House, 2003), p. 59. 64. McAdoo, ‘‘Factors Relating to Stability,’’ pp. 761–76. 65. John S. Mbiti, African Religions and Philosophy (New York: Praeger, 1969), pp. 108–9. 66. Mary Frances Berry and John W. Blassingame, Long Memory: The Black Experience in America (New York: Oxford University Press, 1982), pp. 70–113; Hill, The Strengths of Black Families, p. 9. 67. Sowell, Ethnic America, a History, pp. 202–5. 68. Easterbrook, The Progress Paradox, p. 59, citing William Bowen and Derek Bok, The Shape of the River (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1998), pp. 118–48. 69. Ibid., p. 59. 70. Marianne LaFrance and Clara Mayo, ‘‘Racial Differences in Gaze Behavior during Conversations: Two Systematic Observational Studies,’’ Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 33(5) (1976), 547–52, especially 550–51. See also Amy G. Halberstadt, Race, Socioeconomic Status, and Nonverbal Behavior, ed. Aaron W. Seigman and Stanley Feldstein (Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 1985), pp. 227–66, especially p. 252. 71. Ibid., especially pp. 234–35, 250–53; Robert Shuter, ‘‘Gaze Behavior in Interracial and Intraracial Interactions,’’ International and Intercultural Communication Annual (Falls Church, VA: Speech Communication Association, 1979): 48–55, especially pp. 53–54. 72. Halberstadt, Race, Socioeconomic Status, p. 247; Richard Majors, ‘‘Nonverbal Behaviors and Communication Styles among African Americans,’’ in Reginald L. Jones, ed., Black Psychology, 3rd ed. (Berkeley, CA: Cobb and Henry, 1991), pp. 269–94, especially p. 283. 73. James C. Baxter, ‘‘Interpersonal Spacing in Natural Settings,’’ Sociometry 33(4) (1970): 444–56; Daniel J. Thompson and James C. Baxter, ‘‘Interpersonal Spacing in Two-Person Cross-Cultural Interactions,’’ Man-Environment Systems 3(2) (March 1973): 115–17. 74. Halberstadt, Race, Socioeconomic Status, pp. 240–42. 75. Harry N. Seymour and Charlena M. Seymour, ‘‘The Symbolism of Ebonics: I’d Rather Switch than Fight,’’ Journal of Black Studies 9(4) ( June 1979): 408–9. 76. Gerardo Marin and Barbara VanOss Marin, Research with Hispanic Populations (Newbury Park, CA: Sage, 1991), pp. 20–21. 77. Therrien and Ramirez, ‘‘The Hispanic Population in the United States,’’ p. 3, estimated that 39.1 percent of Hispanics were foreign-born. Another survey of U.S. Hispanics conducted in 2005 estimated that 49 percent of Hispanics were born elsewhere than the mainland United States or Puerto Rico. Time Magazine, August 22, 2005, p. 56.

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78. Therrien and Ramirez, ‘‘The Hispanic Population in the United States,’’ p. 3. As of 2000, Mexicans made up 66.1 percent, Puerto Ricans 9 percent, and Cubans 4 percent—or 79.1 percent—of the U.S. population of 32.8 million Hispanics. 79. ‘‘Inside America’s Largest Minority,’’ Time, August 22, 2005, p. 56. 80. For other sources on the Hispanic cultural paradigm, see Leo Grebler, John W. Moore, and Ralph C. Guzman, The Mexican-American People: The Nation’s Second Largest Minority (New York: Free Press, 1970); John W. Moore, Mexican Americans (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1970); Sowell, Ethnic America, A History, pp. 227–70; Earl Shorris, The Latinos: A Biography of the People (New York: Basic Books, 1992); Ronald Takaki, From a Different Shore: A History of Multicultural America (Boston: Little Brown, 1993). 81. Geert Hofstede, Culture’s Consequences: International; Differences in WorkRelated Values (Beverly Hills, CA: Sage, 1980), pp. 92–152; Gerardo Marin and Harry C. Triandis, ‘‘Allocentrism as an Important Characteristics of the Behavior of Latin Americans and Hispanics,’’ in Rogelio Diaz-Guerrero, ed., Cross-Cultural and National Studies in Social Psychology (North Holland: Elsevier Science Publishers B.V., 1985), pp. 84–104. 82. Jack E. Edwards, Paul Rosenfeld, Patricia J. Thomas, and Marie D. Thomas, ‘‘Willingness to Relocate for Employment: A Survey of Hispanics, Non-Hispanic Whites, and Blacks,’’ Hispanic Journal of Behavioral Sciences 15(1) (February 1993): 121–23. 83. Nydia Garcia-Preto, ‘‘Puerto Rican Families,’’ in Monica McGoldrick, John K. Pearce, and Joseph Giordano, eds., Ethnicity and Family Therapy (New York: Guilford Press, 1982), pp. 164–86, especially p. 169. 84. Sally Innis Klitz, Crosscultural Communication: The Hispanic Community of Connecticut (Storrs: University of Connecticut, 1980), p. 15; Sidney W. Mintz, ‘‘Puerto Rico: An Essay in the Definition of a Natural Culture,’’ in The Puerto Rican Experience: A Sociological Source Book (Totowa, NJ: Rowman and Littlefield, 1973), p. 68. 85. Orlando Isaza, personal communication, October 1995. 86. Maria Nieto Senour, ‘‘Psychology of the Chicana,’’ in Joe L. Martinez Jr., ed., Chicano Psychology (New York: Academic Press, 1977), pp. 329–42, especially p. 333; Melba J. T. Vasquez, ‘‘Latinas,’’ in Lillian Comas-Diaz and Beverly Greene, eds., Women of Color: Integrating Ethnic and Gender Identities in Psychotherapy (New York: Guilford Press, 1994), pp. 114–38. 87. Vicky L. Cromwell and Ronald E. Cromwell, ‘‘Perceived Dominance in Decision-Making and Conflict Resolution among Anglo, Black, and Chicano Couples,’’ Journal of Marriage and the Family (November 1978): 745–58. 88. Hofstede, Culture’s Consequences, pp. 92–152. 89. John C. Condon, Good Neighbors: Communicating with the Mexicans (Yarmouth, ME: Intercultural Press, 1985), pp. 41–46. 90. Rogelio Diaz-Guerrero, Psychology of the Mexican: Culture and Personality (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1967), pp. 44–45. 91. Eva S. Kras, Management in Two Cultures: Bridging the Gap between U.S. and Mexican Managers (Yarmouth, ME: Intercultural Press, 1989), pp. 44–45. 92. Hall and Hall, Understanding Cultural Differences, pp. 6–10. 93. Carmen Judith Nine Curt, Non-Verbal Communication in Puerto Rico, 2nd ed. (Cambridge, MA: Evaluation, Dissemination and Assessment Center, 1984), pp. 30–31.

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94. Edward T. Hall, The Silent Language (Greenwich, CT: Fawcett, 1959), p. 164; Curt, Non-Verbal Communication in Puerto Rico, p. 21; Baxter, ‘‘Interpersonal Spacing in Natural Settings,’’ pp. 444–56; Thompson and Baxter, ‘‘Interpersonal Spacing,’’ pp. 115–17. 95. Curt, Non-Verbal Communication in Puerto Rico, p. 21. 96. Robert F. Forston and Charles Urban Larson, ‘‘The Dynamics of Space: An Experimental Study in Proxemic Behavior among Latin Americans and North Americans,’’ Journal of Communication 18 ( June 1968): 109–16. 97. Robert Shuter, ‘‘Proxemics and Tactility in Latin America,’’ Journal of Communication 26(3) (1976): 46–52, especially 52. 98. Bernardo M. Ferdman and Angelica C. Cortes, ‘‘Culture and Identity among Hispanic Managers in an Anglo Business,’’ in Stephen B. Knouse, Hall Rosenfeld, and Amy L. Culbertson, eds., Hispanics in the Workplace (Newbury Park CA: Sage, 1992), pp. 246–77, especially pp. 256–57; Baxter, ‘‘Interpersonal Spacing,’’ pp. 444–56; Shuter, ‘‘Proxemics and Tactility,’’ pp. 46–52. 99. Shuter, ‘‘Proxemics and Tactility,’’ p. 52. 100. Celia Jaes Falicov, ‘‘Mexican Families, ‘‘in Monica McGoldrick, John K. Pearce, and Joseph Giordano, eds., Ethnicity and Family Therapy (New York: Guilford Press, 1982), pp. 134–63, especially p. 153; Condon, Good Neighbors, p. 45. 101. Calvin Sims, ‘‘The South American Art of Name-Calling,’’ New York Times, July 30, 1995, sec. IV, p. 4. 102. For other sources on the Asian American cultural paradigm, see Peter L. Rose, ‘‘Asian Americans: From Pariahs to Paragons,’’ in Nathan Glazer, ed., Clamor at the Gates: The New American Immigration (San Francisco: ICS Press, 1985), pp. 181–212, cited in Harry Kitano and Roger Daniels, Asian Americans: Emerging Minorities (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1998), p. 48. For the history of Asian Americans in America, see also Stanford Lyman, Chinese Americans (New York: Random House, 1974); William Petersen, Japanese Americans (New York: Random House, 1971); and Sowell, Ethnic America, a History, pp. 133–79. Perhaps the best single source of the World War II internment of Japanese Americans is Page Smith, Democracy on Trial: The Japanese American Evacuation and Relocation in World War II (New York: Simon and Shuster, 1995). For a briefer treatment, see also S. Frank Miyamoto, ‘‘The Forced Evacuation of the Japanese Minority during World War II,’’ Journal of Social Issues 29(2) (1973): 11–32. 103. Sowell, Ethnic America, A History, pp. 138, 144–45. 104. Ibid., 175. 105. U.S. Bureau of the Census, No. 11, ‘‘Resident Population—Selected Characteristics, 1790 to 1992, and Projections, 1995 to 2050,’’ in Statistical Abstract of the United States (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1994); Jessica S. Barnes and Claudette E. Bennett, ‘‘The Asian Population: 2000, Census 2000 Brief,’’ Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 2002), pp. 1–10, especially p. 1. 106. June Ock Yum, ‘‘The Impact of Confucianism on Interpersonal Relationships and Communication Patterns in East Asia,’’ in Larry A Samovar and Richard E. Porter, eds., Intercultural Communication: A Reader, 6th ed. (Belmont, CA: Wadsworth, 1991), pp. 66–78. 107. Frank Johnson, Anthony Marsella, and Colleen Johnson, ‘‘Social and Psychological Aspects of Verbal Behavior in Japanese-Americans,’’ American Journal of Psychiatry 131 (1974): 580–83.

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108. John C. Condon, With Respect to the Japanese: A Guide for Americans (Yarmouth, ME: Intercultural Press, 1984), p. 9; Hall and Hall, Hidden Differences, pp. 78–79. 109. Tocqueville, Democracy in America; Robert N. Bellah, Richard Madsen, William M. Sullivan, Ann Swidler, and Steven M. Tipton, Habits of the Heart: Individualism and Commitment in American Life (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985). 110. Kitano & Daniels, Asian Americans, p. 72. 111. Richard Tanner Pascale, ‘‘Zen and the Art of Management,’’ Harvard Business Review 56 (1978): 153–62. 112. Condon, With Respect to the Japanese, pp. 42–44. 113. Colleen Leahy Johnson and Frank Arvid Johnson, ‘‘Interaction Rules and Ethnicity: The Japanese and Caucasians in Honolulu,’’ Social Forces 54(2) (December 1975): 452–56, especially 453. 114. Johnson et al., ‘‘Social and Psychological Aspects,’’ p. 453. 115. Nan M. Sussman and Howard M. Rosenfeld, ‘‘Influence of Culture, Language, and Sex on Conversational Distance,’’ Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 42(1) (1982): 66–74. 116. Ibid., pp. 71–73. 117. Dean Barnlund, ‘‘Communicative Styles in Two Cultures: Japan and the United States,’’ in Adam Kendon, Richard M. Harris, and Mary Ritchie Key, eds., Organization of Behavior in Face-to-Face Interaction (The Hague: Mouton, 1975), pp. 444–57. 118. Anthony J. Marsella, ‘‘Counseling and Psychotherapy with Japanese Americans,’’ American Journal of Orthopsychiatry 63 (April 1993): 200–208, especially 203. 119. James Morishima, ‘‘Special Employment Issues for Asian Americans,’’ Public Personnel Management Journal 10 (1981): 384–92, especially 389. 120. Jing Hsu, Weng-Shing Tseng, Geoffrey Ashton, John F. McDermott Jr., and Walter Char, ‘‘Family Interaction Patterns among Japanese-American and Caucasian Families in Hawaii,’’ American Journal of Psychiatry 142(5) (1985): 577–81. 121. Colin Watanabe, ‘‘Self-Expression and the Asian-American Experience,’’ Personnel and Guidance Journal 51(6) (February 1973): 393–94; Kitano and Daniels, Asian Americans, p. 72. 122. Bowman and Okuda, ‘‘Japanese-American Communication,’’ p. 19. 123. Marsella, ‘‘Counseling and Psychotherapy,’’ p. 204. 124. Barnlund, ‘‘Communicative Styles in Two Cultures,’’ pp. 429–36. 125. Bowman and Okuda, ‘‘Japanese-American Communication,’’ p. 19. 126. Frederick T. L. Leong, ‘‘Counseling and Psychotherapy with Asian-Americans: Review of the Literature,’’ Journal of Counseling and Psychology 31(2) (1986): 196–206, especially 197; Karen Huang, ‘‘Chinese Americans,’’ in Noreen Mokuau, ed., Handbook of Social Services for Asian and Pacific Islanders (New York: Greenwood Press, 1991), pp. 79–96, especially p. 91. 127. Marsella, ‘‘Counseling and Psychotherapy,’’ p. 205. 128. Barnlund, ‘‘Communicative Styles in Two Cultures,’’ pp. 450–51. 129. Linda Wai Ling Young, ‘‘Inscrutability Revisited,’’ in John Gumperz, ed., Language and Social Identity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982), pp. 72–84, especially p. 79. 130. Barnlund, ‘‘Communicative Styles in Two Cultures,’’ pp. 450–51. 131. Vernon E. Cronen, Kenneth M. Johnson, and John W. Lannamann, ‘‘Paradoxes, Double Binds, and Reflexive Loops: An Alternative Theoretical Perspective,’’ in

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Family Process 20 (March 1982): 91–112; Frederick Steier, ‘‘Introduction: Research as Self-Reflexivity,’’ in Frederick Steier, ed., Research and Reflexivity (London: Sage, 1991), pp. 1–11; Frederick Steier, ‘‘Reflexivity and Methodology: An Ecological Constructionism,’’ in Frederick Steier, ed., Research and Reflexivity (London: Sage, 1991), pp. 163–85; Lynn Hoffman, ‘‘A Reflexive Stance for Family Therapy,’’ Journal of Strategic and Systemic Therapies 10(3,4) (Fall/Winter 1991): 4–17. 132. Anderson and Goolishian, ‘‘The Client Is the Expert,’’ pp. 25–39. 133. Harlene Anderson, ‘‘Then and Now: From Knowing to Not-Knowing,’’ Contemporary Family Therapy Journal 12 (1990): 193–98. 134. Harlene Anderson and Susan Swim, ‘‘Learning as Collaborative Conversation: Combining the Student’s and Teacher’s Expertise,’’ Human Systems: The Journal of Systemic Consultation and Management (1993): 145–60. 135. Kenneth J. Gergen, ‘‘The Social Constructionist Movement in Modern Psychology,’’ American Psychologist 40(3) (March 1985): 266–75. 136. Esther Forbes, Paul Revere and the World He Lived In (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1942), pp. 1–17; Frederick Harling and Martin Kaufman, The Ethnic Contribution to the American Revolution (Westfield MA: Westfield Bicentennial Committee and Historical Journal of Western Massachusetts, 1976), p. 30; and Christopher, Crashing the Gates.

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Dirty Business: Women Managing Sexual Objectification in the Workplace Britain A. Scott and Sidney W. Scott

Twenty-two years after the Civil Rights Act of 1964 placed a prohibition on sex discrimination in workplace and organizational settings, the Supreme Court officially recognized sexual harassment as a form of such discrimination.1 The 1986 Meritor Savings Bank v. Vinson ruling distinguished between two types of harassment: the less frequent quid pro quo harassment, which typically involves a superior asking for sexual favors in exchange for employment or consideration for promotion, and the more pervasive hostile workplace harassment, which may involve a variety of behaviors such as the use of sexist language (e.g., referring to women administrative assistants as ‘‘the girls’’), telling sexist or sexually graphic jokes, displaying sexually graphic pictures, engaging in sexual inneuendo, groping or fondling, exhibitionism, and so on. In this chapter, we will not attempt to comprehensively address the broad topic of sexual harassment. Instead, we will focus on two distinct developments in the commercial sex industry that contribute to a hostile workplace climate for women, and may encourage all forms of sexual harassment, because of their psychological impact on both women and men. Specifically, we address the problem of Internet pornography in the workplace and the growing popularity of ‘‘gentlemen’s clubs’’ that market themselves to a business clientele. We will describe social psychological theory and research on how the sexual objectification of women—which is pervasive in both of these forms of entertainment— affects the thoughts and behaviors of men, and the women with whom they interact, in ways that are distinctly negative for the workplace. If current occupational trends continue, more of the leaders and managers who will be called on to deal with sexual harassment in the next decades will be women. According to a 2003 Catalyst report, women make up almost half of the paid workforce and hold just over half of managerial and professional specialty jobs in the United States.2 The report cites a prediction that by 2010, the number of women in the U.S. workforce will have increased at a rate almost one-third

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higher than that of men.3 For women in leadership and management positions, the challenges of addressing sexual harassment are complicated by the fact that they are women. After we discuss the problem of women’s objectification in the workplace, we will recommend ways in which employers in general, and women specifically, can address it.

OBJECTIFICATION IN THE OFFICE When we say a woman is being objectified, we mean that she is being perceived not as a whole person but in a way that dehumanizes her, sexualizes her, and reduces her to her body—or just parts of her body. When a woman is referred to as a ‘‘blonde’’ or a ‘‘babe,’’ she is being objectified. When an image features a close-up shot of just a woman’s cleavage, butt, or glossy lips, objectification is occurring. Women’s objectification pervades our popular culture. Women are commonly turned into sex objects in advertising and entertainment venues. In the sections that follow, we discuss two specific ways that women’s objectification is increasingly seeping into our workplace and organizational settings. Web Women in the Workplace Live women are not the only ones present in today’s workplace settings. Girlie calenders on the walls may be mostly a thing of the past, but swimsuit model screensavers and pin-up planners are taking their place. Less visible but more insidious in the office are other sexually charged images and descriptions of women that are distributed via spam email, accessed online, or downloaded and tucked away in electronic file folders. During the past several years, many businesses and other organizations have made headlines for disciplining or dismissing employees for accessing sexually related Internet content at work. The Pervasiveness of Internet Porn Estimates of the number of pornography pages currently on the Internet range upward of 260 million. A 2001 Kaiser Family Foundation study surveyed fifteen- to seventeen-year-olds and found that 95 percent of those who had ever gone online had ‘‘accidentally’’ encountered pornography.4 According to SexTracker, a service that monitors the use of sexually related Web sites, as much as 70 percent of Internet traffic on porn sites occurs during the workday.5 In 1999, Xerox fired forty employees for accessing inappropriate Web sites, many of which were sexually related,6 and the New York Times fired twentythree employees for distributing sexually explicit images via email.7 In 2000, Dow Chemical Company fired fifty employees for circulating images ranging from ‘‘material comparable to a swimsuit catalog all the way to hard-core violence and depictions of sadomasochistic sex’’ via the company’s internal

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network.8 A 2000 survey of 224 human resource directors at U.S. companies revealed that although more than 80 percent of the companies had Internet access policies, over 60 percent of them had disciplined employees for inappropriate use of the Internet.9 The most common reason for disciplinary action—and dismissal—was accessing sexually oriented sites. This phenomenon is not limited to the United States. In 2004, the British government fired 19 civil servants and disciplined 200 more for viewing sexually explicit Web sites at work.10 The researchers who conducted the 2000 U.S. survey of human resource directors collected similar data in 2002 from 544 HR personnel in the United Kingdom and found that the majority of dismissals for inappropriate Internet use (69 percent) were related to sexual sites.11 A third to a half of workplace computers in New Zealand have been found to contain downloaded images of a sexual nature ranging from swimsuit models to bestiality.12 A 2004 study conducted by researchers from Queens University in Belfast found that 28 percent of workers at 350 companies in the United States, the United Kingdom, and Australia admitted downloading sexually explicit content while at work.13 The Content of Internet Porn When most people hear the word pornography, they think of photographs or films of people who are nude or engaged in sex. Although much of the sexually related Internet content that workers are perusing probably fits this description, it would be naive to assume that the content is limited to graphic depictions of sex. Women especially may be unaware of the misogynist, violent, and racist content on many Internet sites. Women in pornography are mostly presented as sex objects, dehumanized bodies on display for the pleasure of the viewer. What many women may not realize is that women in pornography are categorized and marketed according to factors such as their race, ethnicity, age, body types, and occupational status. No matter what the viewer’s personal predilection, he can undoubtedly find Internet sites tailored to his preferences. The Web hosts ‘‘naughty housewives’’ and ‘‘barely legal teens,’’ as well as sites featuring ‘‘sexy secretaries’’ and other women in workplace settings. There are sites devoted to women with lots of hair and women with no hair, women with very large breasts and women with very small breasts. Racist stereotypes include black women as sexual slaves or animallike savages and Asian women suffering bondage and torture.14 Women in pornography are frequently portrayed as deriving pleasure from their own pain or humiliation. Such depictions reinforce the myth that women are masochistic and enjoy sexual harassment and abuse.15 When women are portrayed as suffering without enjoyment, the tone is typically hostile and often boastful. For example, in 2003, an amateur videographer filmed nude women being hunted in the desert by camouflage-clad men wielding paintball guns. The video, called ‘‘Hunting for Bambi,’’ was available on his Web site (and

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from mainstream outlets including Best Buy and Amazon.com). At the time of this writing, the Web site it still active and welcomes viewers with the copy, Guys would rather see naked women running around the woods with their beautiful, voluptuous ‘‘racks’’ jiggling all over, versus a hairy, four-legged deer anyways, right? Let’s face it. For those of you that have a wife, girlfriend, significant other, even an ex-wife, or ex-girlfriend (you get the point) or some other Bambi Bitch that has done you wrong in the past, nagged you to death over the stupidest things, complained and whined that you didn’t spend enough time with her, didn’t take out the garbage, yada, yada, yada. . . . Here’s a question. Wouldn’t you just like to ‘‘Busta Bambi’’ sometime? I mean, if you had a paintball gun, and she was running for her hide through the woods, and you busted her in the ass with a paintball, you would feel just a little bit of gratification, wouldn’t you? Okay, maybe some of you really wouldn’t want to see your wife or girlfriend running naked through the woods with their fat rolls wiggling all over. But, you get the point.16

This site is a relatively tame example of the woman-hating and violent content that can be easily accessed on the Internet. Other sites feature images and descriptions of gang rape and ‘‘sexy torture.’’ In addition to virtual sexualized women that inhabit the workplace electronically, live sexy women serve as the backdrop for business that occurs outside the office. Although these women are not physically present at the workplace site, they are present in the memories of men when they return to the office.

BUSINESS AT THE BOYS’ CLUB In the mid-1990s, while the first author was a doctoral student at the University of Minnesota, women who worked in downtown Minneapolis and were members of the newly formed Skyway Business and Professional Women (SBPW) organization became concerned about the growing proliferation of socalled gentlemen’s clubs in the heart of the city’s business district. The women were particularly outraged by the free lunch buffets that their male colleagues were frequenting. These women suspected that the combination of lunch and lap dances might have a negative effect on gender relations during the second half of the workday.17 During this same period, also in the Twin Cities, a local citizens’ group formed in response to the announcement that the planners of the Mall of America intended to include a Hooters restaurant. Although the ‘‘Give Hooters the Boot’’ campaign was ultimately unsuccessful at keeping the restaurant out of the mall, it temporarily raised public awareness about the company’s use of scantily clad, buxom ‘‘Hooters girls’’ to attract customers. Since the early 1990s, strip clubs and Hooters restaurants have become more numerous, more mainstream, and more common as locations for conducting business.

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Growth of the Adult Hospitality Industry Since the opening of the first restaurant in 1983, Hooters has expanded its scope to include over 375 restaurants in 46 states and 15 countries, novelty items such as calendars and DVDs, a magazine, swimsuit contests, sports sponsorship, and an airline. The company describes itself on its Web site as follows: The element of female sex appeal is prevalent in the restaurants, and the company believes the Hooters Girl is as socially acceptable as a Dallas Cowboy cheerleader, Sports Illustrated swimsuit model, or Radio City Rockette. . . . Claims that Hooters exploits attractive women are as ridiculous as saying the NFL exploits men who are big and fast. . . . To Hooters, the women’s rights movement is important because it guarantees women have the right to choose their own careers, be it a Supreme Court Justice or Hooters Girl. . . . The chain acknowledges that many consider ‘‘Hooters’’ a slang term for a portion of the female anatomy. Hooters does have an owl inside its logo and uses an owl theme sufficiently to allow debate to occur over the meaning’s intent. The chain enjoys and benefits from this debate. . . . Sixty-eight percent of customers are male, most between the ages of 25–54. . . . Hooters believes critics of the concept are a vocal minority of politically correct minded individuals.18

The company itself reports that many of its customers are businesspeople and 45 percent of its food sales occur during lunch.19 More extreme than Hooters are the growing number of strip clubs that have gone from being considered seedy to sophisticated. Clubs in many major U.S. cities, including New York, Dallas, and Miami Beach, have recently hired gourmet chefs and now offer fine dining comparable to upscale restaurants.20 Tourist publications in hotel rooms now typically include advertisements for gentlemen’s clubs, often targeting business travelers in particular. In 1995, Houston-based Rick’s Cabaret became the first ever publicly traded adult nightclub stock. According to a 2000 episode of the Arts & Entertainment network’s Investigative Reports, the number of gentlemen’s clubs in North America doubled over the decade of the 1990s.21 Babes as a Backdrop for Business In 2004, Wal-Mart stores faced a class-action sexual harassment lawsuit in which one store manager claimed that monthly sales meetings were held at a Hooters restaurant and that she had been pressured to visit a strip club during a business trip.22 That same year, Wall Street giant Morgan Stanley paid a $54 million settlement in a sex discrimination suit that included complaints about women being routinely excluded from deal-making meetings at strip clubs.23 When the huge Houston-based energy trading company Enron collapsed in bankruptcy in 2001, ugly truths about the spending habits of its top executives made national news. Reports came in that Enron executives had frequented

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Houston strip clubs, in one instance attempting to charge to a business account more than $750 for a single lunch for three or four men.24 In 1995, Sales and Marketing Management magazine surveyed 228 U.S. salespeople and found that 49 percent of the men had entertained clients at topless bars.25 In 1998, the growing trend toward conducting business at strip clubs caught the attention of ABC news and served as the theme of a 20/20 segment.26 Like the increasingly popularity of Internet pornography in the workplace, the mainstreaming of strip clubs as business venues is an international phenomenon. For example, strip clubs in Canada lure business clients with perks such as complimentary hotel pick-up service, VIP meeting rooms, and preferential ‘‘front of the line’’ admission passes.27 A strip club in Oslo, Norway, specializes in major corporate events and several other Norwegian strip clubs rent their dancers for events at company offices.28 In 1997, two women employees sued Magna International, one of North America’s largest auto parts companies, for sexual harassment by their male coworkers that they claimed was fueled by the men spending their lunch hours entertaining clients at strip clubs.29 The women claimed that female employees were regularly fondled and called harassing names (such as ‘‘cupcake’’) by the men who frequented the clubs during work hours.30 Like the women working on the Minneapolis skyway, these women made a connection between lunches spent ogling nude dancers and the treatment they received in the afternoon. In the next section we discuss psychological theory and research that supports such a connection.

HOW OBJECTIFICATION CREATES A HOSTILE WORKPLACE As described earlier, when a woman is objectified, she is stripped of her individual personhood and reduced to a collection of body parts. Clearly, the Web women, waitresses, and strippers discussed previously are objectified. So how does their objectification affect the experience of women in the workplace? When considering the potential negative psychological and behavioral impacts of these women’s objectification on women in the workplace, we must separately address the effects on men and the effects on their female co-workers. From Sexual Objectification to Sexual Harassment: Effects on Men Social psychological research studies clearly demonstrate that sexual objectification of women affects men’s attitudes and behavior toward women and their perceptions of women. Effects vary depending on whether the sexual objectification involves hostility and violence. The effects of violent sexual objectification are most disturbing, but the effects of nonviolent objectification—which is more common in the workplace—also can contribute to a hostile climate.

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It is important to recognize that to some extent this issue is circular: men who are already inclined toward sexist attitudes and harassment of women may be more inclined to download porn or take a business client to Hooters. We do not presume to suggest that the objectification of women as described is the sole or primary cause of sexual harassment; we will explain, however, that the practices mentioned can contribute to or exacerbate a hostile climate because of their psychological effects on men. Nonviolent Objectification In 1995, social psychologists Laurie Rudman and Eugene Borgida published an award-winning study in the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology that was inspired by a sexual harassment suit against Stroh’s Brewery.31 Although the lawsuit eventually settled out of court, it made headlines for a while because of the plantiffs’ attorney’s plan to use Stroh’s own advertising as evidence that the company supported a hostile workplace.32 Specifically targeted was the brewery’s use of the ‘‘Swedish bikini team’’ in its television and print promotions. The bikini team consisted of five clone-like busty blonde bimbos who would conveniently show up with Old Milwaukee beer to entertain a bored and lonely guy. The attorney intended to argue that the portrayal of women in these ads contributed to a climate of sexual harassment at the company. At the time, there was a dearth of empirical research evidence to support the attorney’s claim, so Rudman and Borgida stepped up to the plate. In their experiment, male college students were recruited to individually participate in a consumer research study. The men were told that they would view twenty television commercials and rate them for their consumer appeal. Half of the men saw commercials that portrayed women as sex objects; the other half saw commercials for similar products with no women in them. All were actual commercials taped from television. After watching and rating one of the sets of commercials, each man was asked if he would do a favor for the experimenter and meet with a prospective research assistant who was due to arrive momentarily. The researcher explained that a participant’s evaluation of the candidate would be helpful to her in deciding whether to hire the person for the position. All of the men agreed to help. In each case, the researcher gave the man a set of questions from which he was instructed to select a few to ask the job candidate. The man was left alone in a room with the ‘‘candidate,’’ who was portrayed by the same actress every time—dressed the same, acting the same, and unaware of which set of commercials the man had viewed. Unbeknownst to the man, the interaction was surreptitiously videotaped so the researcher could later assess his behaviors. After the interview, the man was asked his opinion about the candidate and tested on his memory for her personal characteristics. The findings were startling. Men who had viewed the commercials that portrayed women as sex objects (certainly a more tame stimulus than a

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restaurant full of Hooters girls or nude table dancers), sat closer to the woman, acted in a more dominating manner toward her, chose more sex-stereotypical questions to ask her (e.g., ‘‘do you have a good phone voice’’ versus ‘‘are you good at statistics’’), and recalled more about her physical appearance—and less about her as a person—than did men who had viewed the commercials without sexualized women in them. The reason the study was award-winning was because Rudman and Borgida also collected data that explained why the men who had viewed the sex-object commercials treated the woman in a more sexist manner. The motivation for their behavior came from the mindset that the commercials put them in; specifically, the men had been unconsciously primed to think of women as sex objects. The well-learned cultural stereotype woman-as-sex-object had been triggered in their brains and had then acted as a filter for their perceptions of the woman and as a guide for their behavior toward her. How did Rudman and Borgida determine that the stereotype was triggered in these men’s minds? After each man interviewed the candidate, he did a computer task in which strings of letters flashed on the screen and he indicated by pressing a key as quickly as possible whether the string was a real word or a nonsense word. Embedded among these letter strings were words that are commonly associated in people’s minds with the woman as sex object stereotype: bimbo, blonde, babe, Playboy, breasts, and panties. Men who had viewed the commercials portraying women as sex objects recognized these words as words significantly more quickly than did the other men. Because the sex object stereotype had been activated, all ideas associated with that stereotype were in the forefront of these men’s brains, making the recognition of them easier. The activation of the sex object stereotype motivates and directs men’s thoughts and behaviors in a sexual direction as demonstrated in this study and several others.34 Activation of this stereotype also limits men’s thinking in the following way: the perception of women as sex objects is inconsistent with the perception of them as professionals. Researchers have found that women are generally stereotyped as belonging to one of three categories: sexy woman, housewife, or career woman—categories that differ in terms of the women’s power, competence, and moral virtue.34 When people are asked to list the characteristics of the ‘‘sexy woman’’ and of the ‘‘career woman,’’ the lists are distinctly different and nonoverlapping.35 Sexy women are not perceived as powerful, competent, or virtuous, whereas career women are perceived as all three of these. Men who are primed to think of their female co-workers through the filter of the sex object stereotype are not likely to be tuned in to the women’s intelligence, skills, or authority. The activation of the sex object stereotype in the minds of male co-workers has implications for how all women in the workplace are perceived; however, the phenomenon is particularly problematic for women of lesser status. In general, higher power persons stereotype lower power persons more commonly than the other way around because powerful people can afford to generalize

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and ignore the individual characteristics of insignificant others.36 Experimental research suggests that for men who are already prone to sexual aggression, just being in a position of power relative to a woman is an automatic trigger for stereotyping the woman sexually instead of professionally.37 Women of ‘‘lesser status’’ include not only women in subordinate jobs (where most employed women find themselves) but also women who are younger or less experienced than the men or have minority racial or ethnic status relative to the men. Women whose lesser status is defined by more than one of these attributes may be especially vulnerable targets of sexual objectification and harassment. Psychologist Kay Deaux has studied gender stereotypes extensively. She sums up the relationship between the sex object stereotype and the hostile workplace as follows: A hostile work environment might be defined as one in which a particular subtype of woman—one emphasizing sexual characteristics rather than professional ones—is primed, encouraged, and supported. To the extent, for example, that pornographic pictures, photos of women in bathing suits, and sexually explicit jokes and language are part of the work environment, then sexual stereotypes of women are going to be far more accessible than they would otherwise, and sexual harassment is more likely to occur.38

We know that nonviolent objectification of women, such as what occurs at Hooters, in strip clubs, and on many Internet sites, causes men to perceive women as sex objects. What happens when the objectification also involves hostility or violence? Violent Objectification When the sexual objectification involves hostility or violence toward the objectified women (as in the ‘‘Hunting for Bambi’’ example), the psychological and behavioral effects are more extreme. Experimental research suggests that exposure to material that combines the sexual objectification of women with violence lowers men’s support of sexual equality, desensitizes men to violence against women, increases men’s acceptance of rape myths, such as ‘‘all women secretly want to be raped,’’ and increases men’s physical aggression toward women in the laboratory.39 For example, in one study researchers Daniel Linz, Edward Donnerstein, and Steven Penrod exposed male college students to ten hours of R-rated or Xrated movies (two hours a day for five days).40 Some men saw films that were sexually explicit and included sexual assault; some saw films that were sexually explicit but portrayed consensual sex; and the rest saw films that were less sexually explicit but portrayed violence against women within a sexual context. At the end of the five days, the three groups of men, along with a control group who had not seen any films, were asked to watch a reenactment of a rape trial

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and make several judgments about the case. Compared to the control group and the group that had seen the X-rated nonviolent films, the two groups who had seen sexually violent films judged the rape victim’s injury to be less severe and rated her significantly more worthless as a person. Importantly, it is the combination of sex and violence—rather than the sexual explicitness of the material—that leads to the more extreme effects. This means that Internet content such as the ‘‘Hunting for Bambi’’ site should not be dismissed as a harmless joke. Even nonexplicit sites that objectify women in a hostile or violent way may lower men’s inhibitions regarding sexual harassment. For practical and ethical reasons, experimental research cannot address the possible links between sexually violent material and men’s behaviors toward women in the real world; however, numerous interview studies with abused women support the connection. When researchers have interviewed battered women about their partners’ use of pornography, they have typically found that about 40 to 60 percent of the women report that their batterers use of violent pornography was intimately tied to their abuse in that they had been asked or forced to act out violent sexual encounters the men had seen in the porn.41 In their study on the sexual abuse of prostitutes, Mimi Silbert and Ayala Pines had not planned to study pornography, but were confronted with the subject when 24 percent of their study participants implicated violent pornography in their open-ended accounts of rape. One rape survivor recalled her attacker saying, ‘‘I know all about you bitches, you’re no different; you’re like all of them. I seen it in all the movies. You love being beaten.’’42 We cannot conclude from accounts like these that violent sexual objectification of women directly causes otherwise harmless and respectful men to harass or abuse women, but it is clear that such pornography can provide sexually arousing behavioral scripts for men with aggressive impulses. From Sexual Objectification to Performance Problems: Effects on Women The negative effects of objectification on women manifest as performance deficits—a serious concern for workplace productivity. We will describe two ways that women’s workplace performance may be hindered when their male colleagues have been primed to perceive them as sex objects. We first review experimental research that suggests women’s performance may suffer when male superiors stereotype them. Then we describe theory that predicts that a woman’s awareness (or suspicion) that she is being objectified may interfere with her performance. Responses to Being Stereotyped As described, the stereotypes ‘‘sex object’’ and ‘‘career woman’’ have been found to be incompatible and nonoverlapping in U.S. culture. When a woman

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is perceived as one, she is not likely to be simultaneously perceived as the other. When the sex object lens is in place, a woman’s competence, intelligence, leadership skills, and so on will be out of focus. As the Rudman and Borgida study demonstrated, the sex object stereotype will then guide the behavior of the perceiver and direct him to treat the woman in a more sexist—and possibly harassing—manner. The effects do not stop there. When a person is the target of a stereotype, her behavior is affected in turn. When an individual is stereotyped, he or she is likely to unintentionally behave in ways consistent with the stereotype. This phenomenon, labeled behavioral confirmation, has been demonstrated in numerous experiments since the late 1970s. In the first laboratory investigation, pairs of opposite-sex strangers were seated in separate rooms and asked to have a ‘‘getting acquainted’’ conversation over an intercom.43 The man in each pair was given a photograph, ostensibly of his interaction partner. In reality, the photo was one of only two: either a photo of an attractive woman or a photo of an unattractive woman. Before the conversation, the man was asked about his expectations of his partner. Consistent with our culture’s ‘‘what is beautiful is good’’ stereotype, if he was looking at the attractive photo, he expected her to be more intelligent, more socially skilled, and so on. Importantly, the woman participant was unaware that he had a photo he believed to be of her. After the man and woman had their conversation, the man was asked what his partner had actually been like. Men who had looked at the attractive picture reported that their partners possessed significantly more positive qualities than did the men who had looked at the unattractive picture. This finding is not surprising given the effect of stereotypes on our perceptions: we see (and hear) what we expect to. The surprising finding surfaced later when other people judged the women’s behaviors in the conversations. Each conversation had been audiotaped with the man and woman on separate channels. The researchers asked a few people to listen to just the women’s sides of the conversations and rate each woman on the same qualities the men had (intelligence, social skills, etc.). Like the women participants, the listeners were unaware of the photos. Still, what the listeners heard led them to rate the women whose partners had been looking at an attractive picture more positively than the women whose partners had been looking at an unattractive picture. In other words, because the pictures led the men to treat the women differently, the women ended up actually behaving differently—specifically, the women unintentionally behaved in ways consistent with the men’s expectations of them. The stereotype had become a self-fulfilling prophecy. Consider the implications when a woman is being stereotyped as a sex object by her male colleague. Not only is he likely to interpret her behavior as consistent with his expectations about her, she may very well end up behaving in stereotype-consistent ways because of the way he treats her. If he expects her to be incompetent and unintelligent because she is merely a sex object in his eyes, he may not give her the opportunity to disconfirm his preconceived

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notions. For example, if the stereotype leads him to not ask for her opinion about an important decision, her silence may reinforce his belief that she is not bright. She may underperform because she is expected to underperform. Since the late 1970s, behavioral confirmation has been studied in a variety of contexts. Researchers have found that the effects are strongest when the perceiver is more powerful than the target of the stereotype because powerful people have more influence over the way an interaction happens.44 In the case of mixed-sex interaction, not only do men in our culture have higher social status in general, most workplaces are characterized by sex stratification in which men occupy the majority of higher power positions while women are concentrated in lower power roles.45 Recent work by social psychologist Theresa Vescio and colleagues suggests that powerful men do not always automatically stereotype subordinate women, even in masculine domains (such as the majority of both blue-collar and whitecollar workplaces in the United States).46 When the context leads to gender stereotyping, however, powerful men tend to behave toward subordinate women in patronizing ways, offering praise and compliments but withholding tangible resources such as money and power. What women receive is a condescending mixed message: ‘‘wow, what surprisingly good work [for a woman or a sex object]; still, it’s not worthy of real rewards.’’ As a result, the women tend to feel anger and a lack of confidence, and their performance suffers. The effects of stereotyping that we have described can occur without men being primed to view women specifically as sex objects; merely stereotyping women as women (i.e., emotional, dependent, nurturing) can cause women to behaviorally confirm the stereotype or experience feelings of anger and frustration. When the stereotype is the woman as sex object, these effects will likely happen along with the woman’s own internal response to being objectified. Self-Objectification According to Barbara Frederickson and Tomi-Ann Roberts, girls and women in our culture are taught to routinely objectify themselves.47 When girls grow up surrounded by sexually objectified representations of women, they learn to perceive themselves as objects and adopt an observer’s perspective on their own bodies. This self-objectification involves habitual self-surveillance and body monitoring that places demands on attention. Frederickson and Roberts do not suggest that women are naturally vain or self-absorbed, but instead explain that women learn to be vigilant about their appearance because it is a practical strategy in a culture in which a woman’s appearance may significantly affect her life outcomes. When women engage in appearance monitoring, their attention is directed away from the tasks at hand and toward feelings of anxiety (that their appearance will be scrutinized by others), shame (that their appearance doesn’t measure up to some ideal), and fear (that if their appearance is too appealing

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they may become targets of unwanted sexual attention). When women selfobjectify, they enter a self-conscious preoccupation in which they find themselves not subjectively experiencing a situation but thinking about how they appear to others in the situation. For example, in one study of young adult women, approximately a third admitted being preoccupied with concerns about their appearance during sexual intimacy, instead of being tuned in to their own desires and physical sensations.48 Not only does self-objectification direct attention away from subjective experience, it divides attention between self-surveillance and other tasks. We know from cognitive psychology research (and personal experience trying to multitask) that our mental resources are limited; we can only think about so many things at once. Frederickson and Roberts suggest that when women devote mental resources to self-objectification, fewer resources are available for other tasks. Support for this proposition comes from experiments that put women in situations that temporarily heighten their self-objectification. For example, in one study researchers had individual women and men try on either a sweater or a swimsuit.49 The researchers predicted that the women would be in a more self-objectifying state of mind after trying on the swimsuit than after trying on the sweater and that the men would be unaffected by the clothing manipulation. They were correct. Why this study is remarkable, however, has to do with what happened next. After trying on either the sweater or the swimsuit, each participant’s available mental resources were assessed by the administration of a set of fairly challenging math problems. The researchers found that the math performance of women who had tried on the swimsuit was significantly worse than the performance of women who had tried on the sweater. Men’s math performance was unaffected. Granted, it is not very often that women find themselves in situations in which they are wearing a swimsuit and doing math problems; however, even subtle situational cues can trigger women’s self-objectification. For example, in one study feelings of self-objectification were significantly heightened after women participants had simply unscrambled sentences that contained appearance-related words such as weight, slender, beauty, and shapely.50 Consider the implications of both the swimsuit study and the scrambled sentence study for the situation of a woman in the workplace who is aware that her male colleague has just been in his office surfing porn sites or has just returned from lunch at the local topless bar. In the only published study to date that looked at how interacting with a man might heighten a woman’s self-objectification, researcher Rachel Calogero led women participants to believe that they would be engaging in small talk with either a male or female stranger for five minutes.51 Before the interaction (which never actually happened), the women’s self-objectification was measured. Women who anticipated interacting with a male stranger reported significantly greater body shame and anxiety than did women who anticipated interacting with another woman. These participants merely had to anticipate

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interacting with a man for their self-objectification to be heightened. When a woman has to interact with a male co-worker she suspects is objectifying her, due to her awareness of his Web surfing, for example—or one whom she knows is objectifying her, due to his verbal or physical behavior—heightened selfobjectification will almost certainly occur. How might a woman’s heightened appearance monitoring, feelings of shame and anxiety, and mental preoccupation affect her ability to concentrate on her work? MANAGING OBJECTIFICATION In the preceding sections we presented the issue of women’s objectification in the workplace and have described psychological research that supports our thesis that it is a problem warranting attention. The remainder of the chapter will address the challenges of dealing with this problem, some of which pertain to employers in general and others that are specific to women managers. Objectification and Sexual Harassment Policy Sexual harassment has always been difficult to delineate, even with the often cited guidelines presented by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) in the 1980s and approved by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1986.52 According to the EEOC, Unwelcome sexual advances, requests for sexual favors, and other verbal or physical conduct of a sexual nature constitutes sexual harassment when submission to or rejection of this conduct explicitly or implicitly affects an individual’s employment [quid pro quo], unreasonably interferes with an individual’s work performance or creates an intimidating, hostile or offensive work environment.53

Quid pro quo harassment is a clear violation of Section 703 of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and there is no defense on the part of the company when this happens. Less clear-cut yet far more common is the situation of the hostile workplace environment. A recent trend has been toward organizations adopting general harassment policies to encompass not only sexual harassment but also any form of harassment that contributes to a hostile workplace in general. The Massachusetts Commission Against Discrimination has urged employers to supplement sexual harassment policies with broader harassment policies to identify that all forms of discriminatory practices can have a negative effect on workplace relationships, morale, and productivity.54 Although the obvious intent of a general harassment policy is to protect and prevent all types of unwelcome behavior, the unintended result may be that managers and employees will think of harassment in a gender-neutral manner.

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This may be a problem given that the vast majority of sexual harassment remains male-to-female. Situations of female-to-male harassment, such as the one portrayed in the 1994 film Disclosure, in which supervisor Demi Moore created a quid pro quo situation with subordinate manager Michael Douglas, are relatively rare. The latest EEOC data for FY 2004 indicate sexual harassment claims by men, though rising since 1993, still only constitute 15.1 percent of the claims, and women are filing nearly 85 percent of them.55 Genderneutral approaches to harassment policy may be detrimental because they obscure the fact that objectification and stereotyping of women in the workplace is not balanced by similar stereotyping and objectification of men. There are no Sports Illustrated swimsuit hunk desk planners or ‘‘Cocks’’ restaurants for business lunches. In 1993, the American Psychological Association filed an amicus brief with the Supreme Court in the case of Harris v. Forklift Systems that reviewed research on gender differences in perceptions of sexual harassment. The plaintiff in the case claimed that the company president created a hostile workplace with his jokes about her attracting customers with sexual favors and his requests to female employees to pull coins out of his front pants pocket. The amicus brief explained that women and men tend to have different ideas about what constitutes harassment.56 A recent meta-analytic review of sixty-two individual studies on women’s and men’s perceptions of sexual harassment concluded that women tend to perceive a broader range of behaviors as harassing than men do and that some of the largest differences are in perceptions of what qualifies as a hostile workplace and whether derogatory attitudes toward women are present.57 With support from these psychological research studies and a legal precedent from the 1991 case Ellison v. Brady, many have argued that the courts should employ a ‘‘reasonable woman’’ standard in place of a ‘‘reasonable person’’ or ‘‘reasonable man’’ standard in sexual harassment cases.58 This standard allows that a woman need not prove psychological harm to claim sexual harassment and that a hostile workplace may exist when a reasonable woman would find the environment offensive (even if a reasonable man would not). The EEOC description of the hostile workplace is intentionally vague so as to encompass a variety of scenarios, and the reasonable woman standard seems to treat women’s subjective experience as sufficient evidence that a workplace climate is hostile; however, both the EEOC guidelines and the reasonable woman standard were created with only overt behavior in mind. Neither was crafted to address those subtle behaviors (e.g., men privately accessing Internet sites that sexually objectify women and conducting business at establishments that do the same) that may lead to women experiencing a hostile workplace merely because of the way these activities affect men psychologically and the way women’s awareness of these activities may undermine women’s performance. A recent case in the United Kingdom tested the idea that a woman’s awareness of sexually objectifying behavior could, in and of itself, constitute

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sexual harassment. A female data entry clerk worked in close proximity to male colleagues who allegedly downloaded pornographic images from the Internet on three occasions when she was in the room. A tribunal originally rejected her sexual harassment claim on the basis that the images had not been shown to her. The Employment Appeal Tribunal (EAT) overturned the decision, recognizing that downloading porn in the presence of a female co-worker was potentially degrading and an affront to her dignity.59 It is unclear whether the EAT would have ruled the same had she not been present when the behavior was happening. Human resources professionals in enlightened organizations adopt strict policies against sexual harassing behaviors and regularly train employees to recognize, prevent, and stop these behaviors from occurring. This training is primarily conducted to keep the employer out of court with an important secondary objective of making the workplace safer and less threatening. Most training, though necessary and helpful, does not adequately address the problem of women’s objectification. Employees are informed about which behaviors are legally prohibited but are not normally educated about how a hostile workplace can be created by invisible influences, such as the clandestine use of a bikini babe screen saver or lunch at the strip club. Nor are employees typically asked to think critically about how the hostile workplace may be related to underlying male attitudes toward women in general that are reinforced by societal norms, mass media, and our institutional structures. Compounding the problem, courts have held that companies can comply with their obligation to prevent further sexual harassment after an incident by simply removing offending items and reminding employees of the rules. For example, in a Tenth Circuit court decision in 2003, Exxon Mobile Oil was deemed to have responded adequately to a sexual harassment charge by removing ‘‘demeaning graffiti’’ from a female worker’s area, increasing security, and calling all employees into meetings to reinforce the sexual harassment policy even though these actions likely did little to change situational factors, beliefs, and attitudes that prompted the sexually harassing behavior in the first place.60 Companies can address overt behavior, but the activities in question are difficult to monitor. In the next section we will describe how many companies are proactively attempting to address Internet usage (including the accessing of sexual content), while at the same time some companies may actually be resistant to tackling the issue of meetings at sexually objectifying venues because of the belief that it would be bad for business. E-Harassment When the definition of sexual harassment became a part of the language of human resources policies, many forms of communication commonly used today did not exist. For example, use of the Internet has grown astronomically

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since 1994, the year Netscape launched Netscape Navigator, the first widely used browser. Although an estimated 3 million persons worldwide, mostly located in the United States, were using the Internet in 1994, by 2004, estimates of global usage ranged to 945 million, with 140 million U.S. citizens going online every month.61 With the ease of access to the Internet in the workplace, employers have had to contend with the potential loss of productivity associated with employees spending time browsing for non–work-related information and shopping for personal items. Some non–work-related Internet activity, though publicly discouraged in policies, is tolerated by employers who try to balance productivity wants with employees’ needs for periodic breaks from the work at hand. Actually, taking a break at one’s work area is probably less disruptive than going for a break in a remote, designated area of the building. This may explain why in a Vault.com study of over 1,400 employers, 82 percent indicated it was appropriate for employees to view non–work-related Web sites, and 58 percent felt it was permissible to spend fifteen to thirty minutes each day in these activities.62 The problem arises from the tendency of the Internet to become habitual and even addictive.63 While employees’ use includes personal email, chat rooms, games, sports, music downloads, shopping, gambling, and online stock trading, the most commonly reported form of Internet misuse is the accessing and downloading of pornography. A 2002 study found that pornography was the issue in 51 percent of the complaints and 69 percent of Internet misuse dismissals.64 Pornography has addictive properties that have been described by some experts as comparable to those found in heroin or crack cocaine. In a recent testimony before a Senate subcommittee, Mary Anne Layden, codirector of the University of Pennsylvania’s Sexual Trauma and Psychopathology Program, described pornography as, ‘‘the most concerning thing to psychological health . . . existing today,’’ and described how the Internet is ‘‘a perfect drug delivery system because you are anonymous, aroused, and have role models for . . . behaviors.’’65 When we understand that an estimated 260 new porn sites are added each day, and that nearly three-quarters of all pornographic traffic on the Internet is occurring during the workday, then we begin to realize the depth and breadth of the problem facing employers.66 In addition to the misuse of company resources and wasted time, a concern for employers is how to prevent the Internet itself from becoming another vehicle for sexual harassment. The illusion of anonymity and impersonality created by electronic communication may give encouragement to harassers to take even more risks to transmit discriminatory statements, lewd images, and abusive messages than live interaction that forces the offender to face his victim. In response to Internet misuse and the potential for electronic forms of sexual harassment, many companies have not only written strict rules and policies forbidding harassing behavior and outlining severe consequences, up to and including dismissal, but have also added provisions for monitoring and limiting access to email and the Internet. Employers walk a fine line, however, as their

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rules, policies, and procedures must also protect employee rights to privacy afforded by federal and state laws.67 Objectification Is Business as Usual At the same time that employers are cracking down on Internet porn in the workplace, the mixing of business and objectified women appears to be increasing outside the workplace. As described, sexual harassment cases at large companies, including Wal-Mart and Morgan Stanley, have involved accusations that business was conducted at strip clubs. In the high-profile 1996 Mitsubishi case, women workers described how their male colleagues took photos of each other with strippers and prostitutes at off-site parties (including some that managers attended in Japan) and then displayed the photos in the employee break room.68 This specific behavior was only one of a plethora that occurred in what the EEOC ultimately deemed a ‘‘hyper-sexual environment.’’ Women were routinely groped, subjected to lewd and threatening comments, and made to witness to exhibitionism and simulated masturbation. Women’s objectification is an integral part of the business culture in many more organizations than Mitsubishi. For example, in her book Tales from the Boom Boom Room, Susan Antilla describes the sexism and sexual harassment that pervade Wall Street and reports that strip clubs are a favorite hangout for brokers.69 After the CEO of the newly formed Rent-A-Center essentially dismantled the human resources department, problem behaviors flourished— including hiring go-go dancers to entertain at a company meeting in Las Vegas.70 Not only are objectified women considered acceptable in many business circles, they also are seen as lucrative. When women sued in the aforementioned Magna International case, auto industry salesmen explained that the habit of conducting business at strip clubs was a profitable practice. Men, they said, are happy when they are surrounded by beautiful nude women—and happy men are more agreeable clients and collaborators.71 When strip clubs are lauded as bonding environments that facilitate positive relationships between men, a company is most likely going to look the other way when they are used as settings for business. Objectification of women in forms such as the Hooters lunch may also be a part of the routine script because it serves as a means for men to express and reinforce their masculinity and dominance to each other.72 Given that most workplaces are still male-dominated, what will it take to break the tradition of women’s objectification in the workplace? We think it will take women. Women Managers Challenging Objectification We do not want to be misunderstood as unfairly putting the burden on women to remedy a problem that originates with men’s behavior; instead, we

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intend to promote an optimistic and pragmatic perspective that women in positions of authority are the ones best poised to tackle the problem of objectification in the workplace. History tells us that social change comes about when those who are wronged fight against the status quo (e.g., the civil rights movement, the women’s movement). Allies can be found among the dominant group, but the momentum for change comes from the bottom up. Women managers may be more influential than other women employees in eliciting change because they at least have some authority; however, we predict that action on the part of women managers will not be risk-free. Women Managers in a Double-Bind When a woman occupies a role that requires her to behave in ‘‘unfeminine’’ ways, she may find herself in a double bind; in other words, she is damned if she does and damned if she doesn’t. If she acts appropriately for the occupational role (e.g., a woman manager disciplining an employee for tardiness) she may be seen as harsh and unlikable; if she acts in more feminine ways (e.g., gently reminding the employee about the time), she may be considered ineffective and unsuited for her job. For example, in a highly publicized 1988 case against accounting firm Price Waterhouse, senior manager Ann Hopkins described how she was denied a partnership—in spite of her outstanding record—because several colleagues thought she had been acting too masculine and needed to walk, talk, and dress more femininely.73 Presumably, she would not have been so successful in her job had she not displayed so-called masculine qualities, such as agency and assertiveness. Just by being in positions of authority, women managers are in a chronic double bind. When it comes to challenging women’s objectification, women managers will likely find themselves in a situation-specific double bind. If they do not address the problem, the negative effects we have already described will potentially produce a hostile working environment for themselves and their female colleagues. In addition, the glass ceiling may be reinforced as they are left out of important networking that takes place in settings where women are thought of only as objects. If they do address the issue, however, they minimally run the risk of being labeled oversensitive, not a team player, or bitchy. More seriously, they may jeopardize their careers. Several studies conducted in the 1980s and 1990s found that when women challenge sexual harassment, they may face retaliation, poor performance evaluations, denial of promotions, or even dismissal.74 These studies were conducted before the Internet was popular and before business at Hooters and strip clubs was trendy, so the harassment the women were reporting was probably more blatant than the hostile objectifying climate we have discussed. If a woman faces retaliation for complaining about blatant harassment, what can she expect when she tries to argue the subtleties of the problem of objectification?

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Though the situation sounds bleak, we are confident that women who are in influential positions within their organizations can serve both as catalysts for change as well as activists in bringing about necessary progress. We think the crucial goal is systemic change. Isolated lawsuits may yield positive benefits for individual women or groups of women at a particular workplace, but they do not necessarily challenge the pervasive problem of women’s objectified status. Women Changing the System Lasting change will require nothing less than a shift in cultural norms. Large system change has been the purview of organization development (OD) professionals since the 1960s. The standard OD approach is based on the work of Kurt Lewin, a social psychologist who proposed that systemic change requires three steps: organizations and individuals need to ‘‘unfreeze’’ present behavior, take action (called movement) that will change the original social system, and then ‘‘refreeze’’ the new standard of behavior so that it is resistant to change.75 We anticipate that the unfreezing of the objectifying behavior that creates a chilly climate for women will be the most challenging step in the process given that the trends we have described are toward more objectification of women in the workplace. As long as workplaces remain male-dominated—or at least employ primarily men in influential positions—a sexually objectifying ideology is likely to prevail. Still, the unfreezing is already in progress to some extent. The fact that the issues of Internet porn in the workplace and strip clubs catering to business clients have both received widespread media attention is a hopeful sign. The media have not delved into the social science research on why these things are a problem, but at least they have been considered worthy of discussion and debate. As the thaw proceeds, action will need to come from women who will create the new norms for appropriate conduct. One way to shape the norms is to occupy positions of greater influence. Of course, we recognize that this is easier said than done. It is no easy task for women to just step into higher-level positions (for the reasons we have discussed and more). Currently only ten women rank among the Fortune 500 CEOs. Although some women are opting out of high-power (high-demand) positions because of the difficulty of balancing work and family, women’s absence in the upper ranks of corporate America cannot be attributed entirely to them prioritizing family. According to a recent article in Chief Executive, 50 percent of today’s private businesses are run or owned by women.76 Women are still in the workforce, but they are leaving corporate structures that they perceive to be inflexible or not accommodating of diversity. We respect this decision, yet we encourage women who are able to stay within the system where they can change it. Women in visible positions of responsibility can act as role models for respectful behavior.

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As workplaces become more women-friendly and women-managed, we think the refreezing will happen naturally when companies come to recognize the benefits of the changed climate. We are already seeing data that suggest potential benefits include not only improved employee morale but also significantly higher profits. In 2004, the Calvert Group, the largest family of socially responsible mutual funds, unveiled its Calvert Women’s Principles, a set of corporate guidelines intended to economically empower women worldwide.77 The first two companies that adopted the Calvert principles were Dell computers and Starbucks coffee. Dell is the 28th largest company in the United States, and Starbucks is in 372nd place on the 2005 list of the 500 largest corporations.78 Not coincidentally, Starbucks is ranked eleventh on the 2005 Fortune ‘‘100 Best Companies to Work For’’ list, and 63 percent of its workforce is female.79 Calvert asserts that changing corporate conduct and structures will not only help eliminate entrenched gender bias and sex discrimination but will be economically advantageous. As president and CEO of Calvert Barbara Krumsiek put it, ‘‘As a result of gender inequities, women remain . . . an untapped economic resource and an underutilized economic asset.’’80 Support for the claim that woman-friendly environments are good for profits comes from a 2004 Catalyst study of 353 of the Fortune 500, which found a significant connection between representation of women on top management teams and two common measures of financial performance— return on equity and total return to shareholders. In the largest public companies with the highest representation of women on their top management teams, return on equity was 35.1 percent higher and total return to shareholders was 34.0 percent higher than the companies with the lowest representation of women in top management teams.81 As women move up, profits go up—what better argument is there for workplaces changing their objectifying ways?

CONCLUSION The December 2003 issue of Playboy magazine included a cartoon of a secretary seated outside the open office door of a lecherous-looking boss, warning a woman who was about to enter the office, ‘‘Watch yourself—he had lunch at Hooters.’’82 It may seem paradoxical to consider Playboy a definitive source on the negative effects of women’s objectification in the workplace. Still, we see the presence of this cartoon in the magazine as a hint that men are not completely oblivious to the connection between exposure to objectified women during work hours and subsequent sexual harassment of female colleagues; otherwise, why would it be funny? Men know what’s going on, and women are beginning to catch on as well. Social psychologists clearly know what’s going on is problematic. It is time that we all stopped dismissing women’s objectification in the workplace with the excuse

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‘‘boys will be boys,’’ because these days more of the ‘‘boys’’ in the business world are actually girls. And these ‘‘girls’’ are entitled to respect, dignity, and fully human status. NOTES 1. Meritor Savings Bank v. Vinson, 474 U.S. 57 (1986). 2. Catalyst, ‘‘2003 Catalyst Census of Women Board Directors: A Call to Action in a New Era of Corporate Governance,’’ available online at www.catalystwomen.org; accessed June 11, 2005. 3. Howard N. Fullerton Jr. and Mitsa Toosi, ‘‘Labor Force Projections to 2010: Steady Growth and Changing Composition,’’ Monthly Labor Review November (2001): 35. 4. Kaiser Family Foundation, Generation Rx.com: How Young People Use the Internet for Health Information. Publication #3202 available from the Kaiser Family Foundation, 2001. 5. Michelle Conlin, ‘‘Workers, Surf at your Own Risk,’’ Business Week ( June 2000). 6. Lisa Guernsey, ‘‘Surfing the Web: New Ticket to a Pink Slip,’’ New York Times, December 16, 1999. 7. Thomas York, ‘‘Invasion of Privacy: E-Mail Monitoring is on the Rise,’’ Information Week, February 21, 2000. 8. Vito Pilieci, ‘‘Dow Fires 50 over Porn Email: Company Only Latest to Take Action,’’ Chicago Sun Times, July 30, 2000, p. 3. 9. David N. Greenfield and Richard A. Davis, ‘‘Lost in Cyberspace: The Web @ Work,’’ CyberPsychology and Behavior 5 (2002): 347–53. 10. Reuters, ‘‘Britain Fires Porn Surfers,’’ Toronto Sun, August 27, 2004, p. 54. 11. Paul Kelso, ‘‘Most Internet Sackings Linked to Visiting Porn Sites,’’ Guardian, July 10, 2002, p. 11. 12. ‘‘Police Culture: Workplace Porn,’’ New Zealand Herald, April 23, 2005. 13. Bob Sullivan, ‘‘Porn at Work Problem Persists: Study Says 50 Percent Receive Unwanted Sex Messages,’’ MSNBC, September 6, 2004; available online at msnbc .msn.com/id/5899345; accessed May 27, 2005. 14. Patricia Hill Collins, ‘‘Pornography and Black Women’s Bodies,’’ in L. L. O’Toole and J. R. Schiffmann, eds., Gender Violence: Interdisciplinary Perspectives (New York: New York University Press, 1997), pp. 395–99. 15. Diana Russell, Against Pornography: The Evidence of Harm (Berkley, CA: Russell Publications, 1993). 16. Bambi Bob, ‘‘Men Hunting Naked Women. It’s About F**k’in Time!’’ Hunting for Bambi 2; available online at huntingforbambi.com; accessed May 25, 2005. 17. Jill Hodges, ‘‘Doing in Doing Lunch: Women Articulate Growing Concerns about Noon-Hour Adult Entertainment,’’ Star Tribune, January 26, 1995, sec. D, p. 1. 18. Hooters, ‘‘About Hooters,’’ available online at www.hooters.com/company/about_ hooters; accessed June 2, 2005. 19. Andrew Gomes, ‘‘Hooters Okay for Business Lunch? Depends on Definition of ‘Business,’ ’’ Pacific Business News, February 5, 1999. 20. Milford Prewitt, ‘‘Top 10 Restaurant Trends,’’ Nation’s Restaurant News, December 20, 2004.

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21. Arts & Entertainment Network, Investigative Reports: Gentlemen’s Clubs, aired January 4, 2000. 22. Stephanie Armour, ‘‘Rife with Discrimination,’’ USA Today, June 24, 2004, sec. B, p. 3. 23. Jenny Anderson, ‘‘Wall St. Women Win: Morgan OKs $54M Payout in Bias Suit,’’ New York Post, July 13, 2004, p. 5. 24. Robert Bryce, Pipe Dreams: Greed, Ego, and the Death of Enron (New York: Public Affairs, 2002). 25. Robyn Meredith, ‘‘Strip Clubs under Siege as Salesmen’s Haven,’’ New York Times, September 20, 1997, sec. A, p. 1. 26. ABC News, ‘‘A Day at the Office: Entertaining Business Clients at Strip Clubs,’’ aired August 3, 1998. 27. Betsy Powell, ‘‘Strip Clubs Lure Business Clients,’’ Toronto Star, February 23, 2003, p. 7; Charlie Fidelman, ‘‘The Naked Lunch: Is Doing Business in a Strip Club Just Like Taking a Client to Play Golf? Or Is it Discriminatory?’’ Gazette, August 3, 1998, sec. C, p. 5. 28. Jonathan Tisdall, ‘‘Bosses Prefer Strip Clubs,’’ Aftenposten: News from Norway, February 20, 2003. 29. Kathleen Parker, ‘‘Worked up over Lap Dancing at Lunch,’’ Des Moines Register, September 24, 1997, p. 2. 30. Fidelman, ‘‘The Naked Lunch.’’ 31. Laurie A. Rudman and Eugene Borgida, ‘‘The Afterglow of Construct Accessibility: The Behavioral Consequences of Priming Men to View Women as Sexual Objects,’’ Journal of Experimental Social Psychology 31 (1995): 493–517. 32. Tony Kennedy, ‘‘Stroh Must Surrender Ad Material, Judge Says; Women’s Attorney Says She Will Show that Sexism Is Prevalent at Company,’’ Star Tribune, May 5, 1992, sec. D, p. 3. 33. For example, Doug McKenzie-Mohr and Mark Zanna, ‘‘Treating Women as Sexual Objects: Look to the (Gender Schematic) Male Who has Viewed Pornography,’’ Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin 16 (1990): 296–308. 34. T. William Altermatt, Nathan DeWall, and Emily Leskinen, ‘‘Agency and Virtue: Dimensions Underlying Subgroups of Women,’’ Sex Roles: A Journal of Research 49 (2003): 631–42. 35. Kay Deaux, ‘‘How Basic Can You Be? The Evolution of Research on Gender Stereotypes,’’ Journal of Social Issues 51 (1995): 11–20. 36. Susan T. Fiske, ‘‘Controlling Other People: The Impact of Power on Stereotyping,’’ American Psychologist 48 (1993): 621–28. 37. John Bargh and Paula Raymond, ‘‘The Naı¨ve Misuse of Power: Nonconscious Sources of Sexual Harassment,’’ Journal of Social Issues 51 (1995): 85–96. 38. Deaux, ‘‘How Basic Can You Be?’’ p. 16. 39. Daniel Linz, Edward Donnerstein, and Steven Penrod, ‘‘Sexual Violence in the Mass Media: Social Psychological Implications,’’ in P. Shaver and C. Hendrick, eds., Review of Personality and Social Psychology: Vol. 7. Sex and Gender (Newbury Park, CA: Sage, 1987), pp. 95–123. 40. Daniel Linz, Edward Donnerstein, and Steven Penrod, ‘‘The Effects of LongTerm Exposure to Filmed Violence against Women,’’ Journal of Communication 34 (1984): 130–47.

