Jenny M. Hoobler

Women’s Managerial Aspirations An Organizational Development Perspective

Some authors have explained the dearth of women leaders as an “opt-out revolution”—that women today are making a choice not to aspire to leadership positions. The authors of this article present a model that tests managers’ biased evaluations of women as less career motivated as an explanation for why women have lower managerial aspirations than men. Specifically, they hypothesize that day-to-day managerial decisions involving allocating challenging work, training and development, and career encouragement mean women accrue less organizational development, and this is one explanation for their lower managerial aspirations. The authors’ model is based on social role theory and is examined in a sample of 112 supervisor–subordinate dyads at a U.S. Fortune 500 firm.

Aggressive reactions to abusive supervision: The role of interactional justice and narcissism

In this study, we explore personality and situational conditions in which negative leadership - specifically, abusive supervision - is associated with aggressive behavior in subordinates. That is, we examine the role that interactional justice and narcissism play in an employees decision to respond aggressively to an abusive supervisor. We demonstrate that interactional justice mediates the relationship between perceptions of abusive supervision and subsequent employee aggression. In addition, we demonstrate that narcissism interacts with interactional justice perceptions to predict workplace aggression. We find that individuals with high levels of narcissism are the employees who are most likely to respond aggressively when they interpret their leaders behavior as abusive.

A within-subject longitudinal study of the effects of positive job experiences and generalized workplace harassment on well-being.

Drawing on the mobilization-minimization hypothesis, this research examines the influence of positive job experiences and generalized workplace harassment (GWH) on employee job stress and well-being over time, postulating declines in the adverse influence of GWH between Time 1 and 2 and less pronounced declines in the influence of positive job experiences over this same timeframe of approximately one year. A national sample of 1,167 workers polled via telephone at two time periods illustrates that negative job experiences weigh more heavily on mental health than do positive job experiences in the short-term. In the long-term, GWHs association with mental health and job stress was diminished. But its effects on job stress, and mental health, and physical health persist over one year, and, in the case of long-term mental health, GWH overshadows the positive mental health effects of positive job experiences. The research also argues for a reconceptualization of GWH and positive job experiences as formative latent variables on theoretical grounds.

The Business Case for Women Leaders Meta-Analysis, Research Critique, and Path Forward

Since the 1990s, a growing body of research has sought to quantify the relationship between women’s representation in leadership positions and organizational financial performance. Commonly known as the “business case” for women’s leadership, the idea is that having more women leaders is good for business. Through meta-analysis (k = 78, n = 117,639 organizations) of the direct effects of women’s representation in leadership (as CEOs, on top management teams, and on boards of directors) on financial performance, and tests that proxy theoretical arguments for moderated relationships, we call attention to equivocal findings. Our results suggest women’s leadership may affect firm performance in general and sales performance in particular. And women’s leadership—overall and, specifically, the presence of a female CEO—is more likely to positively relate to firms’ financial performance in more gender egalitarian cultures. Yet taking our findings as a whole, we argue that commonly used methods of testing the business case for women leaders may limit our ability as scholars to understand the value that women bring to leadership positions. We do not advocate that the business case be abandoned altogether but, rather, improved and refined. We name exemplary research studies to show how different perspectives on gender, alternative conceptualizations of value, and the specification of underlying mechanisms linking leadership to performance can generate changes in both the dominant ontology and the epistemology underlying this body of research.

The Diversity Education Dilemma: Exposing Status Hierarchies Without Reinforcing Them

A diversity education dilemma occurs when exposure to information concerning status hierarchies, related to demographic and other socially salient identity groups, reinforces those hierarchies in the classroom. Discussions of diversity-related issues in a variety of management courses (e.g., immigrant issues in labor relations, the composition of executive leadership teams in strategy, workplace compliance issues in human resource management) may highlight or draw attention to status differences as individuals identify with—and are identified by others as belonging to—higher or lower status groups (e.g., based on race/ethnicity, gender, or physical disability). As a consequence, the “real world” status hierarchy is strengthened within the classroom with negative consequences for student learning. This study uses status characteristics theory to provide a framework for understanding ways in which one’s best-intended practices may be undermining student learning. The authors also propose a series of practical ways that instructors can mitigate the status hierarchy to create a more equitable learning environment while simultaneously tackling issues related to diversity.

When research setting is important: the influence of subordinate self-esteem on reactions to abusive supervision

In this paper, we argue that the conflicting theoretical views regarding the role that self-esteem plays in the decision to become aggressive can be explained by the particular research methodology used. Specifically, we examine how individuals respond to a perceived abusive supervisor in two settings: (1) using scenarios and (2) in a field study. Results indicate that individuals with high self-esteem are more likely to become aggressive in response to an abusive supervisor in settings where they are asked what they would do (using scenarios). However, in field research settings, where they are asked what they did do, individuals with low self-esteem were more likely to become aggressive in response to an abusive supervisor.

On-Site or Out-of-Sight? Family-Friendly Child Care Provisions and the Status of Working Mothers

“Family-friendly” initiatives are gaining in popularity as employers attempt to ease the fit between work and family. A number of organizations offer on- or near-site child care facilities to employees with young children. The author uses social identity theory to make the argument that family-friendly policies blurring the lines between work roles and family/caregiver roles serve to reinforce gender biases that degrade womens status on the job. Because women are the primary users of on-site child care services, and family roles are devalued in managerial employment, such “family-friendly” programs force women to sacrifice the quest for workplace equality, opting instead for short-term solutions.

A comparative review of multiculturalism in Australia, Canada, the United Kingdom, the United States and South Africa

This chapter assesses the adoption and implementation of multiculturalism across Australia, Canada, the UK, the US and South Africa (the “Anglo bloc”), all of which receive a large number of immigrants. Australia and Canada espouse an official multiculturalism policy, and encourage their citizens and immigrants to adopt each other’s culture. The US does not have an official multiculturalism policy and follows an assimilation approach (“melting pot”) to immigration acculturation, but implements affirmative action to support racial minorities in education and employment. The UK and South Africa also do not have an official multiculturalism policy. They fall somewhere between Australia/Canada and the US on the immigrant acculturation continuum. The UK is heavily influenced by EU directives, and has strong anti-discrimination laws to compensate for a lack of multiculturalism policy. South Africa is a special case, where blacks are indigenous rather than immigrants. It has strong affirmative action policies, but they do not apply to those who attain citizenship after 1984. The emphasis is on the economic empowerment of previously disadvantaged groups. The chapter also updates the 2010 Multiculturalism Policy Index (MPI) with data from South Africa.

Domestic Employment Relationships and Trickle-Down Work–Family Conflict: The South African Context

In this manuscript I call attention to a group of forgotten persons central to the work–family balancing act – domestic workers – that is, those who provide in-home family member and household care for a wage. Especially in post-colonial contexts, but also in more developed nations, domestic employment is a significant occupation, employing between 52.6 and 100 million domestic workers worldwide, 80% of whom are women. The domestic employer–employee relationship is a distinct one, conflated by gender, race, social class, and social-contextual influences. And South Africa, with its post-colonial, post-apartheid history presents an apt “test case” in which to examine this phenomenon. I present ideas for future study of domestic employment within the work and family as well as wider management literature. Ideas include: (1) viewing work–family conflict as a trickle-down process from domestic employer to employee; and (2) examining domestic employers who become reliant on domestic help as a work–family support from an embeddedness perspective, with potential career-limiting implications.

Abusive Supervision, Justice, Power Distance, and Employee Deviance: A Meta-Analysis

The abusive supervision literature, which has proliferated in the past decade, is in need of research to better understand why, when, and how strongly abusive supervision relates to employee devian...