Jodi S. Goodman

Organization-Level Determinants of Women in Management

This study investigated the association of organizational characteristics with the percentage of management positions held by women in a group of medium-sized to large private sector workplaces. Re...

Mediation Testing in Management Research A Review and Proposals

The authors review and critique the conduct and reporting of mediation analyses in 409 studies published in five leading organization studies journals over the past 25 years. The aim of the study is to learn from past practice and to use that knowledge to signal to researchers the importance of correctly applying mediation tests as well as to facilitate the valid testing of mediation models and the reporting of mediation results in future studies. The authors content code their sample for a wide range of characteristics and find that the majority of inferences of full and partial mediation are based on testing procedures that deviate significantly from procedures recommended by statisticians. In addition, the reporting of results is often incomplete and inefficient. The authors discuss and evaluate the findings of the study and make recommendations for future testing and reporting of results for mediation models.

Cracks in the Glass Ceiling In What Kinds of Organizations Do Women Make it to the Top

This study investigates variables that differentiate work establishments that have women in top management positions from those that do not. Women occupied top management positions in slightly more than half of the 228 medium- to large-sized private sector establishments the authors studied. The authors found that women are more likely to occupy top management ranks in establishments that have more lower level management positions filled by women, have higher management turnover, have lower average management salary levels, place greater emphasis on development and promotion of employees, and operate in nonmanufacturing industries.

Feedback Specificity, Exploration, and Learning

Greater feedback specificity is generally considered to be beneficial for performance and learning, but the evidence for this generalization is limited. The authors argue that increasing the specificity of feedback is beneficial for initial performance but discourages exploration and undermines the learning needed for later, more independent performance. The results of their transfer experiment demonstrate that increasing the specificity of feedback positively affected practice performance, but its benefits did not endure over time or modification of the task. In addition, feedback specificity negatively affected levels of exploration during practice and interacted with exploration strategies to affect learning. The results suggest that those who received feedback of varying specificity may have learned through different but equally beneficial mechanisms.

Feedback specificity, learning opportunities, and learning.

Although increasing feedback specificity is generally beneficial for immediate performance, it can undermine certain aspects of the learning needed for later, more independent performance. The results of the present transfer experiment demonstrate that the effects of increasing feedback specificity on learning depended on what was to be learned, and these effects were partially mediated through the opportunities to learn how to respond to different task conditions during practice. More specific feedback was beneficial for learning how to respond to good performance and detrimental for learning how to respond to poor performance. The former relationship was partially mediated by feedback specificitys effect on learning opportunities during practice. The results have implications for designing feedback interventions and training to maximize the learning of various aspects of a task.

Human Resource Dependence and Organizational Demography: A Study of Minority Employment in Private Sector Companies

This study examines the extent to which firms’ human resource dependence explains the representation of Black employees in nonmanagement, management, and top-management jobs. Human resource dependence is a firm-level construct describing the degree to which an organization has difficulty procuring and maintaining supplies of human resources. Indicators of human resource dependence in 154 private sector firms explained the representation of Black employees in nonmanagement and management-level jobs but did not predict Black employee representation in top-management jobs. The results provide new insights into characteristics of firms that shape the demographic makeup of the workplace.