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41. Evelyn K. Sommers and James V. Check, ‘‘An Empirical Investigation of the Role of Pornography in the Verbal and Physical Abuse of Women,’’ Violence and Victims 2 (1987): 189–209; Elizabeth Cramer, Judith McFarlane, Barbara Parker, Karen Soeken, Concepcion Silva, and Sally Reel, ‘‘Violent Pornography and Abuse of Women: Theory to Practice,’’ Violence and Victims 13 (1998): 319–32. 42. Mimi H. Silbert and Ayala M. Pines, ‘‘Pornography and Sexual Abuse of Women,’’ Sex Roles 21 (1984): 857–68, quote from p. 864. 43. Mark Snyder, Elizabeth D. Tanke, and Ellen Berscheid, ‘‘Social Perception and Interpersonal Behavior: On the Self-Fulfilling Nature of Social Stereotypes,’’ Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 35 (1977): 656–66. 44. John T. Copeland, ‘‘Prophecies of Power: Motivational Implications of Social Power for Behavioral Confirmation,’’ Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 67(1994): 264–77. 45. Barbara Reskin, ‘‘Sex-Segregation in the Workplace,’’ Annual Review of Sociology 19 (1993): 241–70. 46. Theresa K. Vescio, Sarah J. Gervais, Mark Snyder, and Ann Hoover, ‘‘The Stereotype-Based Behaviors of the Powerful and their Effects on Female Performance in Masculine Domains,’’ Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 88 (2005): 658–72. 47. Barbara L. Frederickson and Tomi-Ann Roberts, ‘‘Objectification Theory: Toward Understanding Women’s Lived Experiences and Mental Health Risks,’’ Psychology of Women Quarterly 21 (1997): 173–206. 48. Michael W. Wiederman, ‘‘Women’s Body Image Self-Consciousness during Physical Intimacy with a Partner,’’ Journal of Sex Research 37 (2002): 60–68. 49. Barbara L. Frederickson, Tomi-Ann Roberts, Stephanie M. Noll, Diane M. Quinn, and Jean M. Twenge, ‘‘That Swimsuit Becomes You: Sex Differences in SelfObjectification, Restrained Eating, and Math Performance,’’ Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 75(1998): 269–84. 50. Tomi-Ann Roberts and Jennifer Y. Gettman, ‘‘Mere Exposure: Gender Differences in the Negative Effects of Priming a State of Self-objectification,’’ Sex Roles: A Journal of Research 51 (2004): 17–28. 51. Rachel M. Calogero, ‘‘A Test of Objectification Theory: The Effect of the Male Gaze on Appearance Concerns in College Women,’’ Psychology of Women Quarterly 28 (2004): 16–21. 52. Amy Oppenheimer and Craig Pratt, Investigating Workplace Harassment: How to be Fair, Thorough, and Legal (Alexandria, VA: Society for Human Resource Management, 2003). 53. EEOC, ‘‘Facts about Sexual Harassment’’ available online at www.eeoc.gov/ facts/fs-sex.html; accessed June 13, 2005. 54. ‘‘Model Sexual Harassment Policy,’’ MCAD Policy 96-2 Adopted by the Commission on October 25, 1996, Massachusetts Commission Against Discrimination. 55. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, Office of Research, Information and Planning national database, 2005. 56. American Psychological Association, In the Supreme Court of the United States: Teresa Harris v. Forklift Systems, Inc.: Brief for amicus curiae American Psychological Association in Support of Neither Party (Washington, DC: American Psychological Association, 1993).

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57. Maria Rotundo, Dung-Hanh Nguyen, and Paul R. Sackett, ‘‘A Meta-Analytic Review of Gender Differences in Perceptions of Sexual Harassment,’’ Journal of Applied Psychology 86 (2001): 914–22. 58. Frances J. Ranney, ‘‘What’s a Reasonable Woman to Do? The Judicial Rhetoric of Sexual Harassment,’’ NWSA Journal 9 (1997): 1–27. 59. Christina Tolvas-Vincent, Nikki Duncan, Alison Bell, and Ken Allison, ‘‘X-rated Behavior . . . Not What You’d Expect to Find in the Office!’’ Bond Pearce Employment Briefing (November 5, 2004), available online at www.bondpearce.co.uk/publications/ bppubs112004_01.pdf; accessed June 17, 2005. 60. Scarberry v. ExxonMobil Oil Corp., 328 F. 3d 1255 (10th Cir.2003). 61. The World Almanac and Book of Facts, ‘‘About the Internet,’’ (World Almanac Books, 2005, p. 390). 62. Charles J. Muhl, ‘‘Workplace E-Mail and Internet Use: Employees and Employers Beware,’’ Monthly Labor Review (February 2003). 63. Mark Griffiths, ‘‘Internet Abuse in the Workplace: Issues and Concerns for Employers and Employment Counselors,’’ Journal of Employment Counseling 40 (2003): 87–96. 64. Personnel Today and Websense International, ‘‘Internet Misuse Survey 2002,’’ July 2002, available online at www.websense.com/company/news/research/Internet_ Misuse_Survey_2002.pdf; accessed June 1, 2005. 65. Ryan Singel, ‘‘Internet Porn: Worse than Crack?’’ Wired News (November 19, 2004), available online at www.wired.com/news/technology/0,1282,65772,00.html; accessed June 17, 2005. 66. Douglas M. Towns and Mark S. Johnson, ‘‘Sexual Harassment in the 21st Century—E-Harassment in the Workplace,’’ Employee Relations Law Journal 29 (2003): 7–24. 67. Ibid., pp. 17–18. 68. Kathy McKinney, ‘‘Detailing a Pattern of Harassment, EEOC Calls Mitsubishi ‘A Hyper-Sexual Environment,’ ’’ Pantagraph (September 20, 1997): A1. 69. Susan Antilla, Tales from the Boom Boom Room: Women vs. Wall Street (Princeton, NJ: Bloomberg Press, 2002). 70. Robert J. Grossman, ‘‘Paying the Price,’’ HR Magazine (August 2002): 33. 71. Meredith, ‘‘Strip Clubs under Siege.’’ 72. Beth A. Quinn, ‘‘Sexual Harassment and Masculinity: The Power and Meaning of Girl Watching,’’ Gender and Society 16 (2002): 386–402. 73. Ann B. Hopkins, So Ordered: Making Partner the Hard Way (AmherstA: University of Massachusetts Press 1996). 74. Louise Fitzgerald, Susan Swan, and Karla Fischer, ‘‘Why Didn’t She Just Report Him? The Psychological and Legal Implications of Women’s Responses to Sexual Harassment,’’ Journal of Social Issues 51 (1995): 117–38. 75. W. Warner Burke, Organization Development: A Normative View (Reading, MA: Addison Wesley, 1987), pp. 53–57. 76. C. J. Prince, ‘‘Where Are the Women?’’ Chief Executive 209 (1995): 28–29. 77. William Baue, ‘‘Calvert Group Launches Code for Corporations to Profit by Promoting Gender Equality,’’ SocialFunds.com ( June 29, 2004), available online at www.socialfunds.com/news/article.cgi/article1454.html; accessed June 11, 2005. 78. Fortune, ‘‘The Fortune 500: America’s Largest Corporations,’’ Fortune (April 18, 2005).

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79. Robert Levering and Milton Moskowitz, ‘‘The 100 Best Companies to Work for in America 2005,’’ Great Place to Work Institute, available online at www.greatplace towork.com/best/list-bestusa.htm; accessed June 12, 2005. 80. Baue, ‘‘Calvert Group Launches Code,’’ p. 2. 81. Catalyst, ‘‘The Bottom Line: Connecting Corporate Performance and Gender Diversity,’’ 2004, available online at www.catalystwomen.org/knowledge/titles/files/full/ financialperformancereport.pdf; accessed June 12, 2005. 82. Playboy (December 2003): 186.

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Best Practices in Diversity Management Kecia M. Thomas and Jimmy L. Davis

For some organizations, 2002 brought more expenses and negative press than revenue. In February 2002, a federal jury awarded $1.1 million to a white former executive of the Metropolitan Atlanta Transit Authority in a discrimination case that centered on racial politics, alleging that white executives were fired to appease African American critics. In the same month a Chicago federal jury awarded $2.2 million to ten white firefighters who were passed over for promotion due to the use of race norming to benefit minority firefighters. Later that year, MetLife announced it would take a $250 million pretax charge against earnings to cover costs arising out of class-action lawsuits and an investigation of allegations that it charged black customers higher rates than white customers. For other companies, the problems with diversity and management continue. In February 2003, a federal judge approved a settlement of $2.5 million between the Sacramento, California, Regional Transit District and 200 women claiming sex discrimination in pay, promotion, and training. A separate attorney’s fee award was made in the amount of $900,000. In 2004, a judge approved a potential base of 1.5 million plaintiffs for class-action status in their suit against Wal-Mart for discriminating against women.1 The plaintiffs contend that WalMart discriminates in both the recruitment and promotion of female workers. Although this case is pending at this writing, the ramifications from a negative outcome will prove to be damaging to the company listed as second on the 2005 Fortune 500 list. Almost twenty years after the release of Workforce 2000,2 workplace diversity remains one of the most compelling issues facing organizations today. Increasing demographic diversity within the labor force, a less than stable economy, growing global competition, and an evolving consumer market have made diversity management a core platform of top leadership teams regardless of organization, industry, geographic location, or size.

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Clearly diversity management is not going away, and expenses paid by organizations to put in place diversity initiatives and training programs have been extensive and perhaps unnecessary given the unending tide of employment litigation. In 1996, Texaco settled a class-action lawsuit alleging race discrimination for $176 million, and in 2000, Coca-Cola settled a race discrimination case for $192.5 million.3 In 2002, fifteen minority workers filed a $7.4 billion race discrimination lawsuit against General Motors Corporation (GM), the world’s largest automaker.4 The complaint alleged that GM failed to stop employees from discriminating against minority workers at its truck assembly plant and truck engineering and development center. Despite the availability of diversity consultants, training, and packaged initiatives and programs, many organizations still lack guidance regarding the best practices for diversity management. The persistent costs of defending organizations against allegations of discrimination and harassment, settlement costs, and at times, fines, demonstrate that organizations still struggle with issues of diversity and inclusion. Therefore, this chapter will integrate and summarize the management literature related to the best diversity management practices in four core areas of human resource management: leadership, recruitment, training, and executive development. The identification of best practices related to each of these core HR areas will culminate in a discussion of common themes that extend across them and that can themselves promote better diversity management. The first section of this chapter discusses a topic that diversity scholars consistently identify as a critical focal area and management practice—leadership. Beginning with leaders is crucial, given their impact on diversity outcomes across every area of organizational life. Second, the chapter will turn to strategic recruitment of a diverse workforce. Our focus will be on how to best attract a diverse workforce while not deterring traditional workers (i.e., white males) from applying to or entering the organization. After creating a diverse workplace, how does an organization ensure that individuals are able to work together? One way is through training. Therefore the role of diversity training and suggestions for its design and delivery will be presented third. Finally, we will turn to the issue of executive development specifically as it relates to breaking the glass ceiling. The essay will conclude with an integration of the strategies reviewed as an opportunity for identifying human resource strategies for creative, inclusive organizations. To make the case for these best practices, we begin our discussion by highlighting the complex relationship between diversity and organizational performance.

DIVERSITY AND ORGANIZATIONAL PERFORMANCE: A COMPLEX RELATIONSHIP There are many ways to define performance within organizations. We could consider individual productivity or prosocial behavior. Another distinction could

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be made between team processes in organizations and team productivity. Those responsible for leading organizations, however, are likely most concerned with the relationship between diversity and a firm’s productivity and ultimately its financial performance. Yet like other performance indicators, financial performance can be defined in myriad ways, and each has a potential relationship to firm diversity. Financial performance could be defined as return on investment, return on equity, cost savings, and other financial outcomes. In thinking about the best practices related to diversity in organizations, we will take a broad lens to highlight the many ways in which diversity can impact the organization’s bottom line. One way to think about the diversity-organizational performance relationship would be to consider the direct and indirect effects of diversity on financial performance. Direct Financial Outcomes The most obvious way to consider the diversity–organizational performance relationship is simply to assess profit. A study across multiple branches of a Canadian bank revealed that those with racial-ethnic diversity attained higher levels of financial profitability than culturally homogenous branches.5 For example, the culturally diverse branches reported a growth rate in profit per fulltime employee of 52 percent over a two-year period, as compared to 42 percent and 10 percent for the primarily Caucasian and Asian branches, respectively. These results were found despite lower scores on employees’ job satisfaction, organizational commitment, and workplace coherence and higher rates of turnover in the more diverse branches. On all these factors, an expectation that employees’ responses and workplace reactions could lead to decreased levels of financial performance would be reasonable. The relationship between employees’ responses and workplace reactions was, however, moderated by many demographic variables, such as age, job tenure, organizational position, children’s age, location of education and previous employment, birthplace, and education level. Another study in the banking industry, this time in three U.S. states, demonstrated that racial diversity was positively associated with both intermediate and bottom-line firm performance.6 However, this relationship was only found in firms that pursued a growth strategy. Furthermore, the relationship between diversity and firm performance was negative within companies pursuing a downsizing strategy. Thus the relationship of racial diversity to firm performance may depend on the organizational context and business strategy. This research is important in that it demonstrates that failure to consider strategic context can lead researchers to incorrectly conclude that diversity is always negatively associated with firm performance and profit. Direct financial benefits may also accrue from an organization’s image or reputation related to diversity. Research conducted by the Business and Higher

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Education Forum cites evidence that when organizations are commended for their diversity efforts, stock prices rise.7 For example, the 50 best companies for minorities have beaten the S&P 500 over the past three and five years. The need for best practices related to diversity management can be substantiated by also looking at the indirect financial outcomes of sound diversity practices, especially as diversity relates to costs associated with human resources. Indirect Financial Outcomes One method of examining the diversity–financial performance relationship is to consider costs incurred rather than profit or income. The lack of effective diversity management practices can lead to substantial turnover costs. For example, the total cost of replacing a salaried worker (including recruitment, training, lost productivity, placement fees, relocation, human resource processing, etc.) is estimated to be as much as 1.2 to 2.0 times the worker’s salary. For hourly workers, the estimate is somewhat less and may be approximately 0.75 times their salary.8 Imagine that an organization has 1000 employees, each with an annual salary of $30,000. If that organization loses 10 percent of its workforce annually due to poor diversity management practices, and the cost of the loss of each worker is 100 percent of salary, the cost to the company is $3 million per year and potentially $150 million over five years. Although not every unhappy worker will leave the organization, those who stay may be less engaged in their work. These workers’ lack of productivity, absenteeism, and job search behaviors while in their current positions will cost the organization financially. Certainly, a major indirect cost associated with the mismanagement of a diverse workforce involves defending the organization against allegations of harassment and discrimination. For example, the Rand Institute estimates that the cost of defending a wrongful termination lawsuit is at least $100,000.9 Nationally, this cost is significant given the steady growth in charges of employment discrimination. According to the EEOC, 79,432 individual charges of discrimination were filed in its offices in 2004. Of these, 34.9 percent were related to race, 30.5 percent related to sex, 10.5 percent to national origin, and 3.1 percent to religion.10 In cases where the organization is found guilty of discriminatory practices, the costs associated with the mismanagement of a diverse workforce become even more significant. For example, in September 1999, the Bureau of Justice Statistics,11 an agency of the U.S. Department of Justice, reported survey results from 15,613 state court civil trials in the nation’s largest 75 counties during 1996. The median judgment in all such cases where the plaintiff won was $33,000. For employment discrimination cases, the median judgment where plaintiffs won was $200,000. Plaintiffs in the employment discrimination suits were awarded a total of $56 million. Settlements also are expensive and typically involve back pay to the plaintiff, attorney costs, expert witness costs, as well as court costs.

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Even successfully defending a discrimination lawsuit can be costly. Legal fees can average between $100,000 and $500,000. In addition, companies bear significant intangible costs, such as lost productivity of employees who must spend time with lawyers or gather information they require.12 The relationship between diversity and organizational performance is indeed complex. It appears that when organizations and their leaders work toward creating an inclusive climate for diversity, the costs are minimal compared to potential rewards. However, when organizations discriminate subtly or overtly, potential costs associated with firm liability can be significant.

BEST PRACTICES RELATED TO INDIVIDUAL WORKERS AND THEIR EMPLOYERS There is also a potential cost to the individual worker in regard to opportunities for new jobs, development, and promotion. Therefore this section will focus on the best diversity practices as they affect workers and, subsequently, the organization. In each case, we will define existing organizational problems and barriers as they affect workers and then recommend ways for organizations to resolve or avoid them. Leadership Almost every best practice for diversity management relates to thoughts and/ or actions of organizational leaders. Probably the most consistent recommendation regarding managing diversity is that leaders must value and commit to a diverse and inclusive workplace. However, major challenges exist regarding what that means in terms of leadership behavior, organizational policies and practices, and broader organizational behavior. David Thomas, professor at the Harvard School of Business, suggests that despite the sentiment that ‘‘leadership matters,’’ leaders are frequently ineffectual in achieving an organization’s diversity goals and mission. In fact, leaders may behave in ways that are inconsistent with their diversity-related beliefs.13 Committed leaders can adopt several behaviors to improve their odds of being effective diversity change agents. These relate to goal setting, framing, accountability, and establishing diversity readiness. Goal Setting Leaders and their organizations may be ineffective in accomplishing their diversity-related goals and mission because such goals are crafted too broadly to be accomplished or measured. Sometimes leaders even confuse diversity goals with illegal quotas. Measurable diversity goals would be to establish relationships with minority communities in and outside of the organization, increase

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the number of mentoring relationships available to female and minority employees, or raise retention rates of high-potential and minority managers. One strategy for establishing diversity-related goals may be to conduct an organizational diversity climate assessment that also can serve as a needs assessment. Tracking such climate data over time can help leaders develop needsbased diversity initiatives that those responsible for their implementation are more likely to accept. Periodic assessment of the climate for diversity also can enable leaders to learn about successes as well as areas for improvement. These data also give the organization an opportunity to benchmark best practices within departments or functions that could have utility organization-wide. Framing In addition to developing needs-based goals and initiatives, leaders must communicate about diversity in ways that positively frame14 it as a strategic learning opportunity for the organization that will also enhance its effectiveness.15 Rather than telling top managers that diversity is a barrier to effectiveness to be overcome, leaders should instead communicate that diversity is an opportunity to learn about new practices and markets that can improve and expand the business. Another part of effective framing involves tying diversity goals to business goals. In other words, leaders consistently communicate the role of diversity in helping the organization accomplish diversity at every opportunity.16 Accountability Establishing accountability is another way that leaders can promote effective diversity management. One way to do this is to make sure that human resource practices and decisions, such as those related to selection, promotion, and compensation, consider diversity goals and values. For example, one criterion based on which managers are promoted to senior levels may be the extent to which they have identified and developed effective workers regardless of race, gender, sexuality, or physical ability. Those who are effective in developing diverse talent also could be rewarded with special assignments or bonuses. Readiness Diversity readiness refers to leaders’ understanding of the complexities of diversity in the organization and society.17 In addition, readiness for diversity leadership means that leaders have explored diversity’s complexities for their own lives. Specifically, they have engaged in self-exploration and, as a result, understand how privilege and ethnocentrism operate within their organizations and lives. Leaders are growing in knowledge of their own racial, gender, or sexual identity.

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Leaders establish diversity readiness by reflecting on their own identity and the ways it has afforded the leaders advantages (privilege) and disadvantages. They may ask themselves, ‘‘Are there ways in which this organization privileges sameness or the status quo? In what ways does the organization resist differences in its many forms? How does this resistance keep us from recruiting the best talent, using better ideas, and being more effective?’’ These questions not only provide the opportunity for leader self-reflection but also create an opportunity to establish intraorganizational dialogue about the pulls toward and pushes against diversity. These provide new areas in which organizational members can hold each other accountable for achieving the organization’s diversity goals and mission. Recruitment According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics,18 most future labor force growth will occur in nonwhite segments, especially among blacks, Latinos, and Asians. This labor force shift will accelerate in the period through 2020 because of the retirement of white Baby Boomers and their replacement by a younger, more diverse generation. By 2028, the number of jobs will exceed the number of workers trained to fill them by 19 million.19 Approximately 40 percent of those available to take these jobs will be members of minority groups. Therefore, major questions for organizations are, ‘‘How do we attract and retain the best of this new workforce?’’ and ‘‘Are the strategies by which we have engaged in recruitment going to be effective with this more diverse workforce?’’ Based on extensive scholarship about recruitment of a diverse workforce, two best practices have emerged. They relate to who is depicted in recruitment advertisements and the messages that these ads convey. A best practice that has emerged in this area of research pertains to the demographic composition of individuals portrayed in company recruitment advertisements.20 Studies have demonstrated that minority and female job seekers value diversity in recruitment advertisements somewhat differently than their nonminority and male counterparts. Female and minority job seekers are more attracted to demographic diversity among those in recruitment advertisements than to a portrayal of a homogenous, white workforce. Unexpectedly, this research also has shown that diversity depicted in recruitment advertisements has little impact on white male job seekers. Their attraction remains stable regardless of the level of diversity represented in such ads. A second best recruitment practice relates to messages conveyed in recruitment advertisements. As was the case when analyzing job seekers’ responses to people portrayed in these ads, jobs seekers also respond differently based on their gender and racial identities. Again, female and minority job seekers’ attraction to organizations relates to the strength of the diversity statements embedded in recruitment advertisements. White male job seekers’ attraction to organizations again remains stable regardless of the diversity statement. The message from both

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lines of research suggests that organizations can aggressively promote diversity in recruitment campaigns, including advertisements, to attract minority and female job seekers without losing white male job seekers. Another practice related to an organization’s recruitment strategy is to broaden its recruitment net. That is, if vehicles that were successful in the past no longer yield a diverse applicant pool, then the organization should consider new alternatives. Additional options are minority-serving institutions, such as historically black colleges and universities and tribal colleges, and minority professional associations, such as the Black MBA Association, the American Indian Science and Engineering Society, and the Association for Women in Science and Engineering. Networking within regional offices of social justice organizations, such as the Urban League, National Organization of Women, and the National Council of La Raza, is another possibility. Electronic and online resources such as Monster.com, online mailing lists, and one-on-one referrals can create opportunities to communicate with the new workforce. Having a friendly image and reputation should not be underestimated; this may be another best practice that helps recruit diverse workers. Diversity Training and Multicultural Competence Diversity training is perhaps the oldest intervention associated with diversity management. Organizations often attempt to provide some form of diversity training even when leaders have not yet worked out their own beliefs regarding diversity’s role in their workplace or determined whether it adds value to their organization. In fact, most organizations provide some form of diversity training, yet may still become defendants in discrimination-related litigation. Texaco,21 which spent millions of dollars on an organization-wide diversity training campaign but was still sued,22 is a notable example. Various reasons exist for conducting diversity training, and its objectives may differ. Legal and social pressure, business necessity, and a belief that providing diversity training is morally imperative can drive leaders to offer it in their workplaces. Training objectives may be to provide knowledge, enhance self-awareness, change behavior, develop skills, or use the training as a tool for larger organizational change. Within the organization, it can be positioned as a personal growth or skills-based training opportunity or used as a strategic intervention or an impetus for change in the organizational culture. Diversity training’s success rests often on leadership. In a study of over 700 human resource professionals, such training’s perceived success was largely related to perceived support of the top leadership team.23 Leadership support came about through several best practices, including mandatory attendance of all managers in the training, long-term evaluation of its results, rewards for managers who increased diversity, and the adoption and framing of diversity as an inclusive rather than an exclusive goal within the organization.

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Other best practices concern diversity training’s delivery. A study of the perceived effectiveness of such training offered to graduate teaching assistants found that trainee group composition mattered regarding the material to be delivered.24 Graduate assistants without prior diversity training did not seem to care about the racial diversity of the group, but those who had experienced diversity training previously preferred racially homogenous groups. This research may suggest another best practice related to diversity training. During a training campaign’s early stages or when dealing with organizational newcomers, diversity training can be offered to large, diverse groups. Advanced training, relying on the analysis of more personal and sensitive issues, however, should occur within smaller, racially homogenous groups.

EXECUTIVE DEVELOPMENT AND BREAKING THE GLASS CEILING Best practices related to leadership behavior are important and certainly affect subsequent organizational practices related to recruitment and to diversity training. Access to leadership and leadership development, however, also are core areas of diversity management. The following sections addresses the issue of the glass ceiling as a common barrier for women, people of color, and members of other marginalized groups who seek development via upward career mobility. The glass ceiling refers to artificial barriers to the advancement of women and minorities. It is the invisible, impermeable barrier that keeps minorities and women from rising to the upper rungs of the corporate ladder, regardless of their qualifications or achievements.25 A study of career paths of women and people of color found, consistent with the glass ceiling theory, that women and minorities wait longer for promotions than do white men.26 In fact, this study suggested that within industries of increasing racial and gender diversity, white men receive career benefits; this phenomenon is known as the glass escalator. Due to the glass escalator effect, white men’s long history as leaders may create favorable conditions for their upward mobility, especially in situations where they are becoming a minority. Many organizations have been scrutinized for issues associated with the glass ceiling. Major Fortune 500 companies, such as Wal-Mart, Home Depot, Coca-Cola, and FedEx, are defendants in class-action lawsuits regarding selection and advancement of women and minorities each year. Governmental regulations have curbed many overt systems of employment discrimination, but most companies do not respond until they are sued. For example, plaintiffs in Satchell, et al. v. Federal Express, filed in the U.S. District Court in San Francisco in 2003, allege that FedEx violated federal and California law by discriminating against minority employees based on race in promotion, compensation, and discipline practices. The motion for class certification is

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still pending at this writing. Plaintiffs, African American and Latino hourly employees and African American operations managers at FedEx, charge that FedEx treats minority group members worse than similarly situated white employees. Lawsuits such as these are far too common in today’s environment, and the ramifications of one successful lawsuit can either cripple an organization or become a point where diversity within the organization can be recognized and embraced. Most companies that lose a class-action lawsuit must make major changes in policies and practices to improve their environment. In August 2004, Home Depot settled a $5.5 million class-action lawsuit alleging that it discriminated against a group of employees in its Colorado stores. Home Depot paid the $5.5 million to current and former employees and had to provide significant injunctive relief. In addition to the settlement, Home Depot signed a consent decree, a voluntary agreement with the EEOC, which provides for $3 million to resolve charges of discrimination filed by thirty-eight individuals, and paid an additional $2.5 million into a class settlement fund to provide relief for others who were harmed by the alleged unlawful conduct. Besides the monetary relief, the consent decree requires Home Depot to provide training on antidiscrimination law requirements with appropriate levels of information presented to nonsupervisory employees, managers, and human resource employees. Home Depot also agreed to submit quarterly reports to the EEOC and remain under the agency’s continued monitoring. These actions will affect women and minorities in similar firms in the future. With a governmental body monitoring their employment practice numbers, companies must make sure that they are not discriminating against women and minorities and that their practices are favorable to all groups. This helps break the glass ceiling to a certain extent in many organizations. The glass ceiling cannot be broken until leaders are convinced of its existence, and then they must understand the realities of being a member of a minority group in the workplace. For this to occur, some CEOs’ perceptions must change. A study of male CEOs and executive women suggests that the two groups see the glass ceiling differently.27 Male CEOs believed that women’s lack of interest, family responsibilities, and lack of representation in the leadership pipeline prevent them from reaching top corporate positions. In contrast, executive women mentioned as barriers women’s lack of access to frequently male-dominated networks, their shortage of mentoring opportunities, and their lack of access to developmental opportunitities that would place them in the leadership pipeline. Companies wishing to embrace diversity and build capacity for diverse leadership should pay close attention to these findings. A significant lesson from this research on the gap between the way CEOs and executive women see the glass ceiling is that both groups acknowledge that women are not in the pipeline but differ as to why.

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Human Resource Development Practices One best practice may be to develop communication structures allowing top leadership to hear underrepresented workers’ voices. Human resource development strategies such as coaching, networking, and mentoring can facilitate this by placing senior executives and more junior minority group members in developmental and productive relationships. Xerox has accomplished this through its Mentor Up program,28 which pairs senior executives with junior female engineers. These women get the traditional benefits of mentoring, such as career advice, expanded networks, and advocacy. Senior executives also gain from learning about the experiences of female engineeers in their organizations and the conflicts they confront that can stifle their careers. The organization benefits through the learning that occurs for both the prote´ge´e and the mentor. Besides attending to the development of all employees, organizations must critically review human resource practices that may inadvertently leave minority workers underdeveloped and out of the leadership pipeline. Human Resource Management Practices Another best practice may be to monitor all selection materials and procedures. Many companies have flawed selection methods, which have adverse impact on women and minority applicants. An examination of the selection procedures may reveal that some groups are disproportionably advantaged or disadvantaged because of the tools being used. Organizations can increase the diversity of their applicant pool by using different, nondiscriminatory selection methods. A related recommendation is to monitor diversity resulting from an organization’s promotion policies. Many firms use slating and other promotion methods to monitor top talent in key positions.29 Making sure that the slates are diverse and representative of the organization in terms of gender and race will increase the likelihood that more diverse candidates are promoted. Leaders’ willingness to collect data on diversity regularly and monitor and evaluate human resource systems and diversity initiatives generates more work, but ongoing measurement and evaluation can reinforce the organization’s commitment to diversity and help hold it accountable to related goals. IBM has instituted management accountability for developing and promoting diverse talent informally through what its managers refer to as the five-minute drill. The five minute drill takes place during the discussion of management talent at the corporate and business unit levels. During meetings of the senior team, executives are expected at any moment to be able to discuss any high-potential manager . . . an explicit effort is made to ensure that minorities and females are discussed along with white males. The result has been to make the executives more accountable for spotting and grooming high-potential minority managers both in their own areas and across the business.30

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Positive Examples of Workplace Diversity Given many negative examples of ways in which diversity’s absence can cause problems for organizations, we want to note that not all discriminate against minorities and some have embraced diversity. Firms such as IBM and Xerox have been diversity champions. Their programs demonstrate a culture that integrates diversity at all levels. We applaud these organizations for their efforts but also want to highlight other companies, such as Procter & Gamble (P&G).31 P&G is a $51 billion company with 110,000 employees. The awards it has received and its initiatives reflect the firm’s commitment to diversity. P&G is ranked at number forty-five on the 2005 Fortune Best Company for Minorities list. Other examples of its many accolades include being ranked among several of Diversity Inc.’s Top Companies for Diversity (number thirty), which includes being a top company for Executive Women and Latinas. In addition, P&G was ranked first in its industry on Fortune’s World’s Most Admired Companies, and Black Enterprise included it as one of the 2005’s 30 Best Companies for Diversity. The company sponsors one of the oldest supplier diversity programs in the United States, spending more than $1.1 billion across nearly 700 minority- and women-owned suppliers. Additionally, P&G provides continuing leadership in the advertising industry by partnering with agencies to refer applicants to each other and help minorities enter commercial production companies. Not only is P&G devoting funds to diversity efforts, it is also making diversity a key performance determinant for management. Diversity results are tied to stock option awards for the top thirty company officers. Clearly, P&G is another premier company in terms of its diversity efforts.

CONCLUSION This chapter has provided insight into issues dealing with workplace diversity. Common best practices emerged across the issues of leadership, recruitment, training, and executive development. One theme related to these best practices is needs assessment. To be effective, diversity initiatives generally should be developed with an expressed need in mind; otherwise, they lack a purpose. Another best practice theme involves communication. A needs assessment can certainly help open communication avenues throughout the organization. Diversity-related task groups, affinity groups, and mentoring programs, however, can also provide new opportunities for underrepresented or marginalized groups to speak to the organization regarding their concerns and realities. A final theme relates to data collection, monitoring, and evaluation. Diversity initiatives and practices are rarely assessed for several reasons. At times

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the goal is only to put an initiative in place, so no need for evaluation exists. In other circumstances, fear arises that evaluation data will increase the potential for organizational liability, open new opportunities for litigation, or create unrealistic employee expectations. Diversity-related data must be collected to understand the diversity climate and evaluate outcomes of expensive initiatives. Without data collection, reduced accountability for the success of diversity campaigns and goals occurs. Organizations should think broadly and creatively about the data they can obtain, such as applicant pool data, information about the amount and types of outreach to target communities, and organizational tenure and promotion rates. We have set the foundation for workplace diversity, given examples of the detriments organizations face if it is mismanaged, and provided best practices for the incorporation of positive diversity initiatives within an organization. As the popularity of diversity management grows, we hope that more researchers study and benchmark best practices across all areas of organizational life as they affect all segments of an increasingly diverse workforce.

NOTES 1. Anthony J. Sebok, ‘‘The Huge Class Action Sex Discrimination Suit against Wal-Mart: Should It Proceed as a Class Action, or Be Decertified?’’ online document available at writ.news.findlaw.com/sebok/20040809.htm (accessed July 29, 2005). 2. William Johnston and Arnold Packer, Workforce 2000: Work and Workers for the Twenty-First Century (Indianapolis, IN: Hudson Institute, 1987). 3. Ben White, ‘‘Black Coca-Cola Workers Still Angry Despite 2002 Legal Settlement, Protesters Say Little Has Changed,’’ Washington Post, April 18, 2002, p. E3; available online at www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn?pagename¼article&contentId¼ A4802-2002Apr17¬Found¼true. 4. ‘‘$7.4 Billion Race Discrimination Suit Filed Against General Motors,’’ online document available at www.injuryboard.com/view.cfm/Article¼1358. 5. Eddy Ng and Rosalie L. Tung, ‘‘Ethno-Cultural Diversity and Organizational Effectiveness: A Field Study,’’ International Journal of Human Resource Management 9 (1998): 980–95. 6. Orlando C. Richard, ‘‘Racial Diversity, Business Strategy, and Firm Performance: A Resource-Based View,’’ Academy of Management Journal 43 (2000): 164–77. 7. The Business and Higher Education Forum is a nonprofit organization comprised of leaders from American businesses, nonprofit organizations, and institutions of higher education. Its goal is to examine and create dialogue around issues of national importance. Originally sponsored by the American Council on Education, it became an independent entity in 2004. See www.bhef.com. 8. Charles R. McConnell, ‘‘Staff Turnover: Occasional Friend, Frequent Foe, and Continuing Frustration,’’ Health Care Manager 18(1) (1999): 1–13; J. D. Phillips, ‘‘The Price Tag on Turnover,’’ Personnel Journal 69(12) (1990): 58–61. 9. Rita Risser, Stay Out of Court: The Manager’s Guide to Preventing Employees’ Lawsuits (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1993).

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10. See the EEOC’s 1992–2004 charge statistics at www.eeoc.gov/stats/charges .html. 11. Bureau of Justice Statistics, Civil Trial Cases and Vertices in Large Counties 1996. Bureau of Justice Statistics Bulletin, NCJ 173426 (1999). Report can be found online at: www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/pub/pdf/ctcvlc96.pdf. 12. ‘‘What Is This Going to Cost Me?’’ Delaware Employment Law Letter 7(6) (2002). 13. David A. Thomas, ‘‘Diversity as Strategy,’’ Harvard Business Review (2004): 98–108. 14. Michele E. Jayne and Robert L. Dipboye, ‘‘Leveraging Diversity to Improve Business Performance: Research Findings and Recommendations for Organizations,’’ Human Resource Management 43(4) (2004): 409–24. 15. David A. Thomas and Robin Ely, ‘‘Making Differences Matter: A New Paradigm for Managing Diversity,’’ Harvard Business Review 74(5) (1996): 79–90. 16. Thomas, ‘‘Diversity as Strategy,’’ p. 107. 17. Kecia M. Thomas, ‘‘Psychological Readiness for Multicultural Leadership,’’ Management Development Forum 1(2) (1998): 99–112. 18. Projections of the civil labor force through 2012 by sex, race, age, and Hispanic origin can be found online at www.bls.gov/emp/emplab2002-01.htm. 19. Business and Higher Education Forum. 20. Kecia M. Thomas and P. Gail Wise, ‘‘Organizational Attractiveness and Individual Differences: Are Diverse Applicants Attracted by Different Factors?’’ Journal of Business and Psychology 13(3) (1999): 375–90; Lesley Perkins, Kecia M. Thomas, and Gail A. Taylor, ‘‘Advertising and Recruitment: Marketing to Minorities,’’ Psychology and Marketing [Special Issue on Emerging Topics in Marketing] 17(3) (2000): 1–21. 21. Shari Caudron, ‘‘Don’t Make Texaco’s $175 Million Mistake,’’ Workforce 75(3) (1997): 58–65. 22. Jenny C. McCune, ‘‘Diversity Training: A Competitive Weapon,’’ Management Review 85(6) (1996): 25–28. 23. Sara Rhynes and Benson Rosen, ‘‘A Field Survey of Factors Affecting the Adoption and Perceived Success of Diversity Training,’’ Personnel Psychology 48 (1995): 247–70. 24. Loriann Roberson, Carol T. Kulik, and Molly B. Pepper, ‘‘Designing Effective Diversity Training: Influence of Group Composition and Trainee Experience,’’ Journal of Organizational Behavior 22(2001): 871–85. 25. Federal Glass Ceiling Commission, Department of Labor, Good for Business: Making Full Use of the Nation’s Capital (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1995). 26. David Maume, ‘‘Glass Ceilings and Glass Escalators,’’ Work and Occupations 26(4) (1999): 483–510. 27. Belle R. Ragins, Bickley B. Townsend, and Mary M. Mattis, ‘‘Gender Gap in the Executive Suite: CEOs and Female Executives Report on Breaking the Glass Ceiling,’’ Academy of Management Executive 12 (1998): 28–42. 28. Margaret B. White, ‘‘Organization 2005: New Strategies at P & G,’’ Diversity Factor 18 (1999): 16–20. 29. Slating is the concept whereby a company will create a list of possible candidates for promotion to a new or vacant position. It requires the company to pull together

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information on each possible candidate and then rank candidates for their current position and other future positions in the company. Slates are the pipeline of future talent for each key position. 30. Thomas, ‘‘Diversity as Strategy,’’ p. 107. 31. ‘‘Linking Opportunity with Responsibility: Sustainability Report’’ (2004). Available online at www.pg.com/content/pdf/01_about_pg/corporate_citizenship/sustainability/ reports/sustainability_report_2004.pdf.

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The Diversity Journey at Shell Catherine A. Lamboley

Looking back on the Shell Oil Company diversity journey in the United States, one event stands out as a turning point: a two-day diversity awareness seminar for Shell management in 1996. The CEO and other top U.S. executive leaders—all white males—participated in the event along with senior-level women and people of color. As a manager in Shell’s legal department at the time, I was one of those women. At one point, we were invited to talk about what our lives were like at Shell. We were brutally candid. Anger and pain came pouring out. The executives were stunned. We were stunned, too, at the powerful feelings that had been unleashed. The seminar was a watershed for Shell U.S. At the end of the two days, the CEO stated that things would change going forward. Most important, he made a commitment to set goals for diversity. ‘‘Without accountability,’’ he said, ‘‘we will continue to select people who are just like us, and we won’t change fast enough.’’ One year later, at a conference for the top 200 leaders of Shell U.S., the change was clearly evident. In fact, women applauded because for the first time there was a line for the restroom. A decade later, the values of diversity and inclusiveness are woven into the fabric of Shell. Our leadership firmly believes that diversity is both the right thing to do and critical to our success. Our major businesses are held accountable annually through a diversity scorecard, and our leaders know that their compensation is partly tied to their individual diversity performance. It has been an incredible journey.

WHITE, MALE, AND MARRIED The 1996 diversity workshop was actually the outgrowth of an initiative that began a year earlier, when the CEO of Shell Oil Company, the U.S. business of

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the global Shell Group,1 convened a strategic planning team to discuss the direction the company would take on diversity in the future. The Strategic Team on Diversity—one woman, one Hispanic male, two African American males, and four white males—set out as its mission ‘‘to understand the human and business possibilities of a culture in which all types of differences are valued—a culture in which diversity is appreciated as a means to high performance rather than an obstacle.’’ The mid-1990s may strike some as rather late for a major corporation to have embraced the concept of diversity. In fact, Shell U.S. at the time was like most of its peers in the oil industry. Antidiscrimination policies were in place, and the company met all the requirements for equal opportunity compliance, but little was done beyond the minimum. The work environment was dominated by white males and characterized by conservatism and formality. In employee focus groups conducted at the time, when men and women were asked what qualities were required to be a senior leader at Shell, the consensus was ‘‘white, male, and married.’’ But forces for change were emerging both externally and internally. Outside Shell, other major corporations in the oil industry and elsewhere were facing highly publicized lawsuits on diversity issues. This external pressure reinforced a growing recognition among some senior leaders that the company’s compliance-based approach to diversity issues was not enough—something needed to change. Employee feedback indicated dissatisfaction with access to development opportunities for women and employees of color. The demographics of the labor market were shifting, and it was becoming clear that if Shell continued down the path it was on, the company would not be able to attract, retain, and develop the people it needed to continue to succeed. Another force was influencing change as well. About this time, the global Shell Group had begun a broader business initiative to transform the organization from its old, cumbersome structures and processes to a more nimble organization able to respond to change quickly. The concept of a more responsive organization, more reflective of the outside environment, was linked with the need for a workforce that was more representative of the society as a whole.

A STRATEGIC IMPERATIVE Cumulatively, these forces led Shell U.S. to the realization that diversity was a strategic imperative for success, both in the marketplace and in the attraction and recruitment of the most talented employees. As we have embarked on this journey, the business rationale has only become stronger over time. We articulated the business case for diversity and inclusiveness a few years ago in words that have continued to drive our efforts:

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As the workforce becomes increasingly diverse, the company can gain a distinct competitive advantage by attracting, retaining, and developing talented people with diverse backgrounds and perspectives. Effective diversity and inclusiveness management helps remove barriers to productivity and provides an environment in which these employees can contribute fully toward achieving Shell’s business goals. Employees who feel respected, valued, and connected develop stronger relationships and become more involved in their work, which leads to enhanced teamwork, increased innovation and productivity, lower staff turnover, lower absenteeism, and reduced costs. Shell’s customer base is becoming more diverse. By having a workforce that reflects the demographics of the consuming public, we can more effectively understand, anticipate, and respond to customers’ needs. Encouraging diversity and inclusiveness enables the company to build relationships and demonstrate respect and fairness in its dealings with suppliers, partners, the government, and other stakeholders. Promoting diversity and inclusiveness enhances our reputation and increases loyalty, which, in turn, earns us the right of access and the license to operate and grow. Promoting supplier diversity and supporting the growth and development of women- and minority-owned businesses within our community helps improve the climate in which our partners and we conduct business. By promoting diversity not only within our own ranks but also in the communities in which it operates, Shell is helping make these communities better places for its employees to live and work. Finally, an effective diversity process helps ensure that federally mandated affirmative action goals are addressed and achieved.

LEADERSHIP ENDORSEMENT In January 1996, the Strategic Team on Diversity reviewed its findings and recommendations with the senior leadership team of Shell U.S. The team endorsed the report, paving the way for the formal establishment of a diversity process. The first step was to create a structure to manage the process. A function now known as the Shell Diversity Practice was established to provide thought leadership and consulting services to the Shell U.S. companies. An executive director of diversity was hired to spearhead its activities and begin the efforts to train all managers and employees on the concept and practice of inclusiveness in the workplace. Over the next year, Shell U.S. began engaging senior leadership in the diversity process. By mid-1997, each business unit and firm within the company had established diversity councils and had begun creating diversity action teams

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charged with continuing to educate and inform their fellow employees regarding diversity and inclusiveness. This multilevel approach, a change management technique that has been used in other initiatives within Shell, has been one of the keys to our success in permeating an organization of more than 20,000 Shell employees in multiple U.S. locations.  





The Strategic Team on Diversity, a small, senior-level team, provided direction and vision for the change process. The director of diversity position created one focal point for communication, implementation, and accountability. The Diversity Practice influences the integration of diversity into business and human resource strategies and develops and provides processes, tools, training, and consultative services. Diversity councils, which reflected a cross-section of employees from different grade levels, years of service, functions, races, genders, sexual orientations, and ages, brought ownership of the issue into each business unit. These councils began by collecting data, doing needs assessments, and creating specific plans for each unit. They now support the leaders of their respective organizations with ongoing assessments, feedback, goalsetting, and action plans that link diversity efforts to the goals of the respective businesses. Diversity action teams, larger groups also representative of the workforce demographics, created a critical mass of employees committed to the change who could keep the messages flowing through both formal and informal communication channels. These groups implement diversity activities that can cross business unit or departmental boundaries. They are charged with integrating diversity into all aspects of the business and with promoting linkage and resource sharing across and within the businesses to realize the greatest possible efficiency, value, and quality.

A VISIBLE COMMITMENT Two actions that Shell U.S. took early in the process provided highly visible symbols of the company’s commitment to diversity. The first was the appointment of the first woman—a Hispanic woman—to the 1997 Shell U.S. Board of Directors. The second was a restructured employee benefits package introduced in 1997. Reflecting the needs of a diverse employee population, the package included benefits for domestic partners, open resourcing (an internal electronic job posting system accessible to all employees), work-schedule flexibility, and a more flexible pension plan. Later that year, Shell U.S. also initiated a program, called RESOLVE, that provides employees with additional support, tools, and processes for resolving diversity-related and other conflicts in the workplace.

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Although informal employee networking had been in place for many years, the Strategic Team on Diversity report recommended supporting the creation of formal employee network groups. Such groups created another highly visible internal reminder of Shell’s commitment. In 1997, guidelines were issued for these networks, which would serve two roles: as resources to leadership teams, councils, and diversity action teams for business and people/strategy issues and as a support system and forum for development, information sharing, and education among their members. Although sanctioned and funded by the company, the networks are managed entirely by employee volunteers. The first five employee networks represented Asian Pacific, African American, female, Hispanic and GLBT (gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgendered) employee populations.

ACCOUNTABILITY FROM THE OUTSET True to the CEO’s commitment, accountability was built into the program early on. By fall 1997, Shell U.S. had adopted balanced workforce goals. These goals accelerated targets that the Strategic Team on Diversity had originally recommended for achievement by 2005. We also started tracking supplier diversity spend data. These two elements provided the much-needed backbone for Shell’s diversity efforts and raised them to a higher level for making change happen and ensuring continuous progress. Progress continued toward laying the foundation for diversity within Shell U.S. as Diversity Practice staff began establishing processes for incorporating diversity into the company’s business model and leadership succession planning. At the same time, they began developing company-wide diversity recruitment strategies as well as procedures for incorporating the company’s specific diversity goals into future joint ventures and alliance agreements.

MAKING PROGRESS In 1999, Shell U.S. built a formal goal of becoming a model for diversity in corporate America into a broad business initiative we called the Blueprint for Success—a plan for ensuring that the company maintains its leadership role in the United States. We also held our first diversity conference, which brought representatives from leading companies and thought leaders in the diversity field to Houston, Shell’s main office in the United States, to share their views and experiences with more than 300 conference attendees. This conference has since become an annual event. By 2000, the Shell U.S. commitment to diversity was beginning to bring results. The company had women on all of its executive committees, and representation at management levels had improved by 136 percent for women and 61 percent for people of color.

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The number of employee networks had grown to nine with the addition of a network for employees with disabilities, regional networks in Louisiana (where 20 percent of Shell’s U.S. employees are located) for African Americans and women, and a network for Generation Xers. In addition, Shell expanded the role of the networks, increasing their influence in the business and in the community, and using them as the basis for a mentoring program to support the development of diverse leaders. Shell U.S. also launched a new cross-functional Diversity Change Agent Network, aimed at supporting management’s efforts to achieve diversity results. The network organized Shell’s first women’s conference and began piloting a tool for assessing the progress of employee network groups. By 2001, five years into the initiative, Shell U.S. shifted leadership responsibility for diversity to its individual businesses, with the corporate group taking on the support role. This brought accountability home to the level where most of the workforce decisions—hiring, promotion, and development—were made.

CHALLENGES AND SETBACKS Although progress was made, the first five years were not easy. Shell U.S. learned from the experiences of other firms, but none seemed to provide a complete model of diversity and inclusiveness, and in some areas the company had to forge its own path. Changing an organization as large and as set in its ways as Shell historically had been is a long-term effort. Considerable education and culture change was required at all levels of the organization, top to bottom. Compounding the challenge was the outside economic environment. Though the economy as a whole was growing, energy prices were relatively low and declining further from 1997 to early 1999, which meant that few new employees were hired while this initiative was getting under way. In fact, the organization had been focused on operating with a lean staff for several years. That approach, which still underlies Shell’s business strategy, coupled with a low employee turnover, meant that changing the demographic makeup of the organization would not happen as quickly as it might have in a high-growth or highly mobile organization. In addition, some diversity efforts have moved forward more consistently than others. Since 1997, women’s presence in leadership roles at Shell U.S. has increased significantly and continuously. However, to date we have not been as successful in advancing people of color, whether women or men. This remains a challenge, and we continue to work to identify and remove barriers and ensure there are continuous opportunities for advancement.

TAKING IT TO THE NEXT LEVEL In 2002, recognizing the need to accelerate diversity efforts and ensure alignment of business and diversity goals, the Shell U.S. leadership team

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commissioned a cross-business diversity enhancement project team of human resource and diversity leaders to develop a plan to take the company’s diversity efforts to the next level. After brainstorming about barriers to achieving diversity progress and gathering information from employees, members of employee networks, and leaders on their perspectives about diversity, the team drafted and gained approval for a common diversity vision for all Shell operations throughout the United States: ‘‘Shell U.S. will value and leverage diversity to become a model of an inclusive working environment.’’ The team made a series of recommendations to management for achieving this goal:     



 

Make diversity data more transparent to all employees and leaders to identify gaps and demonstrate progress toward closing them. Develop workforce representation goals that are tied to Shell’s affirmative action plans. Develop a scorecard for measuring progress within each business toward achieving diversity goals. Link progress toward diversity goal achievement to compensation. Involve Shell employee networks in recruiting and retaining talented employees, helping acclimate new hires to Shell’s culture of diversity and inclusiveness, and promoting the Shell brand and image in the community. Give high-potential people of color and female employees expanded, cross-organizational experience to prepare them for management positions, which will help close gaps in representation of people of color and females in management. Consider diversity when recruiting external consultants and suppliers. Review supplier diversity certification systems and procedures, mentoring programs, and measurement and tracking systems with a goal of creating a more robust minority/women business enterprise program across the businesses.

These recommendations became the driving force for the next level of progress in the Shell U.S. diversity journey. At the same time, the Shell Group enhanced its accountability system to ensure progress on diversity goals, requiring each country’s business leader to submit an annual in-depth report to the group’s managing directors outlining progress. The goals are based on a Global Diversity and Inclusiveness Standard that includes six components:   

Leadership, commitment, and accountability for change; Standards development and governance; Strategic plans and objectives;

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Supporting systems and resources; Human resources systems integration; and Monitoring performance, communication, and continuous learning.

Based on the enhancement team’s recommendations, in 2003 Shell U.S. began evaluating managers as well as selected employees in diversity-related functions against performance on a diversity scorecard. The scorecard includes such elements as supplier diversity/economic development, workforce representation goals, and workplace climate. That performance is considered in making individual pay decisions. Feedback from women and people of color has been valuable in helping us stay on track. At a roundtable luncheon in 2003, for example, thirty women representing a cross-section of Shell shared insights, experiences, and concerns with the top global leadership of the Shell Group and its businesses. Issues discussed ranged from gender style differences to Shell’s culture and retention strategy for women. The Shell U.S. Asian Pacific employee network group organized a similar session with leaders of several of Shell’s U.S. businesses in 2004. Shell U.S. also began including questions aimed at assessing the company’s diversity and inclusiveness climate in its employee survey. Employees are asked to indicate if they believe leadership supports diversity and inclusiveness, if people are treated fairly, and if different lifestyles, cultural backgrounds, views, and values are respected. ENHANCING CAREER DEVELOPMENT Shell U.S. leaders learned that creating workforce representation goals and standards would be ineffective if no women and people of color were available and prepared to take on increased responsibility. In response to this issue, Shell U.S. began looking for ways to build the talent pipeline through recruitment of new and experienced personnel, assess and develop potential leaders, and help equip the business units for succession planning. This issue has taken on increased urgency as a large percentage of the current workforce—the Baby Boom generation—nears retirement. At the same time, the number of students pursuing geosciences and other technical careers critical to Shell’s business has declined over the past two decades. Internally, Shell U.S. created a career development program to help highpotential women increase their understanding of issues affecting them in business, review their approach to professional and personal development, clarify career and life goals and develop strategies for implementation, learn tactics and develop confidence and skills for upward mobility, gain an understanding of their leadership style and perception by others, obtain mentors and seek mentoring opportunities, develop work-life balance strategies, and create networking opportunities.

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Externally, Shell U.S. has refocused its social and community investment funds to align with the business need to strengthen its talent pipeline. The company’s workforce development initiative was launched in 2004 to increase the flow of candidates, with special emphasis on women and people of color, to meet future workforce needs in engineering, geosciences, and operator, crafts, and technician areas. The program includes scholarships, science teacher training and support, and a stronger presence on key campuses to position Shell as an employer of choice. Reaching further down to primary education, Shell U.S. has provided volunteer and financial support to programs such as the Education Rainbow Challenge, which promotes interest in math to all inner-city children, and other programs that support math and science learning.

MAINTAINING THE MOMENTUM With strong support from Shell U.S. leadership, much of the daily implementation of Shell’s diversity strategy at the business and department levels is driven by diversity and human resources staffs, the company’s diversity councils, diversity action teams, and employee network groups. These teams have organized a wide range of activities aimed at improving the work environment and promoting development opportunities for women and people of color. A few examples: 







The employee network group for women sponsored a workshop in which four senior women from Shell U.S. shared their personal learnings and best practices around three key ingredients for increasing career opportunity: defining success, becoming known, and finding and/or being a mentor. The diversity council in Shell U.S.’s information technology business put diversity into terms that resonated within the organization, creating a talent pipeline flow model that helped leadership understand the demographic composition of people joining, moving through, and leaving the organization at various levels with an eye on identifying systemic changes that are needed to eliminate bottlenecks in the pipeline and achieve desired results. Members of Shell’s Asian Pacific employee network group worked with the diversity office of Shell U.S.’s information technology business to identify opportunities to improve retention of Asian Pacific information technology employees. A network team assisted in determining background factors and developing suggestions for improvement, such as training mid-level managers about Asian Pacific value systems and culture. A Women of Color conference focused on issues faced by African American women working for Shell U.S. Over 150 people attended; about

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one-half were African American women from the organization, about onequarter were supervisors and managers, and the rest were supportive male and female colleagues. Shell’s Hispanic employee network group has organized a series of juntas, based on the Spanish conversational term for ‘‘meetings.’’ These limitedsize sessions bring employees together with experienced leaders in a format that allows everyone to participate. At a Shell U.S. manufacturing facility, the local diversity council created a six-month structured curriculum to help employees learn about diversity and inclusiveness philosophies and about their own perceptions. Employees can meet once a month to discuss specific topics. To involve field operations employees in isolated locations, the diversity action team for Shell’s exploration and production business in the U.S. held a contest among employees and contractors to submit quotes relating to diversity along with three or more discussion questions related to the quote. The winning submissions were used to create four professionally designed posters distributed to field locations on a quarterly basis. The Generation X, Hispanic, and women’s networks collaborated to present a seminar on career paths, including presentations from a female supervisor who began as an hourly operations employee, a manager who discussed how to cross over to a different functional or skill area, the chief financial officer of Shell U.S., and a human resources professional.

BEYOND THE WALLS Early in Shell’s diversity journey, it became clear that to create a diverse workplace, achieve sustainable change, and enhance the reputation of Shell U.S. as an employer of choice and a socially conscious and progressive organization, the company’s diversity and inclusiveness activities would have to extend beyond the walls of Shell. The two components of this effort— encouraging supplier diversity and promoting diversity in the communities where Shell operates—were articulated in the business rationale almost from the outset and were reemphasized in the enhancement team’s recommendations in 2002. One of the clearest success stories for our supplier diversity efforts has been in our legal area. Nationwide as of 2004, only 4 percent of partners in law firms were of color and 16 percent of partners were women. In 2000, we launched an initiative with our key law firms to require that they enumerate for us on invoices the hours all women and men of color worked and fees they generated. We began reporting these figures back to the firms along with a blind comparison of how their totals compare to other firms with which we do business. Where we do not see at least a gradual improvement in diversity, we ask the firm to submit an action plan on the issue.

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In 2003, we decided to reduce the number of law firms with which we work by selecting a core group of firms to handle most of our legal work. By doing so, we believed we could build stronger relationships with firms that had a deeper understanding of our business. In choosing the firms with which to build this strategic partnership, we included a commitment to diversity as one of our selection criteria. Though many factors went into our decision process, at least one firm did not make the list primarily because it lacked diversity. Of the twenty-seven firms we selected, seven have partnerships where women and men of color outnumber white males. Why exert this market pressure? We value diversity among our suppliers for the same reasons we value it internally—because it is good business as well as the right thing to do. As we explain to our suppliers, we value having people of diverse backgrounds—employees and suppliers alike—who can provide different ways of looking at things that can lead to better solutions. If law firms wish to retain and advance talented women and men of color, their attorneys must have the chance to do challenging work and have meaningful interaction with clients, such as Shell, so that relationships can grow. Tracking, reporting, and followup help ensure the opportunities are provided and cause the firms to be very focused on training, mentoring, work assignments, and leadership development so that the women and men of color are prepared to take on those opportunities. We don’t stop at tracking and reporting. We also provide support for our vendors’ diversity programs. In the legal arena, we hold an annual symposium, which brings us together with our law firms to hear from leading experts on diversity in the legal profession and share best practices. The symposium addresses advancement, retention, and similar issues law firms face and has included such topics as how to create additional opportunities/exposure for women and men of color and factors that may inhibit their abilities to succeed in law firms. We also have reached out to other companies and national organizations to join us in supporting diversity. Alone, Shell has pressure it can bring to bear. But with many more corporations, together we have significant buying power and can achieve real change. Shell U.S. serves as a visible, proactive proponent of diversity in the community. When we announced our new benefits package in 1997, we were among the first major corporations to announce benefits for domestic partners. We have continued to take the lead on this and other diversity issues. The CEO of Shell U.S. endorsed efforts by the mayor of Houston to include sexual orientation in the city’s nondiscrimination policy and also testified before the Senate endorsing the Employment Non-Discrimination Act.

TODAY: MODELING DIVERSITY AND INCLUSIVENESS The vision of Shell U.S. as a ‘‘model of diversity and inclusiveness’’ that was articulated in 2002 continues to move into reality. The company has been

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widely recognized, especially for its success in advancing women. Shell received an award in 2004 that Catalyst, the leading U.S. nonprofit organization focused on the advancement of women, gives annually to showcase firms using innovative approaches with proven results to address the recruitment, development, and advancement of all professional women, including women of color. More important than the recognition, however, are the results we have achieved. We have made significant progress, but we still have work to do, both globally and in the United States. Globally, the first woman was appointed to the Shell Group’s committee of managing directors in 2003. As of this writing, three members of the Shell Oil Leadership Team (U.S.) are women; previously, the percentage of positions held by women on this team has been slightly higher. In the United States, as of this writing, women represent 26.5 percent of the total employee population, compared with 22 percent at year end 1997. Women comprise about 32.6 percent of senior executives and 19 percent of the management-level workforce; about 2.2 percent of senior executives and 2.7 percent of managers are women of color. Although Shell’s workforce representation of people of color showed an initial increase after the diversity initiative began, it has not made the dramatic strides that our women’s initiative has made. To close this gap, in 2004 Shell enhanced its focus on increasing the pool of qualified people of color who are candidates for employment, promotion, or development. Our goal is to close existing gaps between our workforce representation and the market demographics by 2010. We continue to actively pursue supplier diversity as a way to achieve a competitive advantage, enhance our brand image and reputation, and support sustainable development of minority firms. Shell U.S.’s active involvement with business and community organizations also fosters a vigorous and sustained business environment. Having a team of supplier diversity advocates in each Shell U.S. business unit, we have developed an infrastructure to identify strategies and provide access for minority and women business owners. Our proactive supplier diversity program has succeeded in increasing the number of women- and minority-owned business enterprises that conduct business with Shell U.S. During 2004, Shell businesses in the United States recorded expenditures of $439 million (approximately 8.6 percent of total spend) with women- and minority-owned businesses—up from approximately $40 million (approximately 2 percent of total spend) in 1994. For the past two years, Shell has been listed as one of America’s Top Corporations for Women’s Business Enterprises by the Women’s Business Enterprise National Council. The Shell U.S. manager of Corporate Supplier Diversity was recognized by Women’s Enterprise Magazine with a 2003 Women of Excellence Award for her personal and professional accomplishments and continuous efforts on behalf of women in business. In 2003 Shell U.S. was

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named one of the Top 5 Companies for Supplier Diversity in DiversityInc.com’s rankings. The Houston Area Women’s Business Enterprise Alliance, the Houston Minority Business Council, and the Louisiana Minority Business Council also recognized Shell U.S. as Corporation of the Year in 2004. These awards recognize Shell’s commitment and success in creating contract opportunities for minority and women business owners. Shell’s diversity efforts are also paying off in new business opportunities. In 2004, two members of Shell U.S.’s Asia Pacific network group participated in organizing a global symposium on petroleum and petrochemical opportunities in China. As a result of the company’s involvement in the symposium, a partnership was forged between Shell’s exploration and production arm in China and the Chinese national petroleum company to develop a major natural gas field. We continue to track and refine our efforts on all diversity fronts. In addition to annual tracking at the individual, business unit, and national level, a quarterly progress enhancement team meeting provides an additional opportunity for key diversity leaders to review progress, share best practices, and identify gaps across businesses. Decisions about managers’ compensation are based in part on progress made by women and people of color who report to them. Diversity demographic data also is shared with employees on a regular basis.

USING THE SHELL MODEL Along Shell’s diversity journey, the company learned many lessons that can be of value to others following in our footsteps. Three key learnings stand out.   

To be successful, diversity and inclusiveness require a commitment of time and energy by many people at all levels of the organization. Over time, diversity must be integrated into the business processes and systems of the company to ensure consistent, effective implementation. Finally, diversity processes must include measurable, achievable goals and clear accountability.

These three lessons are closely linked. Underlying them all is the understanding that diversity is not just another corporate program—it is a business imperative. Diversity and inclusiveness enable a company to attract, retain, and develop the people it needs to execute its business plan. Managed strategically, diversity and inclusiveness create a competitive advantage as the company becomes an employer of choice, a partner of choice, and a supplier of choice. At Shell, we have taken that lesson to heart, and it has guided and will continue to guide our diversity journey.

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NOTE 1. Previously the Royal Dutch/Shell Group. ‘‘The Shell Group’’ is a collective term referring to the global enterprise as a whole, of which Shell Oil Company is an affiliate. ‘‘Shell U.S.’’ refers to the collective businesses and operations of the Shell Group in the United States.

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Career Planning: Toward an Inclusive Model Claretha H. Banks

Many organizations today discuss career planning for women and diverse individuals from the perspective of workforce diversity, which Robbins defines as the ‘‘concept that organizations are becoming more heterogeneous in terms of gender, race, ethnicity, sexual orientation and inclusion of other diverse groups.’’1 The word individual is used as opposed to populations because career planning is an individual endeavor, although the individual may be assisted by others. Many individuals, situations, and events may influence an individual’s career planning; yet ultimately, the individual must live with and execute the plan.

CAREER PLANNING A career is a pattern of work-related experiences that encompass the course of a person’s life.2 According to Robbins, career planning has made a transition from a traditional to a boundaryless approach. In the traditional approach, organizations took responsibility for managing their employees’ careers. In the boundaryless method, which crosses boundaries, functions, and levels, individuals take responsibility for their futures.3 Therefore, employees must become astute at managing their own careers.4 Beverly Kaye identifies career planning as the ‘‘specific strategy and methods of the career development effort. It involves setting objectives, designing an evaluation scheme, assigning responsibilities for the entire effort, and determining methodologies, resources and support.’’5 According to Lee Isaacson and Duane Brown, however, career counselors have not begun to answer the classic question, ‘‘What types of intervention are most useful with which types of clients?’’6

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CAREER PLANNING MODELS Many career planning models have been identified, but very few specifically address career issues of concern to women and diverse individuals who wish to succeed in U.S. corporations. Writers have proposed that many of the theories are oriented primarily toward white males and are inappropriate for women and diverse individuals; others have argued that there is no need for a specific model for diverse individuals.7 Super’s Models Super’s Life-Career Rainbow, six life roles in schematic life space model, initially was developed in 1953.8 The major concepts of his models included vocational stages; vocational tasks to achieve if one is to successfully pass through the stage; implementation of the self-concept in developing a career identity; the development of vocational maturity; and career patterns.9 It associates age with five stages of career development. They are: growth (4–13), exploration (14–24), establishment (25–44), maintenance (45–65), and decline (65 and over).10 Super’s theory suggests that everyone does not progress through the stages at fixed ages or in the same manner. Individuals develop and mature at different stages. Their life experiences also play a role within career progression. In the 1990 segmental model of career development, Super based his life span development theory on fourteen propositions. His propositions suggest that biographical and geographical influences affect individuals as they progress through the career cycle. This model was designed to address the differences in people and explain how their personality and social policy play a role in their career success. Super also proposed a ladder model of life career stages, developmental tasks, and behaviors to express his theory regarding to the life stages and the ages at which they occur.11 Super’s theory is very familiar to individuals in occupations dealing with career development. Most seem to prefer Super’s model and use it within organizations. This preference produces many questions not only with respect to women and diverse individuals but also with respect to white males. Questions of interest include the following: 1. If Super’s model is being used within organizations, what aspect of it is relevant and/or applicable to anyone other than white males? 2. How well do the individuals using Super’s model understand it? 3. In what way(s) is Super’s model being effectively communicated to women and diverse individuals? 4. Are women and diverse individuals aware that Super’s model is the model of choice in today’s workplace? Do they consider this information as they plan their careers?

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Career planning for women and diverse individuals is often written about and researched from a group perspective. Characteristics among like groups of people are indeed similar; yet unless they have the same jobs and display similar personal characteristics including attitude and behavior, their career planning should be based on individual assessment and evaluation. The assessments and evaluations should be strongly based on individual self-perception. Self-perception theory supports the notion that individuals come to know their own attitudes, emotions, and other internal states partially by inferring them from observations of their own overt behavior or the circumstances in which this behavior occurs. To the extent internal cues are weak, ambiguous, or uninterpretable, the individual is functionally in the same position as an outside observer, who must necessarily rely on those same external cues to infer the individuals’ inner states.12 Individuals use self-perception to explain their behavior by noting the conditions under which it occurs.13 Super’s is not the only career planning model; however, it is one of the most accepted. Other models of interest include Holland’s Theory of Vocational Choice, the National Career Development Guidelines (NCDG) Model, Beverly Kaye’s Six Stages of Career Development, the Hayes Career Transition Model, and Karsten and Igou’s Career Planning Model for a Diverse Workforce. Specific details of each model are described here. Holland’s Theory of Vocational Choice Holland’s theory suggests that a person expresses personality through the choice of a vocation and that interest inventories are really personality inventories. He also suggests that individuals hold stereotypical views regarding vocations. His perception is that individuals in like vocations have similar personalities and will respond to situations and problems in comparable ways. Holland’s view is that the success of a person on a job depends on the extent to which the individual’s personality and work environment are compatible.14 Holland’s theory is considered to be the most influential of the extant theories and is used frequently to assess personality types. It identifies six personality types: realistic, investigative, artistic, social, enterprising, and conventional. Holland’s Self-Directed Search instrument is used to match the person with the model work environment. He has also developed a Model for Interpreting Interclass and Intraclass Relationships for assessing the different inventories.15 Because Holland’s theory and model are designed to assess personality traits and match them with potential vocations, women and diverse individuals may want to explore them further. This theory may provide information that helps them understand how their personalities can have an impact on job success. They must realize that this is a method of selecting options and depends on an objective self-assessment.

