Julie Gedro

The Lavender Ceiling Atop the Global Closet: Human Resource Development and Lesbian Expatriates

This literature review will examine international assignments as career development opportunities and uncover multiple issues and considerations with respect to lesbians and international assignments. There is a clear interest in the fields of management and human resource management in the privileges, challenges, and opportunities of international assignments. International assignments serve as a function of HRD because they provide grooming for the most senior management positions in corporations. However, there is little to no research or exploration of the multiple considerations faced by lesbians who seek and engage in international assignments.

Going global: professional mobility and concerns for LGBT workers

The world of work has regularized the practice of people moving from one country to another to accept job assignments. Travel and relocation are stress-laden endeavours. For LGBT people, the risks can be more complicated than they are for heterosexuals. This article explores particular challenges that LGBT people face when they travel and relocate for business, both domestically and internationally. The article is contextualized with a literature review on sexual minorities and workplace issues, and uses auto-ethnographic stories of three of the authors’ lived experiences as sexual minorities relocating for professional reasons in order to examine issues related to LGBT relocation. These issues include legal, social, cultural and familial considerations. Implications and suggestions for human resource developers are presented, which include acquiring awareness around the psychological and physiological reactions to new and diverse ecologies, or ‘eco-shocks’.

Lesbian presentations and representations of leadership, and the implications for HRD

Purpose – This paper seeks to identify, examine, and discuss the unique challenges for lesbians who serve in leadership positions in corporate America.Design/methodology/approach – Drawing upon a multi‐disciplinary framework of management, diversity, feminist, and leadership literature, the paper critically examines the myriad of pressures exerted upon all women in leadership positions, and then identifies the pressures that are specific and unique for lesbians.Findings – There are pressures that are unique for lesbian leaders. These pressures include negotiating the heterosexism of the organization; invisibility versus visibility, and gender expression and gender role expectations.Originality/value – The paper provides implications for human resource development to assume a stronger and more active role in uncovering tacit issues embedded in leadership so that organizational workplaces become locations of greater equity, access, and fairness for all who aspire to leadership positions.

Understanding, Designing, and Teaching LGBT Issues

This article will provide a context as well as content for teaching LGBT issues within HRD. In order to frame both context and content, the article begins with a discussion of queer theory. It then surveys employment laws that protect LGBT people around the world. Because LGBT issues intersect HRM and HRD, and because of the scarcity of LGBT issues courses within the field of HRD, the article highlights a freestanding college course in HRM as an example for purposes of design as well as content.

Responding to ‘Gay Men and Masculinity': further considerations

Even though there are eight million or more employees in the United States who are lesbian, gay, bisexual, or transgender (LGBT), and despite the fact that employment discrimination against them persists, there continues to be no federal law that protects LGBT people (Pizer et al. 2012). There is an increasing tendency for companies to consider themselves ‘gay friendly’; however, homosexuality remains a stigmatized identity in the workplace and few studies have explored the experiences of LGBT people within those contexts (Giuffre, Dellinger, and Williams 2008). LGBT issues today are gathering incremental visibility due to a confluence of factors. These factors include the same sex marriage debate in the US, the repeal of the US Military policy of ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’, the increasing numbers of celebrities and other public figures who are coming out of the closet, politicians such as retired US Representative Barney Frank (D-MA) and Tammy Baldwin (D-WI) establishing and maintaining relatively high profiles as out, gay figures, and the emergence of other events that signal a disinclination to continue to oppress and stigmatize and marginalize sexual minorities. For example, Dr. Robert J. Spitzer, ‘considered by some to be the father of modern psychiatry’ (Carey, 2012, para. 2) recanted a study that he conducted that ‘supported the use of so-called reparative therapy to cure homosexuality for people strongly motivated to change’ (Carey, para. 5). Spitzer had likened homosexuality to disorders such as depression and alcoholism (Carey). However, in 2012 he wrote a letter apologizing for the study. Richard Florida, author of a series of the popular press books that describe and explore the ‘creative class’ (2003, 2004, 2012), publicly opined that economies that tolerate LGBT people are more prosperous, because those types of societies are open to new people and ideas (Florida 2003). Harvard University has welcomed back the Reserve Officers’ Training Corps (ROTC) to its campus after ‘decades of chilly relations between the elite school and the military, dating back to the Vietnam War and persisting because of past military policies on gay soldiers’ (Levitz 2012, p. A3). Finally, teams and players within the National Football League (NFL), arguably an iconic bastion of heteronormative masculine performance, have begun to show their

Navigating the Life Cycle of Trust in Developing Economies: One-size Solutions Do Not Fit All

Trust is critical to the development and maintenance of collaborative and cohesive relationships in societies, broadly, and in organizations, specifically. At the same time, trust is highly dependent on the social context in which it occurs. Unfortunately, existing research involving trust remains somewhat limited to a particular set of developed economies, providing a window to explore a cultures stage of economic development as a key contextual determinant of trust within organizations. In this article, we review the state of the scholarship on trust and identify those qualities of trust that are common in organizations at similar stages of economic development, referred to as its etic aspects. We then also distinguish those elements of trust that are, to the contrary, culturally specific or emic in nature. We structure our discussion around the “life cycle of trust” (i.e., the creation, maintenance, and postfracture repair of trust) and consider unique factors in its application to developing economies. In doing so, we ground our examination in expository examples through field experience in Haiti. We conclude with the proposal of a framework for future research oriented toward the resolution of remaining theoretical and empirical queries as they relate to trust in developing economies.

Educating Next Generation Leaders

The purpose of this discussion is to explore how the educational and social philosophy of John Dewey offers insight for those involved in education evolution in emerging economies, with a particular emphasis on nurturing leaders who are capable of recognizing and responding effectively to the challenges of a globalized economy now and for the next century. Dewey offers comprehensive critiques of the interlocking systems of oppression that are present not only in the educational system but also in the workplace and expanding economic system, along with systematic pedagogical strategies for overcoming identified hurdles. To demonstrate application of these insights, we will focus specifically on the implementation of Deweyan theory in an elementary educational system in today’s Haiti through a case study involving l’Ecole de Choix (the School of Choice). After explaining the genesis of the school’s relationship to Dewey, the discussion unpacks Dewey’s diagnosis of the challenges facing both leadership and education within his social context. The analysis then examines the central features of Dewey’s pedagogical vision within that historical context. To illustrate their continuing relevance to a current social environment that finds remarkable parallels with Dewey’s own, we detail the ecosystem, inspiration, history, vision, design, structure, and examples of Dewey-based influences in an educational institution in rural Haiti. We then conclude with implications for educational research and practice that respond to complex challenges in emerging economies.