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National Career Development Guidelines (NCDG) Model The NCDG Model is a competency based model that is designed for elementary, middle, and high school students.16 It is a framework for thinking about the knowledge and skills young people and adults need to manage their careers effectively, from their first job to their last.17 At the high school level, students are to be introduced to an individual career plan process. Individuals can use the goals and indicators obtained from the model as an informal checklist to determine areas of competency and gaps that need attention. Questions that arise regarding this model include: 1. Are all high school students introduced to this model? 2. In what way(s) does this model address the unique needs of female and minority students? Isaacson and Brown devote sections of their book to the special needs of gifted and physically, emotionally, and learning disabled students regarding career planning;18 however, there is no specific reference to gender, race and ethnicity. Kaye’s Six Stages of Career Development Kaye’s model is designed from the organizational perspective and is focused toward the organization developing and sustaining a career development plan that will be beneficial for itself and its employees. Kaye’s perspective arises from the notion that: Career development is ideally a joint effort . . . [among] the individual, the manager or leader, and the organization. While the individual has the primary responsibility for his or her own career, the leader is a supportive coach, and the organization provides the necessary systems and information. Career development involves looking realistically at the present conditions and at the career environment of today and tomorrow in order to regain the control necessary to ensure future productivity and job satisfaction.19

Kaye suggests that six stages of the career development cycle exist; they are as follows: 1. Preparing (Analyzing, Planning). During this phase, organizations are to determine the scope and nature of the career development effort through analyzing the needs, problems, and activities that led to the career development effort and that will eventually determine its objectives.20 2. Profiling (Identifying, Reality Testing). In the profiling stage, the employee is responsible for identifying skills and interests; the leader must support the effort by providing opportunities for discussion; and the practitioner makes a variety of assessment tools available.21

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3. Targeting (Exploring, Specifying). During the targeting phase the employee is to explore possibilities and specify goals. The organization is to provide guidance that points employees’ exploration efforts in a direction consistent with the organization. Leaders and practitioners are challenged to make exploration and opening of possibilities and goal setting a realistic and profitable exercise.22 4. Strategizing (Understanding, Synthesizing). The strategizing stage involves formulating a comprehensive strategy to accomplish the goals identified in stage 3.23 Change is of the essence within this stage of development. 5. Implementing (Acquiring, Demonstrating). During the implementing stage employees seek information, opportunities, people, or groups to provide support and resources to attain goals. The organization, through practitioners, provides financial resources and developmental activities, monitors progress, establishes motivation and reward systems, and documents activities and results. Managers provide information, encourage employees, provide necessary time for employee development activities, and establish internal means for using new employee capacities. The three groups share responsibility for two-way, effective communication, ongoing feedback, change in support of career development, and improved utilization of the workforce.24 6. Sustaining (Maintaining, Evaluating).25 Kaye suggests several actions to sustain career development programs. They must be adapted to changing conditions, which can be done by designing various sustaining systems that keep the program alive during the preparation stage.26 Some questions to consider throughout this phase include: a. How do identified career development needs match our overall business direction? b. How can we create interventions that are flexible and adaptable enough to meet changing needs and audiences? c. How can our career development efforts be made to outlive individual stakeholders and particular actions so they become part of the fiber of the organization?27 Kaye suggests that individual movement among stages may proceed sequentially or oscillate; yet all six must be experienced at least once for one complete cycle ending at the sustaining phase.28 She considers career planning to be essential in stage 1 of her career development model. Little information in this model is specifically devoted to diverse populations and their individual career planning efforts. Kaye’s model is developed from the organizational and practitioner perspective, which, in most cases, differs markedly from the individual perspectives of diverse employees. Women and diverse individuals can use this model as a guide to take individual responsibility for their own career

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planning. Kaye’s model is not specifically designed for individual career planning purposes, however. It is intended primarily for practitioners inside organizations to advance the goals of the organization. It focuses on the needs of the organization, not necessarily those of the employee. Some stages of Kaye’s model, specifically stages 2, 3, 4, and 5, give the employees an opportunity to assess their positions and goals and take personal responsibility for their career development both from an individual and organizational perspective. Stages 1 and 6 of her model indicate that it is a model with organizational, not individual, goals in mind unless those goals are the same, which may not be the case. Kaye suggests that a diverse workforce poses both challenges and opportunities to an organization. Its main challenge is to develop the knowledge and flexibility of its diverse workforce to its highest potential. She suggests that organizational leaders ask the following questions to evaluate diversity development: 1. Are we satisfied with the state of the art of this organization’s development opportunities for special needs groups? 2. How will each career development stage make our organization more responsive to diversity needs? 3. Are we using the skill identification information developed at the Profiling Stage, to give us a better picture of needs of any underrepresented groups? 4. Are the goals for developing diversity, set at the Targeting Stage, realistic? 5. Is the organization doing all it can to support these goals?29 These questions continue to support the fact that much work is needed within organizations to make them level playing fields for women and diverse individuals. Communication channels must be constantly open to women and diverse individuals so that they can express their concerns and develop their careers within organizations that may not be receptive to their presence. Hayes Career Transition Model Hayes identifies six steps for managing career transitions. She suggests that adults will go through this model several times during their career. The steps are as follows: 1. Self-assessment: Employees get to know themselves very well by looking at their skills, values, interests, and personality preferences. 2. Career exploration: Individuals open up to career possibilities and let go of stereotypes. 3. Decision making: People synthesize information and seek similarities among jobs and the marketplace and their own values, interests, personalities, and skills.

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4. Goal setting: Individuals establish goals to move forward toward their career choices. 5. Acquiring job search skills: People build networks of professional contacts and develop skills to market themselves to employers of choice. 6. Acquiring career success skills: Individuals learn ongoing career management skills and those that will help them fit into a new organization.30 Hayes presents an objective model for individuals who want to change careers. No specific reference is made to the use of the model by women and/or diverse individuals. It is an objective model that can be used to help people assess their ideas regarding career transitions to enhance their opportunities within the workforce. Career Planning Model for a Diverse Workforce Karsten and Igou suggest a need for a career planning model that addresses the unique needs of a diverse workforce.31 They have proposed a model that combines the efforts of Bowden32 and Ibarra33 along with their original ideas. Their model primarily focuses on environmental and personal factors. The phases that they describe are career preparation, entry and progress, reassessment, and career change. Karsten and Igou disagree with Super’s theory from the perspective that until recently, white women tended to leave and re-enter the workforce to deal with non-work responsibilities more than their male peers. Thus, their age may have placed them in the maintenance stage of Super’s model, but, based on their development, they may have fit better in the establishment phase. Because of prior discrimination, experiences of racial and ethnic minorities also may differ from those assumed in Super’s model.34

They also argue that due to the impact of personal and environmental factors associated with women and diverse individuals, inventories and other questionnaires designed to increase self-knowledge are not effective because women and diverse individuals have a greater tendency to select jobs based on community needs as opposed to personal preference.35 During career preparation they suggest using self-knowledge inventories but only to the extent that personal and environment factors specific to women and diverse individuals are considered. They also include developing an understanding of occupational information resources and how they explain career choices within this stage. During the entry and progress phase, they use Bowden’s Career States System model with regard to launching, building, sustaining, subsisting, and searching within a career.36 During the reassessment and career change stage, Karsten and Igou emphasize Ibarra’s model of career change, in which she

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stresses doing over planning. Her suggestions are to try out change, make new connections, and make sense of change.37 They emphasize that career models should allow for career breaks and that employees should be able to determine their own career success measures within their own timeframes.38 Karsten and Igou have developed a complex model that tries to address the needs of women and diverse individuals from a group and individual perspective. This in itself is a very difficult to accomplish. All of the variables that they mention should be explored with regard to women and minorities; however, it may make the model too cumbersome for individuals to navigate effectively.

ORGANIZATIONAL PERSPECTIVE Within organizations one typically finds the individual, the group, the organization system, and organizational dynamics. Each aspect of the organization must be clearly understood by women and diverse individuals to help them attain success within the organization. The characteristics of each of these elements of the organization vary among organizations. As women and diverse individuals enter the workplace, they must recognize these elements and prepare to develop their careers within the opportunities presented and despite the constraints that they may encounter on entry. Robbins suggests that in the boundaryless career, the organization’s responsibility is to build employees’ self-reliance and help them maintain marketability through continuous learning.39 Specific ways in which this can be accomplished are to clearly communicate the organization’s goals and future strategies, create growth opportunities, offer financial assistance, and provide time for employees to learn.40 Women and diverse candidates must be aware of this shift in career planning and adapt accordingly. They have a tendency to enter and reenter the workplace;41 however, women and diverse individuals must remain aware of trends and changes in the world’s workplaces by keeping informed and participating in community and professional organizations.

CAREER PATHS Citing Leibowitz, Farren, and Kaye,42 Isaacson and Brown refer to career paths as a representation of the sequential lines of career progression in an organization.43 Career paths can be used to develop career plans for individuals. Consistency is crucial when developing, explaining, and administering procedures related to career paths within an organization. Individuals progressing along a specified path should encounter no discriminatory experiences concerning gender, race, or ethnicity.

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Usually, career paths for each job are developed based on employees’ experiences that reflect organizational promotion practices.44 However, few organizations provide career counseling or planning assistance to help employees, particularly diverse employees, progress along the paths. BANKS’S SELF-ASSESSMENT AND SUFFICIENCY MODEL The Self-Assessment and Sufficiency Model is developed with consideration for all of the previously identified models. Perspectives from each model may be relevant to women and diverse individuals; however, the author believes that they must be most diligent at organizational entry. Many models help prepare women and diverse individuals obtain a job; however, little emphasis is placed on the unique characteristics they must understand to succeed after job entry. After joining the workplace, women and diverse individuals must emphasize extensive planning and execution of strategy in three distinct career phases—entry, sustainability, and advancement. Internal factors, which are within individuals, and external factors, inherent in the organizations employing them, affect these stages. Processes within the three phases are as follows: 1. Entry Phase a. Relationships within Organizations b. Job Choice 2. Sustainability Phase a. Training and Professional Development b. Personal Development 3. Advancement Phase a. Criteria for Selection b. Skills c. Continuous Learning Goals and Expectations The central theme of Banks’s model is goals and expectations. Women and diverse individuals often enter the workplace for survival reasons, without having identified their goals and expectations. Personal responsibilities are such that they often accept the first available position without considering career plans, goals, or personal expectations. Research also shows that culture, gender, and socioeconomic status influence career choice and development.45 The arrows from goals and expectations are double pointed to represent continuous feedback in both directions (see Figure 5.1). A two-way arrow from the goals and expectations to the organizations represents the fact that

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individuals will receive feedback from the organization; however, it may or may not affect their progress through the career planning model. Arrows around the model go in one direction only. Goals are crucial in motivational theories. Pfeffer, referring to George Gallup, notes that ‘‘People tend to judge a man by his goals, by what he’s trying to do, and not necessarily by what he accomplishes or by how well he succeeds.’’46 Having goals can only be an asset for women and diverse individuals. According to Ormond, the general effects of motivation are to: 1. increase an individual’s energy and activity level; 2. direct an individual toward certain goals; 3. promote initiation of certain activities and persistence in those activities; and 4. affect the learning strategies and cognitive processes an individual employs.47 Victor Vroom first proposed expectancy theory to explain work behavior. He developed three models dealing with job satisfaction, work motivation, and job performance to address people’s choices among work roles, the extent of their satisfaction with their chosen work roles, and their level of effectiveness in such roles.48 Vroom’s model has been used primarily to predict job satisfaction

FIGURE 5.1.

Self-Assessment and Sufficiency Model for career planning.

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and occupational preference.49 Adaptations including the Porter-Lawler Expectancy Model and Porter-Steers Met Expectations Hypothesis have been used to measure effort and job satisfaction. The Porter-Lawler model has been used mainly to measure supervisor, peer, and self-effort. It focused on the value of the reward, the perceived and actual effort required to attain the expected reward, the actual effort, abilities and traits, role perceptions, performance (accomplishment), rewards (fulfillment), perceived equity of rewards, and satisfaction.50 Porter and Lawler’s value of reward variable referred to the attractiveness of possible outcomes to individuals. At a given point, individuals attach different values to a variety of potential rewards.51 The value of the rewards to a person can be measured in several ways, including asking that individual to (1) make an actual choice among two or more alternatives in a situation in which she anticipates that her behavior will affect these outcomes; (2) rank or rate, on an attitude scaling device, the value of different rewards to himself; or (3) complete a projective device, such as the Thematic Apperception Test or a sentence completion test, from which some other person (i.e., the tester) infers the values of different rewards to the individual under consideration.52 The Porter-Steers Met Expectations Hypothesis describes ‘‘three common denominators that characterize motivation: (1) what energizes human behavior; (2) what directs or channels such behavior; and (3) how this behavior is maintained or sustained.’’53 Motivational theories also have models that help explain their characteristics. According to Porter and Steers, ‘‘the basic building blocks of a generalized model of motivation are: (1) needs or expectations; (2) behavior; (3) goals; and (4) some form of feedback.’’54 Banks’s model incorporates all of these elements from the perspective that women and diverse individuals must address their personal goals and expectations, which will affect job choice and on-the-job behavior. Their feedback will be internal, within themselves, and external, from others in their organization. Porter and Steers were concerned with the potential role of ‘‘met expectations’’ on a person’s withdrawal behavior,55 which is their tendency to be absent, avoid participation in optional organizational activities, or, in the extreme, quit. They define met expectations as the ‘‘discrepancy between what a person encounters on this job in the way of positive and negative experiences and what he expected to encounter.’’56 Women and diverse individuals must be able to establish expectations when they start a job and progress through the career model, allowing them to adjust to positive and negative experiences based on an understanding of the way such experiences relate to their expectations. Using met expectations hypothesis, Porter and Steers predict that when an individual’s expectations are unmet, that person’s propensity to withdraw will increase.57 Irving and Meyer felt that the met expectations hypothesis could be tested by using difference scores reflecting the discrepancy between postentry experiences and preentry expectations and found problems. The difference scores yielded

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artificial relationships with outcome variables. The use of direct measures generally requires respondents to indicate the extent to which they perceive that their preentry expectations concerning their jobs have been confirmed.58 Thus, when direct measures of met expectations are used, respondents are implicitly assumed to compare their expectations and experiences mentally. Scores on the measure are assumed to reflect the match between these variables. If this is true, it should be possible to show that direct measures of met expectations reflect independently obtained measures of expectation and experiences approximately equally.59 Requiring individuals to recall their prior expectations after having been on the job for some time is a weakness of direct measures of met expectations. Recollections of preentry expectations are filtered by more recent experiences and behaviors.60 By establishing goals and expectations upfront and throughout the career planning process, women and diverse individuals can establish baselines to determine how well their expectations are being met through their own and organizational efforts, as applicable. This is an area where more research is needed. A study that measures the gap, if any, between expectations and experiences of women and diverse individuals from their point of entry into the workplace and a predetermined time frame that they remain within the organization could be beneficial to career planning professionals. A study that determines whether successful women and diverse individuals had personal goals and expectations and the extent to which they believe those goals and expectations influenced their success could also be beneficial to career planning professionals.

Entry Phase Relationships within Organizations During the entry phase, women and diverse individuals should try to establish relationships within the organization. The most important relationship will be with their immediate supervisor or manager. They must understand the culture and power dynamics that play a major role in decisions to remain in or leave the organization. Historically, women and diverse individuals have been the last to be hired and the first to be dismissed when workforce reductions are necessary. Labor laws and affirmative action practices have enabled women and diverse individuals to enter workplaces to which they previously were denied access. ‘‘Employers are now seeking to create workplaces where employees from all backgrounds fully utilize their skills and feel personally comfortable.’’61 This is not intended to infer that they are unqualified and/or being hired to meet a quota, though some organizational members may think so. Some prejudge women and diverse individuals and do not view them as valuable team

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members who bring essential knowledge, skills, and abilities into the workplace. Because of these issues, women and diverse individuals must understand how their hierarchical positions within their respective organizations can be used to help them gain power and influence. The connotation of the word power is often negative; however, individuals and organizations must use power to remain effective. Each day, people use it to ensure success of organizational initiatives; women and diverse individuals may as well use power, too. According to Pfeffer, ‘‘organizations have career systems in place that tend to reward and encourage activities and skills more generously than others. . . . Therefore, those who rise to positions of influence and who benefit from this career system have a particular set of skills and have engaged in a particular set of activities—those favored by the system.’’62 Therefore, on entry into any organizational system, women and diverse individuals must build relationships and develop an understanding of the culture and career system they have entered. Pfeffer notes that ‘‘the essence of organizations is interdependence.’’63 Individuals must obtain power and the capacity to influence others to be successful within organizations. ‘‘It is critical that one be able to diagnose the relative power of various participants and comprehend the patterns of interdependence. One needs to know and understand not only the game, but also the players.64 Job Choice Women and diverse individuals must become very selective about jobs they choose after organizational entry. In most instances, they consider particular jobs without thinking about the comprehensive career paths they want to follow. They must become aware of career paths to avoid becoming entrenched in positions with no advancement opportunities. They must navigate the organizational landscape and not end up in controversial positions that can become dead-ends for their careers. Kaye provides a comprehensive analysis that women and diverse individuals can use to acquire an understanding of why job choice is essential. Once understanding is achieved, they can begin to develop and move from the concept of job choice to the idea of career planning. Throughout this phase, establishing goals and expectations is critical to the success of women and diverse individuals. Without such goals, they can be steered into jobs and career paths that they may not desire or understand. Sustainability Phase The sustainability phase is the model’s most important stage. This is the point at which women and diverse individuals must be most astute. They must realize that others within the organizations may expect them to fail or may develop schemes to sabotage their success. Having clear goals and expectations with an active execution strategy is essential to their sustainability. This is the

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point at which they should have solid relationships with others within their organization and an understanding of their ability to use power and influence to accomplish assigned tasks. They must execute details of their jobs effectively and be open to learning new skills. The methods by which they acquire these new skills can vary; however, they must use opportunities to network with others in their chosen career field and remain current in essential skills that are necessary for success. Training and Professional Development Women and diverse individuals should take advantage of all training and professional development opportunities available within their organizations. Training usually includes skills taught on a need-to-know basis. Therefore, if the organization is offering training in a skill, employees most likely will need it to accomplish their jobs effectively. Professional development often consists of opportunities to attend training workshops and seminars or gain additional education by using tuition aid programs.65 Cascio identifies training and development activities as ‘‘planned programs of organizational improvement undertaken to bring about a relatively permanent change in employee knowledge, skills, attitudes, or social behavior.’’66 Human resource development focuses on the individual’s ability to perform what she has learned in training and development activities after returning to the job.67 Performance, as defined by Cascio, is the ‘‘observable, measurable behavior from which we infer learning.’’68 Women and diverse individuals must understand how training and professional development provide organizational support to help them acquire knowledge, skills, and abilities. Personal Development Women and diverse individuals should be active participants in their own personal development. They can do this by reading trade journals, joining professional organizations, and networking with peers. Desire cannot be taught, however; people must want to succeed. According to Pfeffer, ‘‘developing and exercising power requires having both will and skill. It is the will that often seems to be missing.’’69 Women and diverse individuals must use their acquired skills. Pfeffer also notes that ‘‘there is a greater sin than making mistakes or influencing others—the sin of doing nothing, of being passive in the face of great challenges and opportunities, and even great problems.’’70 Goals and Expectations Throughout this phase, goals and expectations of individuals may be adjusted to fit their change in skill level and personal development. Understanding

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change as related to personal growth and development will assist them as they make career adjustments. Organizations will change; so must those they employ. According to Moran and Brightman, to manage change, leaders must understand the three most powerful drivers of work behavior: purpose, identity, and mastery. Change leaders must inspire individuals to align their purpose, or what they desire and value, identity, which is their sense of who they are, and mastery, their ability to manage themselves and the environment, with the necessary organizational change effort.71 Advancement Phase To reach the advancement phase, with few exceptions, women and minorities must have mastered the previous stages. They must be prepared to showcase their knowledge, skills, and abilities to move forward. Though not all organizations reward them based on performance, women and diverse individuals should avoid using that as an excuse for failure to perform. Criteria for Selection If they have succeeded in previous phases, by the time they reach the advancement stage, women and diverse individuals must clearly understand promotion criteria. They should be able to match their accomplishments to the criteria to assess their career progress and advancement potential. This is a point where mentoring could be essential. A mentor who has successfully advanced through this phase could be able to assist women and diverse individuals understand the criteria and may even be at the table when the selection for promotion is made. Skills During the advancement stage, women and diverse individuals will be asked to display their skills constantly. Having knowledge is not enough. Most often women and diverse individuals are watched more closely than others and are expected to prove that they have what it takes to succeed in the job before being promoted into it. White males, on the other hand, have traditionally been promoted based on potential to succeed. Though this double standard is unfair, it exists and must be recognized. Women and diverse individuals do not have to accept the double standard, but they still must perform. Continuous Learning Continuous learning is essential during the advancement phase. Throughout the career cycle, there will be many opportunities to obtain new information both

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inside and outside of the organization. Gathering new information is also essential when changing units or moving to a different organization. Continuous learning can include obtaining higher education if a terminal degree has not been earned, attending training and professional development seminars, or engaging in individualized study. Learning from peers and co-workers is another possibility. During this phase, maintaining a record of goals and expectations is crucial. Individuals can assess where they started and to what extent they have progressed in achieving their goals and meeting expectations. Many resources on setting goals and expectations are available; however, individuals must determine which goals and expectations are necessary and feasible for their own success.

CONCLUSION In today’s global economy, all members of the workforce must perform at their best. Women and diverse individuals want to succeed but may be unsure of their acceptance within organizations. Historically, they have struggled to participate actively even in workplaces that recruited them aggressively and welcomed them warmly at first. After entry, however, some have been surprised that other organizational members were far less congenial than the recruiters. If they continue to feel as if they are outsiders, they may not achieve their full potential in the workplace. Women and diverse individuals can use all models of career planning and development described in this chapter in some way. It is up to them to assess themselves to determine if they have sufficient knowledge, skills, and abilities to succeed. This does not suggest that others are unavailable or unwilling to assist them. Rather, it points out that their personal motivation, desire, and will are more important to their success than the influence of others. NOTES 1. Stephen P. Robbins, Organizational Behavior, 11th ed. (New Jersey: Pearson Prentice Hall, 2005), p. 17. 2. Ibid., p. 593. 3. Ibid. 4. Ibid., p. 594. 5. Beverly Kaye, Up Is Not the Only Way (New Jersey: Davies-Black, 1997), p. 59. 6. Lee E. Isaacson and Duane Brown, Career Information, Career Counseling, and Career Development, 6th ed. (Boston: Allyn and Bacon, 1997), p. 499. 7. Ibid. 8. R. L. Gibson and M. H. Mitchell, Introduction to Career Counseling for the 21st Century (New Jersey: Pearson Prentice Hall, 2006), p. 72.

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9. Ibid., p. 71. 10. D. Super, ‘‘A Life-Span, Life-Space Approach to Career Development,’’ in D. Brown and L. Brooks, eds., Career Choice and Development, 2nd ed. (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2002), pp. 197–261. 11. Gibson and Mitchell, Introduction to Career Counseling, p. 75. 12. D. J. Bem, ‘‘Self-Perception Theory,’’ in L. Berkowitz, ed., Advances in Experimental and Social Psychology, vol. 6 (New York: Academic Press, 1972), pp. 1–62. 13. P. G. Irving and J. P. Meyer, ‘‘On Using Direct Measures of Met Expectations: A Methological Note,’’ Journal of Management 21 (1995): 1159–76. 14. Isaacson and Brown, Career Information, p. 21. 15. Ibid., p. 25. 16. Ibid. 17. Linda Kobylarz, Cal Crow, and Judith Ettinger, America’s Career Resource Network (Virginia: National Training Support Center, 2005), online at www.acrnetwork .org/ncdg/ncdg_what.htm. 18. Ibid. 19. Kaye, Up Is Not the Only Way, p. 2. 20. Ibid., p. 21. 21. Ibid., p. 75. 22. Ibid., p. 107. 23. Ibid., p. 155. 24. Ibid., p. 198. 25. Ibid., p. 9. 26. Ibid., p. 227. 27. Ibid., pp. 227–28. 28. Ibid., p. 14–15. 29. Ibid., p. 39. 30. Katherine Harrington Hayes, Managing Career Transitions, 2nd ed. (New Jersey: Prentice Hall, 2000), pp. 14–16. 31. M. F. Karsten and F. Igou, ‘‘Career Planning: A Model for a Diverse Workforce,’’ Proceedings of the North American Management Society track at the 2005 Midwest Business Administration Association Conference (Illinois: MBAA, 2005), p. 97. 32. V. Bowden, ‘‘The ‘Career States System Model’: A New Approach to Analyzing Careers,’’ British Journal of Guidance and Counseling 25 (1997): 473–90. 33. H. Ibarra, ‘‘How to Stay Stuck in the Wrong Career,’’ Harvard Business Review 80 (2002): 40–47. 34. Ibid. 35. Ibid., pp. 98–99. 36. Bowden, ‘‘The ‘Career States System Model,’ ’’ pp. 473–90. 37. Ibarra, ‘‘How to Stay Stuck in the Wrong Career,’’ pp. 40–47. 38. Karsten and Igou, ‘‘Career Planning,’’ p. 104. 39. Robbins, Organizational Behavior, p. 594. 40. Ibid. 41. Karsten and Igou, ‘‘Career Planning.’’ 42. Z. B. Leibowitz, C. Farren, and B. L. Kaye, Designing Career Development Systems (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1986), p. 4. 43. Isaacson and Brown, Career Information, p. 457.

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44. Ibid. 45. Ibid., p. 21. 46. Jeffrey Pfeffer, Managing with Power (Cambridge, MA: Harvard Business School Press, 1992), p. 288. 47. J. E. Ormond, Human Learning, 3rd ed. (New Jersey: Prentice Hall, 1999). 48. Victor Vroom, Work and Motivation (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1995). 49. Claretha Hughes Banks, ‘‘A Descriptive Analysis of the Perceived Effectiveness of Virginia Tech’s Faculty Development Institute.’’ PhD diss., Virginia Tech, 2002. 50. L. W. Porter and E. E. Lawler, Managerial Attitudes and Performance (Illinois: Richard D. Irwin, 1968). 51. Banks, ‘‘A Descriptive Analysis.’’ 52. Porter Lawler, Managerial Attitudes and Performance. 53. L. W. Porter and R. M. Steers, ‘‘Organizational, Work, and Personal Factors in Employee Turnover and Absenteeism,’’ Journal of Management 80 (1973): 151–76. 54. Ibid. 55. Banks, ‘‘A Descriptive Analysis.’’ 56. Ibid. 57. Ibid. 58. P. G. Irving and J. P. Meyer, ‘‘On Using Direct Measures of Met Expectations: A Methological Note,’’ Journal of Management 21 (1995): 1159–76. 59. Ibid. 60. Ibid. 61. S. Jackson and A. Joshi, Research on Domestic and International Diversity in Organizations: A Merger that Works, Handbook of Industrial, Work and Organizational Psychology (California: Sage, 2001) vol. 2, pp. 206–31. 62. Pfeffer, Managing with Power, p. 318. 63. Ibid., p. 38. 64. Ibid., p. 49. 65. Banks, ‘‘A Descriptive Analysis.’’ 66. W. F. Cascio, Applied Psychology in Human Resource Management, 5th ed. (New Jersey: Prentice Hall, 1998). 67. Banks, ‘‘A Descriptive Analysis.’’ 68. Cascio, Applied Psychology in Human Resource Management. 69. Pfeffer, Managing with Power, p. 338. 70. Ibid., p. 300. 71. J. W. Moran and B. K. Brightman, ‘‘Leading Organizational Change,’’ Journal of Workplace Learning: Employee Counseling Today 12 (2000): 66–74.

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Gender, Race, and Role Model Status: Exploring the Impact of Informal Developmental Relationships on Management Careers Audrey J. Murrell and Thomas J. Zagenczyk Changes in the employer–employee relationship, organizational structure, and diversity of the workforce have had a major impact on today’s work environment. The dynamic nature of today’s organizations often means that individuals must be more actively involved in managing their careers than was necessary years ago.1 Recognizing the importance of these changing career dynamics, much research has focused on the increasing need for employees to form their own networks of informal developmental relationships rather than relying solely on formal relationships (e.g., supervisors) provided by the organization to support and advance their careers.2 A variety of informal developmental relationships can significantly influence the outcomes of management careers. For example, peer networks play an important role in shaping career interests, career choice, job seeking, socialization, and career mobility as well as work-related attitudes.3 Formal organizationsponsored networks, often called employee affinity groups, are powerful tools for employee recruitment, socialization, and retention.4 Most recently, research has revealed that peer networks are a vital resource for career mobility and enhancement for women and people of color within organizations.5 The range of different developmental relationships that can be beneficial to one’s career is extensive. Influential work by Kathy Kram outlines a number of mentoring or developmental functions that apply to both formal and informal relationships.6 The work of Kram and her colleagues explains that developmental relationships shaping one’s career are diverse in both form and function. Thus it is vital that we not treat all types of informal (as well as formal) developmental relationships in the same manner; instead, we should focus on the unique set of features associated with a particular type and function. Based on this fundamental assumption, we explore the impact of one aspect of informal mentoring relationships on the outcomes of management careers: role models.

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In addition to the changing relationship between employees and the firm, the overall composition of the workforce continues to change substantially. Although women and people of color have made some advancement in organizations, both groups are still underrepresented in senior management positions and executive levels within most companies, regardless of size, industry, structure, or geographic location.7 When examining the impact of role models as informal developmental relationships, considering the specific context in which these relationships form and develop is necessary. Work on concepts such as distinctiveness, tokenism, and power dynamics in organizations reveals that factors such as gender and race provide the context surrounding interactions between individuals within the workplace that produce either favorable or unfavorable outcomes. Though a wide variety of research examines the impact of role models, this work often omits any discussion of their importance within an organizational context for people who traditionally have been left out of the formal structure and process. Thus we examine the importance of role models for career outcomes and also look at the similarities and differences based on race and gender in the identification and impact of informal role models within organizations.

MENTORING AND THE FUNCTION OF ROLE MODELS Mentoring is a process that assists employees in their career development and advancement that has gained considerable attention from organizations and management research over the past three decades.8 Although much of this previous work concentrated on the impact of formal mentoring relationships between a senior mentor and a junior prote´ge´, much recent work has examined the importance of peers as well as informal developmental relationships in shaping management careers. This is consistent with the original idea developed by Kram of ‘‘relationship constellations’’ reflecting the range of people who are important to support an individual’s career development and success.9 Within this classic perspective, primary mentoring relationships have been the focus. Kram’s original distinction between career and psychosocial functions also has been central to this traditional approach.10 This work helped us unpack the complexity of a single mentor–prote´ge´ relationship to better understand the different types of mentoring functions, such as sponsorship, protection, exposure/visibility, coaching, counseling, acceptance, and role modeling. From a developmental perspective, mentoring also takes into account the various forms of these relationships, such as the number of mentors an individual has and the level or status of the mentor in relation to the prote´ge´. These factors can affect the dynamic nature of the developmental relationship across the various phases of the mentoring (i.e., initiation, cultivation, separation, redefinition).

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Regardless of whether one considers mentoring relationships that are primary or secondary, single or multiple, hierarchical or peer, the importance of the function served by the relationship must be defined and examined. As Higgins and Kram argue, ‘‘the provision of developmental assistance defines the boundaries of the developmental network construct.’’11 Thus diverse mentoring networks provide an important vantage point from which to view the range of career and psychosocial assistance necessary to guide individuals throughout their professional and personal development.

RACE, GENDER, AND MENTORING RELATIONSHIPS Mentoring relationships have been noted as particularly important for women and people of color in organizations. For example, research by the Catalyst organization finds that women who have broken through to high-level positions usually credit mentors with their success, whereas those still struggling to advance cite lack of access to mentors as a key barrier.12 Thomas tracked the careers of African American managers who were successful in reaching the executive levels of their organizations. His work clearly highlights the importance of mentoring and sponsorship early in one’s career. However, his data also showed that although sponsorship from senior-level managers is important, a network of developmental relationships that served both career and psychosocial functions is essential for long-term success. Studies have consistently shown that those who have mentors have higher salaries, achieve higher level positions in organizations, are more satisfied at work, and have lower turnover rates than those without mentors.13 Not only does the presence of a mentor matter, but the race and gender of the mentor is also important. Mentoring research shows that women and minorities who have white male sponsors generally are promoted more quickly and earn higher salaries than those with minority and female mentors.14 A study of graduates from top MBA programs also found that mentoring helped explain the differences in career outcomes between those with and without access to these developmental relationships. In addition, the presence of mentoring helped account for the persistent gap in pay based on race and gender found among managers across various types of firms.15 Recent work in this area examines the interaction of gender and race in mentoring relationships.16 Ragins’s work on ‘‘diversified mentoring relationships’’ explains why issues of race and gender are important to the outcomes of development relationships.17 Mentors and prote´ge´s in diverse mentoring relationships have different group memberships (e.g., gender or race) that are related to power differences in organizations. Mentoring relationships do not occur independently of context, but are influenced by macro-dynamics of power relationships between groups embedded within organizations. The influence of each party in the

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mentor–prote´ge´ dyad is affected by the individual’s group membership and the group’s access to key organizational resources. Consistent with the logic of Ragins’s work, social networks research also explains why groups have differential access to resources and power within organizations. A social network is defined as a specific set of relations among a defined set of people. Social networks analysis is based on the premise that the pattern of interpersonal relationships explains attitudinal and behavioral outcomes better than individual characteristics alone. For example, Brass investigated the interaction patterns of women and men to explain why women have not acquired status and influence similar to men in organizations. He found that how central a person is within the organization’s informal network was significantly related to the influence that he or she had in the organization, and that women were generally less central than men.18 Although women were aware of the importance of social networks and developed networks of their own, they still were not well integrated into the informal networks (particularly those of leaders and managers) and thus did not receive promotions at the same rate as men. Social networks research has revealed that an individual’s race has similar effects on his or her position in a social network.19 The concept of distinctiveness offers another way to understand why gender and race will affect the pattern and nature of informal social networks. People identify with others who share similar characteristics that are relatively rare in the specific environment. Based on this concept, women are more likely to identify with other women, African Americans with other African Americans, and white males with other white males. Mehra and colleagues found that the drive for distinctiveness resulted in white males being highly central in organizational networks because of their greater numbers. Minorities and women, on the other hand, tended to be marginalized.20 Ibarra found a similar pattern in her comparison of minority and white managers’ networks. ‘‘High-potential’’ minority managers had more cross-race ties than did average-potential minority managers and thus were more central within the informal network inside the organization.21 Burt’s work on social networks is also quite relevant to our discussion.22 He argued that women are unable to duplicate men’s networks because they lack legitimacy in the organization. To be successful, women need to effectively borrow the social network of a male sponsor who is influential in the organization. This borrowing of social power makes other organizational members believe that the individual with whom they are dealing is legitimate because that person is being treated as a source of organizational power by proxy. Burt’s research found that women who borrowed male managers’ social networks were promoted more quickly than women who attempted to develop their own networks. Borrowing the social capital of an influential white male sponsor was also an effective strategy for African Americans who broke through to senior levels within organizations, according to Thomas.23 Thus, research on mentoring, social networks, and distinctiveness suggests that developmental relationships may be sources of power and legitimacy (or

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a signal for a lack thereof) for those typically less central in informal organizational networks. Without this support, these individuals may be marginalized within the organization, experience fewer (or slower) promotions, and be seen as lacking leadership potential. Because people tend to use stereotypes in judgments about knowledge, expertise, and competence, the member of a work group who knows or is expected to know more about a particular domain is typically assigned responsibility for it.24 Clearly, issues of power, expertise, and legitimacy are both defined and understood by the social context in which they are formed. It is reasonable to expect that fundamental beliefs and biases surrounding race and gender also influence these definitions. Thus if people wish to advance within organizations or be perceived as having power, status, or legitimacy, they should seek role models who not only share some similar attributes but also can be a signal to others of the employees’ own level of competence, knowledge, or status (i.e., borrowing social capital). In other words, for women and people of color in organizations, developmental networks may be important not only to provide models of and information about career and organizational success but also to share power, legitimacy, and social capital necessary to make that success a reality.

THE IMPORTANCE OF ROLE MODELS Among key developmental relationships is the connection between an individual and any person he or she designates as a role model. Gibson defines a role model as ‘‘person(s) an individual perceives to be similar . . . [to himself or herself] to some extent, and because of that similarity the individual desires to emulate (or specifically avoid) aspects of that person’s attributes or behaviors.’’25 This definition implies that role models can serve three main functions to individuals: motivation, self-definition, and learning. Gibson draws on role identification and social learning theories to explain the function of role models.26 The motivation and self-definition component of role models draws on role identification theories. They propose that people are attracted to others who they believe are similar to themselves in terms of attitudes, behavior, goals, or status position, and are motivated to make themselves similar to those others through observation and learning.27 The idea of learning draws on social learning theories, which suggest that people pay attention to models because they may be useful in learning new tasks, skills, or norms.28 In their research, psychologists and organizational scholars contend that having role models is important to an individual’s growth and development because of the various functions provided by these figures. Role models expand our traditional understanding of developmental relationships in several respects. First, role models are informally selected by organizational members themselves rather than formally assigned by the

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organization. Second, a role model–employee relationship does not necessarily require direct interaction, although it may occur. Because individuals can observe role models without actually interacting with them, relationships with role models may be low-cost compared to those with formal mentors, as no reciprocity is expected or required. Individuals also can benefit by observing different role models who have different skills and styles while expending less time and effort.29 Finally, traditional definitions specify that a mentor is older and hierarchically superior to the prote´ge´.30 A role model, however, may be anyone in an organization regardless of hierarchical position. Because role models afford flexibility, efficiency, and access to a wider array of individuals with diverse skill sets, maintenance of role model relationships may give employees an important source of informal developmental relationships within a dynamic career environment. Indeed, flexibility and choices are valuable given that an employee’s career success may depend on the availability of diverse role models.31 Despite this range of benefits, few organizational studies have examined the impact of diversity on those individuals selected to be role models. This question is important because the very definition of role models involves a status that is socially constructed or based on subjective judgments of knowledge, expertise, and competence. For example, in one study of Canadian managers, researchers showed that managers’ perceived effectiveness was positively associated with being considered a role model by subordinates.32 Investigating consulting and law firm employees, Gibson and Cordova found that employees selected role models based on technical expertise, leadership ability, organizational and financial success, ability to balance personal and professional life, interpersonal skills, and personal traits and values.33 Similarly, Zagenczyk and colleagues found that leadership positions, advice-giving, performance rewards, and tenure were positively associated with being perceived as a role model by others.34 Previous work has shown that role models are frequently selected as representations of an individual’s ideal self.35 Individuals perceived as highly effective and successful are often selected as role models. Thus to help shape their own career and organizational goals, employees who aspire to organizational success will look to those who hold leadership positions, are perceived to have expertise, or who have been honored with performance-related awards or some other formal recognition. In addition, individuals with desirable organizational positions or resources are frequently chosen as role models. Role models differ in terms of whether they are positive or negative; whether they are above, below, or equal to the observer within the organizational structure; and whether they are close or distant to the observer in terms of strength of relationship.36 Positive role models have attributes or achievements that others wish to emulate. On the other hand, negative role models have undesirable attributes and are used by employees as an example of what not to do. Upward role models have higher-level positions in the organizational

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hierarchy, whereas downward role models have lower-level positions. Finally, close role models are those with whom an employee interacts frequently or maintains close ties, whereas no interaction or direct relationship occurs between a distant role model and an observer. Distant role models are monitored vicariously by those who observe them. Thus, role models can be distinguished based on valence (positive, negative), status (upward, downward) or closeness (close, distant) to the individual. Besides Gibson’s initial investigation from which he derived these dimensions37 and experimental work by Lockwood and colleagues38 on positive and negative role models, little research has investigated the various dimensions of role models. In addition, few studies consider race and gender along with the status of the role model in the organizational context. In fact, most research on the effects of role models examines merely the presence versus absence of role models on career choice or on how hypothetical role models affect an individual’s motivation within an experimental context.39 This limited view of role models may underestimate their importance for shaping management careers, particularly for women and people of color within organizations. Employees form a connection or identify with the firm when they define themselves at least partly in terms of what it values or represents.40 Role models are a useful way of transferring information about an organization’s values and norms to its employees.41 In addition, organizational leaders recognize that their observable behavior is a strong signal of what the organization stands for in terms of its embedded culture.42 Thus, because they provide information to an employee concerning the values and culture of the organization and help employees define themselves, having a diverse array of role models should be critical for the success of individuals attempting to better understand and navigate the organization and build informal developmental relationships. Clearly role models serve as important social referents for other employees, and in the case of close relationships, they may dispense advice that can be particularly valuable to employees. Last, as a social referent, they may drive not only aspirations but also the performance of individuals who use role models as a personal benchmark for their own career progress and outcomes.

ROLE MODELS: EXPLORING THE IMPACT OF GENDER AND RACE A small number of studies has focused on attributes of role models in organizations, but even fewer empirical studies have focused on how either gender or race influences whether an individual is perceived to be a role model and the attributes that drive this identification. One exception is provided by Javidan and colleagues,43 who included gender in their study of managers, but found that it did not predict (explaining only 1 percent of the variance) whether an employee considered his or her manager to be a role model. The study only examined the impact of gender in the context of the supervisor–subordinate

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relationship; it did not include any dimension of race or ethnicity. In addition, because the women in this study had already achieved formal recognition within the organization (i.e., supervisor) as part of being included as a role model, this study does not really speak to the issue of how role models are identified within informal relationships among peers within the same organization. More recent research examines co-worker relationships.44 Interestingly, the selection and perception of role models was very consistent with gender-based stereotypes. Female role models were more likely to be described as balancing work and personal life, being hard workers, and having a positive attitude and less likely to be described as organizationally effective, or as leaders, teachers, managers, or coaches than men were. In addition women selected the same number of female role models regardless of the proportion of females within the organization. Thus, even when more female role models were available, women did not seem to identify them as role models. Perhaps female employees may not be viewed as influential because the specific context does not identify women as having power, status, or expertise within the organization. This leaves open the important question of whether the gendered nature of organizations may serve to either prevent women from being identified as role models or place on them a different (and perhaps higher) set of criteria to be perceived as a role model by both men and women. The same logic could be applied to the effect of race and role model status. However, so far, research has failed to examine either of these critical issues. The effect of gender and race on role model status within informal developmental relationships is clearly affected by the representation of women and people of color within organizations. Within the existing literature on diversity in organizations, notions of leadership, expertise, success, and status are viewed as social constructs influenced by the skewed nature (in terms of gender and race) of the portion of individuals occupying formal and informal leadership roles. Because of their relatively scant representation in managerial ranks, women and people of color are often underrepresented within leadership or other positions of influence. Kanter’s classic discussion of organizational tokens as individuals belonging to a numerical minority describes the workplace in which people of color and women reside and must navigate.45 Several conditions accompany being a token: high visibility, high risk, low tolerance for mistakes, and hyperrepresentation. Tokens’ distinctiveness makes them stand out in ways that can be detrimental to building interpersonal relationships and being selected as role models. Interacting with highly visible tokens is risky; if a mistake is made, everyone will see that error because everyone is already looking. This is particularly true in the case of close (versus distant) role models. Because any mistake made is so public, tokens also face far more severe penalties if they make an error. Finally, the success or failure of tokens is not attributed just to their own merit; in success and, more important, failure, they are seen as representing their whole demographic group (e.g., women, African Americans).

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Thus, although token status increases the visibility of women and people of color in organizations, it may discourage others from choosing them as role models. For close, informal peer relationships, each condition just described can hamper the creation of effective developmental relationships. Although the dynamics of tokenism have been studied in a variety of situations, their application to the identification and selection of role models across gender and race is a wide open area for future research exploration. In addition to the effects of numerical representation on role model status, the overall subjective nature of how success, expertise, and leadership competence are defined within an organization’s culture should significantly affect the attributes and criteria used for identifying women or people of color as role models. This conclusion points to a need to better understand how expert status is conveyed within an organization’s culture and how perceptions of expertise are affected by gender and race. This is a critical issue because to the extent that employees wish to be successful in their organization, they will look to those who are perceived as being successful and who have achieved either formal or informal recognition as experts. A more complete understanding of the relationship between judgments of expertise within organizations would contribute significantly to clarification of the effects of race and gender on informal role models within organizations. Some work on transactive memory finds early support for this line of reasoning. Transactive memory systems occur when individuals’ memory becomes involved in larger, organized social systems that have knowledge that is not traceable to individuals.46 For example, research by Hollingshead shows a strong gender bias in the assignment of knowledge expertise among peers. She notes, ‘‘people who are interdependent often develop an implicit plan for learning new information based on their shared conception of another’s expertise.’’47 Transactive memory, along with judgments of expertise, develops naturally in relationships, particularly informal ones. It is no surprise that existing stereotypes should affect how people make judgments about relative knowledge and how they assign labels (e.g., expert or role model) to particular individuals. We need to understand more about how race and gender impact social judgments of expertise within organizations. This will help increase our understanding of when and how women and people of color are identified and nurtured as experts within informal role model relationships. Some might argue that perceptions of expertise are really about organizational legitimacy and the pattern of relationships that helps establish and support it. Social networks and mentoring research show that women and people of color often have difficulty gaining legitimacy in organizations. Recent research on gender and role model status by Murrell and colleagues found that females who were identified as a source of advice by peers were considered to be role models, whereas females who received advice from their co-workers were not. Perhaps females must share their expertise to validate themselves as role models, but to avoid being affected by negative cues that can detract from their

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legitimacy, they must request advice from others infrequently. Females seeking job-related information or advice may not be considered role models because such requests detract from their organizational legitimacy (i.e., those who ask clearly lack the necessary knowledge). On the other hand, Murrell’s research revealed that frequently requesting advice did not affect employees’ beliefs that a male was a role model. Thus it seems that behaviors such as advice-seeking may reduce legitimacy for women (and perhaps also people of color) in their peers’ eyes. This suggests the need to identify a set of distinctive behavioral cues that determine organizational legitimacy and thus make it more or less likely that an individual will be afforded role model status in a manner that is affected by gender and race. Perhaps the cues for legitimacy differ based on race and gender. Identifying how legitimating behaviors are viewed differently based on gender and race would help provide concrete strategies for reducing the bias in the subjective nature of organizational legitimacy and role model status. Last, although issues such as expertise and legitimacy may play an important part in informal role model relationships, the strength of these relationships is critical in helping explain the impact on management careers. Though the reasons for conferring role model status matter, the strength of the relationship is also an important determining factor. Relationships that can be described as strong ties are often reciprocal and characterized by frequent contact and strong levels of identification.48 Previous work has clearly shown that strength of ties affect a range of attitudinal and behavioral outcomes.49 Murrell and Zagenczyk found that the number and strength of advice and friendship ties a female employee maintained was significantly and positively associated with her being perceived as a role model. However, only the number of advice and friendship ties maintained, not the strength of these ties, was significantly related to a male being considered a role model.50 Thomas reported similar findings in his work on African Americans and career mobility.51 These results suggest that to be considered a role model, strength of ties matters more for women and people of color, particularly in terms of their relationships with their coworkers. Though speculative at this point, exploring the effect of tie strength on role model relationships that differ based on race and gender is an important area for future research. Perhaps strong ties help reduce some of the biased or stereotyped judgments that might affect how women and people of color are evaluated within these informal relationships. In addition, establishing legitimacy and expert status may be a function of both the strength of one’s relationships and the type of network involved (e.g., friendship, advice). Although it might be difficult for women and people of color to be included within interpersonal networks (e.g., friendship networks), they may gain access to information networks because their knowledge can be useful to those within the network. These are important questions that require further exploration.

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SOME CONCLUDING THOUGHTS Though much research has explored the power of developmental relationships within organizations, many questions remain. For women or people of color to be identified as role models, what attributes are key? What are the benefits versus the costs of asking for as opposed to providing advice within the organization in terms of being seen as a role model? How important are formal organizational cues such as titles and leadership positions for women and people of color in being perceived as role models? Is it enough for women and people of color to be connected with high-status or powerful individuals as role models, or does the strength of these informal relationships matter for career success? Understanding the identification, cultivation, and impact of informal role models provides a number of important and interesting questions, only some of which are explored here. The argument is made that for women and people of color, role models may provide an invaluable source of support, knowledge, and legitimacy that has been overlooked by the previous work on mentoring and diversity in organizations. Being seen as a role model is also an important signal of organizational values and culture and is affected by the lack of representation of women and minorities in leadership roles and the persistent stereotypes of what it means to be a knowledge expert in today’s organization. This review argues that having access to and being seen as a role model are both important for the management careers of women and people of color and that these issues warrant further research attention. We see work on mentoring, social networks, organizational learning, and transactive memory as key areas to help shape the answers to many of these crucial questions. In addition, such answers may have major implications for individual careers and organizational effectiveness. This is important because role models are expected to be primary sources of learning for the individual and the organization. As the nature of organizations and management careers continues to change and become more complex, the need to expand and cultivate formal and informal systems of knowledge and continuous learning also increases. One important source of knowledge that has gained recent attention involves learning about the context of work called relational job learning.52 This type of knowledge relies on understanding that extends beyond the technical aspects of work to the interdependence of one’s job to systems and to other people. Clearly, developmental relationships can be invaluable tools that facilitate relational job learning. We see role models that can cut across traditional boundaries of race and gender as an untapped resource for innovative relational job learning. Although the effective use of role models is not a panacea, it deserves more attention due to its potential to unlock important aspects of organizational learning and shape the unrealized potential of management careers for women and people of color.

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NOTES 1. Michael B. Arthur and Denise M. Rousseau, The Boundaryless Career (New York: Oxford University press, 1996). 2. Monica C. Higgins and Kathy E. Kram, ‘‘Reconceptualizing Mentoring at Work: A Developmental Network Perspective,’’ Academy of Management Review 26 (2001): 264–98. 3. Scott E. Seibert, Maria L. Kraimer, and Robert C. Liden, ‘‘A Social Capital Theory of Career Success,’’ Academy of Management Journal 44 (2001): 219–37. 4. Ray Friedman, Melinda Kane, and Daniel B. Cornfield, ‘‘Social Support and Career Optimism: Examining the Effectiveness of Network Groups among Black Managers,’’ Human Relations 51 (1998): 1155–77. 5. Herminia Ibarra, ‘‘Personal Networks of Women and Minorities in Management: A Conceptual Framework,’’ Academy of Management Review 18 (1993): 56–87. 6. Kathy Kram and Douglas T. Hall, ‘‘Mentoring in a Context of Diversity and Turbulence,’’ in Ellen Kossek and Sharon Lobel, eds., Managing Diversity: Human Resource Strategies for Transforming the Workplace (Cambridge, MA: Blackwell, 1996). 7. Lotte Bailyn, Breaking the Mold: Women, Men and Time in the New Corporate World (New York: Free Press, 1993); Sharon M. Collins, ‘‘The Marginalization of Black Executives,’’ Social Problems 36 (1989): 317–31. 8. Higgins and Kram, ‘‘Reconceptualizing Mentoring at Work,’’ pp. 264–98. 9. David A. Thomas, ‘‘Racial Dynamics in Cross-Race Developmental Relationships,’’ Administrative Science Quarterly 38 (1993): 169–94. 10. Kathy E. Kram, ‘‘Phases of the Mentoring Relationship.’’ Academy of Management Journal 26 (1983): 608–25. 11. Higgins and Kram, ‘‘Reconceptualizing Mentoring at Work.’’ 12. Catalyst, Women of Color Executives: Their Voices, Their Journeys (New York: Catalyst, 2001). 13. Ellen A. Fagenson, ‘‘The Mentor Advantage: Perceived Career/Job Experiences of Prote´ge´s versus Non-Prote´ge´s,’’ Journal of Organizational Behavior 10 (1989): 309–20. 14. George F. Dreher and J. A. Chargois, ‘‘Gender, Mentoring Experiences and Salary Attainment among Graduates of an Historically Black University,’’ Journal of Vocational Behavior 53 (1998): 501–16; George F. Dreher and Taylor H. Cox, ‘‘Race, Gender, and Opportunity: A Study of Compensation Attainment and the Establishment of Mentoring Relationships,’’ Journal of Applied Psychology 81 (1996): 297–308; Katherine Giscombe, Stacy Blake-Beard, Audrey J. Murrell, and Faye J. Crosby, ‘‘Race, Gender and Mentoring: A Study of African-American Women in the Corporate Sector,’’ unpublished manuscript. 15. Dreher and Cox, ‘‘Race, Gender, and Opportunity.’’ 16. Giscombe et al., ‘‘Race, Gender and Mentoring.’’ 17. Belle R. Ragins, ‘‘Diversified Mentoring Relationships in Organizations: A Power Perspective,’’ Academy of Management Journal 22 (1997): 482–521. 18. Daniel J. Brass, ‘‘Men’s and Women’s Networks: A Study of Interaction Patterns and Influence in an Organization,’’ Academy of Management Journal 28 (1994): 327–43. 19. Reed E. Nelson, ‘‘The Strength of Strong Ties: Social Networks and Intergroup Conflict in Organizations,’’ Academy of Management Journal 32 (1989): 377–401.

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20. Ajay Mehra, Martin Kilduff, and Daniel J. Brass, ‘‘At the Margins: A Distinctiveness Approach to the Social Identity and Social Networks of Underrepresented Groups,’’ Academy of Management Journal 41 (1998): 441–52. 21. Herminia Ibarra, ‘‘Race, Opportunity, and Diversity of Social Circles in Managerial Networks,’’ Academy of Management Journal 38 (1995): 673–703. 22. Ronald Burt, ‘‘The Gender of Social Capital,’’ Rationality and Society 10 (1998): 5–46. 23. David A. Thomas and John J. Gabarro, Breaking Through: The Making of Minority Executives in Corporate America (Boston: Harvard Business School Press, 1999). 24. David M. Wegner, ‘‘Transactive Memory: A Contemporary Analysis of the Group Mind,’’ in Brian Mullen and George R. Goethals, eds., Theories of Group Behavior (New York: Springer-Verlag, 1987), pp. 185–208. 25. Donald E. Gibson, ‘‘Developing the Professional Self-Concept: Role Model Construals in Early, Middle, and Late Career Stages,’’ Organization Science 14 (2003): 591–610; quote on p. 592. 26. Donald E. Gibson, ‘‘Role Models in Career Development: New Directions for Theory and Research,’’ Journal of Vocational Behavior 65 (2004): 134–56. 27. Lawrence Kohlberg, ‘‘Moral Development and Identification,’’ in Harold W. Stevenson, ed., Child Psychology: The Sixty-Second Yearbook of the National Society for the Study of Education (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1963), pp. 277–332. 28. Albert Bandura, Social Foundations of Thought and Action (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1986). 29. Herminia Ibarra, ‘‘Provisional Selves: Experimenting with Image and Identity in Professional Adaptation,’’ Administrative Science Quarterly 44 (1999): 764–91. 30. Ragins, ‘‘Diversified Mentoring Relationships in Organizations.’’ 31. Gibson, ‘‘Role Models in Career Development.’’ 32. Monsour Javidan, Brian Bemmels, Kay Stratton-Devine, and Ali Dastmalchian, ‘‘Superior and Subordinate Gender and the Acceptance of Superiors as Role Models,’’ Human Relations 48 (1995): 1271–84. 33. Donald E. Gibson and Diane I. Cordova, ‘‘Women’s and Men’s Role Models: The Importance of Exemplars,’’ in Audrey J. Murrell, Faye J. Crosby, and Robin J. Ely, eds., Mentoring Dilemmas: Developmental Relationships within Multicultural Organizations (Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 1999), pp. 121–42. 34. Thomas J. Zagenczyk, Audrey J. Murrell, Tanvi Guatam, and Mike Ptaszenski, ‘‘Following the Muse: Role Models, Their Social Networks and Impact on Employees’ Work-Related Attitudes,’’ Midwest Academy of Management Conference Proceedings (2005). 35. Ibarra, ‘‘Provisional Selves.’’ 36. Penelope Lockwood, Christian H. Jordan, and Ziva Kunda, ‘‘Motivation by Positive or Negative Role Models: Regulatory Focus Determines Who Will Inspire Us,’’ Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 83 (2002): 854–64. 37. Gibson, ‘‘Developing the Professional Self-Concept.’’ 38. Lockwood et al., ‘‘Motivation by Positive or Negative Role Models’’; Penelope Lockwood and Ziva Kunda, ‘‘Superstars and Me: Predicting the Impact of Role Models on the Self,’’ Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 73 (1997): 91–103; Penelope Lockwood and Ziva Kunda, ‘‘Increasing the Salience of One’s Best Selves Can

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Undermine Inspiration by Outstanding Role Models,’’ Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 76 (1999): 214–28. 39. Lockwood and Kunda, ‘‘Increasing the Salience of One’s Best Selves.’’ 40. Glen E. Kreiner and Blake E. Ashforth, ‘‘Evidence towards an Expanded Model of Organizational Identification,’’ Journal of Organizational Behavior 25 (2004): 1–27. 41. Cheri Ostroff and Steve W. J. Kozlowski, ‘‘Organizational Socialization as a Learning Process: The Role of Information Acquisition,’’ Personnel Psychology 45 (1992): 849–74. 42. Edgar H. Schein, Career Dynamics: Matching Individual and Organizational Needs (Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley, 1978). 43. Javidan et al., ‘‘Superior and Subordinate Gender.’’ 44. Gibson and Cordova, ‘‘Women’s and Men’s Role Models.’’ 45. Rosabeth M. Kanter, ‘‘Some Effects of Proportion on Group Life: Skewed Sex Ratios and Responses to Token Women,’’ American Journal of Sociology 82 (1977): 965–90. 46. Wegner, ‘‘Transactive Memory.’’ 47. Andrea B. Hollingshead and Samuel N. Fraidin, ‘‘Gender Stereotypes and Assumptions about Expertise in Transactive Memory,’’ Journal of Experimental Social Psychology 39 (2003): 355–63. 48. Mark Granovetter, ‘‘The Strength of Weak Ties,’’ American Journal of Sociology 78 (1973): 1360–80. 49. Mark Granovetter, ‘‘The Strength of Weak Ties: A Network Theory Revisited,’’ in Peter V. Marsden and Nan Lin, eds., Social Structure and Network Analysis (Beverly Hills, CA: Sage, 1982), pp. 105–30; Nelson, ‘‘The Strength of Strong Ties.’’ 50. Audrey J. Murrell and Thomas J. Zagenczyk, ‘‘The Gendered Nature of Role Model Status: An Empirical Study,’’ unpublished manuscript, University of Pittsburgh. 51. Thomas and Gabarro, Breaking Through. 52. Melenie J. Lankau and Terri A. Scandura, ‘‘An Investigation of Personal Learning in Mentoring Relationships: Content, Antecedents and Consequences,’’ Academy of Management Journal 45 (2002): 779–90.

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Alternative Approaches to Mentoring in the New Millennium Suzanne C. de Janasz

Few would argue the value of mentoring in the development of one’s career. Experts agree that individuals with mentors earn higher salaries, have higher job satisfaction, get more promotions, and have greater organizational commitment.1 In addition, prote´ge´s gain confidence and self-awareness through these developmental relationships (and friendships), learn increasingly valuable interpersonal skills by observing a more experienced individual in practice, and expand associations in related networks.2 All individuals, especially women and minorities, miss an important career developmental experience if they do not have a mentor.3 Implementing formalized mentoring programs benefits organizations as well by facilitating the socialization process and hastening the acculturation of junior members of the organization.4 In fact, 60 percent of the Fortune 100 Best U.S. Companies to Work For have formal mentor programs.5 Traditionally, mentoring has been described as a long-term, intense developmental relationship where a mentor—generally a higher-ranking employee with advanced organizational (or industry) experience and knowledge—shapes a prote´ge´’s career by providing advice, coaching, and career opportunities to him or her.6 More specifically, mentors provide prote´ge´s with two types of support. Career development support is provided when a mentor attempts to enhance a prote´ge´’s career advancement through sponsorship, exposure and visibility, coaching, protection, challenging assignments, and career strategizing. Psychosocial support enhances the prote´ge´’s sense of competency, identity, and effectiveness in a professional role; this is done when a mentor provides role modeling, acceptance and confirmation, counseling, friendship and support, and personal feedback.7 The amount and mix of support varies according to the prote´ge´’s needs and mentor’s abilities. Mirroring recent changes in the contemporary environment, mentoring has transformed into diverse relationships that often extend beyond traditional organizational, geographical, and functional boundaries.8 This chapter discusses

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several trends necessitating new forms of mentoring and explains how these alternate forms facilitate career development for prote´ge´s and mentors alike.

TRENDS NECESSITATING ALTERNATE FORMS OF MENTORING BOUNDARYLESS CAREERS The career, once synonymous with a well-defined ladder and advancement in one or two paternalistic organizations, has become boundaryless, with individuals changing jobs an average of every four and a half years.9 One explanation for this shift is changes in the organization’s psychological contract with employees.10 Whereas decades ago most employees could expect to remain with a firm from the start of their professional career through retirement, competitive and global pressures have undermined this implied loyalty. As the business landscape evolves, organizations wishing to remain viable businesses also must change. Accompanying the trend toward free agency among employees and organizations has been a shift of employees’ allegiance—from their organizations to their industry or profession—and career approach. The new protean careerists,11 like the Greek god Proteus they were named after, reshape themselves, repackaging and remarketing their abilities and skills, to find new jobs, challenges, and learning experiences across organizational and occupational boundaries.12 Others following protean strategies do so for more utilitarian reasons: to maintain their standard of living. In either case, each time employees relocate they must learn new organizational rules, procedures, and politics while simultaneously mastering the technical aspects of the job.13 To effectively assimilate new skills and environments and navigate the boundaryless career landscape,14 individuals must consider relying not only on one mentor but on multiple, diverse individuals.15 A variety of mentors—also known as a developmental network16— can provide different perspectives, knowledge, and skills while serving different mentoring functions, such as providing emotional support or protection from political enemies, in a way perhaps no one individual can. In the same way firms are using organizational networks to facilitate increased knowledge for a competitive advantage,17 individuals can—and should—use mentor networks to facilitate access to the knowledge and experiences of others for a competitive career advantage. Although relationships within this developmental network may not be as intense as the traditional oneon-one master–apprentice model,18 a developmental or mentor network can become an important conduit by which individuals increase their social capital, work performance, and career success. More than ever, mentors are needed to help prote´ge´s navigate the less secure waters of today’s careers, learn specific skills, and establish connections with influential decision makers. In tandem with the shift toward the boundaryless career is the transfer in accountability for one’s career from the organization to oneself.19 When both parties anticipated a long-term association, actively guiding employees’ careers

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was an expected, practical role for managers, who sent direct reports on important developmental assignments or recommended participation in professional conferences or training programs. Without this paternalistic approach, employees are on their own to determine and pursue developmental opportunities through relationships and connections with superiors, peers, and those external to the organization. People as a Source of Knowledge and Social Capital Another trend responsible for the increasing reliance on alternative forms of mentoring is the fact that more organizations are viewing their people—as opposed to their products, services, or assets—as the chief source of sustainable competitive advantage.20 In today’s knowledge economy,21 the people within whom knowledge resides become the firm’s primary assets. Rapid environmental and technological changes render previously valuable skills sets obsolete and require that knowledge continuously change and evolve. As such, it becomes difficult, if not impossible, for individuals—or individual mentors—to possess all the requisite knowledge.22 Individuals need to continually tap many knowledge sources to remain valuable to their organizations.23 Even organizations made up of primarily senior-level, highly educated employees (think tenured faculty!) realize that regardless of education, experience, or career stage, individuals’ need for continuous learning goes on, particularly in turbulent times.24 The most valuable employees are those who use their skills and resources to remain on the cutting edge of what is known and who adapt and are flexible learners.25 Because of the value of sharing knowledge, involvement in productive mentoring relationships clearly would benefit participants and the organization.26 As the competition for highly skilled and dedicated professionals heats up, firms focus more attention on developing their current employees. Companies implementing mentoring programs—in traditional and nontraditional formats, such as group mentoring and e-mentoring—have a leg up in recruiting candidates, particularly in tight labor markets.27 Candidates view such firms as people-oriented places where they can develop valuable job- and career-related knowledge and skills. This is critical as personal competencies reflect different forms of knowledge that can be applied and adapted to the shifting career opportunities in today’s turbulent workplace.28 Helping a prote´ge´ build this diverse set of career competencies amid environmental change and uncertainty requires the services of not one but a diverse set of mentors29 who will expand the prote´ge´’s competencies as well as beliefs about career possibilities.30 Need to Manage a Diverse Workforce The applicability of traditional and nontraditional mentoring programs to corporate diversity initiatives is another trend driving its increased implementation.

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Many companies now offer mentoring programs, which bolster a person’s chance for advancement. All employees are eligible, but many organizations pay special attention to underrepresented groups, such as women and minorities, to help them overcome additional barriers (i.e., individual, interpersonal, and organizational) they face.31 Moreover, these programs assist women and minorities in finding senior managers with whom to enter into developmental relationships.32 This is important because senior-level mentors (primarily men) are more likely to choose a prote´ge´ who is ‘‘a younger version of himself.’’33 Without this assistance, female and minority employees may ignore their desire for a mentor or look outside the organization or industry for one. Companies are finding that offering mentoring programs is an excellent way to boost the performance and advancement rates of minorities and women, as well as build confidence and boost morale. In tandem with changes in organizational and job structures are major changes in the demographic makeup of the global workplace. William Johnston, author of Global Workforce 2000, notes that there are ‘‘massive relocations of people including immigrants, temporary workers, retirees and visitors. The greatest relocations will involve young, well-educated workers flocking to the cities of the developed world.’’34 These immigrants are expected to flock to Japan, Germany, and the United States; in addition, millions of women in industrializing nations are entering the paid workforce.35 In this new, diverse global context, managers must bridge the variety of employee expectations, values, and work habits while simultaneously taking advantage of the diversity this new workforce offers. Changing labor force demographics have altered the work of and created additional challenges for managers, necessitating the development of not just one but a cadre of mentor relationships. In addition, as the number of dual-career and single parents continues to grow, organizations increasingly adopt family-friendly policies and other supportive practices and expect their managers to implement them.36 The changing composition of employees and shifts in the work they do create two reasons to seek mentor guidance: to learn how to deal with employees’ diverse employment expectations and how to balance one’s work and family roles and responsibilities. As these reasons for seeking mentors are fairly recent, at least among certain populations, human resource or other formalized functions may provide only minimal guidance. Current and future organizational leaders would benefit greatly from developing mentor relationships with those who have successfully addressed these challenges to provide valuable knowledge and support. The anticipated mass global worker migration suggests increasingly diverse work populations who face challenges emanating from minority status. However, the limited supply of minorities in high-level positions necessitates prote´ge´s to search for mentors beyond organizational and geographic boundaries. As an added bonus, each new mentor in the prote´ge´’s network—whether cultivated face to face or electronically—provides potential access to an exponentially greater number of individuals with similar or compatible values and characteristics.

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Along with the global mass migration of workers into the North American workforce, we are seeing an employee migration out of companies’ physical locations. Organizations implementing teleworking arrangements—also known as boundaryless work practices37—realize significant gains through reduced real estate expenses, enhanced productivity, increased access to global markets, reduced pollution, and greater ability to attract and retain high-quality workers.38 Ceridian Group reported that 90 percent of firms use boundaryless work arrangements, including telecommuting (i.e., completing all or most of one’s work from a home office), flexible scheduling, and project work.39 Furthermore, the International Telework Association and Council reports that in 1999, nearly 20 million workers telecommuted; that number exceeded 44 million in 2004.40 Given societal concerns about traffic, pollution, and disaster preparedness and the passage of a law that requires federal agencies to enact plans to maximize the number of telecommuters, this trend will continue.41 However, this technology-facilitated working arrangement presents a unique set of challenges to executives and managers whose experience is limited to traditional office environments. Today’s managers are challenged to establish organizational and individual goals, provide performance feedback, and lead culturally and geographically diverse teams and meetings, while simultaneously maintaining a positive work climate and tracking productivity, quality, costs, and adherence to regulations with minimal if any face-to-face interaction.42 These skills were likely not part of managers’ formal education; thus, they would benefit from associating with mentors who have the technological and managerial expertise to succeed in this venue.

ALTERNATIVE FORMS OF MENTORING Multiple Mentors Perhaps the most significant change in mentoring theory and practice is prote´ge´s’ cultivation of simultaneous multiple mentors in their developmental network.43 Effectively responding to the many trends such as those discussed requires an individual to seek advice of not one but multiple mentors.44 These shifting demands make it impossible for one person—or mentor—to possess the requisite skills, knowledge, and experience to excel in the ever-changing workplace. Bill Radiger, president of Karma Media, reflects this view when he says: ‘‘One mentor is not enough. You have to rely on a number of mentors to allow you to see values in action, to develop business acumen and product knowledge. If you do choose to rely on one mentor, that mentor had better know everything, otherwise you will end up with their bad habits along with the good.’’45 A diverse set of mentors—also known as a constellation of developmental relationships46—can provide different perspectives, knowledge, and skills while

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serving different mentoring functions, such as providing emotional support or protection from political enemies, in a way perhaps no one individual can. By cultivating and maintaining a cadre of developers—peers, managers, sponsors, or friends—individuals are using their mentor networks to facilitate access to others’ knowledge and experiences to increase their social capital, work performance, and career success.47 Realistically, the individual mentor relationships within one’s developmental network will vary in strength or intensity (degree of closeness, reciprocity), amount and type of assistance provided (career, psychosocial, role modeling), and duration (project or longer term).48 Some may be as intense as the traditional one-on-one master–apprentice model, and others may take the form of an occasional phone call or lunch. Furthermore, all mentor relationships change over time, and at some point end. As an added benefit, unlike in traditional mentoring relationships, prote´ge´s with multiple mentors can rely on others for career assistance should one relationship in the network become dysfunctional or a mentor becomes unavailable. Peer Mentoring Peer mentoring is a relationship between group members at the same level, wherein both parties acknowledge that they can and do learn from and assist one another with professional development.49 Whereas traditional mentors provide both career and psychosocial support as a means to advance in an organization, peer support has not always been thought of as—or been the focus of much research on50—mentoring. Early research by Kram and Isabella demonstrated that although the nature and amount of support that superiors and peers provide differs, peer assistance encompassed career and psychosocial functions.51 Recent conceptualizing by Kram and others recognizes the need for broader notions of what constitutes (and plays out as) mentoring,52 given the changes in the environment, organizations, and individuals’ careers. Interestingly, many refer to a peer or friend as a mentor only in hindsight, as illustrated by Ed Hartman, director of Technical Services with Avaya Corporation,53 ‘‘Working with Jim, Scott, and Ann on the management team was the best time I had at work. We had fun; we made things happen. Jim retired, Scott took a new job, and Ann moved. With them gone, suddenly I realized that I counted on these people for more than support and fun. . . . I had lost a trusted group of advisors.’’ Many peer relationships develop spontaneously without a specific plan. They occur when a mentor and prote´ge´ find each other, such as when an employee seeks counsel or offers advice based on having learned the ropes in an organization. In their study on the effectiveness of formal mentoring programs, Ragins, Cotton, and Miller note that ‘‘mentors choose prote´ge´s whom they view as younger versions of themselves, and prote´ge´s select mentors whom they view as role models.’’54 Because they share commonalities—similar position,

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professional experience, values, or aspirations—those involved in a peer relationship develop trust and disclose more deeply and more quickly than in a traditional mentoring relationship. For example, a prote´ge´ with a more senior mentor may be so concerned with ensuring a positive impression with the higherups that she glosses over weaknesses or mistakes that if shared, could form the basis of a valuable learning experience. With trust, which is developed more quickly in peer relationships, prote´ge´s are more likely to assume the risk inherent in sharing ‘‘what happened as opposed to the story we all made up about what happened,’’ and thus reap the benefit of their mentor’s advice and support.55 Whereas traditional senior/junior mentoring relationships signify a strategy to aid prote´ge´s’ career advancement, today’s flatter, more participative environments have given rise to peer relationships focused on developing jobrelated skills.56 With fewer managers available or able to mentor nonmanagers, employees are likely to feel a sense of vulnerability or isolation,57 making the need for support—and fear in admitting that need to one’s manager—even greater. Moreover, because employees’ loyalty to the profession increasingly exceeds their loyalty to the firm,58 managers’ motivation to fulfill company succession objectives by mentoring employees ‘‘on deck’’ is reduced. Given the current work environment, we would expect to see a rise in the popularity and efficacy of the various types of peer mentoring relationships—those involving co-worker, teammates, and co-mentors. As organizations become flatter and employees increasingly must do more with fewer resources—particularly following organizational restructuring or downsizing—they naturally seek assistance from co-workers. Even in the absence of formal work teams, co-workers are required to interact with one another to complete tasks, provide services, and improve processes. Through these interactions, employees share technical and organizational information; they also share—and support one another on— personal issues.59 Thus, this type of mentoring is consistent with the peer developmental relationships described by Kram and colleagues.60 Eby discusses the increasing preponderance of interdependent work teams and notes how the transfer of traditional management responsibilities (e.g., planning, organizing, coaching, training) to team members creates opportunities for job and career support and development.61 In addition, because teams possess accumulated organizational knowledge and history, they can transmit this knowledge to—and help socialize—members of a team.62 Like other peer developmental relationships, intragroup or team mentoring relationships represent a mutually reinforcing ideal wherein mentor and prote´ge´ help each another. Co-mentors are a pair of close, collegial friends who are committed to facilitating each other’s development and take turns mentoring each other at particular stages of their careers/lives.63 This idea of friends as developers is not new; however, the recognition that friendship can serve as a mentoring relationship is novel. In their study of high-ranking executive women in the

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male-dominated entertainment industry, Ensher and her colleagues found that many shared information and strove to maintain good relationships with those above, below, and at the same status level as themselves.64 Their social lives were built around and integrated with work contacts and friendships. Hiking outings or monthly women-only industry parties provided social satisfaction as well as a means to connect and share resources with many different types of developers. These findings echo another study wherein the participants did not recognize the significant contribution of the friendships to their professional and personal lives until they narrated their experiences for the researcher.65 This notion of co-mentoring clearly demonstrates mentoring as a reciprocal relationship—a concept that has become more common in both the popular and academic press. Wayne Baker, author of Achieving Success through Social Capital, reminds professionals that ‘‘the goal of building networks is to contribute to others.’’66 Similarly, de Janasz et al. advise prote´ge´s to seek out opportunities to provide their mentors with technical information, new knowledge, or emotional support.67 By helping another, individuals increase the likelihood of receiving assistance in the future as well as increasing the trust and credibility of the developmental relationship.68 Virtual or Electronic Mentoring Recently, electronic or e-mentoring programs have burgeoned,69 reflecting changes in our conceptualization of mentoring and reliance on technology for communication. Also known as tele-, online, cyber- or virtual mentoring, e-mentoring—the merger of mentoring with electronic communications— exists within major corporations, connects members of an industry or profession, and supports students and professionals at various levels. Like its traditional counterpart, the goal of e-mentoring is the creation of a mutually beneficial relationship between a mentor and a prote´ge´. Unlike traditional mentoring, however, the personal and professional learning and support come primarily through e-mail and other electronic means.70 Given the billion—and growing— worldwide Internet users,71 and the business climate characterized by layoffs, worker mobility, and increased work demands, the use of electronic means to find and cultivate a mentor makes e-mentoring more tenable and important than ever.72 Responding to the need to foster multiple mentor relationships in the current environment requires individuals to augment traditional, face-to-face mechanisms with electronic means. Preliminary evidence from program evaluations and scholarly work suggests that e-mentoring is extremely beneficial both to mentors and prote´ge´s.73 Aside from freeing up geographic, time, and space constraints, participants in e-mentoring relationships benefit in other important ways. Past research in traditional mentoring has found that particularly early in the relationship, demographic similarity between mentors and prote´ge´s is directly related to mentoring effectiveness.74 More recently, a study

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examining the importance of gender and racial similarity among mentor– prote´ge´ pairs demonstrated that prote´ge´s (students) were more likely to initiate relationships with mentors who were similar in gender and race, even though such similarity was unrelated to the type of or amount of mentoring received.75 One advantage of electronic communication is that it lacks the visual cues that can lead to bias and stereotypes based on demographics or reminders of status differences.76 This is particularly important as women and minorities— suggested by some to have the greatest need for and difficulty finding mentors77— may develop their relationship without the distortion of demographic cues.78 Another benefit arising from the fact that e-mentoring relationships are carried out through electronic means is the evidence that mentors and prote´ge´s develop trust and disclose more quickly and readily in electronic than in traditional mentoring relationships, possibly due to minimal (if any) role played by visual, demographic differences.79 Without trust, prote´ge´s are less likely to disclose their weaknesses or learning needs and receive the needed support and guidance from their mentors.80 E-mentoring is not without its limitations, however. Much has been written about the inability of electronic conversations to convey tone, body language, and other nonverbal cues. E-mentors and e-prote´ge´s may be at greater risk for experiencing misunderstandings as compared to their traditional counterparts. Furthermore, in addition to receiving career and psychosocial support from their mentors, prote´ge´s often benefit from role modeling—learning through informal observation, job shadowing, feedback on career assignments, discussion of professional challenges, and reviewing samples of their mentors’ work.81 Although prote´ge´s might receive some role modeling online, this aspect will likely play a limited role in a virtual mentoring relationship. Mentors for Hire Another alternative approach to mentoring involves the paid mentor. Along with rapid rise in the number of small and start-up businesses—particularly among women and minorities—is the popularity of mentors for hire. Starting or running an organization is complex. Knowledge of marketing, laws, operations, human resources, finance, accounting, as well as an ability to interact with and persuade others to realize favorable pricing and treatment from larger, wellestablished firms is critical. Assuming initial capital can be raised—which is a major feat in itself, few individuals possess the requisite knowledge and experience, a fact borne out by the alarming failure rate of start-ups. With a need for just-in-time knowledge, few developers who can ‘‘show you the ropes,’’ and little time to cultivate a trusting and reciprocal relationship, entrepreneurs and small business owners are turning to mentors for hire. These mentors may be part of a formal program or agency that pairs mentors and prote´ge´s for a fee or might even be a competitor who agrees to provide training and assistance within agreed-on constraints.82

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Although not feasible or desirable for all employees, mentors for hire may be a viable alternative to traditional mentoring. One benefit is the prote´ge´’s ability to shop around for and ‘‘buy’’ specific guidance without investing time to develop a close, trusting relationship. Reciprocity—in the traditional sense—is not expected. Guidance is offered in exchange for money or a percentage of future profits, depending on the nature of the agreement between the parties. The prote´ge´ need not worry about appearances or filtering their mistakes or needs, as the mentor does not control future raises or promotions. Finally, because it is formal, time- and cost-bound, a prote´ge´ can more easily (and contractually) discontinue a mentor-for-hire relationship that is ineffective or dysfunctional, something that traditional prote´ge´s cannot do. Some disadvantages—beyond the financial cost—are inherent in this alternative mentoring arrangement. Because prote´ge´s have paid for a mentor’s advice and support, they may believe that the mentor can and should help them overcome all challenges. For the reasons discussed earlier in this chapter, the likelihood that one mentor, albeit a paid one, can address all of the prote´ge´’s needs approaches zero. By deciding to invest in one formal mentor, the prote´ge´ may develop a false sense of security in the short run, and a one-sided view of the environment and how best to operate within it in the long run. Either situation may spell disaster for the prote´ge´. In summary, the current environment requires individuals to seek advice and support of not one but many, diverse mentors. Some relationships may be of the traditional, long-term, master/apprentice variety; others may involve peer, virtual, or paid mentors. Each mentor relationship can and should vary according to prote´ge´’s current and future needs and abilities.

IMPLICATIONS AND FUTURE RESEARCH Since the publication of Kram’s seminal book, Mentoring at Work, mentoring practice and research has grown and shifted dramatically, reflecting concurrent changes in the business environment. We know much about the nature, function, and outcomes of traditional mentoring. We know less about alternative forms of mentoring that have emerged in response to environmental trends and changes, prompting important implications for scholars and practitioners alike. 1. Career satisfaction and success are no longer possible without the assistance of multiple mentor relationships that vary in intensity, duration, and function over the course of one’s career. Organizational downsizing, mergers and acquisitions, global competition, and the growth of small entrepreneurial startups have altered the ‘‘company man’’ ideal of stability and upward mobility. Today, people have careers characterized by flexibility, project work across multiple firms, and an emphasis on learning rather than promotions and salary increases.83 As prote´ge´s attempt to navigate within boundaryless or protean

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career paths,84 they must seek a diverse set of mentors who can provide needed visibility, access to opportunities, and help in developing specific skills or competencies from within and outside their functional area, peer group, and organizations. The notion and purported benefits of using not one but multiple mentors has received a fair amount of attention in the past decade; however, efforts to conceptualize and empirically test the simultaneous impact of multiple mentors on prote´ge´ outcomes is lacking.85 With the exception of one study,86 mentoring research has focused on one primary relationship or the accumulated mentoring a prote´ge´ has received over time.87 What configuration of how large a mentor network is optimal and during which stage of one’s career? What is the best way to measure the collective impact of a mentor network? Moreover, although multiple mentors may be better than one, individuals may lack the time and emotional energy needed to maintain effective relationships with mentors whose styles, practices, and preferences might differ dramatically. Furthermore, the law of numbers suggests that the more mentor relationships the greater the probability that one or more would be ineffective or dysfunctional.88 For example, some mentors, feeling threatened by the prote´ge´’s success and seeing the prote´ge´ as a rival who could threaten their professional or personal image, might subtly (or not so subtly) attempt to sabotage their prote´ge´’s career. Other mentors, in demand because of their wisdom and reputation for developing others, may have insufficient time to devote to each prote´ge´. Mentoring scholars Eby and Allen found that 55 percent of the 242 prote´ge´s studied reported that their mentors had occasionally neglected them.89 Still other relationships, though not rising to the level of dysfunctional, may simply be ineffective or fail to live up to the expectations of one or both parties. Individuals’ goals may change, or the organization may withdraw its formal support for—or be revealed to be paying lip service to—mentoring activities; situations like these can undermine mentoring’s effectiveness.90 Additional unanswered questions include: How many effective mentors in a network are needed to overcome an ineffective or dysfunctional one? How can the combined effects of mentors (good and bad) at one time be measured and compared to the combined effects of mentors at another time? 2. Prote´ge´s who cultivate mentoring relationships only with those who are formally assigned, in their organization, senior to them, or of the same gender and ethnicity will benefit less than those cultivating a diverse mentor network. The current business environment—characterized by rapid changes in markets, technology, workforce demographics, and demands—renders traditional mentoring models and processes woefully inadequate. Long-term master–apprentice relationships are incompatible with organizational and career realities and are ill-advised for prote´ge´s who seek to continuously learn and update marketable skills. Today’s managers are asked to assume more and different roles than a decade ago. Managing virtual employees and teams, demonstrating ethical leadership, building knowledge capital within and outside organizational

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boundaries, and helping employees (and themselves) balance often competing work and nonwork demands are some challenges for which few managers are prepared. Relying on one’s superior for career advice and development— a traditional mentoring approach—will limit the breadth and depth of information available to the prote´ge´. It may also present potential problems emanating from the power differences and a prote´ge´’s need to ‘‘look good’’ to the person in charge of distributing rewards, thereby missing out on learning or developmental experiences. Future research is needed to perhaps identify a contingency model to match prote´ge´ needs with mentor types. Scholars might consider applying past research on person–organization fit to inform this area.91 While increasing numbers of organizations are implementing formal mentoring programs, prote´ge´s should avail themselves of an assigned mentor and also should seek support from informal mentors who might be peers, colleagues, or others who share similar values. Research on formal and informal mentors demonstrates that each type has benefits and drawbacks, and mentors have different motivations for entering into relationships. Additional questions to be explored include: What is the relationship between mentor network diversity and prote´ge´ success? Is there an optimal mix of formal/informal, internal/ external, or traditional/alternative mentors? Finally, drawing on the growing use of paid mentors, researchers should examine how the processes and outcomes associated with ‘‘free’’ mentor relationships might differ with those of paid mentor relationships. 3. Electronic or virtual mentoring is a viable means for cultivating one or more mentors in a network; it is especially helpful for women and minorities. Despite the proliferation and availability of online mentoring Web sites and opportunities, empirical research on this topic has been extremely limited with a few exceptions.92 As much of the relationship is carried out using electronic, as opposed to face-to-face means, mentors and prote´ge´s likely realize benefits and pitfalls unique to this exponentially growing phenomenon. Representing an entirely new context, e-mentoring creates opportunities for scholars and practitioners alike to clarify which traditional mentoring constructs and measures are applicable and which are not. For example, is role modeling a relevant mentoring function to measure in an e-mentoring relationship? Should we consider participants’ preferences for face-to-face versus electronic communication? Might preferences for visual versus other (e.g., auditory, kinesthetic) forms of communication or learning be important? Does mentor dysfunctionality look the same in electronic versus traditional relationships? Again, more research is needed. Without a doubt, mentors remain critical for individual career development and satisfaction. Career changes, precipitated by business environment changes, have necessitated the evolution of alternate forms of mentoring. Researchers and practitioners must continue their efforts to understand the intricacies, predictors, and outcomes of traditional and alternative mentoring

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relationships that occur separately and simultaneously, as in the case of multiple mentor networks.

NOTES 1. A number of recent articles have demonstrated the benefits of mentoring. See Tammy Allen, Joyce Russell, and Sabine Maetzke, ‘‘Formal Peer Mentoring: Factors Related to Prote´ge´s Satisfaction and Willingness to Mentor Others,’’ Group and Organization Management 22 (1997): 488–507; George Dreher and R. A. Ash, ‘‘A Comparative Study of Mentoring among Men and Women in Managerial, Professional, and Technological Positions,’’ Journal of Applied Psychology 75 (1990): 539–46; Ellen Fagenson, ‘‘The Mentor Advantage: Perceived Career/Job Experiences of Prote´ge´s v. Nonprote´ge´s,’’ Journal of Organizational Behavior 10 (1989): 309–20; and Terri Scandura and Ralph Viator, ‘‘Mentoring in Public Accounting Firms: An Analysis of Mentoring-Prote´ge´ Relationships, Mentorship Functions, and Prote´ge´ Turnover Intentions,’’ Accounting, Organizations and Society 19 (1994): 717–34. 2. R. Alsop, ‘‘Playing Well with Others,’’ Wall Street Journal, September 9, 2002, p. R11; Albert Bandura, A Social Learning Theory (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1977); and Patricia M. Buhler, ‘‘A New Role for Managers: The Move from Directing to Coaching,’’ Supervision (October 1, 1998): 16. 3. D. J. Levinson, C. N. Darrow, E. B. Klein, M. A. Levinson and B. McKee, The Seasons of a Man’s Life (New York: Knopf, 1978). 4. D. M. Hunt and C. Michael, ‘‘Mentorship: A Career Training and Development Tool,’’ Academy of Management Review 8 (1983): 475–85; Kathy Kram, Mentoring at Work: Developmental Relationships in Organizational Life (Glenview, IL: Scott, Foresman, 1985); and J. A. Wilson and N. S. Elman, ‘‘Organizational Benefits of Mentoring,’’ Academy of Management Executive 4(4) (1990): 88–94. 5. S. Branch, ‘‘The 100 Best Companies to Work for in America,’’ Fortune 139(1) (1999): 118–30. 6. Kram, Mentoring at Work; and Vicki Whiting and Suzanne de Janasz, ‘‘Mentoring in the 21st Century: Using the Internet to Build and Network,’’ Journal of Management Education 28(3) (2004): 275–93. 7. Kram, Mentoring at Work. 8. Suzanne de Janasz, Sherry Sullivan, and Vicki Whiting, ‘‘Mentor Networks and Career Success: Lessons for Turbulent Times,’’ Academy of Management Executive 17(4) (2003): 78–91. 9. Michael Arthur and Denise Rousseau, ‘‘The Boundaryless Career as a New Employment Principle,’’ in M. B. Arthur and D. M. Rousseau, eds., The Boundaryless Career (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996), pp. 3–20; and R. Osterman, Broken Ladders (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996). 10. Denise Rousseau, Psychological Contracts in Organizations: Understanding Written and Unwritten Agreements (Newbury Park, CA: Sage, 1995). 11. Sherry Sullivan, ‘‘The Changing Nature of Careers: A Review and Research Agenda,’’ Journal of Management 25 (1999): 457–84. 12. Tim Hall, The Career Is Dead—Long Live the Career (San Francisco: JosseyBass, 1996).

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13. Suzanne de Janasz and Sherry Sullivan, ‘‘Multiple Mentoring in Academe: Developing the Professorial Network,’’ Journal of Vocational Behavior 64(2) (2004): 263–83. 14. See Kenneth Brousseau, Michael Driver, K. Eneroth, and Rickard Larsson, ‘‘Career Pandemonium: Realigning Organizations and Individuals,’’ Academy of Management Executive 10 (1996): 52–66; and Kathy Kram and Tim Hall, ‘‘Mentoring in a Context of Diversity and Turbulence,’’ in E. E. Kossek and S. A. Lobel, eds., Managing Diversity: Human Resource Strategies for Transforming the Workplace (Cambridge, MA: Blackwell Business, 1996), pp. 108–36. 15. See, for example, Gayle Baugh and Terri Scandura, ‘‘The Effect of Multiple Mentors on Prote´ge´ Attitudes toward the Work Setting,’’ Journal of Social Behavior and Personality 14 (1999): 503–22; Monica Higgins, ‘‘The More, the Merrier? Multiple Developmental Relationships and Work Satisfaction,’’ Journal of Management Development 19(4) (2000): 277–96; Higgins and Kram, ‘‘Reconceptualizing Mentoring’’; Kram, Mentoring at Work; and David Thomas and Monica Higgins, ‘‘Mentoring and the Boundaryless Career: Lessons from the Minority Experience,’’ in M. B. Arthur and D. M. Rousseau, eds., The Boundaryless Career: A New Employment Principle for a New Organizational Era (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996), pp. 268–81. 16. Higgins and Kram, ‘‘Reconceptualizing Mentoring.’’ 17. Rosalie Tung, ‘‘Building Effective Networks,’’ Journal of Management Inquiry 11 (2002): 94–101. 18. Higgins and Kram, ‘‘Reconceptualizing Mentoring.’’ 19. S. K. Johnson, G. D. Geroy, and O. V. Griego, ‘‘The Mentoring Model Theory: Dimensions in Mentoring Protocols,’’ Career Development International 4(7) (1999): 384–91. 20. Peter F. Drucker, The Practice of Management (New York: HarperCollins, 1993); Jeffrey Pfeffer, ‘‘Competitive Advantage Through People: Unleashing the Power of the Work Force,’’ Administrative Science Quarterly 40(3) (1995): 524–27. 21. James Clawson, ‘‘Mentoring in the Information Age,’’ Leadership and Organization Development Journal 17(3) (1996): 6–15; and G. Pinchot and E. Pinchot, The End of Bureaucracy and the Rise of the Intelligent Organization (San Francisco: BerrettKoehler, 1994). 22. V. Anand, W. Glick, and C. Manz, ‘‘Thriving on the Knowledge of Outsiders: Tapping Organizational Social Capital,’’ Academy of Management Executive 16 (2002): 87–101. 23. Tim Hall, ‘‘Protean Careers of the 21st Century,’’ Academy of Management Executive 10(4) (1996): 8–16; Higgins and Kram, ‘‘Reconceptualizing Mentoring,’’ p. 267. 24. Melenie Lankau and Terri Scandura, ‘‘An Investigation of Personal Learning in Mentoring Relationships: Content, Antecedents, and Consequences,’’ Academy of Management Journal 45 (2002): 779–90. 25. Higgins and Kram, ‘‘Reconceptualizing Mentoring,’’ p. 267; Kram and Hall, ‘‘Mentoring in a Context of Diversity.’’ 26. Troy Nielson, ‘‘The Developmental Journey of Mentoring Research and Practice,’’ Presented at the Academy of Management Annual Meeting in Chicago (1999). 27. See, for example, K. Tyler, ‘‘Mentoring Programs Link Employees and Experienced Execs,’’ HR Magazine 43(5) (1998): 98–103.

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28. Robert DeFillippi and Michael Arthur, ‘‘The Boundaryless Career: A Competency-Based Perspective,’’ Journal of Organizational Behavior 15 (1994): 307–24. 29. de Janasz et al., ‘‘Mentor Networks.’’ 30. Baugh and Scandura, ‘‘Effect of Multiple Mentors.’’ 31. Belle Rose Ragins, John Cotton, and Janice Miller, ‘‘Marginal Mentoring: The Effects and Type of Mentor, Quality of Relationships, and Program Design on Work and Career Attitudes,’’ Academy of Management Journal 43(6) (2000): 1177–94; R. J. Burke and C. A. McKeen, ‘‘Developing Formal Mentoring Programs in Organizations,’’ Business Quarterly 53 (1989): 76–99; Rosabeth Moss Kanter, Men and Women of the Corporation (New York: Basic Books, 1977). 32. Belle Rose Ragins, ‘‘Barriers to Mentoring: The Female Manager’s Dilemma,’’ Human Relations 42 (1989): 1–22. 33. Margaret Linehan and James Walsh, ‘‘Mentoring Relationships and the Female Managerial Career,’’ Career Development International 4(7) (1999): 348–52; p. 350. 34. William Johnston, ‘‘Global Workforce 2000: The New World Labor Market,’’ Harvard Business Review (1991): 115–26. 35. Ibid. 36. S. D. Friedman and Jeff Greenhaus, Work and Family—Allies or Enemies? (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000). 37. de Janasz et al., ‘‘Mentor Networks.’’ 38. Wayne Cascio, ‘‘Managing a Virtual Workplace,’’ Academy of Management Executive 14(3) (2000): 81–90. See also A. M. Townsend, S.M. DeMarie, and A. R. Hendrickson, ‘‘Virtual Teams: Technology and the Workplace of the Future,’’ Academy of Management Executive 12(3) (1998): 17–29. 39. ‘‘Boundaryless Workforce Vary by Workers’ Age, Position, Company Size,’’ Ceridian Employer Services, January 27, 1999, Canadian Telework Association Web site. 40. ‘‘Telework Facts,’’ International Telework Association and Council, www .telcoa.org/id33.htm (retrieved June 21, 2003). 41. Grant Goss, ‘‘Group Encourages Government Workers to Telecommute,’’ Networkworld.com, April 5, 2005; www.networkworld.com/net.worker/news/2005/ 0405groupencou.html (retrieved September 10, 2005). 42. C. Sandlund, ‘‘Remote Control: As the Virtual Workforce Grows, So Does the Challenge for Managers. Here’s How to Keep it Together,’’ Business Week 27 (March 2000): F14. 43. Higgins and Kram, ‘‘Reconceptualizing Mentoring.’’ 44. See, for example, Baugh and Scandura, ‘‘Effect of Multiple Mentors’’; Higgins, ‘‘The More, the Merrier’’; Higgins and Kram, ‘‘Reconceptualizing Mentoring’’; Kram, Mentoring at Work; and Thomas and Higgins, ‘‘Mentoring and the Boundaryless Career.’’ 45. Quoted in de Janasz et al., ‘‘Mentor Networks.’’ 46. Kram, Mentoring at Work. 47. Tung, ‘‘Building Effective Networks.’’ 48. Higgins and Kram, ‘‘Reconceptualizing Mentoring.’’ 49. Linda Holbeche, ‘‘Peer Mentoring: The Challenges and Ppportunities,’’ Career Development International 1(7) (1996): 24–27. 50. Kathy Kram and Lynn Isabella, ‘‘Mentoring Alternatives: The Role of Peer Relationships in Career Development,’’ Academy of Management Journal 28 (1985): 110–32.

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51. Ibid. 52. See for example Kram and Higgins, ‘‘Reconceptualizing Mentoring’’; Lillian T. Eby, ‘‘Alternative Forms of Mentoring in Changing Organizational Environments: A Conceptual Extension of the Mentoring Literature,’’ Journal of Vocational Behavior 51 (1997): 125–44; and Kram and Hall, ‘‘Mentoring in a Context of Diversity.’’ 53. de Janasz et al., ‘‘Mentor Networks,’’ p. 85. 54. Ragins et al., ‘‘Marginal Mentoring,’’ p. 1179. 55. Todd Smart, quoted in J. H. Maxwell and M. Hopkins, ‘‘Who Do You Call When No One Has the Answers? Where the Smartest CEOs Turn for Guidance and Perspective When Company Building Gets Personal,’’ Inc. (September 2002): 38–45. 56. Eby, ‘‘Alternative Forms of Mentoring.’’ 57. de Janasz et al., ‘‘Mentor Networks’’; Holbeche, ‘‘Peer Mentoring.’’ 58. Sullivan, ‘‘Changing Nature of Careers.’’ 59. Eby, ‘‘Alternative Forms of Mentoring’’; Kram, Mentoring at Work. 60. Kram, Mentoring at Work.; Kram and Isabella, ‘‘Mentoring Alternatives.’’ 61. Eby, ‘‘Alternative Forms of Mentoring.’’ 62. Ibid.; and Richard Hackman, ‘‘Group Effectiveness in Organizations,’’ in M. D. Dunnette and L. M. Hough, eds., Handbook of Industrial and Organizational Psychology (Palo Alto, CA: Consulting Academic Press, 1992), vol. 3, 199–267. 63. J. Rymer, ‘‘Only Connect: Transforming Ourselves and Our Discipline through Co-Mentoring,’’ Journal of Business Communication 39(3) (2002): 342–63. 64. Ellen Ensher, Susan Murphy, and Sherry Sullivan, ‘‘Reel Women: Lessons from Female TV Executives on Managing Work and Real Life,’’ Academy of Management Executive 16(2) (2002): 106–21. 65. T. J. Carter, ‘‘The Importance of Talk to Midcareer Women’s Development: A Collaborative Inquiry,’’ Journal of Business Communication 39(1) (2002): 55–91. 66. Wayne Baker, Achieving Success through Social Capital: Tapping Hidden Resources in Your Personal and Business Networks (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2000). 67. de Janasz et al., ‘‘Mentor Networks.’’ 68. For a review, see Monica Forret and Sherry Sullivan, ‘‘A Balanced Scorecard Approach to Networking and Career Development,’’ Organizational Dynamics 31(3) (2002): 1–15. 69. P. B. Single and Carol Muller, ‘‘When E-Mail and Mentoring Unite: The Implementation of Nationwide Electronic Mentoring Program,’’ in L. Stromei, ed., Implementing Successful Coaching and Mentoring Programs (Cambridge, MA: American Society for Training and Development, 2001), pp. 107–22; and Ellen Ensher, Christian Heun, and Anita Blanchard, ‘‘Online Mentoring and Computer-Mediated Communication: New Directions in Research,’’ Journal of Vocational Behavior 63(2) (2003): 264–88. 70. Ensher et al., ‘‘Online Mentoring.’’ 71. R. Hof, ‘‘The Power of Us,’’ BusinessWeek ( June 20, 2005): 75. 72. Ellen Ensher, Suzanne de Janasz, and Christian Heun, ‘‘E-Mentoring: Virtual Relationships and Real Benefits,’’ manuscript under review. 73. Whiting and de Janasz, ‘‘Mentoring in the 21st Century’’; C. W. Lewis, International Telementoring Report (2002), www.telementor.org (retrieved March 5, 2004); and MentorNet’s 2002-03 MentorNet Evaluation Report (2003), www.mentornet.net/ documents/files/Eval.0203.Report.pdf (retrieved March 5, 2004).

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74. David Thomas, ‘‘The Impact of Race on Manager’s Experiences of Developmental Relationships (Mentorship and Sponsorship): An Intra-Organizational Study,’’ Journal of Organizational Behavior 11 (1990): 479–92. 75. D. B. Turban, Thomas Dougherty, and F. K. Lee, ‘‘Gender, Race, and Perceived Similarity Effects in Developmental Relationships: The Moderating Role of Relationship Duration,’’ Journal of Vocational Behavior 61 (2002): 240–62. 76. L. Sproull and S. Kiesler, ‘‘Computers, Networks, and Work,’’ Scientific American 265(3) (1999): 116–23. 77. Ragins, ‘‘Barriers to Mentoring’’; and Thomas, ‘‘The Impact of Race.’’ 78. Ensher et al., ‘‘Online Mentoring’’; and Betti Hamilton and Terri Scandura, ‘‘E-Mentoring: Implications for Organizational Learning and Development in a Wired World,’’ Organizational Dynamics 31(4) (2003): 388–402. 79. S. Turkle, Life on the Screen (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1995); and Ensher et al., ‘‘Virtual Relationships and Real Benefits.’’ 80. de Janasz et al., ‘‘Mentor Networks.’’ 81. C. R. Bell, Managers as Mentors (San Francisco: Berrett-Koehler, 1996). 82. For a review of one such program, see Leonard Bisk, ‘‘Formal Entrepreneurial Mentoring: The Efficacy of Third Party Managed Programs,’’ Career Development International 7(2) (2002): 262–70; also see Shane McLaughlin, ‘‘New Business Owners Hire Experienced Mentors in Their Fields to Show Them the Ropes,’’ Inc. December (2002). 83. Arthur and Rousseau, Boundaryless Career. 84. Ibid.; Hall, The Career Is Dead. 85. de Janasz and Sullivan, ‘‘Multiple Mentoring in Academe,’’ p. 278. 86. Baugh and Scandura, ‘‘Effect of Multiple Mentors.’’ 87. Higgins and Kram, ‘‘Reconceptualizing Mentoring.’’ 88. Scandura, ‘‘Dysfunctional Mentoring.’’ 89. Lillian Eby and Tammy Allen, ‘‘Further Investigation of Prote´ge´s’ Negative Mentoring Experiences: Patterns and Outcomes,’’ Group & Organization Management 27(4) (2002): 456–79. 90. de Janasz et al., ‘‘Mentor Networks.’’ 91. See, for example, Jennifer Chatman, ‘‘Matching People and Organizations: Selection and Socialization in Public Accounting Firms,’’ Administrative Science Quarterly 36 (1991): 459–84. 92. Single and Muller, ‘‘When E-Mail and Mentoring Unite’’; Ensher et al., ‘‘Virtual Relationships and Real Benefits.’’

8

Impact of Social Networks on the Advancement of Women and Racial/Ethnic Minority Groups Monica L. Forret

There have been glimmers of progress in U.S. corporations for women and members of racial and ethnic minority groups. In 2002, Fortune published its first list of the 50 Most Powerful Black Executives in America.1 The Executive Leadership Council, a professional network for senior African American executives in Fortune 500 firms, has grown from 19 members in 1986 to over 340 members today, with women making up one-third of the membership. Although the signs of upward movement are becoming more visible, the pace is slow. For instance, although women account for about half of all managerial and professional positions, they hold only 8 percent of executive vice president positions and higher at Fortune 500 companies, and only 5 percent are among the top five highest paid for each company.2 A number of explanations exist for the lack of upward advancement for women and minorities. A Catalyst study found that both Fortune 1000 CEOs and women executives agreed that lack of line experience was a major factor preventing women’s upward movement. Other major barriers cited include exclusion from informal networks, negative stereotypes about women, lack of accountability of top leaders for advancing women, lack of role models, lack of mentoring, and lack of awareness of organizational politics.3 Constraints posed by social networks can help explain the obstacles women and minorities face that result in their restricted upward movement in organizations. The constraints come in a variety of forms, such as increased difficulty in forming social networks and lower levels of influence held by the members of their social networks. Consistent with Ragins’s definition, the term minority will be used here to refer to those groups traditionally lacking power in organizations—including women and members of racial and ethnic groups.4 In this chapter, I will first discuss the need for more attention to the social capital of minorities and important factors to consider in building social networks. Second, I explore three major barriers minorities face in developing their

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social networks. Third, the success of three strategies—mentoring, networking, and network groups—minorities use for altering their social networks to improve their opportunities in organizations will be examined. Finally, suggestions for individuals and organizations to help women and minorities improve their social networks to increase their advancement prospects will be proposed.

HUMAN CAPITAL IS NOT ENOUGH: THE NEED FOR SOCIAL CAPITAL Human capital represents the investments we make in ourselves to help us become and stay marketable. Our education, prior work experiences, training, knowledge, skills, and abilities all represent critical sources of human capital that increase our value in the workplace.5 Although human capital theory assumes that similar investments will pay off equally, minorities do not reap the same rewards from their investments as white males.6 Examples of the disparity abound. Stroh, Brett, and Reilly found that women lagged behind men with respect to salary progression and frequency of job transfers in a sample of 1,029 male and female managers even though women had done ‘‘all the right stuff,’’ such as obtaining similar education as men and not moving in and out of the workforce.7 A follow-up survey conducted on this sample by Brett and Stroh showed that only male managers benefited in terms of salary progression by pursuing an external labor market strategy.8 Extending this finding to include race as well as gender, Dreher and Cox showed that an external labor market strategy increased compensation for white males only.9 Controlling for many human capital variables, Landau found females to be rated lower than males and African Americans and Asians to be rated lower than whites in promotion potential in a sample of 1,268 managers and professionals from a Fortune 500 company.10 Furthermore, training seems more beneficial for the advancement of males than females; and women, but not men, who experience a mid-career gap suffer drawbacks in attaining higher management levels.11 Whereas career development efforts have tended to focus on improving human capital, managers and professionals need to evaluate their social capital as well. In his book Achieving Success through Social Capital, Wayne Baker describes social capital as the resources available to an individual as a result of one’s personal network of contacts. Social capital can provide new ideas, timely information, job opportunities, business leads, influence, and social support.12 Social capital is a valuable resource that gives individuals a formidable career advantage.13 For instance, Seibert, Kraimer, and Liden found that the structure of an individual’s network provided access to information, resources, and career sponsorship, which in turn were related to longer term career success outcomes (i.e., current salary, promotions, and career satisfaction).14

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Moreover, social capital is more difficult to imitate than human capital. Similar education, training, and work experiences are easier to obtain and replicate than relationships with others.15 The individuals we know, the quality of our relationships, and the resources available through our relationships are a unique, valuable, nonreplicable asset. One explanation for the slow rate of advancement for minorities is that within organizations members of the majority group— typically white males—tend to possess larger inventories of valuable social capital.

BUILDING SOCIAL NETWORKS Four important factors to consider in building social networks to gain access to social capital are the size of the network, strength of the tie, pattern of ties, and resources of the tie. Size refers to the number of members in a network. To illustrate the importance of size, Morrison’s study of the socialization of auditors showed that having a larger friendship network was positively related to social integration, and having a larger information network was associated with increased organizational knowledge and task mastery.16 In their study of managers and professionals in a high-technology company, Podolny and Baron found that the size of one’s strategic information network was positively related to number of promotions.17 In general, having a larger network translates into more individuals to turn to for friendship, information, resources, and advice. Strength of the tie refers to the degree of closeness that characterizes a relationship. For instance, strong ties are denoted by frequent contact, a degree of intimacy, and emotional investment in the relationship.18 According to Granovetter, because our strong ties (i.e., close friends) tend to know one another and share information, our weak ties (i.e., acquaintances) are more likely to be a richer source of unique information benefits (such as job openings). His research concluded that job seekers with weak ties were more successful in finding jobs than those with strong ties.19 However, recent research has questioned the level of assistance provided by strong versus weak ties. In a study of new product development teams, Hansen showed that weak interunit ties were helpful for gaining quick access to routine information, but strong ties were necessary for obtaining complex knowledge.20 Strong ties may be more important for the transfer of sensitive or complex information than weak ties due to the higher risk and effort involved.21 Burt’s structural hole theory focuses on the pattern of ties in a network, that is, whether the members of an individual’s social network are connected to one another. A structural hole exists when there is no connection between two members of a social network. Having structural holes in one’s network is beneficial in two important ways. First, members of a network who do not know one another are more likely to provide access to diverse information. Second, the absence of a relationship between network members offers an opportunity to

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control the flow of information between them, which may be used to one’s advantage.22 In addition to Burt, Podolny and Baron found that structural holes were associated with upward mobility, and Rodan and Galunic showed that they were related to greater managerial performance.23 Finally, the resources of a tie refer to the benefits that may be derived from a relationship. These benefits may take a wide variety of forms, including information, friendship, materials/services, and influence.24 In particular, relationships with high-status individuals have the potential to provide valued outcomes. To illustrate, in their study of job seekers, Lin, Ensel, and Vaughn found that the status of the contact had a strong positive effect on the prestige of the attained job, indicating the ability of powerful contacts to exert influence on one’s behalf.25 To summarize, network size, tie strength, pattern of ties, and resources of ties are critical factors to consider in building one’s social network. However, minorities experience unique barriers in their attempts to develop their social networks, which will now be considered.

BARRIERS MINORITIES FACE IN BUILDING THEIR SOCIAL NETWORKS Three explanations for the difficulties minorities experience in building their social networks are centered on: (1) the similarity-attraction paradigm, (2) tokenism theory, and (3) existing organizational structures. Similarity-Attraction Paradigm Using Byrne’s similarity-attraction paradigm, those who are considered similar on ascriptive characteristics (e.g., gender, race, ethnicity) are likely to perceive greater interpersonal similarities, which in turn leads to increased attraction and more frequent communication.26 Gender, racial, and ethnic similarities facilitate interactions with others like oneself. Similarity on these factors increases the likelihood of shared values, beliefs, and attitudes, which helps reduce uncertainty and create trusting relationships. For example, Tsui and O’Reilly found that subordinates in same-gender superior–subordinate dyads were rated higher in perceived effectiveness and liking by their superiors and experienced lower role conflict and ambiguity than subordinates in mixed-gender dyads.27 According to March and Simon, similarity on ascribed characteristics influences the ‘‘language compatibility’’ between two people and makes communication easier.28 Roberts and O’Reilly found that participants in a communication network tend to have higher job satisfaction, more organizational commitment, and higher job performance than isolates.29 Furthermore, by communicating frequently, individuals develop similar attitudes and beliefs, which facilitate their integration into the organization.30

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However, the similarity-attraction paradigm poses a problem for minorities in organizations in that the demographic makeup offers fewer opportunities for interactions with others like themselves based on gender, race, or ethnicity.31 For example, based on a sample of managers from four Fortune 500 companies, Ibarra found that minorities had fewer same-race ties and fewer strong ties than white managers.32 This lack of similarity affects the availability of social support for minority employees. Furthermore, given that minorities have less power in organizations, ties to other minorities are less instrumental in their ability to provide access to valued resources. Therefore, minorities have to seek out dissimilar others to obtain what they need. This necessity was illustrated in Ibarra’s study of an advertising firm, in which men developed both instrumental and expressive (i.e., friendship) contacts with other males, whereas females developed instrumental contacts with men and expressive contacts with women.33 Tokenism Theory According to Kanter, the presence of a small, easily identifiable minority group of individuals (referred to as tokens) results in increased performance pressures and boundary heightening. Given that minorities are highly visible in organizations, they face added pressures to perform. If a minority employee performs poorly, it is more likely to be known throughout the organization. This may encourage majority employees to distance themselves from minorities to avoid negative perceptions that association might convey. Furthermore, the behavior of a minority employee is likely to be construed as being symbolic for the group. For example, if a woman fails at her position, majority members are likely to view this as evidence that women as a group are unable to handle those types of jobs.34 Boundary heightening occurs due to polarization that magnifies distinctions between minority and majority groups. Boundary heightening results in an increase in stereotyping and isolation of minorities from areas where informal socializing and politicking take place.35 To illustrate, Ely found that sex-role stereotypes were exaggerated in law firms dominated by men, in contrast to firms with a more balanced gender representation.36 Furthermore, Lyness and Thompson found that female executives were more likely than male executives to report lack of culture fit and being excluded from informal networks as barriers to their career advancement.37 These results support the research on organizational interaction networks in that minorities, due to their token status, have less access to members of the dominant power structures.38 According to Baron and Pfeffer, white males are motivated to preserve the ingroup/outgroup distinctions to protect their status and privilege in organizations.39 Applying tokenism theory to the building of social networks, one can surmise that there will be a tendency for white males to avoid developing relationships with minority employees, resulting in smaller social networks comprised of less instrumental contacts.

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Existing Organizational Structures An individual’s position in the organizational structure influences that person’s social network.40 The hierarchy of authority indicated by an organization chart determines the superior and subordinates one interacts with to facilitate vertical coordination. Furthermore, the design and flow of the work necessitates coordination with other individuals, and changes in the technology used have been found to affect communication patterns.41 To the extent that the job held calls for coordination with individuals from a variety of work units, there is more opportunity to develop personal relationships, which may influence network size, the strength of ties, the pattern of ties, and the resources available. Brass and colleagues also argue that the location of a person in the physical and temporal space of an organization influences interaction patterns.42 We tend to communicate with individuals who are in close proximity to us and who work the same hours we do. One drawback of telecommuting and other types of flexible work arrangements (which are frequently marketed to women) is the negative impact on informal learning and relationship development due to the lower rates of interaction with members of the organization.43 Similarly, Meyerson and Fletcher emphasize the importance of time boundaries in organizations. If strategic decisions are frequently made outside of normal working hours (e.g., while socializing after work), women are less likely to have input into them due to the need to attend to child care and other responsibilities at home.44 Also, as individuals move into different positions in an organization, their social networks change. New relationships must be developed to meet the demands required by the new position, and former relationships may erode through nonuse.45 Starting a new position poses an extra challenge for minorities in that they are more likely to have to develop relationships with others who are dissimilar on the basis of gender, race, or ethnic status. Therefore, organizational decision makers may believe that promoting a minority will result in a slower transition and reduced levels of effectiveness. Furthermore, Pfeffer states that examining the job structure to ensure that minorities are located in jobs that lead to higher positions in the organization is crucial.46 Because lack of line experience is a major factor preventing upward movement, it is important for minorities to obtain jobs that have career ladders.47 Although minorities may hold staff positions that call for extensive interaction with others, those holding line positions with profit and loss responsibility have access to the most powerful decision makers and opportunities to prove their value to the organization. Competition for such line positions is intense and political. Having a powerful sponsor in the upper levels of an organization advocating on one’s behalf provides a strong advantage to obtaining these jobs. Minorities are much less likely to have such sponsors. In sum, research shows that multiple forces help maintain existing power structures. What is being done to address this situation? Next, I discuss the

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success of three strategies women and minorities are using to alter their social networks and improve their opportunities in organizations, namely, mentoring, networking, and network groups.

MENTORING Mentoring has been defined as a relationship whereby a more senior, experienced individual is committed to providing developmental assistance and guidance to a less experienced prote´ge´.48 Obtaining a powerful mentor represents the addition of a strong tie to an individual’s social network that provides access to valued resources.49 Mentors provide prote´ge´s with career development and psychosocial support.50 They nominate prote´ge´s for challenging and visible assignments and provide coaching to help ensure that their prote´ge´s succeed. By introducing prote´ge´s to influential individuals, mentors confer a sense of legitimacy on their prote´ge´s.51 Mentors serve as role models for prote´ge´s and affirm their worthiness and identity by offering counseling and friendship. The benefits of mentoring for prote´ge´s as a result of such assistance have been well established. Prote´ge´s have greater opportunities and higher compensation and receive more promotions than those who have not received mentoring.52 Prote´ge´s also are more satisfied with their jobs and careers and have greater intentions to remain in their organizations.53 Many researchers have discussed barriers that women and minorities face in finding potential mentors.54 Given that the upper echelons of organizations are dominated by white males, there is a lack of role models available to serve as mentors. The few women and minorities in the upper ranks may feel overwhelmed by the number of individuals who might desire a mentoring relationship, and cross-race and cross-gender relationships are more difficult to develop. Cross-gender and cross-race mentoring relationships are highly visible, which might invoke feelings of envy and accusations of favoritism by peers, especially if the prote´ge´ is perceived as less competent.55 In addition, the high visibility of the relationship makes it more likely that a failure by the prote´ge´ will be known in the organization and may reflect poorly on the mentor. Furthermore, men and women may avoid participating in a cross-gender mentoring relationship due to concerns that a sexual relationship might develop or to avoid damaging gossip and rumors that a sexual relationship exists.56 However, even though these barriers are present, several studies show no differences between men and women in the number of mentoring relationships or the amount of mentoring received.57 According to Thomas, due to the scarcity of demographically similar relationships in an organization, minorities are more likely to search outside their organization to find individuals willing to provide developmental assistance.58 Although benefits such as career advice and acceptance can be gained from these relationships, a mentor outside one’s organization is unlikely to wield the type of power and influence needed to help

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the prote´ge´ land prestigious assignments and move up the career ladder in his or her organization.59 Some evidence suggests that cross-gender or cross-race relationships yield fewer benefits than those accruing to white male prote´ge´s with white male mentors. Although Dreher and Cox identified no gender or racial differences in forming mentoring relationships, they found preferences for similarity. African American, Hispanic, and female MBAs were less likely to establish mentoring relationships with white male mentors, despite a compensation advantage for those with white male mentors.60 In his examination of cross-race mentoring relationships, Thomas found that prote´ge´s receive more psychosocial support from mentors of the same race.61 Furthermore, some research suggests that role modeling is more likely to occur in same-gender mentoring relationships.62 The increased psychosocial functions prote´ge´s receive in same-gender, same-race relationships are not surprising given the greater social identification based on sex and race.63 Given the widespread benefits of mentoring and the additional barriers women and minorities face in developing a mentoring relationship, organizations have implemented formal mentoring programs to ensure that mentoring relationships are accessible to employees.64 However, several studies show that formal mentoring programs tend to be ineffective for advancing a prote´ge´’s career.65 Noe argues that one should not expect the same benefits from both formal and informal mentoring relationships because the latter develop naturally based on mutual attraction and interest.66 In contrast, formal mentoring programs tend to be for a limited time period (such as a year) in which mentors and prote´ge´s are paired through a matching process that may not be based on mutual identification given the shortage of mentors in organizations.67 For strong sponsorship to occur, the mentoring relationship needs to be characterized by identification and trust between the mentor and prote´ge´, confidence in the mentor of the prote´ge´’s abilities and potential, and a commitment to helping the prote´ge´ succeed. Although formal mentoring programs may provide some benefits to minorities, it is unlikely that they will receive the powerful backing an informal mentor can provide.

NETWORKING In light of the difficulties in finding a high-ranking senior manager to take a strong interest in one’s development, and given the current boundaryless work environment characterized by frequent movement within and across organizations, a new focus has emerged on forming multiple developmental relationships to support one’s career.68 Multiple developmental relationships build on Kram’s concept of the relationship constellation, which proposes that career and psychosocial support can come from a multitude of people both within and outside the organization.69 Research has shown that having multiple developmental

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relationships is associated with greater work satisfaction, career progress, and retention in the organization.70 Individuals engage in networking to help build developmental relationships that in turn improve their social networks by influencing the size of their networks, their pattern of ties, and the resources available through their ties. Networking behaviors are proactive attempts by individuals to develop and maintain relationships with others for the purpose of mutual benefit in their work or career.71 Networking expands an individual’s relationship constellation by forming relationships with those internal to the organization (e.g., peers) and those external to it (e.g., members of professional associations).72 The relationships formed through networking tend to be characterized by less interaction and intimacy than informal mentoring relationships, and hence are considered to be weaker ties.73 Forret and Sullivan advocate taking a strategic approach to networking, in that individuals should determine their career goals; assess their current social capital; align their networking efforts accordingly to reach individuals in their organization, profession, or community; and invest the time, energy, and effort to develop mutually beneficial relationships.74 Developing interpersonal relationships through networking is considered to be a specific competency vital for managing one’s career.75 Networking is related to career outcomes of managers, such as promotions and salary progression.76 Forret and Dougherty identified five types of networking behaviors: maintaining external contacts, socializing, engaging in professional activities, participating in community, and increasing internal visibility.77 In a study examining the relationship between types of networking behaviors and career outcomes for men and women, Forret and Dougherty found increasing internal visibility to be significantly related to number of promotions and total compensation for men, but not for women. Also, a marginal relationship between engaging in professional activities and total compensation was found. However, the relationship was positive for men and negative for women.78 Although women make attempts to increase their internal visibility, the work assignments and taskforces in which they participate may be less prestigious than those of men, given their lack of access to members of the organization’s power structure.79 With regard to engaging in professional activities, organizations may assign a higher value to the professional involvement of men than of women.80 The few studies examining gender differences in networking behaviors show little difference between men and women. In the Gould and Penley study, men reported engaging in networking (measured via the extent to which respondents reported building a network of contacts and friendships in the organization) more than women, but the result was marginally significant.81 Similarly, Forret and Dougherty found few differences. Men were more likely to engage in socializing behaviors than women; however, a subsequent analysis comparing men with single women found no difference in socializing

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behaviors.82 Because married women tend to carry a disproportionate share of family and household responsibilities, it is not surprising that little time is left for socializing with colleagues outside of work.83 Although writings on protean careers stress the importance of networking, especially because the burden of responsibility for one’s career has shifted from the organization to the individual, research on the benefits of networking for the careers of women and minorities is lacking.84 The little existing evidence shows women benefit less than men from networking efforts. One explanation may be that because women’s contacts are more likely to be at lower levels in organizations, they have less ability to provide influence and access to resources. Studies examining the success of networking behaviors of minorities need to be conducted.

NETWORK GROUPS Network groups are defined as intraorganizational groups composed of members who share a common social identity (e.g., gender, race, ethnicity) who have formally organized themselves to provide support for their members.85 African American employees at Xerox organized one of the first network groups. After an African American colleague left the company in 1971, a group of African American employees started meeting to practice their presentation skills, share sales techniques, and provide tips for navigating the corporate culture to help each other succeed.86 According to Catalyst, 33 percent of Fortune 100 companies have women’s networks, including IBM, Procter & Gamble, Ford, Merck, Kraft, and 3M. Organizations with women’s networks are much more likely to have other network groups (e.g., based on race or sexual orientation) than companies without women’s networks.87 Network groups provide networking opportunities, social support, and career development for their members. They also advise senior management and human resource managers on issues that concern their members and attempt to create positive organizational change.88 In a survey of 20 HR managers, 70 Executive Leadership Council members, and 397 National Black MBA Association members, similar findings regarding the effectiveness of network groups were found. Networks groups were consistently rated as most effective at providing social support, informal advice, support for younger employees, and voicing concerns to management.89 Network groups meet regularly, often on company premises, where they hold a variety of events (e.g., speakers, seminars, workshops, career development sessions) for their members. Network groups are a means by which minorities can find and meet other minorities in their organization, thereby affecting the number, strength, pattern, and resources of their network ties. This reduces feelings of isolation, and allows them to act as ‘‘majority’’ members for a period of time.90 In a sample of members of the National Black MBA Association,

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respondents with network groups in their organization reported more support and ties with other African Americans, were more likely to receive support from a mentor, and felt they were better able to interact with white mentors.91 The presence of a network group was positively related to optimism about career progress in the organization, although this relationship was mediated by the presence of a mentor. Network groups also may influence job performance. According to Catalyst, sales for women brokers who started a network group at Dain Rauscher increased 19.2 percent compared with 5 percent for the rest of the firm.92 There is some concern that forming a network group will promote backlash by the majority members in an organization. As Friedman discussed, a voluntarily formed group of minorities signals that social identity makes a difference. Majority group members may see a network group as a threat to the existing power structure, and its existence may result in heightened tension and avoidance behaviors. Those who might benefit from participation in a network group may choose to decline membership over fears that it will highlight their social identity and negatively influence their career progress.93 In a Catalyst survey of management representatives and leaders of the women’s network at 132 companies, close to 75 percent of both groups indicated the presence of some minor negative reactions to the network group, such as males feeling threatened, concerns over elitism, women’s fears about how participation might affect their careers, conflicts between the group’s and HR management’s role, and lack of management support for the network group. However, 20 percent expressed no negative responses, and only a very few experienced significant backlash.94 In Creating Women’s Networks, Catalyst outlines steps for creating or revamping women’s networks and advocates finding the right goals for the network, responding to member needs, and making positive contributions to the organization.95 Overall, although network groups can provide a variety of benefits to their members, their ability to advance minorities to upper organizational levels may be limited due to the lack of interaction with members of the majority group. Research is needed to examine the linkages between network groups and advancement of minorities.

SUGGESTIONS FOR IMPROVING SOCIAL NETWORKS The results of proactive attempts such as mentoring, networking, and network groups that minorities use to alter their networks have been somewhat successful in providing work-related and psychosocial benefits. However, the analysis of these strategies shows they may not attain the desired results in terms of advancing minorities into the upper ranks of organizations. To get past the barriers presented by the similarity-attraction paradigm, tokenism theory, and existing organizational structures, organizations need to ensure opportunities for

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substantive interaction take place between the organization’s minority and majority members. As Laurence Prusak and Don Cohen discuss in their book, In Good Company: How Social Capital Makes Organizations Work, social capital is created when employees have the opportunity to participate in ‘‘real work’’ with one another that accomplishes organizational objectives.96 Sponsoring the occasional social gathering to provide opportunities for majority and minority employees to interact is not sufficient for developing the types of trusting relationships that are crucial for successful organizational functioning. In the context of performing real work, employees can discover similar values, attitudes, and beliefs held by individuals who initially appear dissimilar. Hence, employees are able to look beyond initial differences and communicate more effectively with each other. Collaborative relationships need to be developed between majority and minority employees. Collaborative relationships are characterized by knowledge of each person’s expertise, a willingness to engage in active and timely problem solving, and trust.97 Building social networks composed of individuals diverse in gender, race, and ethnic background increases the likelihood of receiving novel ideas and a greater variety of feedback, which should enhance knowledge sharing and creation.98 Furthermore, Meyerson and Fletcher advocate experimenting with incremental structural changes to eradicate sources of inequity. By questioning organizational procedures and assumptions, practices that undermine equity for women and minorities can be modified or removed.99 For example, requirements for a line position that are unnecessary for performance but eliminate minorities from the applicant pool can be dropped. By providing women with advancement opportunities, battling gender stereotypes, and rewarding managers based on achieving diversity goals, Georgia-Pacific increased its percentage of top women executives from 9 percent in 2001 to 29 percent in 2004.100 Breaking down the barriers to advancement for women and minorities must become a corporate imperative, not just because it is the ethical step to take but also because it is good for business. A recent study by Catalyst of 353 Fortune 500 companies found that those with the highest representation of senior women had a 35 percent higher return on equity and a 34 percent higher return to shareholders than those companies with the lowest number of high-ranking women.101 Perhaps organizations with higher proportions of minorities in upper management ranks are taking better advantage of both their employees’ human and social capital, a worthy goal for every company.

NOTES 1. Cora Daniels, ‘‘The Most Powerful Black Executives in America,’’ Fortune ( July 22, 2002): 60–80.

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2. Betsy Morris, Kate Bonamici, Susan M. Kaufman, and Patricia Neering, ‘‘How Corporate America Is Betraying Women,’’ Fortune ( January 10, 2005): 65–74. 3. Sheila Wellington, Marcia Brumit Kropf, and Paulette R. Gerkovich, ‘‘What’s Holding Women Back?,’’ Harvard Business Review ( June 2003): 18–19. 4. Belle Rose Ragins, ‘‘Diversified Mentoring Relationships in Organizations: A Power Perspective,’’ Academy of Management Review 22 (1997): 482–521. 5. Gary S. Becker, Human Capital (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1975); Francine D. Blau and Marianne A. Ferber, The Economics of Women, Men and Work (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1987). 6. Ann M. Morrison and Mary Ann Von Glinow, ‘‘Women and Minorities in Management,’’ American Psychologist 45 (1990): 200–208. 7. Linda K. Stroh, Jeanne M. Brett, and Anne H. Reilly, ‘‘All the Right Stuff: A Comparison of Female and Male Managers’ Career Progression,’’ Journal of Applied Psychology 77 (1992): 251–60. 8. Jeanne M. Brett and Linda K. Stroh, ‘‘Jumping Ship: Who Benefits from an External Labor Market Career Strategy?,’’ Journal of Applied Psychology 82 (1997): 331–41. 9. George F. Dreher and Taylor H. Cox Jr., ‘‘Labor Market Mobility and Cash Compensation: The Moderating Effects of Race and Gender,’’ Academy of Management Journal 43 (2000): 890–900. 10. Jacqueline Landau, ‘‘The Relationship of Race and Gender to Managers’ Ratings of Promotion Potential,’’ Journal of Organizational Behavior 16 (1995): 391–400. 11. Phyllis Tharenou, Shane Latimer, and Denise Conroy, ‘‘How Do You Make It to the Top? An Examination of Influences on Women’s and Men’s Managerial Advancement,’’ Academy of Management Journal 37 (1994): 899–931; Joy A. Schneer and Frieda Reitman, ‘‘The Interrupted Managerial Career Path: A Longitudinal Study of MBAs,’’ Journal of Vocational Behavior 51 (1997): 411–34. 12. Wayne Baker, Achieving Success through Social Capital: Tapping the Hidden Resources in Your Personal and Business Networks (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2000). 13. Paul S. Adler and Seok-Woo Kwon, ‘‘Social Capital: Prospects for a New Concept,’’ Academy of Management Review 27 (2002): 17–40. 14. Scott E. Seibert, Maria L. Kraimer, and Robert C. Liden, ‘‘A Social Capital Theory of Career Success,’’ Academy of Management Journal 44 (2001): 219–37. 15. Monica L. Forret and Sherry E. Sullivan, ‘‘A Balanced Scorecard Approach to Networking: A Guide to Successfully Navigating Career Changes,’’ Organizational Dynamics 31 (2002): 245–58. 16. Elizabeth Wolfe Morrison, ‘‘Newcomers’ Relationships: The Role of Social Network Ties During Socialization,’’ Academy of Management Journal 45 (2002): 1149–60. 17. Joel M. Podolny and James N. Baron, ‘‘Resources and Relationships: Social Networks and Mobility in the Workplace,’’ American Sociological Review 62 (1997): 673–93. 18. Mark S. Granovetter, ‘‘The Strength of Weak Ties,’’ American Journal of Sociology 78 (1973): 1360–80. 19. Mark S. Granovetter, Getting a Job: A Study of Contacts and Careers (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1974). 20. Morten T. Hansen, ‘‘The Search-Transfer Problem: The Role of Weak Ties in Sharing Knowledge across Organizational Subunits,’’ Administrative Science Quarterly 44 (1999): 82–111.

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21. Marc-David L. Seidel, Jeffrey T. Polzer, and Katherine J. Stewart, ‘‘Friends in High Places: The Effects of Social Networks on Discrimination in Salary Negotiations,’’ Administrative Science Quarterly 45 (2000): 1–24. 22. Ronald S. Burt, Structural Holes: The Social Structure of Competition (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1992). 23. Ibid.; Podolny and Baron, ‘‘Resources and Relationships’’; Simon Rodan and Charles Galunic, ‘‘More than Network Structure: How Knowledge Heterogeneity Influences Managerial Performance and Innovativeness,’’ Strategic Management Journal 25 (2004): 541–62. 24. Noel M. Tichy, Michael L. Tushman, and Charles Fombrun, ‘‘Social Network Analysis for Organizations,’’ Academy of Management Review 4 (1979): 507–19. 25. Nan Lin, Walter M. Ensel, and John C. Vaughn, ‘‘Social Resources and Strength of Ties: Structural Factors in Occupational Status Attainment,’’ American Sociological Review 46 (1981): 393–405. 26. Donn E. Byrne, The Attraction Paradigm (New York: Academic Press, 1971); Karlene H. Roberts and Charles A. O’Reilly III, ‘‘Some Correlations of Communication Roles in Organizations,’’ Academy of Management Journal 22 (1979): 42–57. 27. Anne S. Tsui and Charles A. O’Reilly III, ‘‘Beyond Simple Demographic Effects: The Importance of Relational Demography in Superior-Subordinate Dyads,’’ Academy of Management Journal 32 (1989): 402–23. 28. James G. March and Herbert A. Simon, Organizations (New York: Wiley, 1958). 29. See Roberts and O’Reilly, ‘‘Some Correlations.’’ 30. W. Gary Wagner, Jeffrey Pfeffer, and Charles A. O’Reilly III, ‘‘Organizational Demography and Turnover in Top-Management Groups,’’ Administrative Science Quarterly 29 (1984): 74–92. 31. Herminia Ibarra, ‘‘Personal Networks of Women and Minorities in Management: A Conceptual Framework,’’ Academy of Management Review 18 (1993): 56–87. 32. Herminia Ibarra, ‘‘Race, Opportunity, and Diversity of Social Circles in Managerial Networks,’’ Academy of Management Journal 38 (1995): 673–703. 33. Herminia Ibarra, ‘‘Homophily and Differential Returns: Sex Differences in Network Structure and Access in an Advertising Firm,’’ Administrative Science Quarterly 37 (1992): 422–47. 34. Rosabeth Moss Kanter, ‘‘Some Effects of Proportions on Group Life: Skewed Sex Ratios and Responses to Token Women,’’ American Journal of Sociology 82 (1977): 965–90. 35. Ibid. 36. Robin J. Ely, ‘‘The Power in Demography: Women’s Social Constructions of Gender Identity at Work,’’ Academy of Management Journal 38 (1995): 589–634. 37. Karen S. Lyness and Donna E. Thompson, ‘‘Above the Glass Ceiling? A Comparison of Matched Samples of Female and Male Executives,’’ Journal of Applied Psychology 82 (1997): 359–75. 38. Daniel J. Brass, ‘‘Men’s and Women’s Networks: A Study of Interaction Patterns and Influence in an Organization,’’ Academy of Management Journal 28 (1985): 327–43; Ibarra, ‘‘Personal Networks of Women and Minorities’’; Ibarra, ‘‘Homophily and Differential Returns.’’

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39. James N. Baron and Jeffrey Pfeffer, ‘‘The Social Psychology of Organizations and Inequality,’’ Social Psychology Quarterly 57 (1994): 190–209. 40. Daniel J. Brass, ‘‘A Social Network Perspective on Human Resources Management,’’ in Gerald R. Ferris, ed., Research in Personnel and Human Resources Management (Greenwich, CT: JAI Press, 2004), pp. 13:39–79; Daniel J. Brass, Joseph Galaskiewicz, Henrich R. Greve, and Wenpin Tsai, ‘‘Taking Stock of Networks and Organizations: A Multilevel Perspective,’’ Academy of Management Journal 47 (2004): 795–817; Podolny and Baron, ‘‘Resources and Relationships.’’ 41. Marlene E. Burkhardt and Daniel J. Brass, ‘‘Changing Patterns or Patterns of Change: The Effect of a Change in Technology on Social Network Structure and Power,’’ Administrative Science Quarterly 35 (1990): 104–27. 42. See Brass, ‘‘A Social Network’’; see Brass et al., ‘‘Taking Stock.’’ 43. Cecily D. Cooper and Nancy B. Kurland, ‘‘Telecommuting, Professional Isolation, and Employee Development in Public and Private Organizations,’’ Journal of Organizational Behavior 23 (2002): 511–32. 44. Debra E. Meyerson and Joyce K. Fletcher, ‘‘A Modest Manifesto for Shattering the Glass Ceiling,’’ Harvard Business Review ( January/February 2000): 126–36. 45. Podolny and Baron, ‘‘Resources and Relationships.’’ 46. Jeffrey Pfeffer, ‘‘A Political Perspective on Careers: Interests, Networks, and Environments,’’ in Michael B. Arthur, Douglas T. Hall, and Barbara S. Lawrence, eds., Handbook of Career Theory (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), pp. 380–96. 47. Wellington et al., ‘‘What’s Holding Women Back?’’ 48. Kathy E. Kram, Mentoring at Work: Developmental Relationships in Organizational Life (Glenview, IL: Scott Foresman, 1985). 49. Reba Keele, ‘‘Mentoring or Networking? Strong and Weak Ties in Career Development,’’ in Lynda L. Moore, ed., Not as Far as You Think: The Realities of Working Women (Lexington, MA: Lexington Books, 1986), pp. 53–68. 50. Kram, Mentoring at Work. 51. Belle Rose Ragins, ‘‘Barriers to Mentoring: The Female Manager’s Dilemma,’’ Human Relations 42 (1989): 1–22. 52. Ellen A. Fagenson, ‘‘The Mentor Advantage: Perceived Career/Job Experiences of Prote´ge´s versus Non-Prote´ge´s,’’ Journal of Organizational Behavior 10 (1989): 309–20; Terri A. Scandura, ‘‘Mentorship and Career Mobility: An Empirical Investigation,’’ Journal of Organizational Behavior 13 (1992): 169–74; William Whitely, Thomas W. Dougherty, and George F. Dreher, ‘‘Relationship of Career Mentoring and Socioeconomic Origin to Managers’ and Professionals’ Early Career Progress,’’ Academy of Management Journal 34 (1991): 331–51. 53. Monica C. Higgins and David A. Thomas, ‘‘Constellations and Careers: Toward Understanding the Effects of Multiple Developmental Relationships,’’ Journal of Organizational Behavior 22 (2001): 223–47; Ralph E. Viator, ‘‘An Analysis of Formal Mentoring Programs and Perceived Barriers to Obtaining a Mentor at Large Public Accounting Firms,’’ Accounting Horizons 13 (1999): 37–53; Ralph E. Viator and Terri A. Scandura, ‘‘A Study of Mentor-Prote´ge´ Relationships in Large Public Accounting Firms,’’ Accounting Horizons 5 (1991): 20–30. 54. Kram, Mentoring at Work; Ragins, ‘‘Barriers to Mentoring’’; Belle Rose Ragins and John L. Cotton, ‘‘Easier Said than Done: Gender Differences in Perceived Barriers

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to Gaining a Mentor,’’ Academy of Management Journal 34 (1991): 939–51; Raymond A. Noe, ‘‘Women and Mentoring: A Review and Research Agenda,’’ Academy of Management Review 13 (1988): 65–78. 55. See Ragins, ‘‘Diversified Mentoring Relationships’’; Kram, Mentoring at Work. 56. Kram, Mentoring at Work; Ragins, ‘‘Barriers to Mentoring.’’ 57. George F. Dreher and Ronald A. Ash, ‘‘A Comparative Study of Mentoring among Men and Women in Managerial, Professional, and Technical Positions,’’ Journal of Applied Psychology 75 (1990): 539–46; Belle Rose Ragins and Terri A. Scandura, ‘‘The Way We Were: Gender and the Termination of Mentoring Relationships,’’ Journal of Applied Psychology 82 (1997): 945–53; Whitely et al., ‘‘Relationship of Career.’’ 58. David A. Thomas, ‘‘The Impact of Race on Managers’ Experiences of Developmental Relationships (Mentoring and Sponsorship): An Inter-Organizational Study,’’ Journal of Organizational Behavior 11 (1990): 479–92. 59. Ragins, ‘‘Diversified Mentoring Relationships.’’ 60. George F. Dreher and Taylor H. Cox Jr., ‘‘Race, Gender, and Opportunity: A Study of Compensation Attainment and the Establishment of Mentoring Relationships,’’ Journal of Applied Psychology 81 (1996): 297–308. 61. Thomas, ‘‘The Impact of Race on Managers’ Experiences.’’ 62. Belle Rose Ragins and Dean B. McFarlin, ‘‘Perceptions of Mentor Roles in Cross-Gender Mentoring Relationships,’’ Journal of Vocational Behavior 37 (1990): 321– 39; Terri A. Scandura and Ethlyn A. Williams, ‘‘An Investigation of the Moderating Effects of Gender on the Relationships between Mentorship Initiation and Prote´ge´ Perceptions of Mentoring Functions,’’ Journal of Vocational Behavior 59 (2001): 342–63. 63. Ragins, ‘‘Diversified Mentoring Relationships.’’ 64. Monica L. Forret, Daniel B. Turban, and Thomas W. Dougherty, ‘‘Issues Facing Organizations When Implementing Formal Mentoring Programmes,’’ Leadership and Organization Development Journal 17 (1996): 27–30; Kathryn Tyler, ‘‘Mentoring Programs Link Employees and Experienced Execs,’’ HR Magazine 43 (1998): 98–103. 65. Georgia T. Chao, Pat M. Walz, and Philip D. Gardner, ‘‘Formal and Informal Mentorships: A Comparison on Mentoring Functions and Contrast with Nonmentored Counterparts,’’ Personnel Psychology 45 (1992): 619–36; Belle Rose Ragins and John L. Cotton, ‘‘Mentor Functions and Outcomes: A Comparison of Men and Women in Formal and Informal Mentoring Relationships,’’ Journal of Applied Psychology 84 (1999): 529–50; Belle Rose Ragins, John L. Cotton, and Janice S. Miller, ‘‘Marginal Mentoring: The Effects of Type of Mentor, Quality of Relationship, and Program Design on Work and Career Attitudes,’’ Academy of Management Journal 43 (2000): 1177–94; Scandura and Williams, ‘‘An Investigation.’’ 66. See Noe, ‘‘Women and Mentoring.’’ 67. See Ragins and Cotton, ‘‘Mentor Functions.’’ 68. Michael B. Arthur and Denise M. Rousseau, eds., The Boundaryless Career: A New Employment Principle for a New Organizational Era (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996); Monica C. Higgins, ‘‘The More, the Merrier? Multiple Developmental Relationships and Work Satisfaction,’’ Journal of Management Development 19 (2000): 277–96; Monica C. Higgins and Kathy E. Kram, ‘‘Reconceptualizing Mentoring at Work: A Developmental Network Perspective,’’ Academy of Management Review 26 (2001): 264–88; Higgins and Thomas, ‘‘Constellations and Careers.’’ 69. Kram, Mentoring at Work.

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70. See Higgins, ‘‘The More, The Merrier’’; see Higgins and Thomas, ‘‘Constellations and Careers.’’ 71. Monica L. Forret and Thomas W. Dougherty, ‘‘Correlates of Networking Behavior for Managerial and Professional Employees,’’ Group and Organization Management 26 (2001): 283–311. 72. See Higgins and Kram, ‘‘Reconceptualizing Mentoring.’’ 73. Keele, ‘‘Mentoring or Networking?’’ 74. Forret and Sullivan, ‘‘A Balanced Scorecard Approach.’’ 75. Robert J. DeFillippi and Michael B. Arthur, ‘‘The Boundaryless Career: A Competency-Based Perspective,’’ Journal of Organizational Behavior 15 (1994): 307–24; Michael B. Arthur, Kerr Inkson, and Judith K. Pringle, The New Careers: Individual Action and Economic Change (London: Sage, 1999). 76. Monica L. Forret and Thomas W. Dougherty, ‘‘Networking Behaviors and Career Outcomes: Differences for Men and Women?,’’ Journal of Organizational Behavior 25 (2004): 419–37; Fred Luthans, Richard M. Hodgetts, and Stuart A. Rosenkrantz, Real Managers (Cambridge, MA: Ballinger, 1988); James Michael and Gary Yukl, ‘‘Managerial Level and Subunit Function as Determinants of Networking Behavior in Organizations,’’ Group and Organization Management 18 (1993): 328–51; Sam Gould and Larry E. Penley, ‘‘Career Strategies and Salary Progression: A Study of Their Relationships in a Municipal Bureaucracy,’’ Organizational Behavior and Human Performance 34 (1984): 244–65. 77. Forret and Dougherty, ‘‘Correlates of Networking Behavior.’’ 78. See Forret and Dougherty, ‘‘Networking Behaviors.’’ 79. Belle Rose Ragins and Eric Sundstrom, ‘‘Gender and Power in Organizations: A Longitudinal Perspective,’’ Psychological Bulletin 105 (1989): 51–88; Brass, ‘‘Men’s and Women’s Networks’’; Ibarra, ‘‘Personal Networks of Women and Minorities.’’ 80. See Forret and Dougherty, ‘‘Networking Behaviors.’’ 81. See Gould and Penley, ‘‘Career Strategies.’’ 82. Forret and Dougherty, ‘‘Correlates of Networking Behavior.’’ 83. Arlie Russell Hochschild, The Second Shift (New York: Penguin Books, 2003). 84. Douglas T. Hall, The Career Is Dead—Long Live the Career: A Relational Approach to Careers (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1996). 85. Ray Friedman, ‘‘Defining the Scope and Logic of Minority and Female Network Groups: Can Separation Enhance Integration?,’’ in Gerald R. Ferris, ed., Research in Personnel and Human Resources Management (Greenwich, CT: JAI Press, 1996), pp. 14:307–49; Ray Friedman, Melinda Kane, and Daniel B. Cornfield, ‘‘Social Support and Career Optimism: Examining the Effectiveness of Network Groups among Black Managers,’’ Human Relations 51 (1998): 1155–77. 86. Elizabeth Lesly, ‘‘Sticking it Out at Xerox by Sticking Together,’’ Business Week (November 29, 1993): 77. 87. Catalyst, Creating Women’s Networks: A How-To Guide for Women and Companies (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1999). 88. Ibid. 89. See Friedman, ‘‘Defining the Scope.’’ 90. Ibid. 91. See Friedman, Kane, and Cornfield, ‘‘Social Support.’’ 92. Catalyst, Creating Women’s Networks.

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93. See Friedman, ‘‘Defining the Scope.’’ 94. Catalyst, Creating Women’s Networks. 95. Ibid. 96. Don Cohen and Laurence Prusak, In Good Company: How Social Capital Makes Organizations Work (Boston: Harvard Business School Press, 2001). 97. Rob Cross, Andrew Parker, Laurence Prusack, and Stephen P. Borgatti, ‘‘Knowing What We Know: Supporting Knowledge Creating and Sharing in Networks,’’ Organizational Dynamics 30 (2001): 100–120. 98. Baker, Achieving Success through Social Capital. 99. Meyerson and Fletcher, ‘‘A Modest Manifesto.’’ 100. Diane Brady, ‘‘The Glass Ceiling’s Iron Girders,’’ Business Week Online (March 28, 2005), web24.epnet.com (assessed July 4, 2005). 101. Patricia Sellers, ‘‘By the Numbers,’’ Fortune (February 2, 2004): 22.

9

Women Are on the Same Team . . . and Other Important Business Rules Gail Evans

I am forced to begin this chapter with an admonition. Did you know that men fill a room from the center to the front and women from the center to the back? In an office setting, unless they have an assigned seat at the table, women tend to take chairs on the periphery. Then they have a great idea, and they’re sitting in outer space; the boss is sitting at the table. The action is happening among the people at the table. A woman has something to say and begins, ‘‘This may be an idea we have tried before, but . . .’’ We know 1,001 things to say before the word but. Then the woman quietly explains her idea, preceded by a conditional phrase. She knows she achieved her current position because she is ‘‘perfect’’ and does not want to speak up in the meeting unless her comments are perfect. She says something quite intelligent; others at the table murmur, and the meeting continues. Ten minutes later, a smart young man lower in rank than the woman but sitting at the table even though he doesn’t necessarily belong there, rephrases her idea. He says, ‘‘We should—’’ and suddenly, the power structure says, ‘‘That’s a great idea!’’ As people leave the room, the man and the boss discuss the idea, and the woman walks out with a female friend discussing the fact that the man stole her idea. Actually, she gave it away! A real friend doesn’t say, ‘‘Yes, he stole your idea.’’ She says, ‘‘You said it, but he’s actually the only one at the table who really heard you. You need to speak more powerfully and own your idea, rather than being so concerned about whether it is perfect. So I begin by getting angry at all of you and saying, ‘‘You don’t have to be perfect.’’ If you’re always at the meeting table and others say what you wanted to say, maybe you think, ‘‘I thought of that three weeks ago,’’ or ‘‘I was about to say that.’’ None of that counts. Learn that nobody ever got fired for saying something stupid. Actually practice. Say something stupid at a meeting once, and discover that you don’t get fired. The boss only hears and discusses the smart ideas, never the stupid things; that’s why that person’s the boss.

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‘‘Good morning everyone; have you got it?’’ I’m tough. I’m determined you’re all going to be more successful than you ever dreamed you were.

WELCOME TO THE GOLF GAME! Something I’ve noticed when speaking to crowds of women—corporate, entrepreneurial, or women who have any kind of business—is that the first question after I finish speaking is, ‘‘Do I have to play golf?’’ My answer is ‘‘no.’’ Play golf if you think it is fun, if you have the time to get out there and really have a game, or if you’re willing to make a fool of yourself at least once or twice a week. But don’t play golf because someone said you must to get ahead in business. In the 1960s and 1970s, we were told that we were going to succeed. We were supposed to wear navy blue suits with tiny pinstripes and floppy navy blue ribbon ties. We were to succeed by becoming junior men and were expected to be meaner and tougher than any male in the office. In reality, that strategy was ridiculous! It was ineffective and not very empowering. Golf is today’s reinvention of those navy blue suits. It is not a great strategy for most women, but some love it. If so, I encourage them to play. On the other hand, women should not force themselves to play golf simply to emulate men if they dislike the game. After I gave a speech to a national association of school superintendents, a woman came up and said, ‘‘Your comments about golf were amazing to me. I’m actually the first female in modern history who’s the school superintendent in my state. When I applied for my job, I was told that there were 88 applicants in two categories. I asked the secretary, ‘What two categories?’ and she said, ‘Eighty-seven men and you.’ ’’ This woman got the job, and shortly thereafter realized that to be part of the fraternity of school superintendents in her state, she had to learn to play golf. So she joined a country club and hired a pro. After she heard me speaking, she realized that for four years she had been perfecting her golf game to become good enough to be able to play with someone. Golf will never be a strategy for her; she wants to do it ‘‘just right.’’ Golf is about being at ease with mistakes and bad shots, and players must be comfortable laughing at themselves. Anyway, the players make the deal in the locker room, and women are never going there. So what do we do if we can’t play golf? I’ve talked over the years about women’s need to understand the unwritten rules of business. We don’t always have to play by them, but we need to know when we don’t. We need to know when we break the rules before we do it. I break them all the time, but I’m aware ahead of time in a business context when I break the rules and know that I will shake people up. They ask, ‘‘What’s going on with Gail today? Why did she say that?’’ That is fine, because I’ve decided in advance that I’m going to do

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it in this moment. Then I do something an hour later that makes everybody comfortable, and they really hear what I did when I broke the rules. But if we learn and study the rules, we feel as if we know about speaking up and speaking out, doing our own public relations, and similar activities. As I talked around the country and the world, I realized that we, as women, missed one rule, and that is that we were all born on the same team—the women’s team—and we have to start playing there. What the guys understand about this game is about team, and what we don’t understand yet is about team. Playing on the same team is very important. Some readers are probably thinking, ‘‘This is going to be one really feminist [bad-word-for-a-lot-of-people] rant, and she is going to set it up as ‘us versus them.’ ’’ I did not get where I did in this world of business through strategies that pit ‘‘us versus them.’’ Women are in television and all over up front looking pretty. Very few executives in the news business are—or have been—female. It is very disturbing that there are actually four of us at the four major news operations, and we have been doing panels together for thirty years. I’ve retired, and I’m still doing news panels. I keep asking when we’ll be replaced. So this isn’t about ‘‘us versus them.’’ I love the guys. I love to play with the guys, and they love to play with me. Women need to step out of the world of ‘‘us versus us.’’ I’m not concerned about the guys; from my perspective they’re doing very well! I’m happy for them; it’s wonderful. We as women are trying to make our careers work better, and we must learn to start playing together. We all have been taught or teach, ‘‘I can do it. If I work hard enough, study hard enough, get smart enough, or have the right breaks, I can do it.’’ As women, we need to change the mantra from ‘‘I can do it’’ to ‘‘we can do it.’’ Many women have had an isolated success; what we need is collective success. Whenever I am introduced as ‘‘the first’’ or ‘‘the only,’’ I always think it’s ridiculous. As long as women have been in the pipeline and active in business, we should not still be celebrating firsts and onlys. One person can do—or change—only so much. It is fun to be the one and only sometimes, but it can be very lonely. It is not a very effective way to create change. I jokingly say my first book should have been called Fourteen Men and Me. I’m a counter; I always count the minorities or women in the room. It just seemed as though I would look around and see fourteen men and me. My other working title for the book was All I Ever Needed to Learn about Business I Learned from Driving a Nine-Passenger Station Wagon. That is true. Learning the skills needed to be an executive in business school is great, but women must also learn helpful skills in their personal lives that transfer to business. If nine children want to sit next to the window in a car, and only four windows are available, it’s similar to some situations that occur in an office. So what do we do? How do we join the team? How can we move women ahead collectively? Seriously, one person can create some change; two people can make a little more; real change takes at least three. In most places, we’re still worrying about getting one powerful woman in the room. At the current rate of

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progress, parity on corporate boards may not occur until 2067 according to some studies. When women represent 48.9 percent of the workforce, thinking that we’ll reach parity in corporate boards in 2067 means we are not getting anywhere very fast. The tiny steps we make each year are what I call creeping incrementalism. We must take—and be architects of—a bigger step. I was very interested in listening to Bill Cosby’s remarks to the African American community, because although they are controversial, they’re very important. What Cosby said in essence to the African American community is exactly what I am saying to women. We need to be responsible for fixing the system—for having it the way we want it. We all know what is wrong and what needs to be changed; that’s all about history. Now is the moment to begin to take collective action, because we are powerful enough to do it. So I want to spend time talking about what we can do to effect change, make the women’s team more powerful, and make it work. The first topic is mentoring.

MENTORING Everyone’s reaction is, ‘‘They always talk about mentoring, mentoring, mentoring!’’ I understand that. Part of the problem is that we discuss mentoring as if it were in a tiny, isolated box. We think mentoring happens only when a powerful person leads the way for someone who is weak. That is traditional, ‘‘old-time’’ mentoring. Those who have very powerful mentors should use them; that’s terrific. They also must be aware, however, that women tend to look at powerful mentors and say, ‘‘Wow; this is great for me for safety and comfort; this person will help keep my career safe.’’ Great mentors are about visibility, not protection. So a good mentor, rather than protecting, pushes people out to do things—to take the risks and be visible— even when they are uncomfortable and do not want to do it. Even women who get great mentors use them differently than men. For most women, however, great mentors are not available. Also, for most people, mentors do not exist as one person. They are everywhere, and women must start using mentors in powerful ways. A very important type of mentoring that women rarely use is peer mentoring. Every woman in this room is a great observer. We know what kind of jewelry every other woman is wearing. We could do a commentary on the women’s apparel and their style. We have this knowledge because we are brilliant observers. This comes with being female, but we do not use this information to be mentors to each other. I love the woman who spends months preparing and then reads the audience her PowerPoint presentation. Then she wonders why the boss’s eyeballs are rolling and no one seems enthusiastic. She worked hard on that presentation, knows the facts from top to bottom, and is determined to tell everyone in

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the meeting everything she learned about the subject. The power structure of the meeting is interested in three or four basic points; powerful people care about the bottom line. As you leave the room after seeing her fail, you say to her friend, ‘‘It’s a shame; Janet worked really hard,’’ but she sure will not get credit for it because everyone was so bored. You need to talk to Janet; you need to have a relationship with her so you can tell her what she needs to know. Mentor her. Take a risk. Don’t spend your energy telling someone else why she failed. Tell her what she needs to know to be successful. I’m going to share a favorite story with a good lesson for everyone. About twenty years ago, I worked in a company with a young woman who was very smart—a real up-and-comer. Clearly, she had the brains to make it big, but she wore tiny white shoes with small heels all year long. She came from California, and I don’t want to disparage that state, but I later learned white shoes were more accepted there. Every other woman in the United States knows about the Labor Day and Memorial Day rule, but unbelievably, no one ever told this woman about it. She always wore white shoes, and I noticed them because they looked ridiculous. One day I walked down the hall and noticed two secretaries who were deep in conversation. They were talking and laughing about the woman’s white shoes, because it was the middle of December. At that point, I realized that her white shoes were a business issue. Someone needed to tell her that they were distracting from her brains, talent, and ability. I thought to myself, ‘‘How can I tell somebody to lose her favorite piece of clothing?’’ I went through an argument with myself before realizing that if I cared about her and her success, I needed to tell her. So I developed the courage. We went to lunch, and I talked about the white shoes and thought of all the things I could say without being insulting. She understood and lost the white shoes. Much later, this woman became president of a very large company in New York. She called me and said, ‘‘I’m being honored in a big industry dinner in about six months and would love it if you could attend because you really guided me in the years when I was struggling in my career.’’ I said I’d be delighted and went to the dinner. In the ballroom with about a thousand people, when she was up on the dais accepting the award, she told the white shoes story. But she told it a little differently. She said another woman she worked with cared enough about her career and success to take the risk to tell her something she needed to know. At that moment, she was struggling about whether she had the courage, power, and brains to push to the next level or whether she would be happy where she was. She had a nice job and was doing well. At that point, she realized that another woman cared about her success and that she could do it. For her, it was about changing her confidence level, not losing her white shoes. It was about being supported. This is a wonderful story for me, but its real importance is that we have no idea the effect we have on someone else if we make even a small contribution to them. We know when somebody missteps, and we watch them continue to

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repeat their mistakes. As women, we learn to be nice and sweet and to avoid criticizing people. They might not like us; it might be uncomfortable; or it might not turn out beautifully. Well, we’re smart enough; we know when and how to speak and to whom. We don’t coach each other, so we keep repeating the same mistakes. Women somehow believe that each generation of women must learn the same things by experiencing them. We need to share with each other to avoid having to rediscover it each time. If you see a smart woman you care about who is doing something that is not helping her career, there are ways to serve as her mentor. She doesn’t need to be twelve steps below you. If you are a peer, you can talk about it. After a meeting, discuss why you weren’t heard or why a project wasn’t adopted. We can do huge things as peers; we don’t have to rely only on important, strategic people to move our careers ahead. The other part of mentoring is that the minute women are promoted for the first time they must ask themselves, ‘‘Am I mentoring a younger woman?’’ It is your obligation. And if you are a woman of color, mentoring another woman of color is your obligation. Part of the way women will get ahead is by helping each other. Because for every woman who succeeds, I succeed a little, and for every woman who fails, I fail a little. All the time, I hear from young women who say that the older women make it tougher for them. The older women say, ‘‘You know it was really tough for me. I had to give up this or do that. These young women expect to have everything. It’s all about entitlement, so we’re out there teaching them a lesson.’’ To the extent they do this, older women must stop. They should ensure the success of younger women by teaching them what they have learned. Each generation should not have to experience the same problems. We need to be there for each other; we know the answers. If two women get together after a meeting, they know every dynamic—everybody who spoke smartly or didn’t and everybody who gained and lost. We need to start being there for each other so we can see our collective, not just our individual, success. We look at the big business pie and spend our lives competing in the one tiny sliver we think is open to us. The whole pie is open to us; we are half the workforce! More than one of us can succeed; four can succeed at the same time. We need to ensure that, so we need to look at mentoring in a new, more holistic way, stop waiting for the perfect mentor, and realize that they are all around us. We must be there for each other.

NETWORKING We also need to think about networking. I’m going to give you a new twist on networking: no one networks like women. It is unbelievable that networking is an issue for women. We know how to network; it’s a natural part of us. We have no shame when it comes to personal networking. I had a purse that everybody liked. If I gave a speech to 2,000 women, 10 would come up afterward

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to ask me where I bought the purse. Three would ask what it cost, because they didn’t want to invest in finding it if it was too expensive. When it comes to finding the right school, apartment, or pair of shoes, we will ask anyone anything. We network in our personal lives as the men dream they could network. Suddenly, when it involves our business lives, we go from ‘‘net,’’ the part of the word we love, to ‘‘work.’’ We turn networking into work. Networking becomes drudgery and is seen as distributing business cards. One result is that women hand out business cards at networking events they don’t want to attend. If they can’t figure out how to be there and enjoy it, they shouldn’t go. But they distribute forty-five business cards and wonder why they didn’t get any business. Networking is not about the number of people contacted; it’s about the quality of the relationships. We somehow think networking is only about us and the other person—that it works when somebody gets business in a one-on-one relationship. Brilliant networkers are clear; networking is about putting two people together. Very successful businesspeople meet person A and remember having heard about a need from person C. They put A and C together, and then, after years of networking, people whom they helped are employed in every place where they do business. So they don’t have to network; it’s already done. These people remember who assisted them. So networking is much more about building a tight net of people worldwide whom you once assisted in some way. This is fun; it’s not an awful thing. It’s a great feeling to put two people together. We love fixing people up. Networking is about fixing people up; it’s just doing so in business. It’s not about having to meet somebody to make the ask; that’s only a small part. We somehow put a box around business networking and have rules about what would or wouldn’t be right and whom you could or couldn’t ask. We need to loosen it and understand that all the people in our lives, starting with those who were our classmates in kindergarten, are in our network. And we need to be able to use them comfortably. Use is not a bad or pejorative word. Part of what’s happened is that we have tried too hard to separate our personal and business lives. Well, guess what? They meet every day, and the idea that they don’t is a fallacy we made up to protect ourselves from being very successful. They always meet. We spend more active time in our lives at work than anywhere else. So the notion of a cutoff doesn’t match the way it works, and the two can’t be separated. In spite of this, we have that dividing line, and we’re safe on the personal side, but it’s all risky on the business side. I was getting on the train at the Atlanta airport two months ago, and two women, probably in their thirties or forties, landed way out at terminal D. (From there, it takes about six minutes to go to baggage claim.) None of us knew each other. The women were both carrying laptops, so I assumed they were businesswomen. They were standing and I was sitting on the train. The first woman looked at the second and asked, ‘‘When’s the baby due?’’ To

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women, that is not a personal question. In the next six minutes, these two women exchanged more information about their lives than any four guys who’ve been in a golf game together for ten years. One was from Boston; she had three children and was divorced. What I learned about these two women’s lives was all of the most intimate details. Guess what I didn’t learn. I have no idea where either worked or what either did for a living. Somehow, the question, ‘‘When’s the baby due?’’ is not an invasion of privacy, but their work was so much not a part of them that they didn’t share it. I’m not saying that women shouldn’t discuss personal matters. In addition, however, they need a good one-line sentence that they’ve practiced about their identity and role in business or in the workforce that rolls off the tongue in the same way that ‘‘The baby’s due in October’’ or ‘‘I’m married and have three children’’ does. Women fear that the other woman they meet might not be employed or might feel insulted. They also worry that they might be more powerful than she is. That’s the big dynamic; we don’t like to be more powerful than anybody else. This is ridiculous! Work is an integral part of who we are, and we need to make it so. If being asked, ‘‘What do you do?’’ makes you uncomfortable, and you answer with something like ‘‘I support IT’’ or ‘‘I help,’’ ‘‘I work for,’’ then learn a one-line sentence that says who you are and what you do. I was talking about this in a speech at an annual convention of a major insurance company. A woman came up afterward, and said, ‘‘Gail, I want to tell you something. I am president of a division of this company. Until you talked this morning, I have never introduced myself that way. I have never used the word ‘president’; others use it all the time but it never feels comfortable for me to say it. I’m going to go home tonight and practice it with my children.’’ That shows how extreme this is. It shows that we are uncomfortable, so if you’re not a president, know that people in high positions also are uncomfortable. We have to learn how to do that, even if it means practicing with our kids or dog or in front of the mirror until the sentence rolls off of our tongues. One problem we have is that we don’t feel as powerful as we can be, and part of that is because we don’t present ourselves as being powerful. I’m sure most people who don’t know that a woman is a division president assume she is a mid-level executive. Seventy-five percent of the time, I am introduced as former vice president of CNN. Vice president is a nice title, but a vice president is not the same as a senior or an executive vice president. I have reached the point now where I find a humorous way to correct people. It kills me, but I do it because we do not know we are powerful; we spend much time and energy telling ourselves and everyone else that we’re not that powerful. We will feel better when those of us who have achieved begin to acknowledge it and not make someone else do it. Recently, a Fortune 200 firm brought together its 100 top-ranking women from around the world for a luncheon. Before I began speaking to the group, the women introduced themselves. The first woman said she was supporting IT.

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I knew no one in the room was below the level of assistant vice president or director, but thirty-five to forty women introduced themselves the same way. Each looked a little less powerful than the woman before her because she didn’t want to brag or make anyone uncomfortable. I stopped and said, ‘‘I see this all the time. You are all trying to so hard to be nice to each other that you’re looking as if you’re a bunch of executive assistants. How will you know whom to network with if you don’t actually know who these women really are?’’ After I said that, we discovered that they were very powerful, and their whole way of connecting with each other changed. So we have to remember that who we are in business is a part of us every day. I see this happen when I get on airplanes all the time. We get on the airplane, and the guys get on. In ten seconds, the guys say, ‘‘This is who I am; this is what I do; is there a deal here?’’ It’s unbelievable! Added to that, if there’s not a deal, they either get into a deep conversation about ball scores, or one who does something interesting explains that business to the other. I’m amazed at what I learn when guys are sitting talking to each other on an airplane. Unless they’re very tall, women who get on an airplane like the window seat because they can define their space; no one can be on the other side. They get out the book or the work and send a very loud message saying, ‘‘I do not want to be disturbed; this is my moment for peace and quiet. Do not interfere in my space.’’ I understand that; I love the silence of an airplane compared to a busy life. But airplanes are great business places where women can learn how to naturally network. The guys do it totally differently than we do. I’m not saying we’re wrong and they’re right. I’m just saying that those who want to be good at networking must look at places where it is available and ask, ‘‘Am I playing?’’ Another thing women do is attend events that are great networking opportunities and sit next to people we know. We walk in the room and know who knows each other and where they are, and this is an opportunity to connect. Making contact with someone we’ve known for thirty years isn’t making a contact. We need to attend these events and connect in new ways with new people. If we leave a two-day event having met five or six people with whom we really have something in common, we have networked brilliantly. Meeting everyone in the room is not necessary; instead, develop a quality relationship with a few people. Then, look at each other, say, ‘‘Let’s have lunch,’’ and do it. One way we miss out on networking is by saying wonderful things and then never following through. After I finish speaking, a lot of women come up and give me their business cards, and I think, ‘‘That’s nice,’’ and never hear from them again. If a man comes up after I speak and gives me his business card, within a week I usually hear from him. He has a request and makes it. We need to remember not to just do the nicety but to follow through. Networking is fun; we need to relax and enjoy it. Those of you with children notice—and now that I have five grandchildren, I notice—that we’re on—or back on—the soccer and T-ball express. I don’t have any football grandchildren, but I certainly have soccer, baseball, and T-ball

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grandchildren, so I get to go to the games again. Somehow, you think missing your children’s games is bad, but it’s nothing compared to missing your grandchildren’s. They really care. At these games, I watch and observe. The guys all stand on one side; it doesn’t matter which team their kids are on. They are deep into ‘‘Who’s here? What do you do? Is there a deal here?’’ The women are on the other side and have an unwritten rule banning business talk. The only essence of their identity at these social events is that they are the mother of this child, and talking about anything related to business would somehow violate the child. First, realize that stay-at-home and working moms are exactly the same species. We’re all women. Most women live on a continuum; we’re in and out of the workforce at various times in our lives. To make it easier for everyone, we need to support each other, not talk judgmentally about the other one. We need to remember that there all sorts of places to network. I am not recommending going to your child’s soccer game with the sole intent of making a business deal. But you are allowed to talk about the other part of your life when it is appropriate, and you don’t need to cut yourself in two. Many different networking opportunities exist; we need to relax, learn to enjoy the process, and engage in networking in ways that can make us more powerful.

CONSIDER A WOMAN Now the next, and most important part of this talk, is to consider a woman. I do not mean to favor a woman. I want to make sure nobody leaves this room and says, ‘‘She told us we were supposed to favor a woman.’’ It is your obligation, though, to enter the world of considering other women. What do I mean by that? I’m going to start in your personal lives. When you get ready to hire the photographer for the wedding, a lawyer to draw up the will, or a contractor to build the addition to your house, do you do the work to find a woman, a womanowned business, or a woman salesperson who is eminently qualified to compete for the business? I said, ‘‘compete for the business’’; I don’t care whether you give her the business. I care that you have done the work to allow her to compete, because that’s how women will go from about 13 or 14 percent to about onethird of real power in this country. Women sign 80 percent of the checks and are responsible for about 89 percent of the buying and financial decisions. So why do we represent only 13 or 14 percent of those with real power? One reason is because we’ve allowed the ‘‘old Rolodex of life’’ to rule us. We go to the same places—usually white, male places—because that’s how it always has been done. Women and minorities can change things by seeking people like ourselves and helping them succeed by allowing them to compete. People always say to me, ‘‘I want the best.’’ I want all of you to have the best; if you do the hard work, you most likely will find another woman who is best at

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least one-third of the time. It takes work; we actually don’t know all those names. When we buy coffee mugs for the office, we always buy from the same place we’ve bought them for thirty-seven years. Instead, why not find out if a female-owned business or a female salesperson might compete for that business. Get her on the minority vendors list. There are all sorts of business implications to this. It’s easiest to look at in our personal lives, but we also must ask, ‘‘Did I consider another woman? Did I give a woman a chance to compete for this job?’’ Your obligation is not to get her the job, and if she obtains it and doesn’t perform brilliantly, it’s not the end of your career. It’s just another vendor or employee who wasn’t perfect. It happens all the time. But we’re terrified to do this, because we somehow think if we suggested someone who doesn’t measure up, it ends up back on us. If you didn’t make the actual hiring decision, it doesn’t end up back on you. If you made the decision, just be smart enough to cut your losses and move on quickly. We’re not going to increase our power and numbers unless we start breaking through the old Rolodexes and bringing new people into the equation. Usually when I’m speaking at a major corporation, five or six top ranking men in the company, sometimes including the chairman, president, or chief financial officer (CFO), are sitting in the back row. They want to hear what I’m telling the women. They laugh louder and harder than we do at most of it, and when everyone gets nervous and uncomfortable what I hear from them is, ‘‘Wait a second; she’s talking about teamwork. We love teamwork!’’ They don’t hear the whole feminine part of it; they hear good teamwork and good business. So I would suggest that considering a woman or minority is important because we’ve exhausted the old places to do business; the opportunities to grow will come from new communities. Everyone has the inroads to the old construction firm which has been here for ten generations. Women and minorities have the ability to move into new communities and find people who are beginning businesses that will grow and become clients for current employers. So there is a very good business reason for all of this, besides the fact that we need to do it to take care of ourselves. Our companies don’t mind this; they will only grow. We really must ask ourselves if we’re doing the work to consider a woman. Those who don’t will get stuck and will be amazed by how limited their Rolodexes are. I was preparing to put an addition on my house, which was built in 1923 and is in one of Atlanta’s historic areas. In Atlanta, 1923 is pretty historic; as many of you know from Gone with the Wind, most of it went away. And I said, ‘‘Okay, Gail, you’re out here talking about all this. You need to find a female contractor and architect to bid on this project.’’ I knew tons of male contractors, but no female contractors. Somebody said, ‘‘Oh I know someone.’’ I met her, and she was nice. She made a bid, but this woman was not really competing. Putting her on the list was not fair, because there was no chance I would give her the project. Every time I talked in Atlanta at meetings I would tell people that I was looking for a good female contractor and architect. I delayed the

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project six or seven months because I wanted to get someone who could compete. Finally, one night I was talking, and afterward a woman came up to me following a board of directors event and said, ‘‘I know exactly who you are looking for.’’ That female-owned contracting firm bid and competed. I gave that firm the project, not just because women owned it but because they understood what I wanted to do. It took work; it wasn’t simple and easy. We also must do the work to find the vendors and, within our own companies, to consider women and minorities for vacancies and promotions. I have been inside the executive committee rooms in major companies. I know the discussion is, ‘‘I’d like to put a woman in this job or a minority in that job.’’ The same discussion occurs six weeks later when the company is hiring somebody whom everyone in the executive committee has known for years. Then the committee members say, ‘‘I really wanted to put a woman there’’ or ‘‘I really wanted to put a minority there, but I was not comfortable with any who came to compete.’’ It’s not that the intentions aren’t good; many times we just go to the same places with the same contacts. When there is an opening, find a woman who genuinely can compete for it and offer her name. You will meet many women; remember who they are and that they are good and smart. Ten months from now, when you hear of an opportunity, say, ‘‘Let me talk to her; let me suggest this name.’’ We need to do the work to ensure that more women and minority names are available. We can find them. When we do, we won’t be labeled as a woman who favors women. Most males understand the notion of taking care of self very well. Rather than looking disparagingly on women who take care of other women, most successful men wonder why we don’t do a better job at it, but they don’t see it as anything negative. When I talk about this, the men who have worked for me over the years always say, ‘‘Gail, you present this as if you never mentored, helped, or advanced men, but you’ve helped tons of guys.’’ I say, ‘‘Yes, but I’m talking to women.’’ There’s nothing wrong with being known as a person who takes care of herself. Those in the power structure usually assume that if you’re taking care of yourself, you’re also taking care of business. People who always give themselves away are not comfortable people to be around in a business context. Because if they are willing to give themselves away, the fundamental unstated belief is that they will give the business away too. The important thing, though, is not about being angry or resentful or letting things build up until you blow up. It’s about taking care of business daily so it becomes part of the way you live and doing it with a smile and a little humor. My biggest piece of advice to women is that no one likes to play on a team with a person who anguishes constantly and thinks everything is impossible or dwells on mistakes made before work. We need to drop the anguish, anger, and frustration. We need to tend to the small stuff. I love to play with my business school class about the small things that happen in business. I always hear, ‘‘Well, I didn’t take care of that,’’ or ‘‘It

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didn’t really matter; it was small; I saved my power and energy for the big stuff.’’ I challenged the business school class to give me an example of something that was big, because the big stuff is the small stuff that no one took care of. Small mistakes occur all the time; for example, someone’s name is mispronounced. One boss repeatedly mispronounces a person’s name and keeps going. Some may think, ‘‘It doesn’t matter,’’ or ‘‘It’s all right as long as I get a good review.’’ It’s not all right; if it were, nobody would know about it. Some say they’re saving their power for something important. Well, part of the reason we get angry and frustrated is because we didn’t tend to the little things. We will be more respected if we take care of each other. We need to remember that it’s about taking care of ourselves and other women and making them more powerful in the marketplace. So in the back of your mind, whenever you’re getting ready to do something, remember to ask, ‘‘Did I consider a woman?’’ This does not mean to favor a woman but to simply give her a chance to compete.

SHARING INFORMATION The importance of beginning to share information is the next topic. Most women love perfection, but realistically, the last time anything was perfect was in the fourth-grade spelling bee. Business is about a lot of things, but perfection is not one of them. It’s about smart, good judgment. But we need to share information; instead, we become isolated experts. Many women love having jobs that are small. I don’t mean nonintellectual; I mean jobs in one isolated area about which they know more than anybody else. Then they can be called in as the expert, and no one will challenge them. This strategy keeps women in the small picture; we always know a lot about our little area. The guys, though, always seem interested in the big picture. Statistics show that women get promoted based on performance. We get the next job after we’ve been doing it for a year or five. We get the next job because our performance on the old job was perfect. We did a great job; we knew it perfectly and got promoted to the next place. Men get promoted based on possibility and potential—because someone thinks, ‘‘This guy is really smart; he can do that.’’ They can get the job and say to themselves, ‘‘I really don’t know how to do this, but the boss wouldn’t have put me here if he or she didn’t think I could do, so I guess I can.’’ We get a job that we have been doing for five years, and all we know how to do is anguish about everything we don’t know how to do while still holding on to the old job because we still want that to be perfect. Then we wonder why we get overwhelmed. We need to loosen up about this and understand that performance is only part of it. We still must be good performers, but perfect performance is not the way to the top, it’s only a small part. Often, perfection causes trouble, because it

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gets us focused on isolated, irrelevant information. But I say we need to share information, so what do we need to do? Those of us who are smart in isolated areas need to go to lunch together regularly. At that lunch, talk about business at least half the time. Discuss anything during the other half. You will begin to develop a bigger picture of what you do and what is happening at the company because one person is in accounting, another is in customer sales, and a third is in development. As a result, you will look smarter, and your decisions will look bigger. A great byproduct is that as you begin to talk to each other and share stories, you will discover you’re not crazy. As you start to tell what you think is the most bizarre story anyone ever heard, everyone else at the table may say, ‘‘That happens to me all the time.’’ This is a great way to develop strategies. After I spoke to a group of women in a major health care businesswomen’s association, the five top-ranking women at a major pharmaceutical house in the United States went to dinner together for the first time. They sat down at the table and said, ‘‘Gail says we need to do all these things; let’s play the game.’’ One said, ‘‘All right, let’s each talk about our most complicated, most difficult issue and see if we can be supportive of each other.’’ So the first said, ‘‘The biggest issue in this company that never changes is about getting heard.’’ The second one was astonished and said, ‘‘That’s my biggest issue, too.’’ As they went around the table, all five senior vice presidents in a Fortune 500 firm agreed. They all struggled with being heard and developed a plan to deal with that problem. Most of the time, two or three were in the same meetings. If at least two were present, they made a pact that if one spoke and wasn’t heard, any others in the group who were in the room would say, after a minute or two elapsed, ‘‘I want to get back to Carolyn’s point.’’ It didn’t matter if she agreed with Carolyn or not. Her work was to make sure Carolyn was heard. The women agreed to continue to force the conversation back until the person was heard. It took them seven months of doing this before the culture began to change. Mysteriously, they noticed that when one of them spoke everybody actually paid attention, even though they were still speaking the same way they had before. This story shows that there are things we can do. I told that story in a recent speech at another Fortune 500 firm. A woman who is CFO of the company in the United States and the woman who is president of the same firm in Mexico attended. One said that she and the other woman had been using that strategy for ten years. They had agreed that when one spoke in a meeting and wasn’t heard, the other would ensure she got heard. It may not always be about being heard, but we all know what the issues are. We can be there for each other, share information to get the bigger picture, and support each other in issues like getting heard. If we begin sharing information, we will find out what is possible. One of the biggest issues I hear from women is, ‘‘I went in for a raise and got it, so I guess it wasn’t enough of an ‘ask.’ ’’ We don’t talk about all these things. Granted, a lot of people lie, but women need to ask, ‘‘What can I do; what’s the

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arrangement I can have? What’s the flextime arrangement, the salary, the perks?’’ Many of us work in companies where we’re told not to discuss these things; confidentiality is part of the human resources rules. Too bad—the guys talk about it all the time. How will you know what’s possible if you can’t ask anyone? If you can’t find out from the person who had the job ten years ago or three years ago, or who is working down the hall, how will you know what to ask for? Women earn about seventy-eight cents to each dollar a man makes. Much of the reason for that is because we don’t know how much to ask for. Unless we start sharing information, we’ll never know. In my first book, I told a funny story about negotiating a contract at CNN. We finished the big negotiations, and I was tying things up with our new general counsel. He asked, ‘‘By the way, Gail, do you get the big or the small car allowance?’’ I thought, ‘‘Car allowance?’’ I had never heard of car allowances. I was smart enough to figure I hadn’t gotten it for years, so I smiled and said, ‘‘The big one.’’ I told that story in my first book, and for the next three years, every woman who negotiated a contract with me asked for a car allowance. Some were entitled to it and got it; to others, I said, ‘‘No, you aren’t on that level yet.’’ I then looked at one and said, ‘‘What amazes me is that I revealed the car allowance; think of what I didn’t reveal. None of you has even moved beyond the car allowance.’’ We don’t know what’s possible unless we talk to each other and find out. We must be clear that there is information to be gleaned, and we need to get it from each other. We may not get everything, but we’ll have a better idea of what’s available by sharing information. So it doesn’t matter if it’s about perks or salaries; it’s about the content of what we do. We must start talking to each other about business and not think everything is confidential. Because nothing is confidential any more; we all know that. The final thing I’m going to say very seriously is that we all need to learn to be a little quieter about each other. What do I mean by this when I just said to share information? We need to begin to make it fashionable for the world to think that women are good to each other. I’m about to write an editorial about the television show The Apprentice. It’s good, entertaining television, and I usually don’t take light things very seriously. It’s so detrimental to the way women perform in the marketplace and to businesswomen and unbelievably harmful to African American women. The stereotyping and what the women have done on the job reinforce all the negative things about us. If you have never seen The Apprentice, it’s all about how mean and nasty women are to each other. That’s supposed to be funny, except it’s not, and we need to recapture the territory. We need to make it fashionable to be known as a woman who is good and caring to other women, and we need to teach our daughters and granddaughters the value of that. We need to teach them that even the person who becomes most popular must still be nice and caring. In all honesty, the guys get a kick out of the nasty fights that go on. We need to stop it and ask if we are being caring or good to each other.

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I often hear stories from other women that the most difficult thing in the workplace is other women. Women tell me how some woman harmed them fourteen years ago, and they still won’t go to meetings or work on a project with her. That’s ridiculous. Guys generally understand that a team is only as good as its weakest players. We see the little boy who’s the hero and best batter out after practice with the kid who strikes out, and we all think, ‘‘He’s such a nice little boy.’’ He may be, but being nice has nothing to do with it. He’s clear that this kid always strikes out. We get two outs in that inning instead of three, and he’s going to teach this kid how to see the balls and swing the bat, because that’s how to win. What do we do when another woman or someone else on the team doesn’t work as hard or care as much? We want to get rid of her. Instead, we must learn to be there to support the weak parts, not just the strong parts. We need to make being known as nice and decent to each other an important of who we are. That doesn’t mean we can’t compete, but it means that there are different ways of competing with each other. I received an email message from a woman in a major investment banking house in New York who had read my white shoes story. She wanted to invite me to her company until she got to the part about being quiet. When she got to the point about not talking about other women, she said something like, ‘‘Damn it. She’s not doing as good a job. If she’s not as good, I won’t support her, and I’m happy to be known as the person who talked about her.’’ This woman told me: I was really furious. I felt as if you were telling me I should support somebody good, bad, or indifferent just because she was a woman. Then, suddenly, my company, which has a woman as senior vice president, appointed a second female executive vice president. The person who got the job was not somebody I would’ve chosen; she wasn’t someone I liked or had much of a relationship with. She was a chief competitor. The morning after the appointment, I walked down the hall toward my office, and four guys at my level were standing in the hall, deep in conversation. As I approached, it was clear that they were waiting for me. The minute I arrived, one looked up with a great smile and said, ‘What do you think about Susanne’s promotion?’ I was dying to tell them what I thought, but I kept hearing you in the back of my mind. I stopped, looked at them, and said, ‘It’s about time a corporation of this size has a second female executive vice president.’ It was over; there was no game to play anymore. If I wouldn’t fan the flames with what I had to say, it was done. I realized I bought this woman two or three weeks to move into the new position. I understood that the fact that she got it ultimately was good for me, even though at the time I didn’t like it, and I didn’t like her.

So we need to understand for every woman who succeeds, we succeed a little, and for every woman who fails, we fail a little. Women are viewed as a group, so being good to each other is important. Being known as women who are supportive of each other is positive for all of us.

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I’ll leave you with the new first question I am asked the most, which is no longer ‘‘Do I have to play golf ?’’ but ‘‘When are we going to have a female president of the United States?’’ The answer is that we will have a female president when the women of the United States decide they want one.

NOTE Adapted from Gail Evans, ‘‘Straight Talk from the Author of She Wins, You Win: The Most Important Rule Every Businesswoman Needs to Know.’’ Keynote address at the Women’s Executive Leadership Summit, Madison, WI, October 7, 2004. Sponsored by the University of Wisconsin–Madison School of Business Executive Education Program.

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Double Jeopardy Survival: Insights and Lessons Learned in Organizational Battlefields Michele V. Gee

Double jeopardy in the U.S. workplace has also been referred to as double tokenism, double discrimination, and double or twin disadvantage. These terms primarily refer to the disadvantaged work status of individuals who suffer from the confounding effects of both race and gender in the United States. Simultaneously being a woman and a member of a minority group tends to increase discrimination and hostilities that may be experienced in American employment. This chapter focuses on important lessons learned by this African American female. Survival strategies are proposed for double-jeopardy workers in contemporary U.S. society. Insights gleaned from more than two decades of corporate and academic experiences are shared.

DOUBLE JEOPARDY AND THE DUAL EFFECTS OF RACISM AND SEXISM Racism and sexism, unfortunately, still exist in places of employment in the United States. Although the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was passed more than forty years ago, race still matters in American employment, and so does gender. Minority women tend to face the greatest disadvantages and discrimination, especially those who were originally brought to the United States involuntarily by force or conquered, enslaved, and forced into labor. These groups are referred to as colonized, involuntary minorities and include African Americans, Native Americans, Mexican Americans (original settlers in the Southwest United States), Native Hawaiians, Alaskan Natives, and Puerto Rican Americans.1 Many women encounter sexism on the job; immigrant women of color who voluntarily came to the United States also experience racism and sexism. However, evidence indicates that colonized, involuntary minorities, that is, nonimmigrant minorities, who are also female tend to face the most discrimination

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and have the lowest status in American society.2 For example, African American women in management have been found to be confronted with dual low status resulting from the intersection of race and gender.3 Similarly, several studies have revealed the combined effects of being an African American and a woman manager. A study of African American women firefighters, for example, found that they had to deal with the double bind caused by the convergence of race and gender.4 The dissimilar lower status and heightened discrimination against African American versus white women is a prime example of what is meant by double jeopardy due to the negative, interactive effect of race coupled with gender. Although female workers share many workplace concerns, women of color face additional disparate challenges. Differences between African American and white women are particularly notable.5 In general, women of color experience what has been referred to as gendered racism in the workplace.6 A recent U.S. Equal Opportunity Commission (EEOC) report on glass ceilings describes the status of all women managers and officials in the private sector.7 This report found that collectively, women represent 48 percent of all employees but only 36.4 percent of managers and officials. The EEOC report concludes that gender discrimination varies by industry, and influencing variables include headquarters versus field locations, blue- versus white-collar positions, and service versus manufacturing industries. The EEOC also has reported private sector employment statistics pertaining to women of color indicating that their employment has risen significantly, but many minority women remain in lower occupational categories and are still concentrated in certain industries.8 Furthermore, of all women of color, African American women made the smallest gains in higher level positions and overall employment. Hispanic and Asian women far surpassed African American women in employment gains. The Institute for Women’s Policy Research has documented a significantly wider gender wage gap for women of color: Hispanic women earned fifty-three cents, and African American women earned sixty-three cents for each dollar earned by white men, and white women earned seventy-six cents.9 Obviously, much more progress is needed in eliminating the gender wage gap that persists in the United States more than four decades after passage of the Equal Pay Act of 1963.

SURVIVAL AND SUCCESS IN SPITE OF RACISM AND SEXISM I have experienced and learned much during more than two decades of double-jeopardy status in corporate America and academic institutions. As a highly educated African American woman, I have worked as a marketing professional and manager in Fortune 500 corporations and as a professor of

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business management and administrator in academe. It still amazes me, when reading and reflecting on current literature, that although considerable progress has been made, so much remains the same. Many workplace challenges are as relevant in the first part of the twenty-first century as they were during the last two decades of the twentieth century. Indeed, it is paradoxical that dynamic changes are coupled with relative stagnation. As it was over twenty years ago, double jeopardy remains a relevant term in the contemporary U.S. workplace. Unfortunately, racism, sexism, and discrimination persist in the work world despite many laws banning such behavior. Considerable meaning and urgency are still attached to terms and conditions such as the oppressed and marginalized, the disadvantaged, academic achievement gaps, the digital divide, major disparities in housing and health care, and the widening gap between the rich and the poor in the United States. Many urban ghettos across the country have increasing high school dropout rates. Unemployment, violence, crime, and incarceration are also growing at staggering rates in many urban, minority ghettos nationwide. For example, the 2005 National Urban League (NUL) Equality Index, which measures equality gaps still separating African Americans from whites, assessed the ratio of the status of blacks to whites to be at 0.73. In other words, the overall status of African Americans in 2005 is only 73 percent of that of white Americans.10 The NUL Equality Index is a statistical measurement that considers factors such as economics, social justice, education, health, and civic engagement. The biggest gap in living conditions between whites and blacks in the United States is economic. A dramatic racial wealth gap exists: one in every four African American and Hispanic families has no liquid financial assets. In contrast, only 6 percent of white families are without liquid financial assets.11 Black unemployment in 2005 held at 10.8 percent, which was 2.3 times higher than that of whites, whose unemployment decreased to 4.7 percent. There are also considerable race- and ethnic-based disparities in health and health care, criminal justice, and education. The life expectancy for blacks is seventy-two years, whereas white Americans can expect to live for seventy-eight years on average.12 African Americans at every stage of life are twice as likely, on average, to die from accident, disease, behavior, and homicide. With respect to social justice, African Americans are three times more likely than whites to be convicted and incarcerated once arrested. The average jail sentence for blacks, for the same crime, is six months longer than that of whites.13 In minoritydominated schools across the country, there are twice as many inexperienced teachers who have been in the occupation for fewer than three years.14 Slow progress is indicated by these statistics. Much more needs to be done to bring African Americans and other minorities to parity with fellow white citizens. Racial and ethnic inequalities result in the loss of considerable human potential, for which society suffers. Many talented individuals remain trapped in poverty, still reeling from the effects of centuries of oppression and

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institutionalized racist and sexist practices. Some policies of the majority culture serve to maintain their privileges and the status quo. At the same time that racial, ethnic, and gender inequalities persist, an alarming proportion of corporate managers exhibit unethical behavior. Financial and other crises have occurred in many businesses due to major lapses in corporate ethics. Enron, WorldCom, Arthur Andersen, Tyco, and Merrill Lynch are just a few examples of businesses that have been implicated in ethically questionable behavior. Several now cease to exist as a consequence of their unethical business activities. Business executives are going to prison in record numbers due to ethical and illegal activities. For example, the $11 billion WorldCom scandal, the largest accounting fraud in U.S. history, resulted in the sentencing of five former top WorldCom executives to federal prison terms by summer 2005. The executives sentenced include the ex-CEO of WorldCom, who received a sentence of twenty-five years in federal prison for his role in the debacle. The Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 was enacted in the United States on the heels of the series of corporate scandals involving allegedly corrupt actions of executives in major firms. The Sarbanes-Oxley Act applies to public companies and increases the culpability of business executives for misstatements concerning financial information. In addition, Sarbanes-Oxley addresses corporate governance issues, organizational structure, and protection for whistle-blowers. The law requires certifications for financial statements and various disclosures, and new corporate regulations are being enforced with failure to comply resulting in serious penalties. Provisions in the act also restrict the control of corporations by their executives, auditing committees, accounting firms, and attorneys.15 Another result of mushrooming corporate scandals has been a call for renewed emphasis on ethics, integrity, and concern for others in all levels of education. For example, the Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business (AACSB International), the premier accrediting organization for business schools, issued new guidelines in 2004 concerning the need for integration of business ethics and governance into management education. Furthermore, many companies now provide ethics training for employees and take corporate social responsibility seriously. Success in the contemporary workplace can involve complex challenges, particularly for women of color. Serious issues abound concerning the doublejeopardy status of minority American workers. Proposed survival strategies and insights shared in this essay address these issues. Recommendations include the importance of developing self-knowledge and the ability to reflect; successful juggling of multiple roles and responsibilities; coping with workplace racism and sexism through tempered radicalism and appropriate choices related to activism versus silence on the job; and avoiding corporate and academic minefields. Before discussing each of these survival strategies, the changing workplace will be considered because it provides the context in which viable strategies and insights are needed not only to survive but to succeed.

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THE CHANGING WORKPLACE The work world is continuously evolving demographically, geographically, technologically, politically, socially, and economically. More women are entering the workforce; minorities and immigrants are a larger percentage of net new entrants; and the average age of many workforces is rising (particularly in more advanced economies). Many countries have workforces that are increasingly diverse. In addition, the global marketplace and world economy are inherently multicultural. Considerable cultural diversity exists in the customer/client bases of many organizations as operations expand across national borders. Thus, multiculturalism is a prime characteristic of significant markets for a wide range of organizations. The employment of women of color in the United States has increased dramatically, as previously indicated.16 Yet although minorities and women are needed to fuel the world’s economies, race and gender discrimination persist. This is another paradoxical aspect of the modern workplace. The most astute employers understand the implications of demographic changes in the composition of new entrants into the U.S. labor force. The classic empirical work in 1987, Workforce 2000, first brought dramatic demographic changes to the attention of many American businesses.17 This Hudson Institute report indicated that white males would make up a small percentage of net new entrants to the U.S. labor force. American businesses were urged to adopt diversity initiatives to maintain a competitive, productive workforce allowing them to survive, grow, and prosper. The sequel to the Hudson Institute’s landmark study was published a decade later. Titled Workforce 2020, the sequel further discussed work and workers in the twenty-first century.18 Ethnic diversification was predicted to continue among U.S. employees, but at a relatively slow pace. White non-Hispanics entering America’s labor force are merely projected to replace exiting white workers during the early part of the twenty-first century, and slightly more than half of all net new workforce entrants will be minorities. (The total number of white male newcomers to the U.S. labor force, however, remains dominant.) Economies and workplaces of the twenty-first century are complex in structure and challenges. Hypercompetition, across and within nations’ borders, has become the norm. The competitive landscape is increasingly global and multicultural for American businesses and industries. The need for successful labor participation of minorities and women is critical. Consequently, managers face critical operational considerations and issues in the world of work. International businesses, governments, nonprofit organizations, and other enterprises need competent leaders who understand that cultural differences can be viewed as assets if effectively managed in the global arena. Higher skill levels are required in the new information age and the knowledge-based world economy. Yet workforce skill deficiencies and labor shortages in many organizations, industries, and nations remain pervasive.

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Several workforce studies identify the skills gap as an issue that managers of diverse employees must address.19 Strategically, effective management of diverse employees is increasingly important because competition for skilled, productive workers is intensifying globally. Ethnocentrism, the belief that one’s own culture is superior to others, is a notoriously unsuccessful approach for contemporary managers. All employees, especially minority females experiencing double jeopardy, have workplace challenges that can be successfully addressed irrespective of organizational behavior and managerial actions concerning multiculturalism. In particular, self-knowledge, reflection, and networking are critical for workers affected by double jeopardy to thrive in the contemporary workplace.

SELF-KNOWLEDGE, REFLECTION, AND NETWORKING Knowing oneself—one’s background, goals, dreams, and priorities—is critical to personal survival, growth, and success. Reflection, which should be a constructive activity, is important. It differs markedly from excess worry, which leads to anxiety and increased stress. Graduate and undergraduate students in my business strategy course must conduct resource-based assessments of firms and analyze their strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. (This SWOT analysis is in addition to other assignments analyzing the industries in which firms operate.) Strengths and weaknesses are internal to the firm, whereas opportunities and threats exist outside of the organization. Similarly, developing a SWOT analysis of oneself as an individual navigating through life and seeking career advancement can also be strategically effective. When analyzing personal strengths and weaknesses and environmental opportunities and threats, one should consider feedback from others. These others could be mentor(s) or corporate sponsors, trusted colleagues, friends, or family members. After completing a personal SWOT analysis, one should develop and then evaluate strategic alternatives or options. What course of action makes the most sense, at this time, given one’s circumstances? For continuous self-development, personal SWOT analyses and strategies should be revised as situations and priorities change. Self-reflection and analysis are therefore quite important. It is also critical to understand the challenges posed by juggling multiple roles and responsibilities and balance them during various life stages while gainfully employed.

MULTIPLE ROLES, PHASES, AND CHOICES Workers generally, and female employees in particular, must often perform multiple roles that change during different life stages. Work-family balance can

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be quite problematic. Regardless of whether one is married or single, working toward career advancement in the midst of workplace challenges, hostilities, and discrimination is highly stressful, especially when simultaneously caring for children or elders. Thus, effectively coping with considerable stress is essential. Juggling multiple responsibilities is complex but doable. Prioritizing what is most important in life and acting accordingly are critical tasks. The challenge then becomes finding the optimum work situation, given personal and professional goals. Some women neither marry nor have children, others wait a long time before doing one or the other. They may complete their higher education and begin careers before committing to marriage or family. Others may marry young and start a family while simultaneously developing their careers. Still others are single mothers who must work to support their families. Regardless of the particulars of all possible scenarios, assessing one’s personal situation, establishing priorities, and progressing toward short- and long-term goals are crucial. Goals, responsibilities, roles, and priorities can and do change. Success often is positively related to the ability to multitask and be flexible, adaptable, and open to change in the modern workplace. The world, people’s lives, and professions constantly evolve. The dynamic times in which we function may be confusing, exciting, or both.

TEMPERED RADICALISM What about specific responses to racist and sexist behavior, policies, and practices encountered on the job? Tempered radicalism is one strategy for dealing with rage against workplace inequalities.20 Tempered radicals identify with a cause or ideology, and choose to work within the system to effect change without upsetting it too much. That is, their rage is tempered at the same time it is acted on to influence change in the status quo. Some women may choose not to make a highly visible, vocal response to workplace injustice. These individuals, however, are not necessarily silent. Rather, they could be working behind the scene to influence or implement needed change. Whether a response to a situation involves apparent silence or public voice is not always clear. What may appear as silence may actually be voice exercised in certain venues and visible only to select others. For example, in various managerial roles I have exercised voice aggressively with top management team members (policy makers) behind closed doors. Progressive changes were made, and needed initiatives were implemented. Some inequities were prevented or remedied. Yet it may not be politically wise or expedient to publicly articulate what one has influenced, said, and done. Too much publicly visible voice at this level could undermine the greater good to be accomplished.

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Thus, receiving public credit for one’s activism or being highly visible is not necessary to act as a successful change agent. Integrity and principles can be maintained. For example, people who interact with me basically understand my perspective on diversity and workplace equity. I engage in dialogue, make presentations, and provide compelling arguments concerning diversity formally and informally, one on one, and in groups. Yet in accordance with my deceased father’s wise counsel, I have learned to ‘‘choose battles carefully, remain aware of the end goal, stay positive, persevere with dignity, and avoid burning bridges.’’ Different workplace equity issues encountered during various phases of one’s career may be addressed in varying forms of voice and activism.

DOUBLE JEOPARDY AND ISOLATION Many women of color feel quite isolated. My experience, which includes double-token, double-jeopardy status countless times, is a case in point. Often, I have been the first and only African American and/or minority female in a range of situations, including in my academic department, corporate branch, hierarchical position, at professional conferences, committee meetings, in my neighborhood, and so on. And I am not the exception. Over the years, I have heard and read accounts of many other minority women who have had similar experiences. Nonetheless, many women of color continue to forge ahead in U.S. workplaces. As kindred souls working toward common goals, we periodically reach out and encounter each other at conferences, via email, and by reading our publications. Too often I felt isolated in corporate and academic positions. I have yet to enjoy the luxury and comfort of working with a critical mass of other colonized minority group members in a majority-dominated workplace. Consequently, with varying degrees of success, I have developed and maintained vital links to similar others to counter the isolation experienced in majority-dominated environments.

MAJORITY-DOMINATED VERSUS MINORITYDOMINATED ENVIRONMENTS A marked difference exists between majority- and minority-dominated academic settings and workplaces. My bachelor of science degree was from a historically black university: Central State University in Wilberforce, Ohio (my father’s alma mater). Wilberforce is a former Underground Railroad site for runaway slaves fleeing to freedom before the Emancipation Proclamation was signed. My first professional job as a college graduate was with the Chicago Urban League, a minority-dominated organization addressing the needs of the urban

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disadvantaged. To a great extent, working in environments where African Americans were most of the top managers, served as role models, and functioned as peers and colleagues was wonderful. Minority-dominated organizations were welcoming, and working for them was very comfortable. Subsequently, for graduate study, I attended a prestigious, private university: the University of Chicago. Ironically, I did not feel highly discriminated against while studying there because my perspective as a graduate School of Business student was that all of us were treated as lowly underlings by the highly esteemed faculty. Most important, the graduate business degree from an elite institution certainly advanced my career. I worked in professional marketing and managerial positions for IBM and AT&T following completion of my MBA. These were enlightening experiences, and good and bad situations were encountered. I observed the revolving door, which refers to high turnover among the few token minorities who were hired at both corporations. My decision to return to academe and earn a doctorate in business was inspired by my desire to better influence American corporations in their diversity efforts.

RUDE AWAKENING IN ACADEME My experiences in two of the largest multinational American corporations, considered to be among the most progressive, clearly demonstrated that much more progress in terms of diversity was needed. So, my plan was to return as an expert, to advise large corporations in creating needed change. I enrolled and graduated from a large, urban, state university, the University of Wisconsin– Milwaukee, with a Ph.D. in business. While completing my doctorate, I worked as an adjunct teaching business strategy, marketing, and management courses at two private institutions of higher education, Marquette University and Alverno College, as well as at the public University of Wisconsin– Milwaukee. After earning my doctorate, I was hired at another campus in the University of Wisconsin System. As I progressed through the tenure process, I had a rude awakening. At this majority-dominated institution of higher learning, I learned that those who have earned a Ph.D. are not all necessarily enlightened, openminded, or appreciative of diversity. Unfortunately, some faculty members acted exactly the opposite and engaged in exclusion, not inclusion. What an eyeopener this was for an African American female reared by her parents to believe that education was the best means to enlightenment, success, acceptance, and inclusion! Important lessons have been learned and insights gained as a result of my academic and corporate experiences. Hopefully, sharing these insights will be of value to many readers of this chapter, whether they are women of color, their mentors, top managers, or others.

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AVOIDING MINEFIELDS IN CORPORATE AMERICA AND ACADEME The valuable lessons learned from my varied experiences in several American workplaces are summarized here. Although I did not enjoy every situation, each contributed to the base of wisdom I am still acquiring. Lessons and important insights include the following:      



   

  

 

Be prepared. Continuously develop and improve marketable work skills and competencies. Maintain a sense of humor; do not take yourself or others too seriously. Believe in yourself and your dreams, and set high goals. Network, network, network! Contacts can be developed in many ways, in many different venues, internal and external to the organization. Develop strategic alliances, and recognize that these may change over time or in different circumstances. Note that allies and enemies can be the same people depending on the cause or issue. The nature of the relationship between you and others, particularly in the workplace, can and often does change over time for many reasons. Changes in structure, leadership, responsibility, experience, maturity, life stage, ideology, legislative mandates, corporate policies, and politics can all result in shifting mutual interests and coalitions. Learn to distinguish between supporters and nonsupporters. An ally today may be an adversary tomorrow, and vice versa. Indeed, some people will swing back and forth. Try not to judge others or berate yourself. All people have positive and negative qualities, so strive to bring out the good and avoid the bad. Balance personal and work life; both are important. Market yourself: toot your horn. You are your best advocate. Constrain your ego; do not believe the hype as you become more successful. Runaway egos have been the downfall of too many highly talented people. Pace yourself in life, be flexible, and learn to go with the flow. Rigidity can be injurious and destructive. Learn to engage in distraction appropriately. Sometimes you need a break or need to deflect others! Help others as they journey in the work world. Appreciate the fact that your achievements have been made possible by direct or indirect assistance from others and historical gains made by other people of color in the workplace. Have no regrets, for they serve no useful purpose. Make the best, most informed decisions at each step, and keep moving forward. It is not personal, even if it appears to be! As my teenage son likes to say, ‘‘People have issues.’’ Don’t allow others’ negative, personal issues to infiltrate your being. Avoid being defensive and overly sensitive.

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Practice discretion; this is critical to avoid self-destruction. Words often can be taken out of context, and careless verbalization may have unintended results. Be careful using email. If you do not want an email message forwarded around the world, do not send it. Do not sweat the small stuff, and it is all small stuff when viewed in the context of unlimited alternatives, choices, and opportunities. Understand politics, and become politically savvy. Learn to get along with people, including diverse others. Good social interaction skills go a long way. Diversity can be defined in terms broader than race, gender, and ethnicity. Diverse others in the workplace may include multiple generations working together, for example, returning retirees and older seniors, aging baby boomers, Generation X, and Generation Y. Diversity can also include sexual orientation, physical ability, socioeconomic status, and educational attainment. Avoid labeling others. People are not always as they appear on the surface. Learn to say ‘‘no.’’ Double-token, double-jeopardy workers often are asked to serve on committees and work on many projects because diverse representation is needed. Do not spread yourself so thin across multiple work activities that you cannot accomplish your goals. Remember to allow time to breathe! Persevere.

CONCLUDING THOUGHTS It should be clearly recognized that women and people of color lack the power to totally eliminate racism and sexism, even by engaging in effective activism. Women of color with double-jeopardy status, however, can control their own thoughts, beliefs, attitudes, and behavior. The way life is viewed greatly affects the way it is perceived. For that reason, try to see and appreciate the good in life. Much of the bad that triggers worry and lost sleep may never materialize. As a former mentor, a retired dean of a business school (who happened to be a white male of privilege) said, ‘‘Life is good; you just encounter a few speed bumps along the way.’’ As suggested previously, all workers, especially women of color, need to believe in themselves and their abilities. It is quite helpful to laugh each day and maintain a good sense of humor. In addition, trust your inner instincts, and consider belief in a higher power. Without a doubt, racism and sexism are alive and well in the U.S. workplace. Double-jeopardy status persists. This chapter, however, has attempted to focus on positive strategies and insights to help minority women (particularly

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colonized, involuntary, minority women) survive and succeed. Years ago, many people of color in the United States said frequently, ‘‘Keep the faith.’’ This is still a good plan. I urge readers to reflect on this advice within the context of their personal belief systems, personalities, philosophies, and goals and use what seems most effective. Engaging in dialogue with mentor(s), colleagues, family, and friends about insights, strategies, and tactics proposed herein can be quite constructive. Seeking multiple, diverse perspectives can be beneficial for all involved. NOTES 1. JoAnn Moody, Faculty Diversity: Problems and Solutions (New York: RoutledgeFalmer, 2004). 2. Ibid. 3. Gwendolyn M. Combs, ‘‘The Duality of Race and Gender for Managerial African American Women: Implications of Informal Social Networks on Career Advancement,’’ Human Resource Development Review 2(4) (2003): 385–405. 4. J. D. Yoder, and A. Aniakudo, ‘‘Outsider within the Firehouse: Subordination and Difference in the Social Interactions of African American Women Firefighters,’’ Gender and Society 11(3) (1997): 324–41. 5. Ella Bell, L. J. Edmondson, and Stella Nkomo, Our Separate Ways: Black and White Women and the Struggle for Professional Identity (Boston: Harvard Business School Press, 2001). 6. P. Essed, Understanding Everyday Racism: An Interdisciplinary Theory (Newbury Park, CA: Sage, 1991). 7. U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, Glass Ceilings: The status of Women as Officials and Managers in the Private Sector (Washington, DC: EEOC, 2004). 8. U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, Women of Color: Their Employment in the Private Sector (Washington, DC: EEOC, 2003). 9. Amy Caiazza, April Shaw, and Misha Werschkul, Women’s Economic Status in the States: Wide Disparities by Race, Ethnicity, and Region (Report) (Washington, DC: Institute for Women’s Policy Research, April 2004). 10. Marc H. Morial, ‘‘From the President’s Desk [and the Equality Index],’’ in The State of Black America 2005: Prescriptions for Change (New York: National Urban League, 2005). 11. Thomas M. Shapiro, ‘‘The Racial Wealth Gap,’’ in The State of Black America 2005: Prescriptions for Change (New York: National Urban League, 2005). 12. Annabelle B. Primm and Marisela B. Gomez, ‘‘The Impact of Mental Health on Chronic Disease,’’ in The State of Black America 2005: Prescriptions for Change (New York: National Urban League, 2005). 13. National Urban League, The State of Black America 2005: Prescriptions for Change (New York: National Urban League, 2005). 14. Ibid. 15. John A. Pearce II and Richard B. Robinson Jr., Formulation, Implementation, and Control of Competitive Strategy, 9th ed. (New York: McGraw-Hill Irwin, 2005).

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16. EEOC, Women of Color. 17. William B. Johnston and Arnold H. Packer, Workforce 2000: Work and Workers in the 21st Century (Indianapolis, IN: Hudson Institute, 1987). 18. Richard W. Judy and Carol D’Amico, Workforce 2020: Work and Workers in the 21st Century (Indianapolis, IN: Hudson Institute, 1997). 19. Ibid.; Johnston and Packer, Workforce 2000. 20. Ella Bell, L. J. Edmondson, Debra Meyerson, Stella Nkomo, and Maureen Scully, ‘‘Interpreting Silence and Voice in the Workplace: A Conversation about Tempered Radicalism among Black and White Women Researchers,’’ Journal of Applied Behavioral Science 2(4) (2003): 381–414.

SUGGESTED FURTHER READING Cross, E. Y., Katz, J. H., Miller, F. A., & Seashore, E. W., Eds. (1994). The promise of diversity: Over 40 voices discuss strategies for eliminating discrimination in organizations. Chicago, IL: Irwin Professional Publishing. Davis, G., & Watson, G. (1982). Black life in corporate America: Swimming in the mainstream. Garden City, NY: Anchor Press/Doubleday. Deresky, H. (2003). International management. New York: Prentice Hall. Gee, M. V. (2003). Empirical exploration of pedagogical approaches to international management education. In Hans Klein (Ed.), Interactive innovative teaching and training including distance and continuing education: Case method and other techniques. Madison, WI: Omni Press. Hale, F. W. Jr., Ed. (2004). What makes racial diversity work in higher education: Academic leaders present successful policies and strategies. Sterling, VA: Stylus Publishing. Harris, P. R., Moran, R. T., & Moran, S. V. (2004). Managing cultural differences: Global leadership strategies for the twenty-first century (6th ed.). Burlington, MA: Elsevier Butterworth-Heinemann. Hartman, L. P. (2005). Perspectives in business ethics (3rd ed.). Boston: McGraw-Hill. McCuiston, V. E., Wooldridge, B. R., & Pierce, C. K. (2004). Leading the diverse workforce. Leadership and Organization Development Journal, 25(1/2), 73–92. Meyerson, D. E., & Scully, M. A. (1995). Tempered radicalism and the politics of ambivalence and change. Organization Science, 6, 585–600. Oakley, J. G. (2000). Gender-based barriers to senior management positions: Understanding the scarcity of female CEOs. Journal of Business Ethics, 27(4), 321–335.

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Developing Men and Women Leaders: The Influence of Personal Life Experiences Laura M. Graves, Patricia J. Ohlott, and Marian N. Ruderman

One key mechanism for leadership development is learning from experience.1 To date, researchers and organizations have focused on the learning opportunities inherent in challenging on-the-job experiences, such as tackling unfamiliar tasks, creating change, or assuming high levels of responsibility. Little attention has been paid to the developmental opportunities inherent in managers’ personal life experiences—ordinary experiences in nonwork roles such as spouse or significant other, parent, friend, or community volunteer.2 In fact, the commonly accepted wisdom is that personal life experiences interfere with managers’ work performance and impede their career advancement. Although we do not deny that personal life experiences are sometimes detrimental to managers’ work, we believe that they are an important means of leader development. Interests, roles, and responsibilities outside of work strengthen psychological well-being, afford access to supportive personal relationships, and provide opportunities for developing leadership skills, all of which can enhance leader effectiveness.3 Thus, ordinary nonwork activities such as pursuing a hobby, organizing a fundraising event, or coaching a youth sports team can actually facilitate leader development. In this chapter, we discuss the effects of personal life experiences on leader development. We also explore gender differences in the effects of these experiences on leader development. Gender continues to have a substantial impact on individuals’ personal and work lives.4 Furthermore, gender differences in personal life roles are associated with differences in women’s and men’s career patterns and development opportunities. Thus, it is important to consider gender differences in the effects of personal life experiences on leader development. Finally, we offer actions that organizations and individuals can take to ensure that women’s and men’s personal life experiences facilitate, rather than impede, their development as leaders.

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EFFECTS OF PERSONAL LIFE EXPERIENCES ON LEADER DEVELOPMENT As noted, managers’ personal life experiences may have both negative and positive influences on the development of their leadership talents. The idea that personal life experiences are detrimental to leader development is grounded in the notion that individuals have a fixed pool of physical and psychological resources.5 Personal life experiences are presumed to deplete this pool of resources, thereby reducing the resources available for work and creating conflict between the personal and work roles. Researchers have documented the existence of conflict between the personal and work roles, and demonstrated its detrimental effects on psychological well-being, life satisfaction, and job satisfaction.6 Conflict between the personal and work roles is also presumed to reduce performance, although this effect remains relatively untested. The negative effects of personal life experiences on work outcomes are presumed to be particularly detrimental for managers. Managerial work is extremely demanding, and individuals who expend their resources on personal life roles are believed to have insufficient resources available for effective performance of their managerial roles. Thus, organizations typically assume that involvement in personal life roles reduces leader effectiveness and are thus reluctant to develop the leadership talents of individuals who are involved in these roles.7 The idea that personal life experiences contribute to leader development is grounded in the notion that individuals’ resources are expandable, not fixed, and can be transferred between the personal and work spheres.8 According to this view, investment of time and energy in personal life roles expands, rather than depletes, an individual’s resources. Examples of resources that might be generated in personal life roles include new skills, knowledge, and ways of perceiving; enhanced physical and psychological well-being; and expanded support networks. The expansion of resources should increase managers’ effectiveness at work by increasing goal-directed behavior.9 Individuals’ expectancies regarding the likelihood of attaining their goals are based in part on the resources available to them. When individuals have more extensive resources, their expectancies of success are higher, and they are more likely to engage in behaviors that will help them achieve their goals. Thus, managers who generate additional resources in their personal life roles may be more motivated to take steps to attain their goals at work. Having more resources also increases the likelihood that managers will possess the resources needed to address specific problems or challenges.10 Furthermore, it may make it easier for them to assign appropriate resources to a particular problem; individuals who have extensive resources can be discriminating in their use, identifying and applying the resources that fit the situation. An in-depth qualitative study of women managers and executives conducted by researchers at the Center for Creative Leadership (CCL) suggests that many

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of the resources derived from personal life roles are directly relevant to the leader role, and, thus, are especially likely to contribute to leader effectiveness and development.11 In particular, personal life experiences offer interpersonal skills, psychological benefits, emotional support and advice, multitasking skills, leveraging of personal interests and background, and leadership practice. Interpersonal Skills Interpersonal skills developed because parents, spouses, friends, and community volunteers are directly relevant to performance in today’s collaborative business environment. For example, community volunteer experiences in which individuals have no formal authority over their partners can teach leaders the skills needed to get work done in the team-based settings that are common in today’s organizations. Parenting experiences may increase an individual’s awareness of others’ needs and perspectives, and create an ethic of caring for others,12 thereby increasing his or her ability to relate to work colleagues. As any parent will attest, raising children creates opportunities to learn how to develop others, bargain, and resolve conflict. Other family relationships such as those with inlaws can provide managers the occasion to learn how to deal with significant stakeholders when making decisions. Psychological Benefits Having a rich personal life also contributes to psychological strength.13 Successfully coping with challenges in the personal sphere may increase individuals’ feelings of self-esteem and confidence, thereby giving them the psychological resources to conquer challenges at work. Furthermore, activities outside of work may provide a source of gratification and pleasure that buffers the stress and pressure that are typically associated with leadership positions. Emotional Support and Advice Individuals’ personal life experiences provide them with access to a support network of family, friends, neighbors, and community partners. These network relationships provide them with access to valuable work advice and contacts and a forum for venting emotions concerning stressful work situations.14 For managers, the knowledge that family and friends are supporting them can be reassuring as they tackle new assignments or thorny challenges at work. Multitasking Skills Nonwork experiences also can teach leaders how to better handle multiple tasks. Extra responsibilities at home, for example, can force leaders to sharpen their skills in setting priorities, managing time, and delegating. In such situations,

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leaders might enlist the help of others or pay for outside assistance. They may also learn to clarify their priorities and be resourceful in handling competing demands. The skills and tactics managers develop by managing multiple tasks in their nonwork lives improve their ability to move projects forward in the workplace. Leveraging Personal Interests and Background Hobbies, travel, and consumer experiences sometimes provide valuable knowledge or insights that are directly relevant at work. For example, managers who vacation by immersing themselves in new cultures may gain knowledge that enables them to better handle global responsibilities at work. Managers’ personal experiences as consumers may provide them with an awareness of the competitive environment and the marketplace. Leadership Practice Involvement in volunteer projects, charitable organizations, and community and religious groups provides managers with a laboratory for testing skills in such areas as influencing others, building teams, managing change, decision making, and other key leadership competencies. Managers may develop leadership skills from such experiences and then apply them at work. Subsequent research conducted at CCL confirms the positive effects of personal life experiences on individuals’ work experiences. A survey-based study of 276 executive and managerial women found that women who were committed to personal roles such as spouse, parent, friend, and community volunteer had higher levels of self-worth and satisfaction with life than those who were not.15 Moreover, women who were committed to roles outside of work were rated by their colleagues as having better management skills in both the task and interpersonal arenas. Another study of 346 executive and managerial men and women found that those who were more committed to family roles (i.e., parental role, marital role) gained more work-related resources from their personal lives, experienced higher levels of life and career satisfaction, and were rated as more effective performers by their work colleagues.16 Research by other scholars also suggests that involvement in parenting, recreational, and community roles generates resources that strengthen work outcomes.17 Thus, personal life experiences can provide fertile ground for the development of leadership skills.

GENDER DIFFERENCES Although today’s gender roles are less rigid than in the past, the conventional homemaker and breadwinner roles continue to influence gender-role socialization and subsequent experiences in the personal and work domains.18

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Stereotypical differences in the importance attached to the work and family roles persist; men are more likely than women to value work over family, and women are more likely than men to value family over work.19 In addition, men and women tend to have different views of family.20 Among men, the family role is often synonymous with providing financial security for one’s partner and children. In contrast, women typically view the family role as ensuring the family’s emotional well-being, including being available to family members and aware of their needs. As a result of these different views of family, women allocate more time and energy to the family domain than do men.21 Women are also less likely than men to psychologically segment or separate the personal and work domains.22 Women consider family needs in determining their work roles (e.g., work hours) and may be psychologically (e.g., thinking about family) or behaviorally involved (e.g., talking with a family member) in the family role while working. This blurring of the boundary between family and work allows working women to meet the demands of the traditional homemaker role. In contrast, men’s breadwinner role does not require them to make themselves available to their families at work or alter their work schedules to meet family demands. Thus, men tend to psychologically segment or separate the family and work roles, and create a relatively impermeable boundary between the two domains.23 Gender differences in family responsibilities are reflected in men’s and women’s career decisions.24 Men typically make independent decisions about their careers based on their goals. They pursue linear career paths, following the conventional wisdom of working without interruption in a series of progressively more complex and responsible jobs in one industry. In contrast, women’s career decisions are based on a desire to blend their work and personal lives.25 Women consider not only available opportunities but also the needs of those around them. As a result, their careers are nonlinear and unpredictable. Early in their careers (first twelve years or so), women are more likely than men to experience employment gaps, or periods of time without employment, typically for childrearing.26 Women are more likely to work parttime, take voluntary leaves of absence, or retire early to care for family members.27 These career choices lead to reduced income and lower levels of advancement in the managerial ranks. Differences in men’s and women’s family responsibilities also lead to differences in evaluations of their competence in organizations. The low status attached to motherhood and other caregiving roles in society sometimes leads to a devaluation of mothers’ social status in organizations, evoking doubts about their competence and suitability for positions of authority.28 Furthermore, working mothers may be stereotyped as incompetent housewives rather than competent businesswomen. Working fathers, however, are not seen as less competent as a result of the fatherhood role.29 In fact, a sense of responsibility or maturity is attributed to fathers, leading them to be viewed more favorably than single, childless men.

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As a result of gender differences in family responsibilities, career patterns, and perceived competence, women often have less access to developmental opportunities in organizations than men.30 Women are less likely to receive challenging stretch assignments, job relocations, and international postings that will help them develop their leadership talents. They also have less access to formal training programs and off-site activities, and they receive less financial support for outside educational programs. This lack of access to developmental opportunities assignments inhibits women’s advancement in the management ranks. The discussion highlights the negative repercussions of women’s personal life experiences for their development as leaders. Yet earlier we argued that personal life experiences are beneficial for leadership development. Moreover, the women leaders who participated in CCL’s research benefited from their personal life experiences. How does gender influence the career-related benefits of personal life experiences? Might personal life experiences be a vehicle for women, who are sometimes denied access to leadership development opportunities at work, to develop their leadership skills? Research evidence on gender differences in the career-related benefits of personal life experiences is limited and inconclusive.31 Some scholars have suggested, however, that women derive such benefits more readily than men.32 In particular, women’s greater investment of resources in the family role increases the likelihood that their family experiences will generate resources that enhance leader effectiveness. For example, women’s greater responsibilities at home (e.g., household chores, childcare) may compel them to improve their multitasking skills. Extensive involvement in childrearing may also boost women’s skills in developing others. In addition, women’s tendency to blur the boundaries between family and work may facilitate the transfer of resources from their personal lives to their work lives.33 The lack of a psychological barrier between the family and work domains may make it easier for women to bring psychological assets (e.g., sense of gratification, self-confidence), knowledge, and skills gained from family experiences to the work role. In contrast, men’s tendency to segment work and family may impede the transfer of resources. Thus the way women approach the family role may strengthen their ability to turn personal life experiences into leadership lessons that enhance their effectiveness at work. We cannot definitively conclude, however, that managerial women benefit from leadership development opportunities inherent in personal life experiences to a greater extent than managerial men. Not all managerial men and women choose to pursue traditional gender roles.34 Furthermore, the traditional gender roles described herein do not apply across all racial and ethnic groups. For instance, due to cultural and economic factors, black women and men in the United States have historically played less traditional roles, with women sharing breadwinning responsibilities and men sharing childcare responsibilities.35 Moreover, managers can develop leadership

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talents from personal life experiences outside of their family roles—roles where gender may be less relevant. Additional research on gender differences in the benefits of personal life experiences for leader development is needed. In sum, differences in men’s and women’s personal life experiences lead to gender differences in leader development. In particular, women’s family responsibilities restrict the choices they make about their careers, as well as the development and advancement opportunities available to them in organizations. However, women’s family responsibilities may also provide opportunities and challenges that contribute to the development of their leadership talents.

IMPLICATIONS FOR ORGANIZATIONS AND INDIVIDUALS In an ideal world, there would be no gender differences in the effects of personal life experiences on leadership development—at or outside of work. Furthermore, the negative influence of personal life experiences on leadership development would be minimized and the positive influence maximized for individuals of both sexes. In this section, we describe the steps that organizations and individuals can take to ensure that women’s and men’s personal life experiences facilitate (rather than inhibit) their development as leaders. Organizational Actions Organizations need to adopt a new approach to leadership development that respects the whole person and recognizes the benefits of personal life roles for leader development.36 Several components are critical to this new approach including work-life programs, management behaviors, workplace norms, and career development practices. These components will help create an organizational culture that acknowledges, values, and supports individuals’ personal life roles.37 Such a culture benefits all employees, not just managers seeking to develop their leadership talents. Work-life balance programs, such as flexible work arrangements (e.g., flextime, telework, part-time work, paid leaves, unpaid leaves, job sharing) and dependent care assistance (e.g., day care facilities or vouchers, elder-care referrals), are a necessary first step. Such programs are beneficial to all employees, improving not only their ability to take care of their families and overall quality of life but also their career satisfaction and commitment to their employers.38 Although many organizations tout their work-life programs, the implementation of these programs leaves a great deal to be desired.39 Bosses are often unwilling to offer flexible work arrangements to employees, particularly critical employees. Moreover, managers are hesitant to take advantage of such offerings because they fear that doing so will jeopardize their career advancement. Organizations must ensure that managers and employees alike have access to and are encouraged to use work-life programs.

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Supportive supervisors are a particularly critical link in creating an environment that values the whole person and encourages use of work life programs.40 Organizations need to educate supervisors about the importance of valuing the whole person and the skill development opportunities inherent in personal life experiences, such as managing a household or parenting. Supervisors should also be knowledgeable about work-life programs and should be provided with incentives and resources (e.g., equipment or systems needed for telecommuting arrangements) to implement these programs. In addition, organizations need to encourage supervisors to be creative in developing flexible ways of working that meet the needs of the individual and the organization. Senior executives are another important link in creating a culture that respects managers’ personal lives. In particular, senior executives need demonstrate through their own behaviors that the whole person is important. They should also model usage of work-life programs so that it will be clear that these programs are valued and that there will be no retribution against those who use them.41 For instance, CEOs who leave work to attend their children’s soccer games and limit weekend work hours to spend time with family signal that the whole person is important and that use of work-life programs is acceptable. Unfortunately, many organizations have been run by workaholic male executives who sacrificed family and outside interests to meet business needs.42 There is anecdotal evidence, however, that some of today’s senior executives are interested in maintaining a life outside of work.43 Organizations also need to consider workplace norms, particularly regarding work hours.44 In this era of downsizing, restructuring, and focusing on shortterm results, managers and employees are expected to work long hours. In many organizations, working long hours has become a badge of honor, and rewards are based on hours worked, not actual performance. Excessive working hours make it difficult for individuals to meet the demands of their personal lives and ignore the developmental benefits inherent in personal life experiences. They also may reduce (rather than enhance) productivity. Organizations should set fair standards concerning the numbers of hours that individuals will work. Moreover, decisions about managers’ compensation, development, and advancement must be based on actual performance, not hours worked. In addition, organizations need to scrap outmoded career development practices.45 Organizations that define a successful managerial career as an uninterrupted upward sequence of promotions or assume that requests to take time out from career for family reasons reflect a lack of career commitment signal that the whole person is unimportant and discourage individuals from taking advantage of work-life programs. They also make it difficult for individuals to benefit from development opportunities outside of work. Organizations that want to facilitate leader development must develop a new definition of successful managerial career. This definition must recognize that a successful managerial career is not a rigid sequence of promotions but instead may include gaps, interruptions, sabbaticals, or periods of part-time work. Moreover,

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they should not deny individuals access to developmental opportunities because their careers have included such features. Development planning processes and leadership training programs must also be reconfigured to recognize the whole person.46 In development planning, individuals should review all possible sources of leadership development, both at work and outside of work. Furthermore, development plans should allow sufficient time for the individual to pursue learning experiences outside of work, not just those formally associated with their work roles. In leadership training programs, organizations can educate participants on the benefits of wholeness and the leadership development opportunities inherent in their personal life experiences. Participants can be asked thoughtful questions about the learning opportunities available to them outside of work. They also can be asked to engage in goal setting exercises that place career goals in the relation to other personal and family goals. Health-related, family-oriented, volunteer-oriented, and other personal goals should be considered at the same time as work-related goals. Creating an organizational culture that values the whole person and ensures that women’s and men’s personal life experiences facilitate rather than inhibit their development as leaders requires extensive commitment by organizations. All of the steps outlined in the preceding paragraphs are necessary. They are designed to help managers meet their family needs, eliminate the career penalties associated with nonlinear career paths and use of work-life programs, and identify and capitalize on the leadership development opportunities inherent in their personal life experiences. Moreover, they are also intended to reduce gender differences in leadership development opportunities that stem from differences in women’s and men’s personal life experiences and career patterns. Individual Actions Although organizational actions are critical, individuals can also take steps to minimize the negative and maximize the positive effects of their personal life experiences on their development as leaders. Of course, individuals must acknowledge their whole selves.47 They must develop respect for roles outside of work, including those related to the family and community. Deriving leadership benefits from personal life roles is difficult unless one sees value in them. Individuals also need to clarify what is important to them by prioritizing their roles.48 Doing so allows them to identify the appropriate mix of personal and work commitments. Individuals can then attempt to create personal and work lives that mirror their priorities. For instance, men and women can seek employers and work environments where the value attached to personal and work activities is consistent with their own priorities. In such settings, leadership development opportunities are less likely to be restricted by mismatches between individual and organizational values.

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Furthermore, individuals must recognize that leadership development occurs in their personal lives as well as at work and create development plans that acknowledge both of these sources of leadership development.49 As a first step, individuals should identify their development needs by comparing their portfolios of skills and experiences to those needed in target jobs or in present and future assignments. Once the skills and capabilities to be developed have been identified, individuals can review both their personal and work roles and experiences for potential learning experiences. It may be helpful to work with a mentor, trusted advisor or friend, or a coach to help identify both development needs and potential sources of learning. Work-related development opportunities may be obvious, but opportunities outside of work can be identified with careful consideration. For example, an individual who needs skills in developing others or team building might consider coaching a youth sports team. A person who would like to practice leadership skills in a relatively low-risk setting might consider a leadership experience in a community organization. Individuals can then create and implement action plans including both on- and off-the-job activities for developing their leadership talents. To maximize the leadership development opportunities inherent in personal life experiences, individuals need to build support networks in both their personal and work lives.50 Relationships with supportive others are critical in providing individuals with the flexibility needed to manage both domains. For instance, supportive partners may reduce the burden of family responsibilities, and supportive supervisors or co-workers may allow individuals to engage in flexible ways of working. Throughout the leadership development process, supporters in and outside of work can act as coaches, give feedback, provide encouragement, serve as sounding boards, and otherwise contribute to leadership development efforts. Finally, people should also serve as role models for others.51 Individuals who recognize the whole person, seek work situations that match their priorities, engage in development planning processes that consider their personal and work lives, and build networks of supporters will expand their opportunities to develop their leadership talents. To the extent that they share their experiences with others, they can serve as valuable role models—demonstrating the benefits of being a whole person and showing how personal life experiences expand leadership talents. In conclusion, personal life experiences offer important opportunities for leadership development. However, organizations (and individuals) seeking to develop leadership talent often pay little attention to the development opportunities inherent in individuals’ personal life roles. In fact, many view involvement in personal life roles as detrimental to leadership development. This view restricts the leadership development opportunities available to women, who are often highly engaged in family roles. To remedy these shortcomings, we advocate a new approach to leader development that values the whole person and draws on the leadership development opportunities inherent in personal life experiences.

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NOTES 1. M. W. McCall Jr., M. M. Lombardo, and A. M. Morrison, The Lessons of Experience: How Successful Executives Develop on the Job (Lexington, MA: Lexington, 1988); P. J. Ohlott, ‘‘Job Assignments,’’ in C. McCauley and E. Van Velsor, eds., CCL Handbook of Leadership Development, 2nd ed. (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2004), pp. 151–82. 2. M. N. Ruderman, P. J. Ohlott, K. Panzer, and S. N. King, ‘‘Benefits of Multiple Roles for Managerial Women,’’ Academy of Management Journal 45 (2002): 369–86. 3. M. N. Ruderman and P. J. Ohlott, Learning from Life: Turning Life’s Lessons into Leadership Experience (Greensboro, NC: Center for Creative Leadership, 2000). 4. S. D. Friedman and J. H. Greenhaus, Work and Family—Allies or Enemies? What Happens When Business Professionals Confront Life Choices (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000); G. N. Powell and L. M. Graves, Women and Men in Management, 3rd ed. (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 2003); L. A. Mainiero and S. E. Sullivan, ‘‘Kaleidoscope Careers: An Alternative Explanation for the ‘Opt-Out’ Revolution,’’ Academy of Management Executive 18(1) (2005): 106–23. 5. W. J. Goode, ‘‘A Theory of Role Strain,’’ American Sociological Review 25 (1960): 483–96. 6. E. E. Kossek and C. Ozeki, ‘‘Work-Family Conflict, Policies, and the Job-Life Satisfaction Relationship: A Review and Directions for Organizational Behavior-Human Resources Research,’’ Journal of Applied Psychology 83 (1998): 139–49; S. Parasuraman and J. H. Greenhaus, ‘‘Toward Reducing Some Critical Gaps in Work-Family Research,’’ Human Resource Management Review 103 (2002): 1–15; M. R. Frone, ‘‘WorkFamily Conflict and Employee Psychiatric Disorders: The National Comorbidity Study,’’ Journal of Applied Psychology 85 (2000): 888–95. 7. J. R. Kofodimos, ‘‘Why Executives Lose Their Balance,’’ Organizational Dynamics 19(1) (1990): 58–73. 8. Ruderman et al., ‘‘Benefits of Multiple Roles’’; J. H. Greenhaus and G. N. Powell, ‘‘When Work and Family Are Allies: A Theory of Work-Family Enrichment,’’ Academy of Management Review (in press); S. E. Hobfoll, ‘‘Social and Psychological Resources and Adaptation,’’ Review of General Psychology 6 (2002): 307–24. 9. Hobfoll, ‘‘Social and Psychological Resources and Adaptation.’’ 10. Ibid. 11. Ruderman et al., ‘‘Benefits of Multiple Roles’’; M. N. Ruderman and P. J. Ohlott, Standing at the Crossroads: Next Steps for High Achieving Women (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2002); M. N. Ruderman, ‘‘Learning Off the Job,’’ Personal Excellence 8(4) (2003): 47. 12. R. Palkovitz, ‘‘Parenting as a Generator of Adult Development: Conceptual Issues and Implications,’’ Journal of Social and Personal Relationships 13 (1996): 571–92; R. Palkovitz, M. A. Copes, and T. N. Woolfolk, ‘‘ ‘It’s Like You Discover a New Sense of Being’: Involved Fathering as an Evoker of Adult Development,’’ Men and Masculinities 4 (2001): 49–69. 13. Ruderman et al., ‘‘Benefits of Multiple Roles.’’ 14. Ibid.; Greenhaus and Powell, ‘‘When Work and Family Are Allies.’’ 15. Ruderman et al., ‘‘Benefits of Multiple Roles.’’

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16. L. M. Graves, P. J. Ohlott, and M. N. Ruderman, ‘‘Commitment to Family Roles: Effects on Managers’ Work Attitudes and Performance,’’ Paper presented at the meeting of the Academy of Management. New Orleans, LA, 2004. 17. C. Kirchmeyer, ‘‘Nonwork Participation and Work Attitudes: A Test of Scarcity vs. Expansion Models of Personal Resources,’’ Human Relations 45 (1992): 775–95; C. Kirchmeyer, ‘‘Perceptions of Nonwork-to-Work Spillover: Challenging the View of Conflict-Ridden Domain Relationships,’’ Basic and Applied Social Psychology 13 (1992): 231–49; C. Kirchmeyer, ‘‘Nonwork-to-Work Spillover: A More Balanced View of the Experiences and Coping of Professional Women and Men,’’ Sex Roles 28 (1993): 531–52; G. A. Adams, L. A. King, and D. W. King, ‘‘Relationships of Job and Family Involvement, Family Social Support, and Work-Family Conflict with Job and Life Satisfaction,’’ Journal of Applied Psychology 81 (1996): 411–20. 18. A. H. Eagly, W. Wood, and A. B. Diekman, ‘‘Social Role Theory of Sex Differences and Similarities: A Current Appraisal,’’ in T. Eckes and H. M. Tratner, eds., The Developmental Social Psychology of Gender (Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 2000), pp. 123–74; N. P. Rothbard, ‘‘Enriching or Depleting: The Dynamics of Engagement in Work and Family Roles,’’ Administrative Science Quarterly 46 (2001): 655–84. 19. Friedman and Greenhaus, Work and Family—Allies or Enemies?; R. G. Cinamon and Y. Rich, ‘‘Gender Differences in the Importance of Work and Family Roles: Implications for Work-Family Conflict,’’ Sex Roles 47 (2002): 531–41. 20. Friedman and Greenhaus, Work and Family—Allies or Enemies? 21. Ibid.; J. T. Bond with C. Thompson, E. Galinsky, and D. Prottas, Highlights of the National Study of the Changing Workforce (no. 3) (New York: Families and Work Institute, 2003). 22. A. Andrews and L. Bailyn, ‘‘Segmentation and Synergy: Two Models of Linking Work and Family,’’ in J. C. Hood, ed., Men, Work, and Family (Newbury Park, CA: Sage, 1993), pp. 262–75; B. E. Ashforth, G. E. Kreiner, and M. Fugate, ‘‘All in a Day’s Work: Boundaries and Micro Role Transitions,’’ Academy of Management Review 25 (2000): 472–91l Rothbard. ‘‘Enriching or Depleting?’’; Friedman and Greenhaus, Work and Family—Allies or Enemies? 23. Andrews and Bailyn, ‘‘Segmentation and Synergy.’’ 24. Mainiero and Sullivan, ‘‘Kaleidoscope Careers’’; M. N. Ruderman, ‘‘Developing Women Leaders.’’ in R. Burke and C. Cooper, eds., Inspiring Leaders (London: Taylor and Francis, in press). 25. Mainiero and Sullivan, ‘‘Kaleidoscope Careers’’; Ruderman, ‘‘ Developing Women Leaders.’’ 26. J. A. Schneer and F. Reitman, ‘‘The Interrupted Managerial Career Path: A Longitudinal Study of MBAs,’’ Journal of Vocational Behavior 51 (1997): 411–34. 27. Graves and Powell, Women and Men in Management; P. Bolle´, ‘‘Part-Time Work: Solution or Trap?’’ in M. R. Loutfi, ed., Women, Gender, and Work: What Is Equality and How Do We Get There? (Geneva: International Labor Office, 2001), pp. 215–38; M. K. Judiesch and K. S. Lyness, ‘‘Left Behind? The Impact of Leaves of Absence on Managers’ Career Success,’’ Academy of Management Journal 42 (1999): 641–51; J. A. Talaga and T. A. Beehr, ‘‘Are There Gender Differences in Predicting Retirement Decisions?’’ Journal of Applied Psychology 80 (1995): 16–28; Friedman and Greenhaus, Work and Family—Allies or Enemies?

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28. C. L. Ridgeway and S. J. Cornell, ‘‘Motherhood as a Status Characteristic,’’ Journal of Social Issues 60 (2004): 683–700; A. J. C. Cuddy, S. T. Fiske, and P. Glick, ‘‘When Professionals Become Mothers, Warmth Doesn’t Cut the Ice,’’ Journal of Social Issues 60 (2004): 701–18. 29. Cuddy et al., ‘‘When Professionals Become Mothers’’; Friedman and Greenhaus, Work and Family—Allies or Enemies? 30. Powell and Graves, Women and Men in Management; P. J. Ohlott, M. N. Ruderman, and C. D. McCauley, ‘‘Gender Differences in Managers’ Developmental Job Experiences,’’ Academy of Management Journal 37 (1994): 46–67; L. T. Eby, T. D. Allen, and S. S. Douthitt, ‘‘The Role of Nonperformance Factors on Job-Related Relocation Opportunities,’’ Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes 79 (1999): 29–55; Catalyst, Passport to Opportunity: U.S. Women in Global Business (New York: Catalyst, 2000); M. Linehan, Senior Female International Managers: Why So Few? (Aldershot, UK: Ashgate, 2000); T. J. Keaveny and E. J. Inderrieden, ‘‘Gender Differences in Employer-Supported Training and Education,’’ Journal of Vocational Behavior 54 (1999): 71–81; Friedman and Greenhaus, Work and Family—Allies or Enemies? 31. Rothbard, ‘‘Enriching or Depleting?’’; Kirchmeyer, ‘‘Nonwork-to-Work Spillover’’; Graves et al., ‘‘Commitment to Family Roles.’’ 32. Rothbard, ‘‘Enriching or Depleting?’’ 33. Ibid.; Andrews and Bailyn, ‘‘Segmentation and Synergy’’; Ashforth et al., ‘‘All in a Day’s Work.’’ 34. K. Gerson, No Man’s Land: Men’s Changing Commitments to Family and Work (New York: Basic Books, 1993); K. S. Lyness and D. E. Thompson, ‘‘Above the Glass Ceiling? A Comparison of Matched Samples of Female and Male Executives,’’ Journal of Applied Psychology 82 (1997): 359–75; C. Kirchmeyer, ‘‘Determinants of Managerial Career Success: Evidence and Explanation of Male/Female Differences.’’ Journal of Vocational Behavior 24 (1998): 673–92; Friedman and Greenhaus, Work and Family—Allies or Enemies? 35. S. D. Toliver, Black Families in Corporate America (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 1998). 36. Ruderman, ‘‘Developing Women Leaders’’; Friedman and Greenhaus, Work and Family—Allies or Enemies? 37. D. T. Hall and J. Richter, ‘‘Balancing Work Life and Home Life: What Can Organizations Do to Help?’’ Academy of Management Executive 3 (1988): 213–23; C. Kirchmeyer, ‘‘Managing the Work-Nonwork Boundary: An Assessment of Organizational Responses,’’ Human Relations 48 (1995): 515–36. 38. Bond et al., Highlights of the National Study; Powell and Graves, Women and Men in Management; Friedman and Greenhaus. Work and Family—Allies or Enemies?; L. T. Thomas and D. C. Ganster, ‘‘Impact of Family-Supportive Work Variables on Work-Family Conflict and Strain: A Control Perspective,’’ Journal of Applied Psychology 80 (1995): 6–15. 39. G. N. Powell and L. A. Mainiero, ‘‘Managerial Decision Making Regarding Alternative Work Arrangements,’’ Journal of Occupational and Organizational Psychology 72 (1999): 41–56; Ruderman, ‘‘Developing Women Leaders.’’ 40. Powell and Graves, Women and Men in Management; Friedman and Greenhaus, Work and Family—Allies or Enemies?

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41. M. N. Ruderman and P. J. Ohlott, ‘‘What Women Leaders Want,’’ Leader to Leader 31 (Winter 2004): 41–47. 42. Kofodimos, ‘‘Why Executives Lose Their Balance.’’ 43. C. Hymowitz, ‘‘Working Fewer Hours Is Hard for Most CEOs but Some Find a Way,’’ Wall Street Journal ( July 12, 2005), p. B1. 44. U.S. Department of Labor, ‘‘Hours of Work,’’ Report on the American Workforce 1999 (Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Labor, 1999), pp. 80–109; Bond et al., Highlights of the National Study; P. J. Ohlott, A. Bhandary, and J. Tavares, ‘‘What Women Want: Comparing Leadership Challenges in Europe and the U.S.,’’ Leadership in Action 23(3) (2003): 14–19; Mainiero and Sullivan, ‘‘Kaleidoscope Careers’’; C. Hein, Reconciling Work and Family Responsibilities: Practical Ideas from Global Experience (Geneva: International Labour Office, 2005); Powell and Graves, Women and Men in Management. 45. Mainiero and Sullivan, ‘‘Kaleidoscope Careers’’; Ruderman, ‘‘Developing Women Leaders’’; Powell and Graves, Women and Men in Management. 46. Ruderman, ‘‘Developing Women Leaders.’’ 47. Friedman and Greenhaus, Work and Family—Allies or Enemies?; Ruderman and Ohlott, Learning from Life. 48. Friedman and Greenhaus, Work and Family—Allies or Enemies? 49. Ruderman and Ohlott, Learning from Life. 50. Ibid.; Friedman and Greenhaus, Work and Family—Allies or Enemies?; Graves and Powell, Women and Men in Management. 51. Ruderman and Ohlott, Learning from Life.

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Interrupting the Persistence of Gender Inequities in Loosely Coupled Systems: Effective Management Processes to Address the Lack of Institutional Support for Work/Life Issues in Academic Careers Louise F. Root-Robbins

It has been well documented that progress toward gender equity in most workplaces has not occurred at the pace expected or desired given women’s rate of participation in the workforce. However, relatively little has been written regarding effective organization development and change strategies that contribute to progress toward more equitable workplaces. Most workplaces have been established by men for men. Yet fundamentally, men and women differ and have divergent life experiences. Lottie Bailyn claims that just allowing women to meet success criteria, on terms that men define representing their life experiences, does not ensure equity.1 Equity requires integrating nonwork life experiences into policies, practices, and procedures to change existing norms and behaviors that disadvantage women. Equal opportunities and equal constraints create the potential for producing more equitable work environments.2 Psychologist Karl E. Weick states that intention and action are often at odds within organizations.3 He explains that conventional images of organizations as tightly connected, responsive, and with large effects that ramify swiftly do not accurately depict how most organizations typically function. Depending on the tightness of the coupling among their parts, organizations have delays, lags, unpredictability, and erratic guidance due to unstable equilibrium and untrustworthy feedback.4 These characteristics contribute to a lack of effective responses to cues for change. In addition, they partially explain why faddish management ideas, strategic planning, and change efforts that do not consider these aspects are frequently unsuccessful.5 Achieving gender equity requires that organizations become more responsive at every level to the needs of all of their employees. An improved, more comprehensive approach by management is required. Such an approach would integrate

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organizational change and development skills that have been informed by the need to address not only the rational or tightly coupled aspects of an organization but also those aspects that are loosely coupled and seemingly inscrutable.6 This chapter uses examples from higher education institutions to explore concepts and theories related to loosely coupled systems. Academia provides a wealth of opportunities to learn about these aspects of organizations. The findings from these studies should be applicable to many other settings. Slow response to internal and external pressures to change, a feature of loosely coupled systems, also characterizes academia. For example, many social scientists and others have documented that the slow pace of women’s progress in higher education has persisted, in spite of steady increases in the number of women students, faculty, and staff over the past several decades.7 This chapter explores the organizational factors of loosely coupled systems that contribute to the persistence of gender inequities and offers recommendations to improve management processes.

DEFINING LOOSELY COUPLED SYSTEMS: CHARACTERISTICS AND FUNCTIONS More than being a precise definition of a specific quality of organizational structure, the phrase ‘‘loosely coupled system’’ summarizes a way to think about aspects of organizations.8 Predicting and activating the cause-and-effect relationship are particularly difficult for members of these systems because connections are intermittent, lagged, dampened, slow, abrupt, and mediated.9 In this chapter, the phrase ‘‘loosely coupled system’’ refers not to structural looseness but to process looseness, insofar as organizational events unfold unevenly, discontinuously, sporadically, or unpredictably, if they unfold at all.10 Weick’s description of the characteristics and functions of loosely coupled systems suggests possible ways to increase gender equity.11 Loose coupling is a relative term that refers to numbers, patterns, and strengths of the connections and relationships among the organizational subsystems that are joined by few or weak common variables.12 Loosely coupled systems have the potential to preserve many independent sensing devices and therefore know their environments better than do more tightly coupled systems, which have fewer independent, externally constrained elements.13 However, loosely coupled systems are limited and slow in responding to disturbances and influences; therefore, subsystems, once established, tend to be relatively stable.14 This characteristic of a loosely coupled system allows some parts of the organization to persist and lowers the probability that the organization will have to—or be able to—respond to each change in the environment as it occurs.15 Loose coupling also carries connotations of impermanence, dissolvability, and tacitness, all of which are potentially crucial properties of the glue holding organizations together.16 Weak connections achieve both stability and adaptation with less interdependence, consensus, and mutual responsiveness

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than are usually assumed.17 According to Weick, in loosely coupled systems several means can produce the same result; influence spreads slowly or is weak; coordination throughout the system is lacking or dampened; regulations are absent; observers have poor observational capabilities; feedback through connected networks is slow or nonexistent; there is causal independence of the various subsystems; and planned unresponsiveness exists.18 Like other types of organizations, loosely coupled systems must be managed properly, giving consideration to their nature and inherent challenges to achieve desired outcomes. Weick describes loosely coupled systems as having seven functions. First, persistence as an outcome of loosely coupled systems is evident in the reduced responsiveness of an organization.19 Therefore, both archaic traditions and innovative ideas may persevere.20 Glassman’s basic argument is that loose coupling allows some portions of the organization to persist but is not selective in what is perpetuated.21 In higher education institutions, for example, a dramatic and significant change in the academic workforce has resulted in more instructional staff, who are ineligible for tenure due to the nature of their positions, and increasing numbers of women.22 However, higher education has neither actively responded nor articulated how it will integrate or incorporate what has become the majority of its workforce. Archaic policies and procedures defining the terms for pursuing and advancing an academic career have persisted in the face of overwhelming pressures for change.23 Second, a loosely coupled system may provide a sensitive sensing mechanism.24 According to the perceptual theory of things and mediums, perception is most accurate when a medium senses something and contains many independent elements that can be externally constrained.25 But when elements in a medium become either fewer in number, more internally constrained, or more interdependent, their ability to represent some remote thing decreases. Loosely coupled systems, when functioning well, may preserve many independent sensing elements and therefore ‘‘know’’ their environments better than do more tightly coupled systems, which have fewer externally constrained, independent elements. Therefore, mechanisms must be in place to gather cues for change, and the organization must be responsive to create sustainable change. Third, loosely coupled systems adapt locally.26 One element can adjust to and modify a local, unique contingency without affecting the whole system. Local adaptations can be swift, economical, and substantial. Thus they can result, for better or worse, in less standardization. This function is readily observed at the academic department level, where some departments integrate women and minorities well and others do not. Fourth, loosely coupled systems tend to preserve identity, uniqueness, and separateness of organizational elements. Therefore, they create the potential for retaining a greater number of permutations and novel solutions.27 However, that very uniqueness and separateness can also prevent good ideas from spreading. For example, effective methods for recruiting and retaining women may not be disseminated because mechanisms are not in place to share best practices.

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Fifth, a breakdown in one part of a loosely coupled system can be sealed off, but this can make prompt repair difficult.28 Tenure decisions and search and screen committees that eliminate women and minorities demonstrate how decisions made at the subsystem level can have an impact on the entire organization. Because it is difficult, if not impossible, to gain knowledge regarding these decision-making processes, it is difficult to work toward changing the outcomes. Sixth, the more room there is for individual self-determination and autonomy, the greater the self-efficacy; however, this also increases resistance and shortens the chain of consequences.29 For example, units and departments function autonomously; this self-determination fosters self-efficacy and control but can also lead to resistance to change. Seventh, loosely coupled systems require less coordination.30 For example, fund allocation in such a system is implicit and therefore unspecifiable, unmodifiable, and incapable of being used as means of change. Most faculty and staff function autonomously and do not receive or require close supervision or evaluation that is linked to their compensation. Decisions related to compensation are not transparent or consistently applied. This loosely coupled arrangement can contribute to the persistence of pay discrepancies.

CONSEQUENCES OF LOOSELY COUPLED SYSTEMS RELATED TO GENDER INEQUITIES Persistence refers to stability, resistance to change, and continued operations— common outcomes of loose coupling. Persistence is a consequence of loosely coupled systems, along with buffering, adaptability, satisfaction, and effectiveness.31 Each of these consequences might be construed as an organizational advantage or disadvantage, depending on one’s perspective and desired outcomes. As indicated earlier, loose coupling fosters perseverance, but it is not selective in what is perpetuated; therefore, archaic traditions as well as innovative improvisations may be perpetuated.32 The reduced responsiveness of loosely coupled systems, a manifestation of persistence, makes them less conducive to systemwide change than those that are more tightly coupled.33 Persistence could be perceived as an advantage if the status quo is considered satisfactory and maintaining it is preferred. Orton and Weick suggest that persistence and buffering imply adaptation to change by neutralizing its impact.34 Perhaps, given the persistence of gender discrepancies in academia, the slow rate of women’s career advancement is an example of an organization neutralizing the impact of the influx of women into the academic workforce.35 The lack of an effective organizational response to the well-documented trend toward escalating numbers of nontenure instructional staff and decreasing numbers of tenure track faculty positions throughout

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higher education is another example of negative consequences of persistence and buffering in a loosely coupled system.36

GENDERED NATURE OF ACADEMIA The number of women entering the academic workforce has risen over the past several decades.37 However, the fact that women’s increased numbers have not resulted in the expected shift in the composition of the academic workforce highlights the persistence of gender inequities.38 For example, women earn nearly half of the doctorates awarded in the United States and enter the tenure track in nearly equal numbers to men. Nonetheless, the percentage of women who hold tenured positions remains low relative to male counterparts. Women are not advancing to the upper ranks of the professoriate or to top leadership positions at the same rate as men.39 Growing evidence reveals that women who advance in academia make personal sacrifices that men are not expected to make, which are often related to children and marriage.40 In addition, the established norms conflict dramatically with the typical life cycle of women. Problems associated with this conflict are documented by the Mapping Project, a study of 5,087 faculty members at 507 universities and colleges.41 For example, in higher percentages than men, women faculty reported having fewer children than they wanted, avoiding asking for reduced teaching loads when needed, and neglecting meeting family commitments that would hurt their careers.42 In addition, the salary advantage of male compared to female faculty members exists at all ranks and institutional types. The salary gap is largest at the rank of full professor, where, for all institutional types combined, women are paid on average only 88 percent of their male colleagues’ compensation.43 Although women’s participation in academia overall has improved, the increase comes at a time when opportunities for full-time tenured positions are declining.44 The American Association of University Professors (AAUP) 2003 annual salary survey reported that only 48 percent of full-time female faculty members are tenured compared to 68 percent of their full-time male counterparts. As of 1998, 48 percent of all part-time faculty (but only 36 percent of all full-time faculty) were women. Females without full-time positions hold 57 percent of nontenure track lecturer and instructor positions, which provide little opportunity for tenure. As of 2000, women made up 55 percent of lecturers, 58 percent of instructors, 46 percent of assistant professors, 36 percent of associate professors, and only 21 percent of full professors.45 Women remain significantly underrepresented at research institutions but are heavily represented at community colleges. The proportion of full-time women faculty at two-year institutions rose from 38 percent in 1987 to approximately 50 percent in 1998. At the same time, among full professors at

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doctoral-granting institutions, the proportion of female faculty members was only 19 percent.46

EQUITY VERSUS EQUALITY Bailyn,47 while acknowledging the importance of protecting one’s legal rights to equal pay, having freedom from harassment, and having equal access to opportunities to enter and advance in an occupation, states that equality differs from equity. Equal opportunity, even if it exists, is not equitable if constraints are unequal. She further distinguishes between equality and equity by explaining that the notion that the two concepts are the same assumes the workplace is separate from the rest of life and ignores people’s lives outside of work. This notion perpetuates the myth that the workplace is gender-neutral. This myth ignores different life experiences of women and men and promotes the male model, in which work takes priority over nonwork interests and responsibilities, as the ideal academic norm. Bailyn adds that the assumptions that women can follow this model as easily as men and that they will be as successful as male colleagues if they do are false. She argues that fairness (rather than equality) is at issue and that equality should not be limited to the workplace; integration rather than separation of work and nonwork spheres is the goal. Bailyn claims equity will be impossible if one group, for example, those with caregiving responsibilities, is systematically unable to meet the requirements of the ideal worker.48

CUES FOR CHANGE Documented gender inequities in academia have deleterious effects both for individuals and for higher education as an organization.49 The future direction of higher education should not be determined by default in response to current budget pressures or to maintain the status quo.50 Theories, models, and processes for organizational development and change management that fit with the current realities of higher education institutions are needed.51 They must be generated, experimented with, and integrated into the core of higher education to create organizations that are equitable, flexible, responsive, and more readily adaptive to the needs of the students, employees, and society they are intended to serve.52 The American Association of University Professors (AAUP), American Council for Education (ACE), National Education Association (NEA), and many individual researchers have issued statements of concern regarding changes in the professoriate, specifically those related to the significant increase in nontenure track appointments and women’s overrepresentation in these frequently part-time positions.53 Over one-half of full-time instructional staff members are employed

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in nontenure track appointments, and a majority of university and college tenure track and nontenure track teaching faculty and staff are part-time. Academia has not heeded the dire warnings of the consequences of this shift. In fact, tenure track positions continue to decline at an alarming rate, while nontenure track appointments are dramatically rising.54 According to the 2003 AAUP Policy Statement Contingent Appointments and the Academic Profession, the minimal institutional commitment and relatively rapid turnover that characterize appointments of part-time and full-time nontenure track instructional staff mean that the faculty as a whole is less stable. Fewer members are available to support key academic activities: long-term institutional and curricular planning, mentoring newer faculty, and other collegial responsibilities, such as peer reviews of scholarship and evaluations for reappointment and tenure. In addition, growing evidence shows that the increase in nontenure track positions is resulting in negative outcomes for students.55 It may also contribute to the decreasing number of individuals seeking doctoral degrees, as academic job possibilities appear bleak.56 The most frequently cited explanation for the rise in nontenure track positions and decrease in tenure track positions is the need generated by the increased student enrollment at a time when funding for public higher education has steadily declined. This has resulted in hiring greater numbers of lower paid, more flexible nontenure track instructional staff.57 However, there has been very little analysis of the cost or benefits of these trends to the academy as an organization, to the professoriate, to individuals’ career options, to student outcomes, or to society. This lack of analysis has obstructed the development of innovative responses to changes in the academic workforce.

LACK OF ALIGNMENT BETWEEN WORKFORCE AND WORKPLACE NEEDS The misalignment between the current human resource practices of academic institutions and the needs of the workforce is becoming critical. Unfortunately, the unique nature of academic institutions and the academic labor market constrains them from implementing some responses that nonacademic organizations use to address work and nonwork issues.58 A mismatch exists between the current work environment and terms of employment on one hand and the professional and personal needs of faculty and staff members on the other.59 This is particularly true for the new generation arriving at the academic workplace with an attitude that quality-of-life issues are as essential as tenure and salary.60 Tenure obviously remains important but, according to The Project on Faculty Appointments at Harvard University, an institution’s location (which also relates to the quality of life) and the ability to integrate professional and personal life are the most important factors in deciding where to accept employment.61

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Currently, most faculty members are part of dual-career couples, and it is increasingly difficult to meet the demands of full-time work while being responsible family members and active citizens.62 If higher education institutions do not become more nimble, creative, and adept at responding to change, these issues will become even more acute as unprecedented numbers of tenured faculty retire.63 As state budget allocations shrink, public higher education institutions struggle with recruiting and retaining a well-qualified, talented, diverse workforce.64 An academic career offers few guarantees of returns on the time and financial investment in obtaining a doctoral degree.65 Limited, relatively inflexible options exist for faculty to define the terms for achieving their career goals (i.e., tenure and promotion), and nontenure track instructional staff have nearly no flexibility to define the terms of their work.66 Although oversimplified, enduring options in academia are to seek tenure and have a consuming career or to be nontenured and have a contingent job with limited security, compensation, and status. Neither option ensures that one’s work and nonwork life will be easily integrated due to the lack of institutional support for nonwork responsibilities.67 New and potential scholars are migrating away from academia and looking elsewhere for career possibilities.68 Some report making alternative career choices based on their observations of the increased number of nontenure track staff as indicated by decreasing numbers of doctoral degrees being granted.69 There must be a better fit between the needs of the academic workforce and the workplace. Increased flexibility and more manageable workloads are most frequently cited as issues that would create greater alignment.70

WORK/LIFE ISSUES Well-documented trends, such as the increased number of employed women and dual-income and single-parent families, increased hours worked, and competitive pressures have made it necessary for employees to conduct business while in the nonwork domain and vice versa.71 Technological advances have made this overlap between work and personal life more possible. The result for many individuals, particularly those with caregiving responsibilities, has been heightened conflict or incompatible demands between work and personal commitments.72 Role conflict is a stressor that contributes to parental overload and poor family performance.73 It is also negatively associated with work and personal outcomes, such as lowered productivity and dissatisfaction.74 Effective management of work and nonwork issues has significant implications for the success of individuals’ careers and for the employing organizations.75 According to Thomas Kochan, co-director of the MIT Workplace Center and MIT Institute for Work and Employment Research, U.S. workers are confronting two major issues.76 The first and most obvious is that the majority are working harder and longer but not achieving as much as they expected. As

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a result, many U.S. workers are unsatisfied and stressed.77 The second issue is that although we are experiencing a transition from an old industrial economy to a knowledge economy, most U.S. industries, policies, and institutions continue to behave as though society has not changed. Consequently, many individuals and their families are caught in an untenable bind between the escalating demands of work and the lack of support for a personal life—a mismatch between the workplace and the workforce.78 This lack of alignment has been well documented.79 Consider the following findings from the Families and Work Institute (FWI) related to today’s workplaces:80    

  



Men (at 51 percent) and women (at 49 percent) participate almost equally in the workforce. The workplace is increasingly knowledge- and service-based, and technology driven; it is global, fast-paced, and 24/7. The job for life has been replaced with growing mobility and job insecurity. The workday is no longer 9 a.m. to 5 p.m.—men work 48.2 hours on average, and women (including the 24 percent who work part-time) average 41.4 hours per week. Approximately 26 percent of employees in the United States regularly work at least one weekend day. 56 percent of U.S. employees are 40 or older versus 38 percent in 1977. Technologies (e.g., voicemail, email, pagers, hand-held computers, and wireless networks) are blurring the lines between when people are work and when they are off; 46 percent report they are regularly contacted about their jobs outside of work hours. Time famine, a term coined by Leslie Perlow, is used to describe people’s sense of lack of control over their time. Sixty-seven percent of employed parents say they don’t have enough time with their children; 63 percent report that they don’t have enough time with their spouse; and 55 percent indicate they do not have enough time for themselves.

The FWI in its 2002 report on the national study of the changing workforce proposed the following six criteria for creating an effective workplace and maximizing employees’ contributions, with consideration for people’s lives outside of work: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6.

provide job autonomy; create learning opportunities and challenges on the job; develop environments where supervisors support employees’ success; develop environments where co-workers support each others’ success; involve employees in decision making; and create flexible workplaces.81

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Kochan asserts we need organizational change that is focused on encouraging community groups, labor organizations, business, and government officials to collaborate on addressing these problems.82 In other words, we need large-scale change that incorporates a strategy to empower those closest to the problems to invent the solutions that work for them.83 Once new workable solutions are discovered and agreed on, they can be institutionalized by transferring them into policies, structures, and operations that create responsive, flexible organizations.

INSTITUTIONAL RESPONSE Academic workforce development is complex; decisions depend on programmatic needs, fluctuating demands, availability of qualified faculty, and budgets. Given both the likely continued employment of nontenure track staff and the long-range concerns—including preserving quality of instruction and academic freedom—ideas for institutional change need to be proposed, implemented, and studied to ensure that the contributions of this significant portion of higher education’s human resources are captured, cultivated, and supported.84 Institutional responses to the accelerating demands and the consequent implications for the academy of the resulting changes in the workforce are not entirely clear and therefore warrant thorough exploration.85 A thoughtful examination of the changes in the academic workforce and their impact on higher education needs to occur. The accumulating shifts in the dynamics and structure of the academic workplace and workforce have the potential to revolutionize the academy—for better or for worse.86 Shrinking budget allocations and diminished public support for higher education affect public and private colleges and universities nationwide. We must gain more understanding and expertise in creating academic institutions that maximize the contributions of all employees and are responsive, adaptable, and flexible in meeting workforce needs.87 The stakes are too high not to do so; we can no longer afford to operate colleges and universities as if the world and society were the same as when higher education began.88 In the midst of all the changes in demographics and division of labor, two things have not changed: (1) faculty still have rigorous selection and promotion processes, and (2) faculty still bear primary responsibility for the academic and educational enterprise. Some feel that these two traditions are at the heart of the resistance to granting privileges or more prestigious titles to women and nontenured academic staff or to sharing decision making with them.89

ORGANIZATION DEVELOPMENT AND CHANGE All organizations must adapt; otherwise, they risk obsolescence and atrophy.90 Institutions of higher education have been bombarded with many irreversible

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internal and external changes that have had dramatic effects and that demand creative responses. However, the academy, in many ways, continues to behave as though the world is the same as it was 100 years ago. For example, it reproduces and reinforces the gendered nature of the academic workplace.91 Peter Eckel reported that three fundamental tasks are involved in changing higher educational institutions.92 His analysis is based on his experience with the ACE Project on Leadership and Institutional Transformation and the Kellogg Forum on Higher Education, a collaborative project to explore and better understand institutional change and transformation. These tasks are (1) creating momentum institution-wide (and within academic units), (2) reducing barriers and factors that contribute to maintaining the status quo, and (3) facilitating different ways of thinking. Most efforts to address issues related to the academic workplace have paid too much attention to what to change and not enough to how.93 Interventions from the outside, or from the top down, have little chance of success. Better prospects lie in an inclusive, interactive approach in which the interventions emerge from a process of dynamic and engaged dialogue that allows for representation of all the affected groups. Robert Blake and Jane Mouton concluded that the academy must develop an organizational model that fits universities’ unique mission to ‘‘spur creativity, commitment, and convictions essential for the pursuit of excellence.’’94 They did not discover an ideal or consensus model of how a college or university should operate. Instead they found contradictory images of the academy that include but are not limited to political organization, bureaucracy, quasiinformational gatherings of colleagues, input-throughput-output systems, and institutions that maintained a quasi-stationary equilibrium with their constituents. Now, more than two decades later, the discussion continues. The issues are even more acute than when Blake and Mouton first advocated cultivating a model of excellence. They developed their model by diagnosing and describing how universities actually function and how they might operate if they were clear about their standards of excellence. They argued that the academy does not function as an organism but as a loose collection of independent units that are so free that the university resists management, administration, or supervision. To create more equitable workplaces, organizational change must occur and management processes must be implemented to effectively address the underlying attitudes and norms. A system is a collection of interrelated parts, or subsystems, that interact and affect each other to varying degrees to function as a whole.95 A systems framework for organizational development and change involves both examining relationship patterns within and among the subsystems and ways in which the organization functions in the context of these interactions and identifying points for intervention.96 Organizations may have some rational elements, but in most, many parts are neither logical nor predictable and are not amenable to rational assumptions.97 Frequently, members participate in functions, activities, and interactions that do not seem to be in the

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organization’s best interest.98 Organization development and change require understanding all aspects of an organization and noticing and questioning its less coordinated aspects—the loosely coupled parts of organizations.99

MANAGEMENT OF LOOSELY COUPLED SYSTEMS Interactions among organizational members as they work to make sense of information produce a dynamic feedback loop that enables change to occur.100 This process resembles double-loop learning and Model II theory-in-use, espoused by Argyris, which require alteration in the governing rules. In other words, it requires a new theory-in-use to address the causes of problems and to challenge established organizational patterns. Sharing accurate data promotes movement from single-loop learning, which at best attempts to solve the presenting problems but not the causes, to double-loop learning to prevent reoccurrence of the same problems. Through this exchange, organizational members begin to form new ways to think about significant organizational issues, rather than accepting the status quo.101 The management of loosely coupled systems has been most pronounced in the educational administration literature because in the context of educational systems, researchers typically indicate that ‘‘loose coupling is an unsatisfactory condition that should be reversed.’’ The three most recurrent managerial strategies for managing loosely coupled systems are: 1. enhanced but subtle leadership, 2. focused effort, and 3. shared values.102

SENSE-MAKING AS A METHOD OF MANAGING Sense-making involves turning a set of circumstances into a situation that is clearly understood and inspires action. Weick states that sense making fills important gaps in organizational theory and is a way to deal with ambiguity and interpret meaning in an organization. Sense-making is about the interplay of action and interpretation, rather than the influence of evaluation on choice.103 Data provide only a single point of information about an organization. A multitude of variables are represented in and contribute to a particular data point. Weick, Sutcliffe, and Obstfeld contend that sense-making offers a way to consider and interpret our experiences within an organization along with the complex information we observe, collect, and analyze by ‘‘materializing meanings that inform and constrain identity and action.’’ When Weick states that meanings materialize, he means that sense-making is primarily an issue of

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language and communication. Organizations are constructed and ‘‘talked into existence and circumstances are turned into a situation that is comprehended explicitly in words and that serves as a springboard to action.’’104 Most universities do not employ a top-down managerial system. The faculty, academic staff, and students participate actively in a strong tradition of shared governance. Policy development depends on shared governance. Most public higher education institutions must comply with state laws and campus policies and procedures for faculty and for staff. However, most of those in management positions have not been adequately prepared for these important leadership roles and responsibilities.105 Efforts to address some of academia’s challenges or even attempts to better understand their implications have been met with resistance and criticism. Frequently, recommended policy and procedural changes are inconsistently implemented. The inertia that must be overcome is founded in out-of-date attitudes. A major barrier to overcoming this inertia is lack of dedicated staff, time, and leadership. Thus, any change strategies must involve modifying attitudes of those who are deeply attached to ‘‘doing things the way they have always been done.’’ However, shared governance structure must be viewed and used as a strength and conduit for change, not opposed or circumvented. People tend to overrationalize their behavior and attribute greater meaning, predictability, and coupling among activities. This overrationalizing makes it difficult to determine what is actually loosely or tightly coupled, adding to the challenge of implementing organizational change in academic settings.106 According to Dannemiller, who has integrated Kurt Lewin’s action research theories into whole-system-change work, organizational change occurs as people share information, learn about one another’s perspectives, determine potential answers to questions, and engage in their common vision for the future. Based on the conviction that all organizational members, not just the experts or leaders, can contribute to the wisdom necessary for success, all parts of the organization should be represented.107 However, the continuous response to change and adaptability that is the potential state of loosely coupled systems will not necessarily be achieved either with more contact among organizational members or with improved communication.108 ‘‘Prevailing thinking about organizations places a disproportionate emphasis on interaction, interpersonal relations, and being together. Loose coupling imagery suggests that people get by far longer, on less thick socializing, with less pathology, and more energy and creativity than we presumed.’’109 Accordingly, simply increasing or even improving communication will not necessarily improve equity or increase flexibility in academic workplaces. Countering the negative aspects of persistence in loosely coupled systems requires mechanisms to capture what people are experiencing throughout the

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organization and connect those discoveries to powerful organizational leaders who make resource allocation decisions. Sense-making can potentially contribute to identifying ways to interrupt the negative consequences of persistence. Sense-making enables people to learn about organizational realities by increasing the members’ attentiveness to the events in a loosely coupled system that might otherwise go unnoticed. Members can then question which organizational events have significance, why, and how they connect. Sense-making can also contribute to taking stock of what and why organizational events do or do not occur, where connections happen and where they do not, and what is apparent and what is less transparent.110 According to Argyris, intervention research focuses on conducting experiments to change the status quo and assumes that organizational learning or change cannot occur without challenging an organization’s routines.111 Weick explains that sense-making involves seven properties of the workplace environment that influence the members’ efforts to make sense of their situation. These properties affect individuals’ initial sense of a situation and the extent to which they are willing to form a new sense of a situation that might be a better fit when confronted with specific or new information. To summarize, these environmental properties are: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7.

social context—others influencing one’s sense-making; personal identity—one’s sense of self influencing sense-making; retrospect—the past influencing what is perceived as present; salient cues—small details stimulating the recall of entire scenarios; ongoing projects—experiences being bounded to make sense of them; plausibility—events being believable and credible; and enactment—that part of self being reflected in what ones sees in any moment of sense making.112

CONCLUSION Organizations that excel discover how to tap the commitment and capacity of individuals at all levels to learn.113 It is ironic that as the U.S. workforce moves toward a knowledge-based economy, dramatic changes and budgetary restrictions are threatening the core functions of the educational institutions charged with producing the next generation of workers.114 Adding to this irony is the lack of curiosity that institutions of higher education display in regarding themselves as learning organizations and in applying knowledge related to organizational theory—mostly generated at universities—to themselves.115 The combination of the loosely coupled and gendered nature of academic workplaces predisposes the organization to persistence—even when what is being perpetuated has harmful consequences for the organization and its members. The persistent lack of effective organizational responses to the misalignment

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between workplace needs and the workforce is an issue of national significance, not just for academia but for most organizations.116 The best way to change a system is to engage the whole system in fostering inclusion, soliciting genuine input, and actively involving members of the organization.117 Taking action multiplies the data available from which meaning can be constructed.118 To review, three recurrent managerial strategies for managing loosely coupled systems should be incorporated into designed change: 1. enhanced but subtle leadership, 2. focused effort, and 3. shared values.119 One approach to managing such systems is double-loop learning, in which the system learns to learn. Two ways to facilitate such learning are to provide opportunities for the participants to participate in sense-making and to create a double feedback loop.120 Such a loop requires a system to question its own underlying assumptions and values and thus risk fundamentally changing the terms of its own organizing.121 For example, department chairs might be provided current information regarding how their department compares with all other departments on campus in recruiting and retaining women faculty and staff. If this information were regularly reviewed at faculty meetings, undoubtedly questions related to positive and negative trends in this particular department would arise, dialogue would occur, and sense making would commence. From this dialogue the department members create the opportunity to learn together what contributes to promoting gender equity. People can contribute powerfully to organizational change when they have enough accurate information and are invited to do so.122 Forming organizational microcosms (i.e., groups of people who represent basically the same mix of knowledge, yearnings, fears, hopes, functions, levels, wisdom, and attitudes that would be found in the larger group) provides efficient and effective access to the whole organization. According to Dannemiller’s whole-scale change model, once a microcosm of an organization has a common database, this shared information is the key to creating change. This database allows participants to identify what needs to be different and to effect change in real time.123 Fostering dialogue about and interaction with these persistent trends and issues allows for each step of the change process to inform the next.124 More attention must be placed on incorporating an understanding of the importance and relationship of power and authority in determining which cues for change are recognized and acted on in loosely coupled systems, such as institutions of higher education. Attention should especially focus on how power and authority relate to change associated with gender, race, and rank. Persistence as a consequence of a loosely coupled system is an example of how important issues can be overlooked if the coupling is so loose that connections

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don’t exist or if mechanisms are not in place to ensure optimal connections. Persistence contributes to inequities if adequate management mechanisms are not established and maintained. Excessive looseness combined with the lack of effective management mechanisms have contributed to the lack of effective organizational responses to the growing numbers of nontenure academic staff and the increasing numbers of women in these ranks. When the coupling is excessively loose and the organization does not or will not recognize cues for change, the organization can sustain negative consequences. To achieve change in a loosely coupled system, rational, linear theories must be altered. Instead, a more sensitized approach is required to create organizational change that integrates both the rationalized, tightly coupled aspects of academia and the parts that are intractable to analysis through rational assumptions.125 We need to instill more mindfulness in organizations and capture people’s experiences to create systems that collect, track, and respond to cues for change. We need to interact with and hold leaders and people with power and authority to make decisions accountable for creating more equitable workplaces.

NOTES 1. L. Bailyn, ‘‘Academic Careers and Gender Equity: Lessons Learned from MIT,’’ Gender, Work, and Organization 10(2) (2003): pp. 137–53. 2. L. Bailyn, Breaking the Mold: Women, Men, and Time in the New Corporate World (New York: Free Press, 1993); R. Rapoport, L. Bailyn, J. K. Fletcher, and B. H. Pruitt, (Beyond Work-Family Balance: Advancing Gender Equity and Workplace Performance (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2002). 3. K. E. Weick, ‘‘Educational Organizations as Loosely Coupled Systems,’’ Administrative Science Quarterly 21 (1976): 1–19. 4. K. E. Weick, Making Sense of the Organization (Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 2001), pp. 384–85. 5. C. Argyris, Overcoming Organizational Defenses: Facilitating Organizational Learning (Boston: Allyn and Bacon, 1990); T. G. Cummings, Systems Theory for Organization Development (New York: Wiley, 1980); H. Mintzberg, ‘‘The Design School: Reconsidering the Basic Premises of Strategic Management,’’ Strategic Management Journal 11 (1990): 171–95; J. B. Quinn, H. Mintzberg, and R. M. James, The Strategy Process: Concepts, Contexts, and Cases (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1991). 6. Weick, ‘‘Educational Organizations.’’ 7. Bailyn, ‘‘Academic Careers and Gender Equity’’; L. S. Hornig, ed., Equal Rites, Unequal Outcomes: Women in American Research Universities (New York: Kluwer Academic/Plenum Publishers, 2003); J. R. Martin, Coming of Age in Academe: Rekindling Women’s Hopes and Reforming the Academy (New York: Routledge, 2000); C. A. Trower and J. L. Bleak, Study of New Scholars, Gender: Statistical Report [Universities] (Cambridge, MA: Harvard Graduate School of Education, 2004); V. Valian, Why So Slow? The Advancement of Women (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1998).

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8. Weick, Making Sense of the Organization, p. 43. 9. Ibid., pp. 400–401. 10. Ibid., p. 384. 11. Weick, ‘‘Educational Organizations,’’, pp. 5–9. 12. K. E. Weick, The Social Psychology of Organizing (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1969), p. 111. 13. Weick, ‘‘Educational Organizations,’’, p. 6. 14. Weick, Social Psychology of Organizing, p. 112. 15. Weick, ‘‘Educational Organizations,’’, p. 6. 16. Ibid., p. 3. 17. Weick, Social Psychology of Organizing, p. 110. 18. Weick, ‘‘Educational Organizations,’’, p. 5. 19. J. D. Orton and K. E. Weick, ‘‘Loosely Coupled Systems: A Reconceptualization,’’ Academy of Management Review 15(2) (1990): 203–23. 20. Weick, ‘‘Educational Organizations.’’ 21. R. B. Glassman, ‘‘Persistence and Loose Coupling in Living Systems,’’ Behavioral Science 18 (1973): 83–98. 22. Nontenure track faculty refers to adjunct, instructional academic staff and other instructional positions that are often contingent, temporary, or of limited contractual length and frequently with no certainty of renewal. At most higher education institutions, a mechanism exists for transferring to the tenure track, but it is difficult to accomplish and rarely achieved, particularly at research institutions. 23. Bailyn, ‘‘Academic Careers and Gender Equity’’; T. H. Davenport and L. Prusak, Working Knowledge: How Organizations Manage What They Know (Boston: Harvard Business School Press, 1998). 24. Weick, ‘‘Educational Organizations.’’ 25. F. Heider, ‘‘Thing and Medium,’’ Psychological Issues 1(3) (1959): 1–34; K. Lewin, F. Heider, and G. M. Heider, Principles of Topological Psychology (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1936). 26. Weick, ‘‘Educational Organizations.’’ 27. Ibid. 28. Ibid. 29. Ibid. 30. Ibid. 31. Weick, ‘‘Educational Organizations’’; Orton and Weick, ‘‘Loosely Coupled Systems.’’ 32. Orton and Weick, ‘‘Loosely Coupled Systems,’’ p. 213; Weick, ‘‘Educational Organizations,’’ p. 6. 33. Orton and Weick, ‘‘Loosely Coupled Systems,’’ p. 213. 34. Ibid. 35. Bailyn, ‘‘Academic Careers and Gender Equity’’; Hornig, Equal Rites, Unequal Outcomes; Martin, Coming of Age in Academe; Trower and Bleak, Study of New Scholars; Valian, Why So Slow? 36. American Association of University Professors (AAUP), Contingent Appointments and the Academic Profession (Washington, DC: AAUP, 2003). 37. AAUP, Don’t Blame Faculty for High Tuition: Annual Report on the Economic Status of the Profession (Washington, DC: AAUP, 2004); A. R. Hoschschild, ‘‘Inside the

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Clockwork of Male Careers,’’ in K. P. Meadow-Orlans and R. A. Wallace, eds., Gender and the Academic Experience (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1994). 38. AAUP, ‘‘Balancing Faculty Careers and Family Work,’’ Academe 90(6) (2004); American Association of University Women (AAUW), Tenure Denied: Cases of Sex Discrimination in Academia (AAUW Educational Foundation and Legal Advocacy Fund, 2004); AAUW, Women at Work (AAUW Educational Foundation, 2003); E. Benjamin, Disparities in the Salaries and Appointments of Academic Women and Men (Washington, DC: AAUP position paper, 2000); M. Heilman, ‘‘Description and Prescription: How Gender Stereotypes Prevent Women’s Ascent up the Organizational Ladder,’’ Social Issues 57 (2001): 657–74; M. Heilman, ‘‘Sex Stereotypes and Their Effects in the Workplace: What We Know and What We Don’t Know,’’ Gender and the Workplace: A Special Issue of Journal of Social Behavior and Personality 10 (1995): 3–26; Hornig, Equal Rites, Unequal Outcomes; J. A. Jacobs and S. Winslow, ‘‘Faculty Working Time and Gender Inequality,’’ Paper presented at the 2003 Annual meeting of the College and University Work/Family Association in Philadelphia, PA (2003); M. A. Mason and M. Goulden, ‘‘Do Babies Matter? The Effect of Family Formation on the Lifelong Careers of Academic Men and Women,’’ Academe 88(6) (2003): 21–27; M. A. Mason and M. Goulden, ‘‘Do Babies Matter (part II)? Closing the Baby Gap,’’ Bulletin of the American Association of University Professors. Balancing Faculty Careers and Family Work, Academe 90(6) (2004): 3–7; M. A. Mason, and M. Goulden, ‘‘Marriage and Baby Blues: Re-Defining Gender Equity in the Academy,’’ Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 596 (2004): 86–103; Trower and Bleak, Study of New Scholars; Valian, Why So Slow? 39. American Council on Education (ACE), An Agenda for Excellence: Creating Flexibility in Tenure-Track Faculty Careers (Washington, DC: ACE: Office of Women in Higher Education, 2005); AAUP, Statement of Principles on Family Responsibilities and Academic Work (Washington, DC: AAUP, 2001); AAUP, Contingent Appointments, Don’t Blame Faculty for High Tuition; R. J. Ely and D. E. Meyerson, ‘‘Theories of Gender in Organizations: A New Approach to Organizational Analysis and Change,’’ in B. M. Staw and R. L. Sutton, eds., Research in Organizational Behavior (New York, JAI Press, 2000). 40. Bailyn, ‘‘Academic Careers and Gender Equity’’; Mason and Goulden, ‘‘Marriage and Baby Blues.’’ 41. R. Drago and C, Colbeck, ‘‘The Mapping Project: Exploring the Terrain of U.S. Colleges and Universities for Faculty and Families,’’ Final Report for the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation (2003). 42. Mason and Goulden, ‘‘Do Babies Matter?’’ Part II; J. W. Williams and G. M. Alliger, ‘‘Role Stressors, Mood Spillover, and Perceptions of Work-Family Conflict in Employed Parents,’’ Academy of Management Journal 37(4) (1994): 837–68. 43. AAUP, Statement of Principles, Contingent Appointments. 44. Bailyn, ‘‘Academic Careers and Gender Equity’’; Hornig, Equal Rites, Unequal Outcomes. 45. AAUP, Contingent Appointments. 46. Ibid. 47. Bailyn, ‘‘Academic Careers and Gender Equity.’’ 48. J. Williams, Unbending Gender: Why Work and Family Conflict and What to Do about It (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999).

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49. Bailyn, ‘‘Academic Careers and Gender Equity.’’ 50. M. J. Finkelstein and J. H. Schuster, ‘‘Assessing the Silent Revolution: How Changing Demographics Are Reshaping the Academic Profession,’’ AAHE Bulletin of the American Association for Higher Education 54(2) (2001): 3–7. 51. Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, The Condition of the Professoriate: Attitudes and Trends (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1989). 52. L. E. Coate, Beyond Re-Engineering: Changing the Organizational Paradigm. Organizational Paradigm Shifts (Washington, DC: National Association of College and University Business Officers, 1996); A. E. Guskin and M. Marcy, ‘‘Dealing with the Future Now: Principles for Creating a Vital Campus in a Climate of Restricted Resources,’’ Change 35(4) (2003): 10–21. 53. AAUP, ‘‘Report on the Status of Non-Tenure-Track Faculty,’’ Academe 78 (1992): 39–48; AAUP, Contingent Appointments; American Council on Education Center for Policy Analysis, The New Professoriate (Washington, DC: ACE, 2002); National Center for Education Statistics (NCES), A Profile of Part-Time Faculty (Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Education, Fall/October 2002); NEA Higher Education Research Center, ‘‘Part-Time Faculty,’’ NEA Update 7(4) (2001); R. G. Baldwin and J. L. Chronister, Teaching without Tenure: Policies and Practices for a New Era (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2001); R. G. Ehrenberg and L. Zhang, ‘‘The Changing Nature of Faculty Employment,’’ Presented at the TIAA-CREF Institute Conference on Retirement, Retention and Recruitment, New York (April 1–2, 2004); Finkelstein and Schuster, ‘‘Assessing the Silent Revolution’’; J. M. Gappa, and D. W. Leslie, The Invisible Faculty: Improving the Status of Part-Timers in Higher Education (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1993); Jacobs and Winslow, ‘‘Faculty Working Time and Gender Inequality’’; R. E. Rice, M. D. Sorcinelli, and A. E. Austin, ‘‘Heeding New Voices: Academic Careers for a New Generation,’’ New Pathways Working Papers Series, No. 7, Washington, DC: American Association for Higher Education (AAHE) (2000). 54. AAUP, Don’t Blame Faculty for High Tuition; D. W. Leslie, ed., The Growing Use of Part-Time Faculty: Understanding Causes and Effects, New Directions for Higher Education, 104 (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1998). 55. AAUP, Contingent Appointments; E. Benjamin, ‘‘How Over Reliance on Contingent Appointments Diminishes Faculty Involvement in Student Learning,’’ Peer Review (February 2002): 4–10; R. G. Ehrenberg, ed., The American University: National Treasure or Endangered Species? (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1997). 56. Finkelstein and Schuster, ‘‘Assessing the Silent Revolution’’; J. H. Levine, ‘‘Through Their Eyes: Undergraduate Perceptions of the Career of College Teaching,’’ College Student Journal 30 (1996): 232–37; C. A. Trower, ‘‘Your Faculty, Reluctantly,’’ Trusteeship 8 (2000): 8–12. 57. AAUP, Contingent Appointments. 58. M. D. Sorcinelli, and J. P. Near, ‘‘Relations between Work and Life away from Work among University Faculty,’’ Journal of Higher Education 60 (1989): 59–81. 59. AAUP, Statement of Principles; Jacobs and Winslow, ‘‘Faculty Working Time and Gender Inequality.’’ 60. C. A. Trower, ‘‘Alleviating the Torture of the Tenure Track: All It Takes Is a Little Show & Tell,’’ Department Chair: A Newsletter for Academic Administrators 9(4) (1999).

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61. J. Bleak, H. Neiman, C. Sternman, and C. Trower, Faculty Recruitment Study: Statistical Analysis Report. Project on Faculty Appointments (Cambridge, MA: Harvard Graduate School of Education, 2000); Trower and Bleak, Study of New Scholars. 62. Jacobs and Winslow, ‘‘Faculty Working Time and Gender Inequality’’; J. A. Jacobs and K. Gerson, ‘‘Overworked Individuals or Overworked Families: Explaining Trends in Work, Leisure, and Family Time,’’ Work and Occupations 28(1) (1998): 40–63; B. Probert, B. ‘‘ ‘I Just Couldn’t Fit it In’: Gender and Unequal Outcomes in Academic Careers,’’ Gender, Work, and Organization 12(1) (2005): 50–72. 63. D. W. Leslie, ‘‘Renewing Higher Education’s Social Contracts: Transparency out of Chaos,’’ Educational Considerations 30(1) (2002): 10–13. 64. M. J. Finkelstein, R. K. Seal, and J. H. Schuster, The New Academic Generation: A Profession in Transformation (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1998); B. D. Ruben, ed., Pursuing Excellence in Higher Education: Eight Fundamental Challenges (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2004). 65. R. G. Baldwin and J. L. Chronister, Policies and Practices for a New Era (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2001); Teaching without Tenure. 66. Baldwin and Chronister, Teaching without Tenure; C. A. Trower, ‘‘Your Faculty, Reluctantly,’’ Trusteeship 8(4) ( July–August 2000): 8–12; C. A. Trower, ‘‘Negotiating the Non-Tenure Track,’’ Chronicle of Higher Education ( July 6, 2001). 67. E. Benjamin, ed., Exploring the Role of Contingent Instructional Staff in Undergraduate Learning, New Directions for Higher Education 123 (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2003); E. Benjamin, ‘‘Reappraisal and Implications for Policy and Research,’’ in Benjamin, ed., Exploring the Role (2003), pp. 79–113; Levine, ‘‘Through Their Eyes.’’ 68. Baldwin and Chronister, Teaching without Tenure; Rice et al., ‘‘Heeding New Voices.’’ 69. AAUP, Don’t Blame Faculty for High Tuition. 70. J. T. Bond, E. Galinsky, and E. J. Hill, When Work Works: Summary of Families and Work Institute Research Findings (New York: Families and Work Institute, 2004); J. T. Bond, C. Thompson, E. Galinsky, and D. Protas, The 2002 National Study of the Changing Workforce (New York: Families and Work Institute, 2003). 71. Bond et al., The 2002 National Study; L. A. Perlow, ‘‘The Time Famine: Toward a Sociology of Work Time,’’ Administrative Science Quarterly 44 (1999): 57–81; J. B. Schor, Overworked American: The Unexpected Decline of Leisure (New York: Basic Books, 1992); R. M. Kanter, Men and Women of the Corporation (New York: Basic Books, 1977). 72. L. Bailyn, T. Kochan, and R. Drago, ‘‘Integrating Work and Family: A Holistic Approach,’’ Sloan Work-Family Policy Network Report, Cambridge, MA (2001); A. Bookman, Starting in Our Own Backyards: How Working Families Can Build Community and Survive the New Economy (New York: Routledge, 2004); P. Moen, ed., It’s about Time: Couples and Careers (Ithaca, NY: ILR Press—Sage House, Cornell University, 2003). 73. Moen, It’s about Time; Schor, Overworked American; Bookman, Starting in Our Own Backyards; Jacobs and Gerson, ‘‘Overworked Individuals. 74. E. E. Kossek and C. Ozeki, ‘‘Bridging the Work-Family Policy and Productivity Gap: A Literature Review,’’ Community, Work and Family 2 (1999): 7–32; Moen, It’s about Time.

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75. E. Galinsky, S. Kim, and J. Bond, Feeling Overworked: When Work Becomes too Much (New York: Families and Work Institute, 2001); Rapoport et al., Beyond WorkFamily Balance. 76. T. A. Kochan, Regaining Control of Our Destiny: A Working Families’ Agenda for America (Cambridge, MA: MIT Workplace Center, 2004). 77. J. Smithson and E. H. Stokoe, ‘‘Discourses of Work-Life Balance: Negotiating ‘Genderblind’ Terms in Organizations,’’ Gender, Work, and Organization 12(2) (2005): 147–68; Schor, Overworked American. 78. P. Moen and P. Roehling, The Career Mystique: Cracks in the American Dream (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2005); Smithson and Stokoe, ‘‘Discourses of Work-Life Balance.’’ 79. J. Heyman, Can Working Families Ever Win?, J. Cohen and J. Rogers, eds. (Boston: Beacon Press, 2002). 80. Bond et al., When Work Works. 81. Bond et al., The 2002 National Study. 82. Kochan, Regaining Control of Our Destiny. 83. K. Lewin, Field Theory in Social Science, D. Cartwright, ed. (New York: Harper and Row, 1951); R. Beckhard and R. Harris, Organizational Transitions: Managing Complex Change (Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley, 1987); M. Weisbord, Discovering Common Ground (San Francisco: Berrett-Koehler, 1992); J. Surowiecki, The Wisdom of Crowds: Why the Many Are Smarter than the Few and How Collective Wisdom Shapes Business, Economics, Societies, and Nations (New York: Doubleday, 2004). 84. NEA Higher Education Research Center, ‘‘Part-Time Faculty,’’ NEA Update 7(4) (2001). 85. Ehrenberg, The American University. 86. Finkelstein and Schuster, ‘‘Assessing the Silent Revolution’’; J. M. Gappa and D. W. Leslie, ‘‘Two Faculties or One: The Conundrum of Part-Timers in a Bifurcated Work Force,’’ New Pathways Project (commissioned paper),Washington, DC, American Association for Higher Education (1997). 87. Guskin and Marcy, ‘‘Dealing with the Future Now.’’ 88. Ruben, Pursuing Excellence in Higher Education. 89. Bailyn, ‘‘Academic Careers and Gender Equity’’; L. S. Hornig, Equal Rites, Unequal Outcomes: Women in American Research Universities (New York: Kluwer Academic/Plenum Publishers, 2003). 90. Ruben, Pursuing Excellence in Higher Education. 91. Bailyn, ‘‘Academic Careers and Gender Equity’’; P. Bourdieu and J. Passeron, Reproduction in Education, Society and Culture (Beverly Hills: Sage, 1977); G. DeSole and M. A. Butler, ‘‘Building an Effective Model for Institutional Change: Academic Women as Catalyst,’’ Initiatives 53 (1990): 1–10; E. Pajak and A. Green, ‘‘Loosely Coupled Organizations, Misrecognition, and Social Reproduction,’’ International Journal of Leadership in Education 6(4) (2003): 393–413; Valian, Why So Slow?; Williams, Unbending Gender. 92. P. Eckel, ‘‘Institutional Transformation and Change: Insights for Faculty Developers,’’ in D. Lieberman and C. Wehlburg, eds. To Improve the Academy: Vol. 20. Resources for Faculty, Instructional, and Organizational Development (Bolton, MA: Anker, 2002). 93. Eckel, ‘‘Institutional Transformation and Change.’’

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94. R. Blake, J. Mouton, and M. Williams, The Academic Administrator Grid: A Guide to Developing Effective Management Teams (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1981). 95. M. J. Hatch, Organization Theory: Modern Symbolic and Postmodern Perspectives (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997), p. 35. 96. D. Katz, R. L. Kahn, and J. S. Adams, eds., The Study of Organizations (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1980); D. Katz and R. L. Kahn, The Social Psychology of Organizations, 2nd ed. (New York: Wiley, 1978). 97. Weick, ‘‘Educational Organizations.’’ 98. Argyris, Overcoming Organizational Defenses; R. L. Kuhn, ed., Generating Creativity and Innovation in Large Bureaucracies (London: Quorum Books, 1993). 99. Weick, ‘‘Educational Organizations.’’ 100. Dannemiller Tyson Associates, Whole-Scale Change: Unleashing the Magic in Organizations (San Francisco: Berrett-Koehler Publishers, 2000). 101. Argyris, Overcoming Organizational Defenses, pp. 92–95; J. G. March and H. A. Simon, Organizations (New York: Wiley, 1958). 102. Orton and Weick, ‘‘Loosely Coupled Systems,’’ pp. 211–13. 103. K. E. Weick, K. M. Sutcliffe, and D. Obstfeld, Organizing and the Process of Sensemaking (in press). 104. Ibid., pp. 3–4. 105. A. F. Lucas, Strengthening Departmental Leadership: A Team-Building Guide for Chairs in Colleges and Universities (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1994); A. F. Lucas, Leading Academic Change: Essential Roles for Department Chairs (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2000). 106. Weick, ‘‘Educational Organizations’’; Weick et al., Organizing and the Process of Sensemaking. 107. Argyris, Overcoming Organizational Defenses; Dannemiller, 2000; M. Weisbord, Productive Workplaces Revisited: Dignity, Meaning, and Community in the 21st Century (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2004); Surowiecki, The Wisdom of Crowds. 108. Katz et al., The Study of Organizations. 109. Weick, Making Sense of the Organization, p. 391. 110. K. E. Weick and K. M. Sutcliffe, Managing the Unexpected: Assuring High Performance in an Age of Complexity (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2001); Weick et al., Organizing and the Process of Sensemaking; K. E. Weick and K. H. Roberts, ‘‘Collective Mind in Organizations: Heedful Interrelating on Flight Decks,’’ Administrative Science Quarterly 38 (1993): 357–438. 111. C. Argyris, ‘‘Unrecognized Defenses of Scholars: Impact on Theory and Research,’’ Organizational Science 25(1) (1996): 79–87. 112. Weick, Making Sense of the Organization, pp. 460–63. 113. P. M. Senge, The Fifth Discipline: The Art and Practice of the Learning Organization (New York: Currency Doubleday, 1990), pp. 150–55; W. G. Tierney, ed., The Responsive University: Restructuring for High Performance (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1998). 114. Guskin and Marcy, ‘‘Dealing with the Future Now’’; Ehrenberg and Zhang, ‘‘The Changing Nature of Faculty Employment’’; Finkelstein and Schuster, ‘‘Assessing the Silent Revolution.’’ 115. D. Ward, ‘‘Strategic Planning at the American Council on Education (ACE): Guiding a Venerable Institution Forward into a New Century,’’ Presidency 6(1) (Winter

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2003); D. M. Kolb and J. M. Bartunek, Hidden Conflicts in Organizations: Uncovering Behind-the-Scenes Disputes (Newbury Park, CA: Sage, 1992); Ruben, Pursuing Excellence in Higher Education. 116. AAUP, ‘‘The Role of the Faculty in Budgetary and Salary Matters,’’ in Policy Documents and Reports, 9th ed. (Washington, DC: AAUP, 2001), pp. 232–35; Bailyn, Kochan, & Drago, ‘‘Integrating Work and Family’’; F. Bartolome and P. A. Evans, ‘‘Must Success Cost so Much?’’ in Harvard Business Review on Work and Life Balance (Boston: Harvard Business School Press, 2000), pp. 31–60; R. Drago and J. Williams, ‘‘A HalfTime Tenure Track Proposal,’’ Change 32 (2000): 46–51; Galinsky et al., Feeling Overworked; P. Moen and Y. Yu, ‘‘Effective Work/Life Strategies: Working Couples, Work Conditions, Gender and Life Quality,’’ Social Problems 47(3) (2000): 291–326. 117. W. Burke, Organization Development: A Process of Learning and Changing, 2nd ed. (Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley, 1992); Dannemiller, 2000; Eckel, ‘‘Institutional Transformation and Change’’; Katz and Kahn, Social Psychology of Organizations; A. H. Van de Ven and D. Polley, ‘‘Learning while Innovating,’’ Organization Science 3 (1992): 92–116. 118. Weick, Making Sense of the Organization. 119. Orton and Weick, ‘‘Loosely Coupled Systems,’’ pp. 211–13. 120. K. E. Weick, ‘‘What Theory is Not, Theorizing Is,’’ Administrative Science Quarterly 40 (1995): 385–90; C. Argyris and D. A. Schon, Organizational Learning: A Theory of Action Perspective (Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley, 1978). 121. Hatch, Organization Theory, p. 372. 122. C. Argyris, Organizational Development (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1971); Lewin, Field Theory in Social Science; Surowiecki, The Wisdom of Crowds; Weick, Making Sense of the Organization; Weisbord, Productive Workplaces Revisited. 123. Dannemiller, 2000; R. C. Norvall, The Process of Change in Higher Education (Washington DC: American Association for Higher Education, 1982); P. C. Ritterbush, ed., Talent Waste: How Institutions of Learning Misdirect Human Resources (Washington, DC: Acropolis Books, 1972); I. S. Rubin, ‘‘Loose Structure, Retrenchment, and Adaptability in the University,’’ Sociology of Education 52 (October 1979): 211–222. 124. P. Reason and H. Bradbury, eds., Handbook of Action Research: Participative Inquiry and Practice (London: Sage, 2001); K E. Weick, ‘‘Organizational Culture as a Source of High Reliability,’’ California Management Review 29(2) (1987): 112–28. 125. K. E. Weick, ‘‘Management of Organizational Change among Loosely Coupled Elements,’’ in P. S. Goodman, ed., Change in Organizations: New Perspectives on Theory, Research, and Practice (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1982), pp. 375–408; Weick, ‘‘Organizational Culture as a Source.’’

13

Managerial Women, Minorities, and Stress: Causes and Consequences Margaret Foegen Karsten

This chapter explains each part of a straightforward yet complex model that tries to clarify ways in which work- and nonwork-related stressors and those related to work/ life interface lead to perceived stress. Individual and organizational consequences of perceived stress and effective methods to cope with it will be described. Stress-related issues relevant to ethnic and racial minorities and women will be integrated in the discussion whenever possible. Definitions of distress, eustress, and stress and a summary of monetary costs associated with dysfunctional stress begin the chapter. Stress has a huge impact on women, men, and people of color in the workplace. The main focus has been on distress, its negative effects, but eustress, its beneficial effects, can improve work performance. Though an individual’s optimal stress level varies based on personality and other factors, peak task performance typically occurs at moderate levels. Boredom can occur when stress is low; people feel overwhelmed when it is too high. Stress is defined here as ‘‘a physiological, emotional, and mental state that occurs in response to special demands of an event, situation, or action, moderated by individual differences.’’1 Events or actions provoking stress are stressors. Supposedly, ‘‘only significant or unusual situations, rather than the day-to-day minor adjustments of life, can really be said to produce stress.’’2 Perhaps repeated, chronic minor irritations might rise to the level of special demands in this definition. The high costs of stress in monetary and human terms are indisputable. Costs that can be reduced to dollar amounts have been estimated at $300 billion per year.3 According to the National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH), the percent of stress-related absences among blacks and non-Hispanic whites is lower than their representation in private sector workplaces with 100 or more employees.4 The same is not true for Hispanic and Asian Americans, however. Hispanic employees account for 21 percent of stress-related absences,

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though only 11 percent of private sector employees working for organizations employing at least 100 are Hispanic. Comparable figures for Asian Americans are 5 percent and 4 percent. Absenteeism due to stress among Native Americans and Alaskan Natives in the private labor force is less than 1 percent.5

A MULTIPURPOSE STRESS MODEL The details and assumed interrelationships of variables in stress models differ, but most follow a similar format. Stressors are related to tasks, roles, relationships, the physical environment, careers, and organizational structure, culture, or practices. They may be categorized, more generally, as work- and nonwork-related. Their effects are moderated by individual or environmental factors to produce perceived stress, which leads to positive or negative outcomes for individuals and organizations. Primary appraisals, which assess ‘‘what’s at stake’’6 to decide whether a situation poses a threat, could lead to loss or harm, is irrelevant, or is a positive challenge,7 and secondary appraisals, which evaluate resources available to reduce a situation’s threat potential,8 affect stress perceptions. Most research focuses on negative individual or organizational stress outcomes. Individual outcomes can be classified as physiological, psychological, and behavioral, and organizational outcomes relate to commitment, performance, and withdrawal behaviors, but they may be interrelated. Individual coping mechanisms vary based on the nature, intensity, duration, and time of onset of stressors, and the nature of moderating factors. They are generally categorized as problem- or emotion-focused approaches. Stressors related to the job, organizational culture, or work environment that seem to result in adverse consequences may indicate a need for serious, long-term organizational change. Figure 13.1 is a general model of the causes and consequences of perceived stress. The model’s straightforwardness should not obscure its complexity. The same factors may be both moderating variables and stressors. Stressors may interact with each other, as may moderating variables, to worsen or lessen perceived stress. Coping methods also may serve as moderating variables, and social support may be either a coping mechanism or a moderating variable. Stressors Stressors may be related to gender, race/ethnicity, or both. Some stressors seem to affect most managers, regardless of gender or race/ethnicity. For example, black and white managerial women in Davidson’s study both rank work overload as the top stressor.9 Women may be more likely than men to perceive organizational politics as a stressor.10 Minorities and females experience the glass or concrete ceiling, harassment, tokenism, isolation, stereotypes, work-family

FIGURE 13.1.

Stress model.

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conflict, the ‘‘maternal wall,’’ and prejudice and discrimination, thoroughly discussed by Karsten, as stressors.11 Work-family conflict and the maternal wall seem more problematic to whites than blacks. Ironically, due to the slavery legacy, which denied autonomy to black males and females alike, black couples may have more egalitarian relationships, and black women may view the provider role as integral to their role as parents. The maternal wall is a manifestation of stereotypical attitudes toward women with children, who are assumed to be more committed to their children than careers. That assumption causes them to receive fewer development opportunities than they otherwise might.12 Failing to equally consider qualified women and men for positions is illegal, but proving that gender was the underlying reason may be difficult. White (but not black) women experience a ‘‘wage penalty’’ of 6 to 7 percent of income per child.13 For that reason, the maternal wall may be a greater obstacle for white women. Single-parent managerial women face special stressors. Compared to those with spouses or partners, they may have greater work overload, less social support, and more financial strain.14 Their career advancement opportunities and job choice may be limited due to difficulties arranging for child care when attending evening functions, working extended hours, or traveling overnight is necessary. Executives may be expected to attend evening meetings and be able to travel. Single-parent managerial women believe they are sometimes excluded from events because other women view them as a threat.15 This perception of executive women who are single parents represents their reality, but the extent to which it reflects a stereotype is unknown. Compared to two-career couples, male and female single parents have less discretionary income. They must spend a larger percentage of total household income on such necessities as housing, utilities, and food. A child’s illness is stressful for any parent, but single parents may not have another adult available to help care for the sick child. Extended family members may not live nearby or may be unavailable to help. Care centers that accept mildly ill children are relatively rare and may not exist in rural areas. Male, single-parent managers face similar challenges but may be less likely to be excluded from social groups due to marital status. They still must cover basic expenses from one income, but that income may be higher than that of similarly situated women due to the persistence of a gender-based wage gap. Anecdotes indicate that those who believe the stereotype that parenting is easier for women due to nurturing abilities considered innate may have higher regard for male single-parent managers than their female counterparts. Individual and institutional racism, prejudice, and discrimination are particularly relevant stressors for minority managers. All subjects in a study of blacks experienced racial discrimination at some point in their lives; 98 percent had encountered it within the previous year.16 Seventy-five percent of a sample of 156 African Americans had experienced racial stress as compared to 44 percent of a sample of 376 U.S. citizens of Western European descent.17 Of the

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one-third of survey respondents who reported having dealt with discrimination in another study, 61 percent said it was ‘‘moderate’’ or ‘‘severe.’’18 Examples include inequities in pay, promotion, or job assignments; denial of housing; and refusal of service. Though many experience everyday unfair treatment regardless of their race/ethnicity, it also may be a manifestation of individual racism. For example, blacks report receiving poorer service in stores and restaurants, less courteous treatment than others, and being followed in stores due to a suspicion of shoplifting.19 Cornel West, a noted Princeton scholar who formerly taught at Harvard, recounts being unable to hail a taxi in New York City. Though he acknowledges that this incident is minor compared to experiences of other blacks, West says, ‘‘the memories cut like a merciless knife at my soul as I waited on that godforsaken corner.’’20 Institutional racism is defined as ‘‘policies that exclude [minority group members] from full participation in the benefits offered to other members of society.’’21 It may entail imposing harsher penalties on illegal activities when engaged in by minority than majority group members. For example, Utsey and colleagues cite federal drug laws that apply a less onerous penalty for possession of powdered cocaine, which whites are more likely to use, than crack cocaine, which is more available to blacks.22 Though severe penalties for any type of cocaine possession are justifiable in this author’s opinion, they should be applied uniformly, not in a way that may create race-based adverse impact. In addition, the root cause of the higher job loss rate among blacks than whites may relate to underlying institutional racism. More than those of Chinese or Korean descent, Asian Americans of Japanese and Filipino ancestry are likely to think that a double standard in law enforcement results in punishment of a greater percent of Asian Americans than whites who violate the law.23 All four groups agree that Asian Americans with identical qualifications hold worse positions than whites and that Asians must perform better than whites to succeed.24 Other stressors unique to racial/ethnic minorities, including biculturalism, acculturation, and minority status, will be presented next. Then, stressors that occur for those who are doubly disadvantaged based on race/ethnicity and gender will be discussed. ‘‘Soul wound’’ and ‘‘historical trauma’’ are stressors for Native Americans and other minority groups that have encountered racism and discrimination.25 Forced migration to urban areas, seizure of land (often without proper compensation), and stays at boarding schools designed to indoctrinate them in the majority culture have contributed to trauma among Native Americans. Another example of an action causing soul wound is the involuntarily sterilization of 40 percent of their women of childbearing age in the 1970s,26 carried out under the direction of the Indian Health Service. Forced internment of Japanese Americans during World War II also may qualify as historical trauma. Forced splitting of families, physical abuse, and rape of black women by white plantation

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owners most likely wounded and traumatized blacks even more, but debating which group’s pain was worse is futile. Rather, taking steps to root out racial and ethnic intolerance and its negative consequences wherever it occurs is more productive. Violence is a stressor for targets, bystanders, and perpetrators, and Native Americans have experienced more than their share. They are 2.5 times more likely to be victims of violent crime than the average U.S. citizen. At 98 per 1,000, the violent crime rate among Native American women is greater than for females of any other ethnic group. They are affected by violence at a rate nearly 50 percent higher than that which affects black men.27 Women and minorities both deal with social isolation, but its effects may be more pronounced for minorities, particularly blacks. Those who relocate to areas without a strong black community may experience isolation in their neighborhoods as well as their workplaces.28 Biculturalism occurs when people feel they must behave, dress, speak, and act differently on the job than at home due to their race or ethnicity. It creates stress for minorities in a majority-dominant work culture. Toliver identifies a positive side of biculturalism in her study of black managers.29 She maintains that it may be beneficial for blacks to be able to draw on the strengths of two different communities on and off the job. Furthermore, she suggests that marginalization, rather than being a stressor, encouraged the sample she studied to believe that they were part of an elite group while growing up. They had advantages that others of similar ethnic and racial backgrounds lacked, and they were expected to succeed in future careers and in life. Native Americans typically do not view biculturalism as an advantage. Colonization forced them to adapt to a majority culture that espoused values conflicting with their own. Though the cultures of specific tribal nations differ, they invariably emphasize cooperation, group identification, responsibility for friends and extended family members, and tradition.30 These characteristics contrast with the majority culture’s emphasis on competition, individual achievement, and consumerism. Acculturation is the process through which people, particularly immigrants or racial/ethnic minorities, adapt to the dominant culture or choose not to do so. Assimilation is an acculturation strategy involving immersion in and acceptance of the mainstream culture. Integration means being immersed in both the dominant and minority cultures; marginalization, linked with the highest stress levels, implies a rejection of both. As an acculturation strategy, separation focuses on the minority culture and rejects the majority culture.31 Whether or not the acculturation process is a stressor has been debated. It seems to be for Mexican American women, who risk losing support of their ethnic group, and for Native American women. According to Zambrana and colleagues,32 ‘‘risky health behaviors, stress levels, and medical risks all seemed to increase with greater acculturation and decreases in social support of the Hispanic community.’’ LaFromboise, Heyle, and Ozer report that ac-

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culturation has led some Native American males to try to dominate females, thereby eroding the previously existing complementary relationship between the sexes.33 Other studies, however, show more stress among less acculturated individuals.34 Native American women seem to deal with acculturation better than their male peers. LaFromboise, Heyle, and Ozer suggest this is due to their traditionally greater role flexibility, which made them willing to assume roles that Native American men would have spurned.35 Minority status is a social stressor for Asian American refugees and immigrants, but little research has systematically analyzed its impact.36 Racial/ ethnic minority and socioeconomic status combine with institutional role expectations to form a social stratification system, or hierarchical pecking order in which having low status is a stressor.37 ‘‘Negative synergy’’ may explain why stressors associated with being female and a member of a racial/ethnic minority group may be more harmful than an additive model implies. It may place their career progress in double jeopardy. Few studies have been done on such individuals, but Davidson’s comparison of black and white managerial women shows that both groups rank being undervalued or underutilized among their top three stressors.38 Beyond that, stressors differ between the two groups. In addition to work overload, mentioned earlier, performance pressure, powerlessness, and a need to be three times as qualified to get the same job as whites complete the top five stressors for executive black women. For their white counterparts, the top five stressors included being the boss, having to acquire and use managerial styles considered masculine, and being assertive and confident. Some work- and nonwork-related stressors, such as the threat of terrorism and workplace violence and the effects of immigration on racial/ethnic minorities, are beyond the scope of this chapter. They are real concerns, but because volumes could be written about either, they will not be addressed here. Work-Related Stressors Work-related stressors appear in Figure 13.1. Change and resulting lack of control may be overriding factors that affect each category of stressor.39 Job stressors may be quantitative, such as work overload or underload, or qualitative. Either a lack of skills to accomplish a task or repetitive, boring work could be qualitative stressors. The quality of the job experience, not just the quantity of work, helps determine whether it challenges incumbents or provokes strain. Jobs featuring energizing work on diverse tasks, an opportunity to learn, a sense of achievement, and a match between the incumbent’s interests and abilities and job requirements have beneficial effects on women’s health.40 Similarly, women who perform ‘‘substantively complex’’ jobs independently and feel valued have ‘‘the highest levels of well-being.’’41 Decision latitude and psychological demands influence whether jobs are considered challenging or too taxing. Skill discretion, the opportunity to use

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different skills on the job, and task authority, the ability to make decisions affecting one’s work, compose decision latitude.42 Jobs can be placed in one of four quadrants of a grid based on whether psychological demands and decision latitude are relatively low or high. Those featuring both high psychological demands and control, such as those of attorneys and accountants, are of ‘‘average’’ stress; some speculate that higher level managerial jobs also could be placed in this quadrant.43 Jobs characterized by high psychological demands but low control are most stressful. Lower level managers, mail carriers, administrative assistants or secretaries, teachers, nurses, and restaurant servers fit in this quadrant.44 Inter- or intrarole conflict, ambiguity, and role incongruity are examples of role demands. Interrole conflict occurs when demands of two different roles clash. For example, if the job requires attendance at a reception outside normal working hours at the same time an employee plans to have dinner with her daughter to celebrate a special occasion, that employee may experience interrole conflict between the roles of parent and employee. Intrarole conflict may occur when competing priorities exist at work and synergy is impossible. Spending time on one priority makes less available to devote to the other. Ambiguity means uncertainty about tasks to be accomplished or the best ways to complete them. First-time managers typically deal with much ambiguity. Because the percentage of women and men in management, overall, is nearly equal in the United States, women in leadership roles should no longer be viewed as incongruous. Nevertheless, those who have rigid notions of prescribed and proscribed gender-related stereotypes still may perceive role incongruity when they see women in top leadership roles.45 They also may perceive role incongruity among men whose active involvement with their families necessitates leaving work early or being unavailable for work-related travel. Challenges associated with maintaining relationships with bosses, coworkers, and subordinates are interpersonal stressors. Harassment is an extreme example of a maladaptive approach to such sources of stress and has been discussed elsewhere.46 Managers, by definition, must get things done through others, so their jobs are susceptible to relationship stressors. They must reward, motivate, discipline, and gain cooperation from employees; listen to their concerns; mediate disagreements; and evaluate performance. Interpersonal or personality conflicts may occur during any of those activities. If they are functional conflicts, in which people ultimately resolve differences, they may be productive. Dysfunctional conflicts, the goal of which is to attack and discredit those with opposing views, are counterproductive and create distress.47 Conflicts with supervisors tend to induce more distress than those with coworkers,48 and women may be more upset than men by interpersonal conflict.49 However, this tendency may not exist for managerial women who have adopted leadership styles similar to those of male peers. Managers’ relationships with colleagues may induce stress, and peers may create tension by exerting group pressure to punish workplace nonconformists.

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Many advantages of diversity management exist, but if a diverse workforce is not handled appropriately, relationships may become strained. Then diversity stress, defined as difficulty caused by uncertainty about the nature of a multicultural situation and suitable responses,50 may occur. Stressors associated with the physical environment on the job are selfexplanatory. They include inadequate ventilation, extreme temperatures, and noise.51 Hazards from malfunctioning equipment, potential dangers due to lax security measures, and problems associated with new technology use also fit in this category. Technological change and use of new equipment may lead to negative consequences in some; others will react positively. Proper ergonomic techniques help people avoid strain; proper lighting and periodic exercise may prevent physical strain associated with overuse of video display terminals. Common career stressors are job insecurity, obsolescence, lack of promotion, and inadequate mobility. Fear of losing one’s job is visceral, but in the labor market of the early twenty-first century, lifelong learning is the best guarantee of future employability. Though career ladders are much shorter than they were in the mid-twentieth century, some still mistakenly equate success with vertical movement or number of promotions received. With such a mindset, disappointment is inevitable. Employees should be urged to adopt a more realistic view of career progress and may need to broaden their concept of success. Aspects of an organization’s structure, culture, and practices may become stressors. For example, spreading responsibility for accomplishment of a major project to many units without ensuring coordination could be a structural stressor.52 A closed, authoritarian culture would be a stressor for many. Failure to define performance criteria, development of vague criteria after an evaluation period ends, rather than at the outset, or distribution of rewards based on ‘‘politics’’ or ‘‘popularity’’ rather than on clear contributions to the organization’s goals also are stressors.53 Work/Life Interface The work/life interface is labeled as such to emphasize the fact that boundaries exist between work and home regardless of whether employees currently have obligations to members of a nuclear or extended family. Single employees who live alone may have parents, step-parents, or other relatives who will need their assistance in the future. As Boyar and colleagues state, ‘‘All employees have the potential to experience work-family conflict and should not be excluded because they are unmarried, do not have children living at home, or their spouse [assuming they have one] does not work.’’54 This section will focus on conflict that occurs at the work-life or workfamily interface. Two distinct variables have been identified: work-family and family-work conflict. Both are types of interrole conflict that occur when demands of one role make fulfilling requirements of the other difficult.55 In the

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1990s, 25–50 percent of individuals in the United States from ages 25 to 54 who did not live alone and were employed at least 20 hours per week faced workfamily conflict (WFC). In contrast, only about 10–14 percent experienced family-work conflict (FWC).56 Two features of work-family boundaries, namely, flexibility and permeability, affect conflict and integration levels and ease of transition in either direction. Those working from home have greater boundary flexibility, which means they have more discretion regarding where and when they work. Permeability refers to the degree to which work interferes with personal or family life and vice versa.57 Flexibility and permeability promote integration and ease work-home transitions (and vice versa) but also may be associated with increased conflict. Employees retain some control over boundary permeability, however. Those working at home can establish rules to minimize interruptions from other household members while they are engaged in jobrelated tasks. Interestingly, WFC relates positively to FWC, but the latter is inversely related to the former.58 Perhaps this is because family boundaries are easier than work boundaries to infiltrate. When work prevents employees from performing family roles adequately, a spillover of negativity may result. Conflict originating in the family is less likely to spill over to work because ‘‘employees make adjustments in their home lives rather than their work lives, since the immediate effect is less damaging to [their] livelihood.’’59 Certain factors increase the odds of WFC, FWC, or both, and others have a protective effect. Negative affectivity, list-making, and use of avoidance or resignation as coping techniques are linked to WFC and FWC. It seems reasonable that negative moods and perceptions and passive responses could increase these types of conflict, but their association with list-making seems counterintuitive initially. People habitually underestimate the amount of time it will take to complete tasks, however.60 When they see many remaining tasks on to-do lists, they feel as if they have lost control, which may increase perceptions of WFC or vice versa.61 A preference for being organized negatively associates with WFC and FWC.62 Preoccupied attachment styles, in which people think of one domain while they are physically in the other, increase the chance of FWC, as do marital tension,63 number of children, a lack of childcare, and criticisms or burdens family members impose.64 Psychological involvement in the job, low levels of supervisory support for those who are highly involved with their work, job dissatisfaction, and work overload increase the risk of WFC.65 Factors such as ‘‘hardiness,’’ supervisory support, and ‘‘informal accommodation of work to family’’ reduce the risk of WFC.66 Conscientiousness lessens the chances of FWC as do perceptions of instrumental and emotional support.67 Among other criticisms of studies on WFC and FWC, Boyar and colleagues lament that ‘‘measurement of family responsibility has been deficient.’’68 They propose examining the number of people residing in a household rather than

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number of children to avoid underestimating the effects of providing in-home care for an elderly relative or the children of a sibling.69 Perhaps extent of physical and/or mental disabilities of those living in the home also should be considered. Little evidence supports the role of gender as a mediating variable between predictors and outcomes of WFC or FWC in the United States.70 A study of over 12,000 employees in the Netherlands, however, shows that predictors of WFC differ by gender. Overtime, amount of commuting time, physical demands, and the presence of dependent children increase the likelihood of WFC for women there. Job insecurity, shift work, full responsibility for household duties, and accountability for the care of a chronically ill child in the home predict WFC for men.71 Joint outcomes of FWC and WFC are marked with an asterisk on Table 13.1. In addition, WFC is negatively related to organizational commitment;72 FWC is inversely related to self-reported performance and positively linked to absenteeism.73 The last work-life interface issue to be addressed is stress contagion, or crossover. Unlike spillover, in which one person’s distress in a role, such as work, causes his or her stress associated with personal or family roles to rise, crossover occurs when increased distress in one spouse or partner leads to higher distress in the other.74 For example, a managerial woman whose spouse is a health care professional experiences distress when her husband is called to the hospital where he is employed after normal working hours to assist in lifethreatening situations. Westman indicates that crossover is somewhat more likely to go from husband to wife than vice versa, perhaps because women are more likely to provide social support and to empathize with their husbands’ stress.75 Suggesting that women who have been socialized to accept the ‘‘feminine’’ gender role and have internalized gender stereotypes might be more susceptible to stress contagion is premature, but future research on this idea might be productive. Nonwork-Related Stressors Categorizing major life events and daily hassles as nonwork-related stressors may be inaccurate, because some of each may be job-related. This section, however, will focus primarily on life events and daily irritations that occur off the job. Major life events that are stressors are typically evaluated on checklists or scales. One example is the Holmes and Rahe Social Readjustment Rating Scale (SRRS), developed more than thirty-five years ago to assess the amount of life stress in a year. Most stressors listed in the SRRS relate to personal (not organizational) factors. Items include a spouse’s death, a major personal accomplishment, or the birth or adoption of a child. Unlike some checklists, the SRRS

TABLE 13.1.

Adverse Consequences of Stress

To the Individual Physical Elevated blood pressure—6,7,11 Coronary heart disease—7,11 Headaches—10 Psychogenic disorders—12 Relatively short menstrual cycles—12 Physical illness (skin disease, cancer)—3 Raised risk of miscarriage, pre-eclampsia during pregnancy—2 Low energy levels—9 Decline in physical health* Psychological/emotional Depression—3,5,6,8,10,11* Anxiety—3,5,10,11* Anger/frustration—3,10,11 Sleep disturbances—3,10,11 Exhaustion—3 Mental fatigue—11 Disappointment—10 Increased psychological distress* Reduction in mental well-being* Suicidal thoughts—3 Job dissatisfaction—3* Reduced morale—2 Changes in personality characteristics—9 Worsened existing personality problems—9 Weakened emotional and moral constraints—9 Decline in interest and enthusiasm—9 Increased cynicism about clients, colleagues—9 Life dissatisfaction* Decreased family satisfaction*

To the Organization Withdrawal Increased absenteeism Increased tardiness Increased voluntary turnover Commitment Reduced loyalty (hindrancerelated stress) Increased job search (hindrance-related stress) Increased intent to quit* (hindrance-related stress) Decreased job involvement Decreased organizational commitment Performance quality and quantity Reduced productivity Increased accident rate Increased error rate

Cognitive—9 Decreased concentration Increased distractibility New information is ignored Deterioration of long- and short-term memory Deterioration of long term planning ability (continued)

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TABLE 13.1. (Continued) To the Individual Behavioral Increased substance abuse—4,11* Increased conflict—4 Eating disorders—12 Smoking—2 Increased shifting of responsibility to others—9 ‘‘Bizarre’’ behavior patterns—9

To the Organization Legal and medical costs Increased health care consumption Increased workers’ compensation claims Increased number of lawsuits Other Increased employee theft Increased aggression Increased workplace violence

*Outcomes of Family-Work and Work-Family Conflict Key 1 ¼ Managers 7 ¼ Blacks 2 ¼ Executive women 8 ¼ Filipino Americans 3 ¼ Black executive women 9 ¼ Source Fontana (1989) [may not be empirically based] 4 ¼ Native Americans 10 ¼ Asian Americans 5 ¼ Native American women 11 ¼ Nonmanagerial employees 6 ¼ Women of color 12 ¼ Employed women

assigns a weight to each event. For example, a speeding ticket counts 11; a spouse’s death counts 100.76 Items including responsibility for preparation for major holidays were added to the SRRS in the late 1980s or early 1990s to reflect the fact that some stressors may affect women and men differently.77 Until recently, women typically got ready for holidays by making special foods, buying gifts, and preparing to entertain, regardless of their employment status. Such duties can be time-consuming for anyone who assumes them. Other stressors added to the SRRS to reflect the changing times were single parenthood, crime victim status, chemical dependence, and the process of parenting teens. The likelihood of becoming ill or injured in the next two years is linked to the overall SRRS score if people do not alter their stress responses. Those who score at least 300 have an 80 percent chance of becoming seriously ill in the future if they continue their current response pattern to stressors. If effective coping mechanisms are used, high SRRS scores may not necessarily result in sickness or injury, however.78 The adequacy of major life events checklists in measuring stressors has been debated since the 1970s.79 After acknowledging that the massive stress literature supports a connection between social stress, as evaluated by a major life events checklist, and mental problems, Turner and Avison question whether results would differ based on gender, race/ethnicity, and socioeconomic status.

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Their examination of recent life events, chronic stressors, total lifetime major events, daily discrimination, and total stress in a sample of 900 young black and white males and females shows that reliance on ‘‘recent life events systematically and dramatically underestimates the significance of social stress for the mental health of young adults’’ and that ‘‘checklist scores yield substantially biased estimates of total stress exposure across gender, race/ethnicity, and socioeconomic status.’’80 Measuring exposure to recent life events alone without considering chronic stressors may lead to the conclusion that men experience slightly more total stress,81 but this may not be true. Stress components tend to offset one another. For example, though men witness more violence and are more likely to report exposure to traumatic events, they seem to have less social stress than women. Because women are more likely than men to be affected by stressful events that happen to friends, co-workers, and relatives, they tend to report more strainproducing major and recent life events and more deaths on the SRRS.82 In Turner and Avison’s study, blacks’ reported levels of nearly every type of stress analyzed exceeded those of whites. An inverse relationship occurred between reported stress and socioeconomic status. Respondents in the lowest third based on socioeconomic status showed higher levels of every stress measure than those in the middle or top third.83 Thus, ‘‘limiting stress measurement to a checklist of recent events significantly overestimates total stress exposure among women relative to men and systematically underestimates such exposure among African Americans relative to whites and among persons of lower socioeconomic status relative to their more advantaged counterparts,’’ according to Turner and Avison.84 Those disagreeing with the notion that major life events are the most crucial determinants of dysfunctional stress contend that the cumulative effect of small, repeated irritations such as traffic congestion or minor disagreements can be more harmful.85 Consistent with this view are the ideas that the ‘‘mental health effect of chronic stress can be stronger than acute stress,’’86 and minor instances of racial discrimination may ‘‘have greater effects on health outcomes than their magnitude may suggest.’’87 Furthermore, Meyer notes that many researchers refuse to use scales measuring daily annoyances because they may be influenced by people’s moods at the time. Perceptions of daily hassles as stressors may differ based on race/ethnicity. Nonmanagerial Asian American women report higher levels than people of any other ethnic group.88

MODERATING FACTORS Characteristics and behaviors that may moderate the effect of stressors on perceived stress and its consequences to be discussed are agentic and instrumental characteristics, self-efficacy and self-esteem, ethnic identity, hardiness, locus of control, negative affectivity, perfectionism, Type A behavior, and

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workaholism. Available literature will be summarized, but readers are cautioned that imprecise definitions may lead to overlap or confounding of moderating factors. Also, the literature has many gaps. A few studies examine effects of individual characteristics and behaviors on stress among managers; some look at the impact on employees in general. Research on stress and managerial women has typically focused on white women; research on executive women of color related to factors that buffer the impact of stressors on perceived stress is rare. Agentic and instrumental characteristics are similar and are related to efficacy. Optimism, self-efficacy, and instrumentality have been called ‘‘agentic traits.’’89 One definition of instrumentality is ‘‘agency or means’’; assertiveness and confidence are examples of instrumental characteristics according to Portello and Long.90 Efficacy is the power to produce a desired effect; self-efficacy is one’s belief that he or she can carry out a task or behavior successfully.91 All three terms imply action and accomplishment. Managerial women have stronger agentic qualities than female clerical workers, according to Long.92 Such characteristics are associated with more positive views of the work environment and fewer reported daily annoyances.93 Contrary to expectations, Portello and Long indicate that executive women scoring high on instrumental qualities evaluate interpersonal conflict as more troubling than those scoring lower after effects of negative affectivity, or negative moods, are removed.94 This may stem from a belief that as managers, they should be able to deal effectively with interpersonal relations and frustration when doing so is difficult.95 The impact of self-efficacy as a moderating variable is mixed. It reduces effects of role overload on anxiety and tension among military staff but does not mitigate the effects of stressors on strain among educational employees.96 Self-esteem, the extent to which people value and like themselves, decreases the chance that stressors will result in distress. Low self-esteem is linked to anxiety, depression,97 reduced self-efficacy, and an increased desire to please others.98 Compared to men in the workforce, employed women are more likely to believe that others hold them in high regard. Because managerial women typically occupy lower ranked positions than male peers and get relatively little recognition, however, they may have lower self-assessments and therefore may not benefit from the buffering effect of high self-esteem to the same degree that men do.99 Racial discrimination affects self-esteem, especially among African Americans. In a study of nonmanagerial African Americans, Simpson and Yinger show a negative relationship between discrimination and both self-esteem and life satisfaction.100 Nonetheless, 60 percent of Davidson’s female executive interviewees seem satisfied with their levels of self-confidence.101 The situation differs for Chinese nonmanagerial women in Toronto who have experienced discrimination. They are more likely to have reduced selfesteem compared to Chinese women who have not encountered discrimination. Interestingly, weak evidence indicates that Chinese men who have been discriminated against have higher self-esteem than those who have not.102

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For Filipino Americans,103 urban Native American women,104 and perhaps other groups, a strong ethnic identity buffers the effects of racial discrimination and prejudice on negative outcomes, such as depression. Ethnic identity is a high degree of commitment and strong connection to one’s ethnic group, as evidenced by knowledge of and pride in its heritage and significant participation in its cultural events and practices.105 Mossakowski suggests that it may be difficult for discrimination to affect the self-esteem of those with a strong ethnic identity because they immediately dismiss negative racial stereotypes as false. Enculturation, or the process through which minorities develop ethnic identity, helps Native American women avert depression and avoid psychological distress and alcoholism while enhancing their self-esteem.106 Hardiness, a characteristic attributed to managers, views change as a positive challenge and involves resilience and stress resistance. Because it entails a sense of control over one’s life, hardiness may be confounded with locus of control, to be discussed next. It includes a commitment to an important goal or activity.107 Evidence about whether hardiness mitigates the effects of stressors on strain is mixed, however. Locus (literally ‘‘place’’) of control may be internal or external and is on a continuum. People with an internal locus of control believe their efforts affect outcomes. They are achievement-oriented, responsible individuals who take the initiative to accomplish tasks.108 Those with an external locus believe they lack influence; events that are beyond their control simply occur. Managers are more likely than nonsupervisory employees to have an internal locus of control.109 As a result, they experience fewer psychological complaints.110 Managerial women are less likely to have an internal locus of control than male counterparts, which puts them at heightened risk of developing psychological maladies.111 Studies of managerial women that produced these results are based mainly on white women and may or may not generalize to women of color. In addition, executive women do not seem to have higher anxiety, hostility, or depression than nonmanagerial employees.112 Negative affectivity is a tendency to view events pessimistically and is characterized by anger, anxiety, and depression. It colors perceptions of stressors and strain and is linked to frequent use of ineffective coping techniques among white executive women.113 Whether negative affectivity is a moderator that should be factored out of studies analyzing the relationship between stressors and strains or a variable whose impact on strain is mediated by stressors is being debated. Removing it may only be appropriate if people with high negative affectivity report higher stress levels than those that actually exist.114 Determining when this occurs seems nearly impossible because self-reported perceptions of strain are subjective. Another unresolved question regarding negative affectivity that is measured via self-reports is whether those who have a high degree perceive additional stressors that others fail to see or choose work environments characterized by above average stress levels.115

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Women generally have more negative affectivity than men, but women in positions of low control are especially susceptible.116 This may indicate that negative affectivity has less impact on executive females than on other female employees because management positions, particularly at higher levels, are characterized by a high degree of control. Several studies show gender differences in depression and unhappiness with women reporting higher levels than men.117 These are based primarily on whites in various occupations and may or may not generalize to women and men in management. Perhaps women report more negative affectivity because it is more socially acceptable in the United States for women than men to have and openly express intense emotions.118 Though executive women may differ from the norm, women, with some exceptions, tend to mull over negative emotions and events more than men do, and rumination prolongs depressed moods.119 This inclination also may contribute to higher reported negative affectivity. The next three moderating factors—perfectionism, Type A behavior, and workaholism—have similarities. An inner compulsion to avoid error or accomplish as much as possible may be at the root of each. Perfectionism tolerates no mistakes. Women are more likely than men to have self-imposed standards of perfectionism,120 but whether this finding generalizes to managerial women and men of various ethnicities is unknown. Type A behavior has been described as time-conscious, competitive, aggressive, and hard-driving. The ‘‘free-floating hostility’’ associated with Type A behavior may be its most damaging characteristic; that part has been linked to increased coronary heart disease.121 Some studies show that women in management exhibit higher levels of Type A behavior than men,122 but this may reflect differences in organizational environments. Environmental stressors and challenges that managerial women often face in environments numerically dominated by men may precipitate Type A behavior.123 The coping method used moderates the effects of Type A behavior on strain. Executive women who employ problem-focused styles, in which they attempt to resolve the difficulty directly and actively, reduce symptoms of strain. Those resorting to emotional approaches, in which they vent feelings, seek social support, and blame themselves, have more strain.124 Three components characterizing workaholics are an inner compulsion to work and high involvement in and low enjoyment of work. In a study of primarily white female MBAs, Burke compares workaholics to ‘‘work enthusiasts,’’ formerly dubbed ‘‘extra-effort people,’’ and ‘‘enthusiastic workaholics.’’125 Work enthusiasts have high involvement and joy in work but do not feel driven; enthusiastic workaholics rate high on all three dimensions. Workaholic managerial women are less optimistic about future careers and less satisfied with their communities and friends than their counterparts who are work enthusiasts;

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they have less job, career, and family satisfaction than either work enthusiasts or enthusiastic workaholics.126 A direct relationship exists between feelings of being driven to work and poor physical and emotional well-being and between work enjoyment and positive well-being.127 Enactment of multiple roles simultaneously may buffer the negative effects of stress according to those who believe the expansion theory, an idea that human energy is a renewable resource and is not scarce.128 Instead of draining energy, multiple roles replenish it because people gain resources from each role. When career disappointments occur, employees can draw strength from their relationships. Becoming addicted to work due to personal problems is not recommended, but focusing on work temporarily may provide the perspective needed to objectively evaluate a personal situation. Other remaining moderating variables include financial resources, management level, and the end of a marriage through death, divorce, or separation. Portello and Long present evidence that executive women who are married, have children, and have relatively high incomes evaluate stress more positively.129 How much of the favorable assessment is due to income level and how much is due to additional roles of wife and mother is unknown. Smith reports that stress rises as employees’ salaries increase, but other studies contradict this.130 Female managers with relatively low financial resources who perceive the work environment as more demanding and less supportive are more likely to perceive relationship stressors as threats to their competence.131 As executive women are promoted, they are more likely to have jobs that encourage good health and positive environments. Female chief executives seem to have less global job stress than managerial women at lower levels.132 Dissolution of a marital relationship may be linked to stress long after it ends. A greater proportion of those who are widowed, separated, or divorced report high stress compared to those who are not.133 Smith’s study does not report stress variations among single (never married), partnered, and currently married individuals.

ENVIRONMENTAL FACTORS Environmental factors that may moderate the effect of stressors on strain include social support, job control, and organizational justice. The absence of any such factor also may be considered a stressor, and an organization may decide to start providing a specific environmental factor or increase its level to help employees cope with stress. Social support may come from friends or relatives off the job, co-workers, or supervisors. Good supervisors provide taskrelated, emotional, informational, and appraisal support.134 Perceived and actual support may differ. Perceived organizational support is a feeling that that the employer is concerned about workers and appreciates

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their contributions. This variable is negatively related to role conflict and role ambiguity among individuals with liaison, also known as boundary-spanning, positions.135 Black women’s strong belief in responsibility to the black community may increase the social support available to aspiring black females. Bell and Nkomo call the ‘‘geographic, social, and psychological space where African Americans lived, shared a collective history, and held a common understanding of the way of life in a Black community’’ their ‘‘homeland.’’136 Successful black women are expected to ‘‘give back’’ to those in the homeland, and managerial black women’s families have done so when they ‘‘joined with people in the homeland to give these women unconditional love, armored them to go out into the world and do their best, and told them stories of Black people’s painful struggles to achieve racial equality.’’137 The families and ‘‘homeland’’ community provided aspiring black women with emotional support that may have been lacking in the workplace. Emotional support from a supervisor can reduce negative stress consequences that otherwise might result from a job in which employees have little control over the work pace or the way in which tasks are done. This illustrates an interrelationship between two variables, each of which could serve as stressors or moderators depending on the circumstances. In this instance, lack of job control is the stressor, and support is the moderator. A high degree of job control may moderate high job demands to lessen stress. For example, managerial jobs are generally considered less stressful than clerical positions because managers have more job control. Three types of organizational justice, defined as perceived fairness, are distributive, procedural, and interactional. Distributive justice refers to perceived equity in the allocation of outcomes, including the organization’s resources and power. Procedural justice relates to the process through which resources are assigned, and perceived fairness of treatment and information provided in an interpersonal exchange or transaction is interactional justice.138 When low job control is a stressor, perceived organizational justice may cushion its negative impact.139 When one type of organizational injustice is a stressor, another type may buffer its negative effects. For example, perceived distributional justice may lessen the adverse effects of procedural injustice.

CONSEQUENCES OF STRESS Though harmful outcomes of stress are widely recognized, some organizational consequences may be positive, especially if the stress is challengerelated rather than hindrance-related. Challenge-related stress occurs when individuals perceive a positive net gain from potentially distress-provoking demands, such as work overload or a high degree of responsibility. In hindrancerelated stress, the net result is negative.

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A study of 1,886 primarily male executives in large U.S. firms reveals that challenge-related stress is positively associated with job satisfaction and negatively linked to job search. The association between hindrance-related stress and both job satisfaction and job search are in the opposite directions. An inverse relationship also exists between hindrance-related stress and voluntary turnover.140 Both types of stress are negatively linked to extroversion and positively associated with neuroticism. The relatively small percentage of women in the sample report more challenge-related stress than the men do.141 Another study of over 450 mainly white female nonmanagerial employees at a university again shows that challenge- and hindrance-related stress associate in opposite directions with certain work outcomes. Challenge-related stress is inversely related to job search, intent to quit, and work withdrawal behaviors, such as absenteeism and tardiness. It is positively linked to loyalty. Hindrance-related stress relates negatively to loyalty and positively to work withdrawal behaviors, job search, and voluntary turnover.142 Both types of stress seem associated with anxiety and emotional exhaustion, two dimensions of psychological strain.143 Before research was conducted on challenge- and hindrance-related stress, empirical studies trying to link work stress with negative organizational outcomes, such as job dissatisfaction, intent to quit, and job search, often failed to do so.144 Cavanaugh and colleagues believe this happened because both challengeand hindrance-related stress were measured on the same scale.145 Because they have the opposite impact on work outcomes, they cancel each other out. Women generally report a higher level of distress than men but have thus far maintained a longevity advantage of nearly eight years.146 Though they are more willing to say they experience pressure, women do not report worse mental health than men unless they are employed in male-dominated industries and use an interpersonal leadership style.147 They are, however, two to three times more likely than male peers to report a ‘‘history of affective disorders.’’148 With some exceptions, women report more chronic maladies; those that men mention tend to be life-threatening. Due to socialization, women may be more willing to report stress symptoms; men may be less likely to discuss health issues.149 Stockdale and colleagues reject a biological explanation for varying reactions to work stress among women and men and offer a ‘‘structural’’ explanation instead.150 They say responses differ due to the extent that women have dissimilar organizational roles. More managerial women than men report stress as a consequence of their experience both on and off the job. When the unpaid ‘‘second shift’’ of domestic and childcare duties,151 for which women are more likely to be responsible, is considered, women work longer than men. Long work hours affect both mental and physical health. Compared to nonmanagerial employed women, executive women seem to have better health outcomes, however. The association of multiple roles with a lowered risk of cardiovascular disease is especially strong among females in high status positions but has been noted for all employed women.152

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Table 13.1 illustrates one possible way to categorize stress outcomes. Some items included may be both individual and organizational consequences; classifying them as one or the other is admittedly arbitrary. For example, an increased number of accidents or errors could have been categorized as an individual behavioral consequence instead of a consequence to the organization pertaining to performance quality and quantity. Similarly, job dissatisfaction could have been considered an organizational, rather than an individual, outcome. Until relatively recently, most studies of managerial stress were based on white males, and most research on executive females and stress did not consider women of color. For that reason, a shortage of research on outcomes of perceived stress on minorities and women of color exists. Table 13.1 summarizes negative consequences of perceived stress based on studies of various groups, such as managers, employees, female employees, executive women, women of color, and specific minority groups, such as blacks, black executive women, Native American women, and Asian Americans. Unfortunately, empirical studies on stress outcomes are not readily available for each major racial/ethnic group by gender and occupation. For that reason, the summary in Table 13.1 is sketchy. Fontana enumerates negative outcomes commonly attributable to stress but does not cite empirical studies to verify the connection.153 They are included in Table 13.1, but readers are cautioned that supporting evidence for these consequences may or may not exist. Notable by their absence from the table are studies pertaining to the effects of stress on Hispanics. A study of Hispanic immigrants was not used because issues they encounter are beyond the scope of this chapter. The few other existing studies are not readily available. Most items in Table 13.1 are self-explanatory; a few require elaboration, and an explanation is appropriate for some items that have been omitted. For example, psychogenic disorders, listed as adverse physical consequences of perceived stress to individuals, are physical illnesses that begin with a psychological problem.154 Reduced morale is listed as a stress outcome for managerial women in Table 13.1 but is believed to be an adverse consequence for employees generally. So is burnout, which does not appear in Table 13.1 but can be defined as extreme physical and mental exhaustion that hinders or may prevent effective job performance. Minor aches and pains, muscle twitches, excess perspiration,155 and digestive problems,156 though not listed in Table 13.1, are considered effects of stress on employees. State workers’ compensation laws originally were passed to provide prompt compensation for work-related physical injuries without assigning fault. Their coverage expanded to cover stress-related illness, including emotional distress caused by workplace conditions. Because the number of claims due to on-thejob stress rose by the 1990s, more than thirty states adopted more stringent standards, which led to a reduction in such claims. For example, in Oregon, stress must be the ‘‘major contributing cause’’ of an injury or illness to be

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compensable.157 Employee stress from justifiable human resource actions such as performance appraisal and discipline up to and including discharge are not compensable, even if they are handled poorly.158 To prevail, stress-based workers’ compensation claims increasingly must be related to unusual situations. DeFrank and Ivancevich give an example of a female secretary in a major U.S. city who experienced ongoing psychological trauma, but no physical injuries, after a steel beam fell into her office. That was deemed extraordinary enough to warrant compensation.

COPING MECHANISMS Coping mechanisms are methods to deal with stress at the individual or organizational level or at the interface between the two. This section will discuss positive, rather than dysfunctional, coping mechanisms. The latter may result in increased daily hassles or adverse stress consequences which appear in Table 13.1.159 Individual coping is the management of internal or external demands that are judged to exceed one’s resources via cognitive or behavioral means.160 Organizational-level coping methods may include job redesign, adoption of alternative work schedules, or provision of various employee benefits to help workers integrate or balance work and life.161 Though different coping approaches can be identified, the process is complex, dynamic, and situationspecific.162 Personality, demographics, other individual characteristics, the context, and a subjective evaluation of the situation greatly affect the effectiveness of the selected method(s). Coping also involves primary and secondary appraisal, described earlier. As previously indicated, coping methods are commonly classified as problem- or emotion-focused.163 Stockdale and colleagues add a third category of ‘‘appraisal-focused’’ methods, which others include as a subset of emotionfocused strategies.164 Problem-focused methods address the issue directly. They involve planning, thinking positively, seeking information and advice, confronting others, and contacting civil rights organizations if the stressful event entails discrimination. These approaches are considered more effective than emotion-focused coping, but no method is appropriate in all situations. Problem-oriented strategies can be used only when people can take control; if that is impossible, emotionoriented coping may be the only option. With some exceptions, men seem to use problem-focused strategies more than women.165 When dealing with racial discrimination, Asian American women are more likely than their male counterparts to use problem-focused coping.166 Overall, emotion-oriented coping, particularly readjustment of one’s thoughts, is a dominant strategy among Asian Americans.167 When facing discrimination, a majority in Kuo’s study believe ‘‘things could be worse’’ and think that Asian Americans ‘‘are less victimized’’ than other minorities.168

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Use of problem- and emotion-based strategies also differs by nationality and education level among Asian Americans. Chinese Americans are less likely to use problem-oriented approaches than Koreans; Koreans are more likely to use emotion-based approaches than Filipinos, who have a propensity to use problemoriented strategies. Kuo concludes as follows: ‘‘These inter-group differences suggest that despite their common Confucian heritage, ethnicity still has a role in influencing coping choices.’’169 Contrary to popular belief, education, not socioeconomic status, relates to increased problem-focused coping.170 Among Asian Americans, family income, another component of socioeconomic status, associates negatively with problem oriented strategies. Ethnic identity is linked to problem-oriented coping among Hispanics. Those with higher levels deal with discrimination by refuting racist stereotypes; those with lower levels try to ignore them.171 Emotion-focused coping tries to change emotions arising as a result of stressors. It may include venting (expressing feelings to trusted confidantes as a release), wishful thinking, self-blame, or meditation. Appraisal-oriented coping, defined as a separate category of coping by Stockdale and colleagues but included under emotion-focused methods here, may entail redefining the meaning of the stressful event or situation or avoidance techniques, such as directing energy elsewhere.172 As indicated, support-seeking may be either a moderating variable or a coping mechanism in the stress model. When regarded as the latter, it is usually categorized as an emotion-focused strategy. Greenglass identifies two types of support: emotional, which provides a forum for ‘‘venting’’ and empathic reaction to distress; and instrumental, which consists of advice and practical help.173 The latter seems similar to advice seeking as a problem-focused strategy. Nelson and Burke maintain that women are at a disadvantage in terms of social support because they experience added challenges finding mentors and role models and being accepted in informal networks.174 Workplace support seems to reduce work stress for men more than women even when both receive equal amounts.175 Other research contradicts this finding, however. Studies on federal employees link co-worker support to instrumental and preventive coping among women but not among men. Greenglass,176 reporting on research with Fiksenbaum, maintains that women’s use of negative coping, such as wishful thinking, diminishes when co-workers support them. Single-parent female managers have less support than peers in two-parent households. They are less likely to receive support from ex-spouses or partners and may obtain little from extended families. Nevertheless, they tend to make good use of support they do have, primarily provided by female friends.177 Unemployed managerial women engage in activities to provide both emotional and instrumental support to a greater degree than their male counterparts. They are more likely to work for volunteer organizations, which not only provide an outlet but also may lead to valuable contacts to aid the job

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search process. Unemployed male managers, on the other hand, ‘‘tend to actively refuse situations in which they would have access to social support, thereby denying themselves an effective means of coping.’’178 Social support was among the top coping methods female Native American college students used to deal with bicultural conflict in the late 1980s. They also engaged in positive self-talk, worked harder, exercised, obtained professional counseling, and recalled beliefs about spirituality.179 Overall, emotion-oriented approaches are linked to increased emotional distress,180 but specific methods may elicit such a response more than others. Obtaining social support through cultivation of close relationships, discussed here as an emotion-focused strategy, may have positive organizational and personal consequences. Women seek significantly more instrumental and emotional support than men,181 which may be advantageous in coping with stress. Requesting help also is more consistent with gender role socialization commonly experienced by women. Approaches that Asian Americans employ to deal with the stress associated with racial discrimination have been discussed. Because of the shortage of easily accessible information on other racial/ethnic groups, only the experiences African Americans have had coping with the stress of discrimination will be mentioned. African Americans rely on different strategies to confront individual racism, which affects them personally; institutional racism, previously defined as policies that exclude them from full participation in society and enjoyment of societal benefits; or cultural racism, the belief in the superiority of the cultural practices of the dominant group.182 African American women are more likely than men to seek social support in response to individual racism but prefer avoidance strategies to either problem solving or social support.183 One study shows that African Americans who have experienced discrimination adopt an avoidance strategy,184 but other research contradicts this. Feagin indicates that African Americans respond to individual racism with resigned acceptance or verbal counterattack;185 Lalonde and colleagues suggest that black Canadians’ preferred method of dealing with institutional racism is to seek social support.186 Why do some African Americans prefer avoidance to more active coping strategies? They and other racial/ethnic minorities find direct confrontation costly in terms of time and energy, even when discrimination is serious. In an individualistic culture such as the United States, which emphasizes competition and personal responsibility for success or failure, gaining support for the idea that a negative outcome was caused by discrimination, rather than a personal shortcoming, is increasingly difficult. Because discrimination is more subtle than it once was, white mid- to upper classes in the United States may be more likely to blame the person alleging discrimination for its existence than to consider the context or other societal factors contributing to the problem.187

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ORGANIZATIONAL COPING: STRESS MANAGEMENT INTERVENTIONS Criticisms of stress management interventions are nearly as widespread as their use. Though they require a commitment of organizational resources and prospective consultants tout their advantages, surprisingly little is known about their effectiveness due to methodological and other problems including inconsistent terminology.188 Systematic, rigorous evaluation of the effectiveness of stress management is lacking; Arthur indicates that the effectiveness of some interventions remains unknown due to such problems.189 Dewe and O’Driscoll complain that stress management programs are often administered on an ad hoc basis.190 Still others say that interventions are too narrow or invite legal liability.191 Regarding the latter point, Dewe and O’Driscoll ask: What thought, for example, has been given to such ethical issues as informed consent, anonymity and confidentiality, potential harm and the individual’s right to withdraw or not attend? Where in the intervention process has attention been given to the individual’s right to access information collected during the intervention and their right to know how that information may be used, not to mention the legal risks organizations face by failing to pay attention to such issues?192

Some organizational interventions, such as equitable development and reward systems, workplace programs to provide social support and networking opportunities, zero tolerance for harassment, and concern for work-life integration, are recommended for organizations wishing to provide a welcoming environment for executive women.193 These simply reflect good management practice, assuming they result from a needs analysis of a particular workforce and are not instituted as one-size-fits-all measures. Finally, lack of top management support and employees who are unwilling to participate will quickly derail stress management interventions. Preventive (proactive) or curative (reactive) stress management interventions may be implemented at the individual, work group, or organizational level. Individual-level techniques are used most often, perhaps because some managers believe that reinforcing the mindset that stress is an individual problem absolves them from responsibility for dealing with it. In the long run, this idea may cause problems because the context seems to influence employees’ stress perceptions.194 Individual-level interventions may be more effective than those implemented organization-wide, however.195 Primary preventive approaches are intended to reduce the risks of damage from stressors or eliminate them, whereas secondary preventive measures help employees manage their responses to stressors. Curative interventions promote healing after strain has harmed employees and have been called tertiary preventive measures.196 Due to their after-the-fact nature, this seems a misnomer.

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Preventive interventions may include one or several of the following: relaxation, physical fitness, exercise, biofeedback, cognitive restructuring, meditation, assertiveness training, and time management. Stress awareness/education is another preventive measure.197 Progressive relaxation involves systematically tensing and relaxing muscle groups to obtain a calming response. For high-control employees, cognitive restructuring seems more effective in stress reduction than relaxation, however, according to a meta-analysis of forty-eight studies of stress interventions.198 Interventions that include relaxation seem to be most effective in combating negative physiological or psychological effects of stress, and ninety-six stress management experts rank relaxation as most practical, easiest to implement, and least costly.199 Physical fitness entails monitoring, exercise, and good nutrition to increase cardiovascular and respiratory endurance. Previously mentioned stress management experts rank physical fitness most effective in achieving five of seven objectives, including individual fitness and physiological indices, reduction of negative symptoms, enhancement of psychological well-being, reduction of health care cost, and organizational effectiveness and image.200 Exercise, which may be considered part of physical fitness or a separate stress management technique, is generally thought to be helpful in reducing stress. For example, Atchiler and Motta show that anxiety levels dropped after one session of aerobic exercise.201 Even exercise is not recommended in all circumstances, however. In group settings, certain types of exercise can increase competitiveness and aggression, particularly among those with Type A tendencies.202 Biofeedback is included in less than 5 percent of stress management programs. It measures physiological changes in muscle and skin to provide information about physical effects of stress interventions and is typically used with relaxation methods.203 Cognitive restructuring involves changing perceptions of stress to build resilience. Unwarranted negativity is systematically replaced by more rational thoughts. This strategy seems most effective among individuals whose jobs have a high degree of decision latitude, such as managers.204 Sixty-seven percent of stress management experts use cognitive restructuring ‘‘always,’’ ‘‘constantly,’’ or ‘‘often’’ compared to 59 percent who say the same about physical fitness, 56 percent for relaxation, and 35 percent for meditation.205 Meditation is focusing on one repetitive stimulus to prevent distraction and induce calmness. It resembles physical relaxation but employs mental exercises to achieve the same end.206 Assertiveness training, in which people learn to state their needs openly and honestly while respecting others’ needs, is fairly widely used. Nevertheless, stress management experts do not consider it a very effective intervention.207 In addition, it may clash with the way some Asian Americans and other ethnic groups have been socialized.

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Stress awareness/education incorporates preventive techniques, such as relaxation, exercise, and biofeedback. Factual information, such as that presented in this chapter regarding the pervasiveness of stress, its causes, positive and negative consequences, and coping mechanisms, is provided. Managing time more effectively sounds easy but can be challenging. It also may pose problems for those from ethnic or racial groups that approach time differently than the stereotypical white, non-Hispanic middle- to upper-class male U.S. executive does. After reassessing priorities, those who value the efficient use of time might benefit by asking whether all their current duties are necessary, and if so, whether they could be done less often or delegated to others. If activities are essential, doing them less frequently saves time. For example, a professor whose department thought it was desirable to publish an alumni newsletter decided to do so twice per year instead of three times, saving time and funds. If work-related duties can be delegated, abandoning perfectionism and assigning them to others is wise. Professionals who can afford to hire help to do household and other chores should do so. The time gained may be well worth the money spent. Employee assistance programs (EAPs) are invariably part of curative stress interventions. Started to deal with alcohol and drug abuse, EAPs are confidential referral programs led by an in-house coordinator who refers employees with marital, financial, family, or personal problems to appropriate social service agencies for professional counseling or other help. Bento quips that doubt exists about whether EAPs help employers or employees.208 This is because, due to cost concerns, gatekeepers of EAPs may be reluctant to refer individuals to social workers, psychologists, and psychiatrists, whose help, more than that of professionals with less training, benefits employees experiencing the negative consequences of stress.209 One of the few studies assessing the effectiveness of EAPs attributes reduced absenteeism, fewer health claims, and savings to their use.210 In another study, a life insurance company reports $4.23 in claims savings for every dollar invested in an EAP.211 So far, stress management interventions have been discussed for employees generally, not necessarily managers, let alone executive women or racial/ethnic minorities in management. Nelson and Burke outline suggestions for executive women who are interested in primary and secondary stress prevention and in curative measures.212 They suggest cognitive restructuring, self-analysis to identify personal stressors and develop plans for alleviation, and acceptance of positions with high visibility and developmental opportunities to reduce the risk of dysfunctional stress. Palliative measures recommended include meditation, conversations with trusted individuals to reduce the tendency to obsess or ruminate, and daily exercise. As a precaution, Nelson and Burke also urge executive women to develop relationships with physicians, psychologists, and other professionals before their services are needed in the same way they would develop contacts with tax lawyers or accountants on the job.213

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SUMMARY The focal point of this chapter is a comprehensive model that attempts to explain the process through which stressors lead to perceived stress, which has many individual and organizational consequences. Moderating factors and coping mechanisms affect perceived stress and may interact to reduce or worsen it. The same factor may be a moderating variable and a coping mechanism; for example, social support can be both. Moderating factors may be individual characteristics and behaviors or organizational variables such as the amount and type of social support, job control, and organizational power. Individual coping methods may be problem-focused or emotion-oriented; organizational coping includes stress management interventions that may be preventive or curative. Stress-related issues relevant to ethnic and racial minorities and women are integrated throughout the chapter. For example, racism, discrimination, and biculturalism are stressors of particular concern to minorities; racism also may affect self-esteem, a moderating factor. Ethnic identity may buffer the negative effects of stress. Gender issues related to negative affectivity, another moderating variable, are discussed. Managerial women in low- or middle-level positions report more stress than men; executive females at top levels seen to experience less than women at lower levels. NOTES The author and publisher gratefully acknowledge permission to reprint an adaptation of Margaret Foeger Karsten, Chapter 11, ‘‘Stress and Managerial Women and Minorities,’’ Management, Gender, and Race in the 21st Century (Lanham, MD: University Press of America, Inc., 2006): 318–49. Copyright # 2006 by University Press of America, Inc.). Adapted and reprinted with permission of University Press of America, Inc. 1. J. M. Ivancevich and M. T. Matteson, Organizational Behavior and Management, 4th ed. (Chicago: Irwin, 1996); M. S. Stockdale, K. P. Murphy, and J. Cleveland et al., Women and Men in Organizations: Sex and Gender Issues at Work (Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 2000). 2. R. S. DeFrank and J. M. Ivancevich, J.M.,1998. ‘‘Stress on the Job: An Executive Update,’’ Academy of Management Executive 12(1) (1998): 56. 3. American Institute of Stress, Job Stress (New York: American Institute of Stress, 2002). 4. National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH), Worker Health Chartbook, 2004, NIOSH Publication 2004-146; available online at www2a.cdc .gov/NIOSH-Chartbook/imagedetail.asp?imgid¼47; retrieved November 24, 2004. 5. Ibid. 6. J. V. Portello and B. C. Long, ‘‘Appraisals and Coping with Interpersonal Stress: A Model for Women Managers,’’ Journal of Counseling Psychology 48(2) (2001). 7. S. O. Utsey, J. G. Ponteretto, A. L. Reynolds, and A. A. Cancelli, ‘‘Racial Discrimination, Coping Life Satisfaction, and Self-Esteem among African Americans,’’ Journal of Counseling and Development 78(1) (2000).

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8. R. S. Lazarus and S. Folkman, Stress, Appraisal and Coping (New York: Springer, 1984). 9. M. J. Davidson, The Black and Ethnic Minority Woman Manager: Cracking the Concrete Ceiling (London: Chapman, 1997). 10. D. L. Nelson and R. J. Burke, ‘‘Women Executives: Health, Stress, and Success,’’ Academy of Management Executive 14 (2000): 107–22. 11. M. F. Karsten, Management, Gender, and Race in the 21st Century (Lanham, MD: University Press of America Inc., 2006). 12. D. L. Nelson and R. J. Burke, ‘‘A Framework for Examining Gender, Work Stress, and Health,’’ in D. L. Nelson and R. J. Burke, eds., Gender, Work, Stress, and Health (Washington, DC: American Psychological Association, 2002), pp. 3–14. 13. S. A. Hewlett, ‘‘Executive Women and the Myth of Having It All,’’ Harvard Business Review 80 (2002): 66–74. 14. S. Gill and M. J. Davidson, ‘‘Problems and Pressures Facing Lone Mothers in Management and Professional Occupations—A Pilot Study,’’ Women in Management Review 16 (2002): 383–400. 15. Ibid. 16. H. Landrine and E. A. Klonoff, ‘‘The Schedule of Racist Events: A Measure of Racial Discrimination and a Study of Its Negative Physical and Mental Health Consequences,’’ Journal of Black Psychology 22 (1996): 144–68. 17. D. L. Plummer and S. Slane, ‘‘Patterns of Coping Racially Stressful Situations,’’ Journal of Black Psychology 22 (1996): 302–15. 18. V. L. Thompson Sanders, ‘‘Perceived Experiences of Racism as Stressful Life Events,’’ Community Mental Health Journal 32 (1996): 223–33. 19. D. R. Williams, D. I. S. Spencer, and J. Jackson, ‘‘Race, Stress, and Physical Health: The Role of Group Identity,’’ in R. J. Contrada and R. D. Ashmore, eds., Self, Social Identity, and Physical Health: Interdisciplinary Explorations (London: Oxford University Press, 1999). 20. C. West, Race Matters (Boston: Beacon Press, 1993). 21. S. O. Utsey et al., ‘‘Racial Discrimination.’’ 22. Ibid. 23. W. H. Kuo, ‘‘Coping with Racial Discrimination: The Case of Asian Americans,’’ Ethnic and Racial Studies 18 (1995): 109–27. 24. Ibid. 25. K. L. Walters and J. M. Simoni, ‘‘Reconceptualizing Native Women’s Health: An ‘Indigenist’ Stress-Coping Model,’’ American Journal of Public Health 92 (2002): 520–24. 26. M. A. Jaimes and T. Halsey, ‘‘Native American Women,’’ in M. A. Jaimes, ed., The State of Native America (Boston: South End Press, 1992), pp. 311–44. 27. Walters and Simoni, ‘‘Reconceptualizing Native Women’s Health.’’ 28. S. D. Toliver, Black Families in Corporate America (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 1998). 29. Ibid. 30. T. D. LaFromboise, A. M. Heyle, and E. J. Ozer, ‘‘Changing and Diverse Roles,’’ Sex Roles 22 (1990): 455–75. 31. L. Sutton, Feed a Cold, Starve a Fever: An Exploration into the Relationship between Culture, Belief, and Health, N.d., online document available at www.members .tripod.com/random_sage/part2b.htm; accessed November 24, 2004.

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58. Boyar et al., ‘‘Work and Family Domain Variables.’’ 59. Ibid., p. 180. 60. R. Buehler, D. Griffin, and M. Ross, ‘‘Exploring the ‘Planning Fallacy’: Why People Underestimate Their Task Completion Times,’’ Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 67 (1994): 366–81. 61. G. A. Adams and S. M. Jex, ‘‘Relationships between Time Management, Control, Work-Family Conflict, and Strain,’’ Journal of Occupational Health Psychology 4 (1999): 72–77. 62. Bellavia and Frone, ‘‘Work-Family Conflict.’’ 63. H. C. Sumer and P. Knight, ‘‘How Do People with Different Attachment Styles Balance Work and Family? A Personality Perspective on Work-Family Linkage,’’ Journal of Applied Psychology 86 (2001): 653–63. 64. J. B. Grzywacz and N. Marks, ‘‘Family Work, Work-Family Spillover and Problem Drinking during Midlife,’’ Journal of Marriage and the Family 62 (2000): 336–48. 65. Ibid. 66. K. H. Bernas and D. A. Major, ‘‘Contributors to Stress Resistance: Testing a Model of Women’s Work-Family Conflict,’’ Psychology of Women Quarterly 24 (2000): 170–78. 67. Ibid.; C. S. Bruck, and T. D. Allen, ‘‘The Relationship between Big Five Personality Traits, Negative Affectivity, Type A Behavior and Work-Family Conflict,’’ Journal of Vocational Behavior 63 (2003): 457–72. 68. Boyar et al., ‘‘Work and Family Domain Variables.’’ 69. Ibid. 70. Bellavia and Frone, ‘‘Work-Family Conflict.’’ 71. M. C. W. Peeters, J. deJonge, Peter P. M. Janssen, and S. van der Linden, ‘‘Work-Home Interference, Job Stressors, and Employee Health,’’ International Journal of Stress Management 11 (2004). 72. S. E. Anderson, B. S. Coffey, and R. T. Byerly, ‘‘Formal Organizational Initiatives and Informal Workplace Practices Links to Work-Family Conflict and JobRelated Outcomes,’’ Journal of Management 28 (2002): 787–810. 73. M. P. O’Driscoll, D. R. Ilgen, and K. Hildreth, ‘‘Time Devoted to Job and OffJob Activities, Interrole Conflict, and Affective Experiences,’’ Journal of Applied Psychology 77 (1992): 272–79. 74. M. Westman, ‘‘Gender Asymmetry in Crossover Research,’’ in D. L. Nelson and R. J. Burke, eds., Gender, Work, Stress, and Health (Washington, DC: American Psychological Association, 2002), pp. 129–50. 75. Ibid. 76. Holmes and Rahe (1967), as reported in Karsten, Management and Gender. 77. E. Craeger, ‘‘Women and Stress,’’ Wisconsin State Journal (October 8, 1991). 78. Karsten, Management and Gender. 79. R. J. Turner and W. R. Avison, ‘‘Status Variations in Stress Exposure: Implications for the Interpretation of Research on Race, Socioeconomic Status, and Gender,’’ Journal of Health and Social Behavior 44 (2003): 488–505. 80. Ibid., p. 498. 81. Ibid.

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82. R. J. Turner and D. A. Lloyd, ‘‘Lifetime Trauma and Mental Health: The Significance of Cumulative Adversity,’’ Journal of Health and Social Behavior 36 (1995): 360–75. 83. Turner and Avison, ‘‘Status Variations in Stress Exposure.’’ 84. Ibid., p. 496. 85. C. Schaefer, J. Coyne, and R. Lazarus, ‘‘The Health-Related Functions of Social Support,’’ Journal of Behavioral Medicine 4 (1981): 381–406. 86. K. N. Mossakowski, ‘‘Coping with Perceived Discrimination: Does Ethnic Identity Protect Mental Health?’’ Journal of Health and Social Behavior 44 (2003): 318–31. 87. I. H. Meyer, ‘‘Prejudice as Stress: Conceptual and Measurement Problems,’’ American Journal of Public Health 93 (2003): 262–64. 88. V. L. S. Thompson, ‘‘Racism: Perceptions of Distress among African Americans,’’ Community Mental Health Journal 38 (2002): 111–19. 89. B. C. Long, ‘‘Coping with Workplace Stress: A Multiple Group Comparison of Female Managers and Clerical Workers,’’ Journal of Counseling Psychology 45 (1998). 90. Portello and Long, ‘‘Appraisals and Coping with Interpersonal Stress.’’ 91. A. Bandura, ‘‘Self-Efficacy Mechanism in Human Agency,’’ American Psychologist 37 (1982): 122–47. 92. Long, ‘‘Coping with Workplace Stress.’’ 93. B. C. Long, S. E. Kahn, and R. W. Schultz, ‘‘Causal Model of Stress and Coping: Women in Management,’’ Journal of Counseling Psychology 45 (1998). 94. Portello and Long, ‘‘Appraisals and Coping with Interpersonal Stress.’’ 95. Ibid. 96. S. M. Jex, P. D. Bliese, S. Buzzell, and J. Primeau, ‘‘The Impact of SelfEfficacy on Stressor-Strain Relations: Coping Style as an Explanatory Mechanism,’’ Journal of Applied Psychology 86 (2001): 401–9; S. M. Jex and S. M. Gudanowski, ‘‘Efficacy Beliefs and Work Stress: An Exploratory Study,’’ Journal of Organizational Behavior 13 (1992): 182–91. 97. J. L. Pierce, D. G. Gardner, R. B. Dunham, and L. L. Cummings, ‘‘Moderation by Organization-Based Self-Esteem of Role Condition-Employee Response Relationship,’’ Academy of Management Journal 36 (1993): 271–88. 98. S. M. Jex, J. Cvetanovski, and S. J. Allen, ‘‘Self-Esteem as a Moderator of the Impact of Unemployment,’’ Journal of Social Behavior and Personality 9 (1994): 69–80. 99. S. L. Fielden and C. L. Cooper, ‘‘Managerial Stress: Are Women More at Risk?’’ in D. L. Nelson and R. J. Burke, eds., Gender, Work, Stress, and Health ( Washington, DC: American Psychological Association, 2002), pp. 19–34. 100. G. E. Simpson and J. M. Yinger, Racial and Cultural Minorities: An Analysis of Prejudice and Discrimination, 5th ed. (New York: Plenum, 1985). 101. Davidson, The Black and Ethnic Minority Woman Manager. 102. A. W. P. Pak, K. L. Dion, and K. K. Dion, ‘‘Social Psychological Correlates of Experienced Discrimination: Test of the Double Jeopardy Hypothesis,’’ International Journal of Intercultural Relations 15 (1991): 243–54. 103. Mossakowski, ‘‘Coping with Perceived Discrimination.’’ 104. Walters and Simoni, ‘‘Reconceptualizing Native Women’s Health.’’ 105. Mossakowski, ‘‘Coping with Perceived Discrimination.’’ 106. Walters and Simoni, ‘‘Reconceptualizing Native Women’s Health.’’

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107. T. A. Beehr and S. Glazer, ‘‘Organizational Role Stress,’’ in J. Barling, E. K. Kelloway, and M. R. Frone, eds., Handbook of Work Stress (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 2005), pp. 7–34. 108. D. J. Cherrington, ‘‘Needs Theory of Motivation,’’ in R. M. Steers and L. W. Porter, eds., Motivation and Work Behavior (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1991). 109. G. M. Kapalka and J. R. Lachenmeyer, ‘‘Sex-Role Flexibility, Locus of Control, and Occupational Status,’’ Sex Roles 19 (1988): 417–27. 110. W. Weiten, Psychology Themes and Variations (Pacific Grove, CA: Brooke/ Cole, 1989). 111. W. A. Hochwater, P. L. Perrewe, and M. C. Dawkins, ‘‘Gender Differences in Perceptions of Stress-Related Variables. Do the People Make the Place or Does the Place Make the People?’’ Journal of Managerial Issues 7 (1995): 62–74. 112. C. A. Beatty, ‘‘The Stress of Managerial and Professional Women: Is the Price Too High?’’ Journal of Organizational Behavior 17 (1996): 233–51. 113. Portello and Long, ‘‘Appraisals and Coping with Interpersonal Stress.’’ 114. M. A. Cavanaugh, W. R. Boswell, M. V. Roehling, and J. W. Boudreau, ‘‘An Empirical Examination of Self-Reported Work Stress among U.S. Managers,’’ Journal of Applied Psychology 85 (2000): 65–74. 115. S. M. Jex, G. M. Adams, M. L. Ehler, ‘‘Assessing the Role of Negative Affectivity in Occupational Stress Research: Does Gender Make a Difference?’’ in D. L. Nelson and R. J. Burke, eds., Gender, Work, Stress, and Health (Washington, DC: American Psychological Association, 2002), pp. 71–84. 116. Nelson and Burke, ‘‘A Framework for Examining Gender.’’ 117. S. Nolen-Hoeksema, ‘‘Sex Differences in Unipolar Depression: Evidence and Theory,’’ Psychological Bulletin 101 (1987): 259–82. 118. Jex et al., ‘‘Assessing the Role of Negative Affectivity.’’ 119. Almeida and Kessler, ‘‘Everyday Stressors and Gender Differences.’’ 120. Nelson and Burke, ‘‘A Framework for Examining Gender.’’ 121. N. Adler and K. Matthews, ‘‘Health Psychology: Why Do Some People Get Sick and Some Stay Well?’’ Annual Review of Psychology 45 (1994): 229–59. 122. D. Rees and C. L. Cooper, ‘‘Occupational Stress in Health Service Workers in the U.K.,’’ Stress Medicine 8 (1990): 79–80. 123. Fielden and Cooper, ‘‘Managerial Stress: Are Women More at Risk?’’ 124. Ibid. 125. R. J. Burke, ‘‘Workaholism among Women Managers: Work and Life Satisfactions and Psychological Well-Being,’’ Equal Opportunities International 18 (1999): 25–35. 126. Ibid. 127. Ibid. 128. Barnett and Baruch, ‘‘Social Roles, Gender, and Psychological Distress.’’ 129. Portello and Long, ‘‘Appraisals and Coping with Interpersonal Stress.’’ 130. Smith, ‘‘Perceptions of Stress at Work.’’ 131. Portello and Long, ‘‘Appraisals and Coping with Interpersonal Stress.’’ 132. Nelson and Burke, ‘‘Women Executives.’’ 133. Smith, ‘‘Perceptions of Stress at Work.’’ 134. Kelloway et al., ‘‘Poor Leadership.’’

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135. C. L. Stamper and M. C. Johlke, ‘‘The Impact of Perceived Organizational Support on the Relationship between Boundary Spanner Role Stress and Work Outcomes,’’ Journal of Management 29 (2003): 569–88. 136. E. Bell and S. Nkomo, Our Separate Ways: Black and White Women and the Struggle for Professional Identity (Cambridge, MA: Harvard Business School Press, 2000), p. 183. 137. Ibid. 138. R. Cropanzano, B. M. Goldman, and L. Benson III, ‘‘Organizational Justice,’’ in J. Barling, E. K. Kelloway, and M. R. Frone, eds., Handbook of Work Stress (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 2005), pp. 63–88. 139. Ibid. 140. Cavanaugh et al., ‘‘An Empirical Examination of Self-Reported Work Stress.’’ 141. Ibid. 142. W. R. Boswell, J. B. Olson-Buchanan, and M. A. LePine, ‘‘Relations between Stress and Work Outcomes: The Role of Felt Challenge, Job Control, and Psychological Strain,’’ Journal of Vocational Behavior 64 (2004): 165–91. 143. Ibid. 144. R. D. Bretz, J. W. Boudreau, and T. A. Judge, ‘‘Job Search Behavior of Employed Managers,’’ Personnel Psychology 47 (1994): 275–301; C. S. Leong, A. Y. Furnham, and C. L. Cooper, ‘‘The Moderating Effect of Organizational Commitment on the Occupational Stress Outcome Relationship,’’ Human Relations 49 (1996): 1345–63. 145. Cavanaugh et al., ‘‘An Empirical Examination of Self-Reported Work Stress.’’ 146. Nelson and Burke, ‘‘Women Executives.’’ 147. M. Gardiner and M. Tiggermann, ‘‘Gender Differences in Leadership Style, Job Stress and Mental Health in Male- and Female-Dominated Industries,’’ Journal of Occupational and Organizational Psychology 72 (1999): 301–16. 148. Almeida and Kessler, ‘‘Everyday Stressors and Gender Differences.’’ 149. Stockdale et al., Women and Men in Organizations. 150. Ibid. 151. A. R. Hochschild and A. Machung, The Second Shift (New York: Viking, 1989). 152. Nelson and Burke, ‘‘Women Executives.’’ 153. D. Fontana, Managing Stress (Problems in Practice) (Oxford: British Psychology Society and Routledge, 1989). 154. Stockdale et al., Women and Men in Organizations. 155. Beehr and Glazer, ‘‘Organizational Role Stress.’’ 156. Stockdale et al., Women and Men in Organizations. 157. DeFrank and Ivancevich, ‘‘Stress on the Job.’’ 158. Ibid. 159. Portello and Long, ‘‘Appraisals and Coping with Interpersonal Stress.’’ 160. Lazarus and Folkman, Stress, Appraisal, and Coping. 161. See Karsten, Management, Gender, and Race in the 21st Century. 162. Fielden and Cooper, ‘‘Managerial Stress: Are Women More at Risk?’’ 163. A. Billings and R. Moos, ‘‘The Role of Coping Responses and Social Resources in Attenuating the Stress of Life Events,’’ Journal of Behavioral Medicine 4 (1981): 157–89. 164. Stockdale et al., Women and Men in Organizations.

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165. A. J. M. Vingerhoets and G. L. Van Heck, ‘‘Gender, Coping and Psychosomatic Symptoms,’’ Psychological Medicine 20 (1990): 120–35. 166. Kuo, ‘‘Coping with Racial Discrimination.’’ 167. Ibid. 168. Ibid. 169. Ibid., p. 124. 170. Ibid. 171. Mossakowski, ‘‘Coping with Perceived Discrimination.’’ 172. Stockdale et al., Women and Men in Organizations. 173. E. Greenglass, ‘‘Work Stress, Coping, and Social Support,’’ in D. Nelson, L. Nelson, and R. J. Burke, eds., Gender, Work, Stress, and Health (Washington, DC: American Psychological Association, 2002), pp. 85–114. 174. Nelson and Burke, ‘‘Women Executives.’’ 175. Ibid. 176. Greenglass, ‘‘Work Stress, Coping, and Social Support.’’ 177. Gill and Davidson, ‘‘Problems and Pressures.’’ 178. S. L. Fielden and C. L. Cooper, ‘‘Women Managers and Stress: A Critical Analysis,’’ Equal Opportunities International 20 (2001): 3–16. 179. LaFromboise et al., ‘‘Changing and Diverse Roles.’’ 180. Fielden and Cooper, ‘‘Managerial Stress: Are Women More at Risk?’’ 181. Greenglass, ‘‘Work Stress, Coping, and Social Support.’’ 182. J. M. Jones, Prejudice and Racism, 2nd ed. (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1997). 183. Utsey et al., ‘‘Racial Discrimination.’’ 184. N. Krieger and S. Sidney, ‘‘Racial Discrimination and Blood Pressures: The CARDIA Study of Young Black and White Adults,’’ American Journal of Public Health 86 (1996): 1370–78. 185. J. R. Feagin, ‘‘The Continuing Significance of Race: Anti-Black Discrimination in Public Places,’’ American Sociological Review 56 (1991): 101–16. 186. R. N. Lalonde, S. Majumder, and R. D. Parris, ‘‘Preferred Responses to Situations of Housing and Employment Discrimination,’’ Journal of Applied Social Psychology 25 (1995): 1105–19. 187. Utsey et al., ‘‘Racial Discrimination.’’ 188. J. J. Hurrell Jr., ‘‘Organizational Stress Interventions,’’ in J. Barling, E. K. Kelloway, and M. R. Frone, eds., Handbook of Work Stress (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 2005), pp. 7–34. 189. A. R. Arthur, ‘‘Mental Health Problems and British Workers: A Survey of Mental Health Problems in Employees who Receive Counseling from Employee Assistance Programs,’’ Stress and Health 18 (2002). 190. P. Dewe and M. P. O’Driscoll, ‘‘Stress Management Interventions: What Do Managers Actually Do?’’ Personnel Review 31 (2002): 143–62. 191. C. Bellarosa and P. Y. Chen, ‘‘The Effectiveness and Practicality of Occupational Stress Management Interventions: A Survey of Subject Matter Expert Opinions,’’ Journal of Occupational Health Psychology 2 (1997). 192. Dewe and O’Driscoll, ‘‘Stress Management Interventions.’’ 193. Nelson and Burke, ‘‘Women Executives.’’ 194. Long, ‘‘Coping with Workplace Stress.’’

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195. J. J. L. Van der Klink, R. W. B. Blonk, A. H. Schene, and F. J. H. Van Dijk, ‘‘The Benefits of Interventions for Work-Related Stress,’’ American Journal of Public Health 91 (2001): 270–76. 196. Nelson and Burke, ‘‘Women Executives.’’ 197. Bellarosa and Chen, ‘‘The Effectiveness and Practicality’’; S. Cartwright, and C. Cooper, ‘‘Individually Targeted Interventions,’’ in J. Barling, E. K. Kelloway, and M. R. Frone, eds., Handbook of Work Stress (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 2005), pp. 607–22. 198. Van der Klink et al,, ‘‘The Benefits of Interventions.’’ 199. Bellarosa and Chen, ‘‘The Effectiveness and Practicality.’’ 200. Ibid. 201. L. Atchiler and R. Motta, ‘‘Effects of Aerobic and Non Aerobic Exercise on Anxiety, Absenteeism, and Job Satisfaction,’’ Journal of Clinical Psychology 50 (1994): 829–40. 202. S. Cartwright and L. Whatmore, ‘‘Stress and Individual Differences: Implications for Stress Management,’’ in A. Antoniou and C. L. Cooper, eds., New Perspectives in the Area of Occupational Health (London: Wiley, 2003). 203. Cartwright and Cooper, ‘‘Individually Targeted Interventions.’’ 204. Van der Klink et al., ‘‘The Benefits of Interventions.’’ 205. Bellarosa and Chen, ‘‘The Effectiveness and Practicality.’’ 206. Van der Klink et al., ‘‘The Benefits of Interventions.’’ 207. Ibid. 208. R. F. Bento, ‘‘On the Other Hand . . . The Paradoxical Nature of Employee Assistance Programs,’’ Employee Assistance Quarterly 13 (1997): 83–91. 209. M. E. P. Seligman, ‘‘The Effectiveness of Psychotherapy: The Consumer Reports Study,’’ American Psychologist 50 (1995): 965–74. 210. F. Landy, J. Quick, and S. Kasl, ‘‘Work, Stress, and Well-Being,’’ International Journal of Stress Management 1 (1994): 33–73. 211. B. Intindola, ‘‘EAPs Still Foreign to Many Small Businesses,’’ National Underwriter 95 (1991). 212. Nelson and Burke, ‘‘Women Executives.’’ 213. Ibid.

Index

Page numbers followed by f or t indicate figures or tables. AACSB (Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business), 188 AAUP (American Association of University Professors), 217, 218–19 absenteeism, 237–38 abuse, physical, 52. See also violence academia, 11–12, 193, 215–20, 215n22, 222–28 accountability, diversity management and, 74, 89, 91–92 acculturation, 242–43 achievement, 9 Achieving Success through Social Capital (Baker), 138, 150 advancement: in academia, 215, 215n22, 217; barriers to, 149, 160, 240; as career development phase, 113–14; and gender differences, 179; and social networks, 151 African Americans: American history of, 16, 241–42; and communication, 3, 18–19, 19–20; community support, 255; demographic trends, 2; diversity conferences for, 93; double jeopardy, 185–88, 190–96, 243; equality index measurements including, 187; and gender roles, 204, 240; job loss rates, 241; pay comparisons, xi, 186; stress, 237, 240–41, 241–42, 243, 255, 260; values of, 16–18; workplace disparities, 150 agentic traits, 251 agonistic verbal communication, 11–12

ambiguity, 244 American Association of University Professors (AAUP), 217, 218–19 American Indians. See Native Americans American Psychological Association, 57 Antilla, Susan, 60 appearance monitoring, 54–55 The Apprentice (television show), 181 Asian Americans: American history of, 26, 241; and communication, 11, 12, 28–29, 29–30; demographic trends, 2; diversity of, 28; and stress, 238, 241, 243, 259, 260; values of, 26–28; workplace disparities, 150 assertiveness training, 262 assimilation, 242 Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business (AACSB), 188 autonomy. See individualism Bailyn, Lottie, 213, 218 Baker, Wayne, 138 Banks’s Self-Assessment and Sufficiency Model, 107–8, 108f, 109 behavioral confirmation, 53–54 biculturalism, 242 Black English, 20 black people. See African Americans Blake, Robert, 223 Borgida, Eugene, 49–50

274 boundaryless (protean) careers: and developmental relationship building, 140–41, 156, 158; evolution of, 132; traditional vs., 99; work practice trends in, 135 Bowden’s Career States System, 105 Brown, Duane, 99 Business and Higher Education Forum, 71–72n7 business schools, 188 Calogero, Rachel, 55 Calvert Group, 63 Calvert Women’s Principles, 63 career paths, defined, 106–7 career planning and development. See also advancement: definitions of, 99; family roles influencing, 191, 203–5, 217; gender differences in, 203; as individual endeavor, 99; models for, 100–106, 107–10; phases of, 110–14; stages of, 100, 102–4; and work-life balance, 205–7 career stressors, 245 Chenault, Kenneth I., 18 Chinese Americans, 26, 29, 259. See also Asian Americans Chinese Canadians, 251 Civil Rights Act of 1964, 43 coaching, 79 Cohen, Don, 160 collectivism, 21, 27 colonized minorities, 185–86 co-mentors, 137–38 communication, face-to-face (personal dialogue): African Americans and, 3, 18–19, 19–20; Asian Americans and, 11, 12, 28–29, 29–30; conventional vs. reflexive models of, 30–32; diversity and, 3–6, 80; effectiveness of, 3; Hispanics and, 10, 11, 12, 19, 24–25, 25–26; history of, 11–12; metaphors for, 27; silence and, 12, 26, 29; statistics of, 3; white males and, 7–12, 18–19, 24–25; women and, 4, 10–11, 14–16 community, 17, 255 conflicts, work-related, 220–21, 240, 244, 245–47 confrontation, 30 Confucianism, 26–27 Contingent Appointments and the Academic Profession (AAUP Policy Statement), 219 Cosby, Bill, 170 Cose, Ellis, 6

Index Cox, Taylor, Jr., 3 cultural paradigms, 1–2, 4, 5, 7t, 152–53 Deaux, Kay, 51 decision latitude, 243 Dell, 63 demographics: Asian Americans and, 26; Hispanics and, 21; trends in, 2, 134; white male history of, 7n24, 8 depression, 252, 253 dialogue. See communication, face-to-face dignity, 22 Disclosure (film), 57 discrimination. See also lawsuits; sexual harassment: in academia, 193; advancement barriers, 149, 160, 240; of colonized minorities, 185–86; EEOC case statistics of, 72; equity indexes, 187–88; historical traumas of, 16, 26, 241–42; race (See racism); response strategies for, 191–92; self-esteem and, 251–52; sex, 69 (See also gender equity); as stressor, 238–45, 260 diversity management. See also communication, face-to-face: best practices in, 73–80; corporate model for (See Shell U.S./Strategic Team on Diversity); and financial outcomes, 71–73; future trends in, 190; lawsuits prompting, 69–70; macro vs. micro levels of, 1; and mentoring programs, 133–35 diversity stress, 245 diversity training, 76–77 Donnerstein, Edward, 51 double binds: communication, 6; discrimination, 185–88, 190–96, 243; women managers in, 61–62 double jeopardy, 185–88, 190–96, 243 double-loop learning, 227 Dow Chemical Company, 44–45 drug laws, 241 EAPs (employee assistance programs), 263 EAT (Employment Appeal Tribunal), 58 Eckel, Peter, 223 economic equity, 187 education: academia workplaces, 193, 215–20, 215n22, 222–28; as value, 13, 17 EEOC (Equal Employement Opportunity Commission), 56, 57, 72, 186 Ellison v. Brady, 57 e-mentoring, 138–39, 142–43 emotions, expression of, 9–10, 29–30

Index employee affinity groups, 117. See also networking employee assistance programs (EAPs), 263 Employment Appeal Tribunal (EAT), 58 Enron, 47–48 entry phase, 110–11 environmental stressors, 239f, 245 Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), 56, 57, 72, 186 Equality Index of National Urban League, 187 equity vs. equality, 218 ethics, business, 188 ethnic identity, 252, 259 ethnocentrism, 190 Executive Leadership Council, 149 experiences, personal life, 200–208 Exxon Mobile Oil, 58 eye contact, 10, 14, 18–19, 24 facial expressions, 14–15 Families and Work Institute (FWI), 221 familism, 21 family roles: influencing career planning and development, 191, 203–5, 217; as leadership development, 202; single parents, 134, 191, 240, 259; stereotypes of, 240, 244; as value, 13, 21; work conflicting with, 220–21, 240, 245–47 family-work conflict (FWC), 245–47 financial outcomes (profits), 71–73 foreign-born residents, 2, 20n77 Fortune 500 companies, 62, 63 Fortune (magazine), 149 framing, diversity management and, 74 Fredrickson, Barbara, 54–55 free agency employment. See boundaryless (protean) careers FWC (family-work conflict), 245–47 FWI (Families and Work Institute), 221 gender differences: career development, impact on, 240; communication styles, 4, 14–16; leadership development, impact on, 202–5; networking behaviors, 120–21, 157–58, 175; peer support, 182; promotions, 179; self-care, 178; sexual harassment definitions, 57; stress, 247, 249, 253, 256, 259–60; work-family conflicts, 247 gender equity: in academia, 217–19, 222–26; and income, xi, 181, 186, 217; in loosely coupled systems, 216–17; and organizational functioning, 213; at workplace, 150 gender neutrality, 56–57, 218

275 gender roles, 203, 204, 240 gentlemen’s clubs (strip clubs), 46, 47–48, 60 Georgia-Pacific, 160 GI Bill, 8 Gibson, Donald E., 121 glass ceilings, 61, 77–78 glass escalators, 77 Global Workforce 2000 ( Johnston), 134 goal setting, 73–74, 108, 112–13, 191 golf, as business strategy, 168 Gutierrez, Carlos M., 21 Hall, Edward T., 8 Hall, Mildred Reed, 8 harassment, 244. See also sexual harassment hardiness, 252 Harris v. Forklift Systems, 57 Hartman, Ed, 136 Hawaiians, 28 Hayes Career Transition Model, 104–5 hierarchy: cultural, 23, 27, 29, 30; organizational, and social networks, 154–55 high-context cultures, 11, 25, 28 higher education, 193, 215–20, 215n22, 222–28 Hispanics: and communication, 10, 11, 12, 19, 24–25, 25–26; demographics, 2, 21; diversity within, 21, 25, 26; foreign-born statistics, 20n77; and stress, 237, 242, 259; term definition, 20–21; values of, 21–23 historical traumas, 16, 26, 241–42 Holland’s Theory of Vocational Choice, 101 Holmes and Rahe Social Readjustment Rating Scale (SRRS), 247–50 Home Depot, 78 Hooters restaurants, 46–47 Hopkins, Ann, 61 hostile work environments, 48–49, 51, 56 Hudson Institute, 189 human capital, 150–51 humanism, 16–17 ‘‘Hunting for Bambi’’ (video), 45–46, 51, 52 hyperindividualism, 6, 7t, 9 Iacocca, Lee, 8 IBM, 79, 80 Igou, Frank P., 105–6 immigration, 2, 20n77, 26, 134, 185 income disparity. See pay equity individualism: career planning and, 99, 132–33, 190; collectivism vs., 27; cultural generalizations vs., 5; hyperindividualism, 6, 7t, 9; within loosely coupled systems, 216;

276 individualism career planning and, (continued) and mentoring, 132–33; and personal life experience contributions, 207–8 individual racism, 241 industry, work, 9 In Good Company: How Social Capital Makes Organizations Work (Prusak and Cohen), 160 Institute for Women’s Policy Research, 186 institutional racism, 241 instrumentality, 251 integration, 242 Internet, 44–46, 58–59 internment, 241 interrole conflicts, 244, 245–47 intrarole conflicts, 244 Isaacson, Lee, 99 isolation, 192, 242 Japanese Americans, 26, 29, 241. See also Asian Americans job assessments, 108–9, 243–44 Johnston, William, 134 Jones, Edward W., Jr., 3 Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 49 justice, organizational, 255 Karsten, Margaret Foegen, 105–6 Kaye, Beverly, 99, 102–4, 111 Kaye’s Six Stages of Career Development, 102–4 Kennedy, John F., 8 ‘‘Kinder, Ku¨che, Kirche’’ (German proverb), 13 kinesics, 10–11 King, Martin Luther, Jr., 6 kinship, 17 Kochan, Thomas, 220–22 Kram, Kathy, 117, 136, 140 Krumsiek, Barbara, 63 Lagomasino, Maria Elena, 21 Latinos/Latinas. See Hispanics law enforcement discrimination, 241 lawsuits: costs of, 72, 73; and diversity management, 69–70; glass ceiling issues and, 77–78; judgment amounts, 72; racial discrimination, 69, 70; sexual harassment, 43, 47–48, 49, 57, 58, 60 Layden, Mary Anne, 59 leadership: and diversity management, 73–75; personal experiences influencing, 199–205; women and, 61–62, 88, 186; and work-life balance, 205–7

Index ‘‘Letter from Birmingham Jail’’ (King), 6 Lewin, Kurt, 62 life expectancies, 187 life experiences, personal, 200–208 Linz, Daniel, 51 locus of control, 252 loosely coupled systems, 214–17, 224–26, 227 low-context cultures, 11, 24 machismo, 22 Magna International, 48, 60 management. See also diversity management; leadership: of loosely coupled systems, 224–26, 227; objectification, 56–63; stress, programs, 261–63 Mapping Project, 217 marginalization, 121, 242 marianismo, 22–23 Massachusetts Commission Against Discrimination, 56 maternal wall, xi, 240 medieval universities, 11–12 men. See also gender differences: family roles, 203, 240; networking, 175; pay equity, 181, 217; promotions, 179; self-care, 178; sexual objectification of women, 48–52; stress, 250, 253; white males, 7–12, 7n24, 18–19, 24–25, 77 mentoring. See also role models: alternative forms of, 135–43; barriers to, 155; benefits of, 119, 131, 140–43, 155–56; definitions, 131, 155; as diversity management strategy, 79, 133–35; phases of, 118; programs for, 131, 156; trends necessitating, 132–35; women and, 170–72 Mentoring at Work (Kram), 140 Meritor Savings Bank v. Vinson, 43 MetLife, 69 Metropolitan Atlanta Transit Authority, 69 Mexican Americans, 19, 26. See also Hispanics microcosms, organizational, 227 minorities (people of color). See also specific minority groups: and career planning, 110–14; colonized/involuntary, 185–86; and role models, 123–27; social network barriers and, 152–55; stressors experienced by, 238, 240; as tokens, 124–25 Mitsubishi, 60 Morgan Stanley, 47 motherhood status, xi, 203, 240 motivation, 108

Index Mouton, Jane, 223 multitasking skills, 201–2 National Career Development Guidelines (NCDG) model, 102 National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH), 237 National Urban League (NUL), 187 Native Americans: and acculturation, 242–43; ethnic identity of, 252; and stress, 238, 241, 242, 260 NCDG (National Career Development Guidelines) model, 102 negative affectivity, 252–53 networking: benefits of, 156–57; as diversity management strategy, 79; gender differences in, 120–21, 157–58, 175; multiple mentors as, 132, 156–57; organization-sponsored programs for, 89, 90, 93, 117, 158–59; personal life experiences and, 201; and social capital, 150; social networks, 120–21, 151–55, 159–60; women and, 120, 153, 154, 172–76, 180 New York Times, 44 New Zealand, 45 NIOSH (National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health), 237 nontenure track faculty, 215n22 nonverbal communication, 5, 10–11, 14–15, 18–19, 24–25, 28–29. See also communication, face-to-face NUL (National Urban League), 187 objectification. See also sexual harassment: definition, 44; and double bind, 61–62; hostile work environments created by, 48–49; Internet pornography, 44–46; management of, 56–63; men, impact on, 48–52; nonviolent, 49–51; system solutions to, 62–63; violent, 51–52; women, impact on, 52–56 O’Neal, Stan, 18 organizational justice, 255 organizations. See also academia: dominant norms and values within, 3, 8–10; and gender equity, 213–14, 223–24; hierarchy of, 154–55; as loosely coupled systems, 214–16; and stress, 248–49t, 258, 261–63; structural characteristics of, 213–14; work-life balance in, 205–7 Padilla, James, 21 paradigms, cultural, 1–2, 4, 5, 7t, 152–53

277 Parsons, Kenneth, 18 pay equity: in academia, 217; and gender, xi, 181, 186, 217; and maternal wall, xi, 240; and race, 17, 186 peer mentoring and networks, 117, 136, 170–72 Penrod, Steven, 51 people of color. See minorities; specific minority groups perfectionism, 167, 179–80, 253 performance, work, 70–73, 248t persistence, 216, 227–28 personalismo, 22 personality types, 101 Pfeffer, Jeffrey, 108, 111 P&G (Proctor & Gamble), 80 Pines, Ayala, 52 Playboy (magazine), 63 pornography, 44–46, 52, 58, 59–60 Porter-Lawler Expectancy Model, 109 Porter-Steers Met Expectations Hypothesis, 109–10 Powell, Colin, 18 Price Waterhouse, 61 Proctor & Gamble (P&G), 80 productivity, workplace, 59, 70–73, 248t profits, company, 71–73 promotions. See advancement protean careers. See boundaryless (protean) careers prote´ge´s, 134–40, 155. See also mentoring ‘‘Protestant Ethic’’ (Weber), 9 proverbs, 13, 17 proxemics, 10, 19, 24, 28 Prusak, Lawrence, 160 questioning styles, 29 racism: categories of, 241; and lawsuits, 69, 70; and pay equity, 17, 186; and sexism (double jeopardy), 185–88, 190–96, 243; as stressor, 240–42 radicalism, tempered, 191–92 Radiger, Bill, 135 readiness, diversity management and, 74–75 recruitment, diversity management and, 75–76 reflection, 190 reflexive communication, 30–32 relationship constellations, 118, 135, 156 relationships, developmental, 123–27, 150–51. See also mentoring; networking religion, 9, 17–18 Rent-A-Center, 60

278 respect, 22 Rice, Condoleezza, 18 Richardson, Bill, 21 Rick’s Cabaret, 47 Robbins, Stephen P., 99 Roberts, Tomi-Ann, 54–55 role models, 118–19, 122, 123–27 Rudman, Laurie, 49–50 Sales and Marketing Management (magazine), 48 Sarbanes-Oxley Act, 188 Satchell, et al. v. Federal Express, 77 SBPW (Skyway Business and Professional Women), 46 scandals, corporate, 188 schools, business, 188 screensavers, 44 Self-Assessment and Sufficiency Model, Banks’s, 107–8, 108f, 109 self-control, 9–10 self-efficacy, 251 self-esteem, 251–52 self-objectification, 54–56 sense-making management, 224–26 sensitivity, 23 separation, 242 sex discrimination, 69. See also gender equity sex industry, commercial, 43, 46, 47–48, 60 SexTracker, 44 sexual harassment: female-to-male, 57; lawsuits involving, 43, 47–48, 49, 57, 58, 60; policies on, 56–57, 58; and retaliation, 61; types of, 43 Shell U.S./Strategic Team on Diversity: accountability, 89, 91–92; activities promoting diversity, 93; benefits packages, 88; career development programs, 92–93; influences on, 85–86; key learnings, 97; law firm partnerships, 94–95; leadership organization, 87–88; networking programs, 89, 90, 93; program implementation challenges, 90; rationale, 86–87; recognition and results, 95–97; recommendations for continued progress, 91; suppliers and, 96; women managers of, 88 Shotter, John, 2, 3 Silbert, Mimi, 52 silence, 12, 26, 29. See also communication, face-to-face similarity-attraction paradigms, 152–53 single parents, 134, 191, 240, 259 skill discretion, 243–44

Index Skyway Business and Professional Women (SBPW), 46 slating, 79n29 smiling, 15 social capital, 150–51 social justice, 187 social networks, 120–21, 151–55, 159–60. See also networking Social Readjustment Rating Scale (SRRS), 247–50 Socrates, 11 soul wounds, 241–42 space, use of physical, 10 SRRS (Social Readjustment Rating Scale), 247–50 stances, communication, 31–32 Starbucks, 63 stereotypes: family roles and, 240, 244; gender, 203; sex object, 49–51, 52–54 sterilization, 241 Strategic Team on Diversity. See Shell U.S./ Strategic Team on Diversity stress: absences related to, 237–38; consequences of, 237, 238, 239f, 255–58; contagion/crossover, 247; coping mechanisms for, 258–63; factors influencing (See stressors); income levels and, 254; management levels and, 254; management programs for, 261–63; models of, 238, 239f; and multiple roles, 190–91, 254; rating scales for, 247–50, 248–49t; types of, 255–56 stressors: discrimination, 238–45, 260; factors moderating, 250–55; non-work, 247–50; within stress model, 239f; work-life conflicts, 240, 245–47; work-related, 243–45 strip clubs, 46, 47–48, 60 Stroh’s Brewery, 49 success, 9 Super’s Life-Career Rainbow, 100–101 support, social, 180–82, 254–55, 259–60 sustainability phase, 111–13 SWOT analyses, 190 Tales from the Boom Boom Room (Antilla), 60 Tannen, Deborah, 3–4 task authority, 244 television commercial studies, 49–51 teleworking, 135, 154 tempered radicalism, 191–92 tenure, 215, 215n22 time famine, 221 tokenism, 124–25, 153, 192, 193

Index touch, 11, 19, 24–25, 28–29 transactive memory, 125 trends, workplace, 2, 132–35, 189, 220–22 turnover, employee, 72 Type A behaviors, 253 unemployment, 187 verbal communication, 5, 11–12, 19–20, 25–26, 29–30. See also communication, face-to-face Vescio, Theresa, 54 violence, 51–52, 242, 250 virtual mentoring, 138–39, 142–43 vocal qualities, 15 Vroom, Victor, 108–9 Wal-Mart, 47, 69 WASCs (white Anglo-Saxon Catholics), 8 WASPs (white Anglo-Saxon Protestants), 7–8 Weber, Max, 9 Weick, Karl E., 213, 214–15 West, Cornel, 241 WFC (work-family conflict), 240, 245–47 white people: equality index measurements and, 187; and law enforcement, 241; men, 7–12, 7n24, 18–19, 24–25, 77; stress-related work absences and, 237; WASPs and WASCs, 7–8; women, xi, 7t, 186 womanliness, 22–23 women. See also gender differences: abused, and pornography, 52; in academia, 217–18; as business considerations, 176–79; as business owners, 62; and business rules, 168–70; and career planning and

279 development, 110–14, 203–4; of color (See specific minority groups); and communication, 4, 10–11, 14–16; and family roles, 13, 191, 203–5, 217, 240; in management, 61–62, 88, 149, 186, 243, 251, 254; and mentoring, 170–72; and networking, 120, 153, 154, 172–76, 180; objectification of, 44–46, 52–56; pay equity, 181, 217, xi; and perfectionism, 167, 179–80, 253; and role models, 123–27; and stress, 239, 240, 250–54; support between, 180–82; values of, 13–14; wage penalties, xi; white, xi, 7t, 186; workforce statistics, 43–44; workplace disparities, 150, 221 Women of Color (conference), 93–94 workaholics, 253–54 work-family conflict (WFC), 240, 245–47 Workforce 2000 (report), 189 Workforce 2020 (report), 189 work industry, 9 work-life balance, 205–7, 220–22, 245–50 workplace. See also organizations: academic, 193, 215–20, 215n22, 222–28; disparities within, 150, 221 (See also pay equity); effective change criteria, 221–22; genderneutral myths of, 218; as hostile work environments, 48–49, 51, 56; productivity in, 59, 70–73; trends in, 2, 132–35, 189, 220–22 WorldCom, 188 Xerox, 44, 79, 80 You Just Don’t Understand: Men and Women in Conversation (Tannen), 4

About the Editor and Contributors

Margaret Foegen Karsten is Professor in the Department of Business and Accounting and Coordinator of the Print Business Administration Distance Program at the University of Wisconsin-Platteville, where she teaches management and human resource management courses. She developed a Management, Gender, and Race course and has taught it for many years. Her books include Management, Gender, and Race in the 21st Century (2005) and Management and Gender: Issues and Attitudes (1994), in addition to over twenty other professional publications. She has presented at many national and regional conferences, has received several grants, and has held various administrative positions. Her current research interests include career paths of executive women and the impact of intellectual distance between students and professors on learning. Claretha H. Banks is Assistant Professor at the University of Arkansas–Fayetteville. Her research interests focus on vocational and adult education/human resource development (HRD), and she teaches courses in those areas. She holds graduate faculty status II and advises graduate students with an interest in vocational and adult education. Claretha has extensive professional experience in business and industry and continues to serve as a consultant to international, national, and state organizations in vocational and adult education and HRD. Jimmy L. Davis is a doctoral student in the Industrial/Organizational Psychology Program at the University of Georgia (UGA). His research focuses on the psychology of workplace diversity with emphasis on the career and organizational experiences of women and people of color. He is the 2004 recipient of UGA’s Fanning Leadership award for leadership among graduate students. Davis has worked on consulting projects for large and small organizations and agencies such as BellSouth, the UGA Accounts Payable Department, United Parcel

282

About the Editor and Contributors

Service, the American Cancer Society, the Human Resource Research Organization, and Home Depot. Suzanne C. de Janasz is Associate Professor of Leadership and Management at the College of Graduate and Professional Studies at the University of Mary Washington. Before earning her doctorate, she was an organization development consultant in the aerospace industry. Her research interests include work-family conflict, careers, mentoring, leadership, and innovative pedagogy, and she has published several articles in journals such as the Academy of Management Executive, Journal of Organizational Behavior, Career Development International, and Journal of Management Education. De Janasz has made many presentations and has been an invited contributor for a variety of organizations and media outlets. She serves in various leadership roles in the Academy of Management, Organizational Behavior Teaching Society, and the Southern Management Association. Gail Evans, author of Play Like a Man, Win Like a Woman and She Wins, You Win, is Visiting Professor at the Dupree School of Management at Georgia Tech. Her previous positions include executive vice president of CNN, where she was employed since its inception, and founding partner of Global Research Services, an Atlanta-based marketing and research firm. Evans’s career began in government, and she helped create the President’s Committee on Equal Employment Opportunity while working in the Office of the Special Counsel to the President during the Lyndon B. Johnson administration. Evans was elected to the Committee of 200, International Women’s Forum, and the Council on Foreign Relations. She is a member of the board of directors for organizations that include the Society for Women’s Health Research, the Radio Television News Directors Foundation, the Breman Jewish Heritage Museum, and the Atlanta Girls School. Monica L. Forret is Associate Professor in the Department of Managerial Studies at St. Ambrose University. She has published articles in Organizational Dynamics, Journal of Organizational Behavior, Group and Organization Management, Journal of Vocational Behavior, Journal of Business and Psychology, and Leadership and Organization Development Journal primarily in the areas of networking, mentoring, and recruitment processes. Michele V. Gee has a dual appointment as Assistant to the Provost and Associate Professor of Management in the School of Business and Technology at the University of Wisconsin–Parkside. Her interests include workplace diversity, cross-cultural management, international business, economic development, strategic management, and workforce skills development, and she is currently developing a mentoring program on campus. Gee also provides expertise to the chancellor and campus community in its ongoing strategic planning activities.

About the Editor and Contributors

283

She was co-director of the Center for International Studies, co-director of three externally funded regional economic development programs, and has been appointed to many UW System committees/task forces. She is a two-time recipient of the University of Wisconsin System Women of Color Awards and has received several other honors and awards. Laura M. Graves is Associate Professor of Management at the Graduate School of Management at Clark University. She is a recognized scholar on diversity issues in the workplace. Her work focuses on topics such as balancing work and family, preventing sex bias in employee selection, and managing diverse teams. She recently coauthored Women and Men in Management (3rd ed., 2003), which considers how gender influences individuals’ experiences in organizations. Her research has appeared in leading academic journals, including Academy of Management Review, Journal of Applied Psychology, Journal of Organizational Behavior, Human Relations, and Personnel Psychology. Catherine Kano Kikoski is Professor and Chair of the Graduate Department of Marriage and Family Therapy at St. Joseph College, West Hartford, Connecticut. She is a licensed psychologist and a licensed marriage and family therapist. She and John F. Kikoski have taught, researched, presented, consulted, and published in the field of face-to-face communication with foci on diversity and knowledge creation for over twenty-five years. John F. Kikoski is Professor of Political Science and Public Administration at Sacred Heart University in Fairfield, Connecticut. He is past president of the section on professional organization and development of the American Society for Public Administration. Catherine A. Lamboley is Senior Vice President and General Counsel of Houston-based Shell Oil Company, an affiliate of Royal Dutch Shell, the third largest oil and gas group in the world with 112,000 employees and operations in 140 countries. Lamboley joined Shell in 1979 and has spent most of her career in the legal organization. She serves on the Shell Oil Leadership Team. Active in the legal and business communities, she serves on various local and national committees and boards, including the Catalyst Board of Advisors and United Way of the Texas Gulf Coast. She also chairs the Minority Corporate Counsel Association and Houston Area Women’s Center Boards Audrey J. Murrell is Associate Professor of Business Administration at the Katz School of Business at the University of Pittsburgh, where she is also Director of the Program on Women and the Workforce at the University Center for Social and Urban Research. She holds secondary appointments in the Psychology Department and the Graduate School of Public and International Affairs. Murrell has conducted research on positive versus negative effects of career

284

About the Editor and Contributors

mobility and transition with emphasis on factors affecting careers of women in management, including mentoring, affirmative action, and workplace discrimination. This work has been published widely in management and psychology journals and book chapters. It has been highlighted by the popular media such as the Wall Street Journal, Black Enterprise, and Vida Executive (in Brazil). Murrell’s many recognitions include the Girl Scouts of Southern Pennsylvania’s 2002 Women of Distinction award and the Women’s Leadership Assembly’s Susan B. Anthony Women of Vision award (2001). She is coauthor of Mentoring Dilemmas: Developmental Relationships within Multicultural Organizations (1999). Patricia J. Ohlott is Senior Research Associate at the Greensboro campus of the Center for Creative Leadership. She is coauthor of Standing at the Crossroads: Next Steps for High-Achieving Women. Her research focuses on the career development of women and the impact of diversity on management development processes. She has published articles in the Academy of Management Journal, Journal of Applied Psychology, Human Resource Management, Personnel Psychology, Journal of Management Development, and Training and Development. She coauthored the center’s feedback instrument, the Job Challenge Profile, has broad interests in the field of leadership development, and contributed a chapter on the use of assignments for developmental purposes to the center’s Handbook of Leadership Development. Her work recently received a citation from the American Society of Training and Development for excellence in translating research to practice. Louise F. Root-Robbins is Honorary Fellow at the Women’s Studies Research Center at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. Previously, she served as the University of Wisconsin System Coordinator for the President’s Initiative on the Status of Women and was co-director of the UW System Sloan Project for Academic Career Advancement. She has teaching and research experience in the medical and nursing schools at UW–Madison and was a senior administrator at the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction and Division of Health, where she worked closely with the U.S. Centers for Disease Control to implement statewide HIV/AIDS prevention programs. Root-Robbins is a member of the board of directors of the national organization College and University Work/ Family Association and the Wisconsin Women in Higher Education Leadership. She received the Madison 1993 League of Women Voters Citizen of Distinction Award, the 2003 YWCA Woman of Distinction Award, and the Milwaukee 2003 Margaret Miller Award for distinctive community service on behalf of women’s health. Marian N. Ruderman is Director of Global Leadership and Diversity at the Center for Creative Leadership. Her research focuses on the career development of women and the impact of diversity on leadership development, and she has

About the Editor and Contributors

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written widely on these topics. Ruderman is coauthor of Standing at the Crossroads: Next Steps for High-Achieving Women and coeditor of Diversity in Work Teams: Research Paradigms for a Changing Workplace. She coauthored the center’s feedback instrument, the Job Challenge Profile. Her published work has been cited widely in the press and has been applied in the Women’s Leadership Program offered by the Center for Creative Leadership. In addition, she speaks frequently to corporate and academic audiences about issues related to the career development of women. Britain A. Scott is Associate Professor of Psychology at the University of St. Thomas in St. Paul, Minnesota. She has taught social psychology and psychology of women courses for over a decade and currently teaches a seminar called Women IN Their Bodies, in which students learn about theory and research on women’s bodily objectification and then engage in experiential physical activities that represent embodied antidotes to the negative psychological effects of living in an objectified body. Several of Scott’s publications, presentations, and ongoing research projects address the topic of women’s bodily objectification. Sidney W. Scott is Vice President of Human Resources for Woodward Communications. of Dubuque, Iowa. Previously, Scott held leadership positions in marketing, organization development, and public relations and distribution in three media corporations and was business manager for two physician specialty groups. His firm, Scott Consultants, has assisted organizations with strategic planning, organization development, human resources, and marketing since 1983. Scott’s articles have appeared in publications including Training, Training and Development, Personnel Journal (now Workforce), and Organization Development Journal. He has presented for several national organizations, including the Society for Human Resource Management and the American Society of Training and Development. An adjunct faculty member at the University of Wisconsin–Madison Executive Education Center and UW–Platteville, Scott is a Registered Organization Development Consultant and serves on the board of directors of the National Center for Employee Ownership and Monroe Publishing Company. In 2000, he received the Volunteer Leadership Award from the local American Red Cross chapter, and in 2003, Iowa Governor Vilsack selected Scott to serve on the Iowa Health Facilities Council. Kecia M. Thomas is Associate Professor in the Psychology and African American Studies Departments at the University of Georgia (UGA). She is coordinator for Graduate Education in the Psychology Department. Her research focuses on the psychology of workplace diversity, and over thirty of her articles have appeared in publications, including the Journal of Applied Psychology, Academy of Management Learning and Education, and Journal of Business and Psychology. She edited an issue of the Journal of Career Development on black women’s experiences and has written many chapters dealing with diversity. Thomas is author of

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About the Editor and Contributors

the first diversity text written by an industrial/organizational psychologist, Diversity Dynamics in Organizations and the forthcoming edited volume Diversity Resistance: Manifestations and Solutions. She is on the executive committee of the Academy of Management’s Gender and Diversity in Organizations Division. The 2004 recipient of UGA’s first faculty award for diversity, Thomas has consulted for organizations such as the U.S. Department of Agriculture, BellSouth, and the American Cancer Society. Thomas J. Zagenczyk is a doctoral candidate within the Organizational Behavior/Human Resources area of the Katz School of Business at the University of Pittsburgh. His research interests include the employer–employee relationship, informal relationships in organizations, and social issues in management.