András Tilcsik, associate professor of strategic management, received a Tier 2 Canada Research Chair.
Author: Sarah Kaplan
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Financial Times Business School Newsletter
The Financial Times Business School Newsletter points to Sarah Kaplan’s Rotman Management Magazine on gender equality as an innovation challenge.
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Leaning out: Bad experiences in recruiting add to the gender gap
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Summary
Women remain significantly underrepresented in leadership positions, holding just 16% of senior executive roles in Fortune 500 companies and only 5% of CEO positions. While many explanations for this disparity center on the choices women make, considerable evidence points to employers’ practices–e.g. unconscious bias, stereotyping, and promotion barriers–as the real reason. This paper examines how employers’ recruiting practices may influence a woman’s willingness to consider roles in the same organization in the future. The research shows that women are less likely than men to consider another job at an employer who has previously rejected them–they “lean out” of competition for future jobs. This is not because they subsequently lack confidence but because–when they are in a minority status–women (or any minorities) may interpret the rejection as a sign that they do not belong.
Research
For both men and women, rejection is an undesirable but normal part of the process of rising to the top of organizations. It is not unusual to get rejected for promotions, key assignments, or moves. Indeed, rejection is a sign that executives have put their hats in the ring.
However, for women in a minority status–rejection prompts them to consider whether they belong in the group that rejected them. They begin to wonder if their contributions would be valued in that company. In business, because individuals must apply for many positions and promotions over the course of their careers, this has significant implications for the advancement of women to senior levels because it reduces the number of applicants for key jobs. The researchers examined three sources of data: (1) an archival data set of more than 10,000 people from an executive search firm, (2) a survey, and (3) a lab experiment.
The first study used data from a UK-based executive search firm and was restricted to individuals who had considered multiple jobs through the search firm. The authors were able to determine whether an individual had been rejected by a company in the past and look at their decisions about whether they accepted an interview at the same company again. They found that women are less willing than men to consider a job opportunity if they were rejected by the firm in the past.
Women are less willing than men to consider a job opportunity if they were rejected by the firm in the past.
The authors then used a survey to look at why this rejection might reduce the likelihood that a woman would apply to the same company in the future. This survey asked a number of questions about a time when the respondent had been rejected for a job that they wanted and had interviewed for. In particular, the respondents were asked about their perception of fair or unfair treatment by the company. All of the respondents who indicated that they would not be interested in applying to the same company again signalled that this was due to unfair treatment or an unfair decision-making process. However, this perception of unfair treatment more strongly affected women’s (versus men’s) decision on whether to apply for a position in this company again.
The authors then tested the influence that this “belonging uncertainty” and “perceived procedural injustice” had on executives in an experimental setting. The participants were assigned a job applicant’s profile and told they were either accepted or rejected for the position. They were then asked a series of questions to assess how the rejection or acceptance influenced their sense of belonging or injustice.
The results indicated that for women, rejection triggers “belonging uncertainty,” priming them to perceive less fair treatment and thus making them unwilling to apply to the same firm again.
The conclusion is that firms may want to focus less on women “leaning in” and more on preventing them from “leaning out.”
Implications
- Examine the recruitment process – While there has been increasing attention paid to gender bias in hiring practices, companies should also consider the long-term implications of an unfair recruitment process. For companies seeking to increase the number of women in executive management, their hiring practices at every level of the organization could impact their ability to attract and retain top talent at the executive level. They would do well to communicate very clearly to applicants about the process and how the decisions were made.
- Deciphering between a “demand” problem and a “supply” problem – The gender gap at executive levels in corporations has often been attributed to individual’s behavior or preferences, resulting in the so-called “supply” or “pipeline” problem (not enough women seeking these kinds of roles). There is mounting evidence that points to a demand-side problem instead: companies are contributing to the gender disparity in executive management through their recruiting behaviors that do not signal a welcoming culture.
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Title
Leaning Out: How Negative Recruitment Experiences Shape Women’s Decisions to Compete for Executive Roles
Authors
Raina A. Brands and Isabel Fernandez-Mateo
Institutions
London Business School
Source
Administrative Science Quarterly
Published
December 2016
Link
http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/0001839216682728
Research brief prepared by
Celeste Jalbert
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Discrimination in Hiring
As part of our Rotman Short Talks series, hear from Professor Sonia Kang about how diversity statements can have unintended consequences. Based on her research on whitening resumés, she shows that minorities tend to disguise their minority status when applying for jobs, understanding rightly that firms tend to select people at a lower rate when their ethnic background is more visible. Yet, when firms make statements about their desire for diverse candidates, applicants are less likely to “whiten” their resumés. Unfortunately, even these firms that make diversity statements tend to hire racialized minorities at lower rates, thus leading diversity statements to have the opposite of the intended effect. See our research brief about the study here.
Sonia Kang is an Assistant Professor of Organizational Behaviour and Human Resource Management in the Department of Management at the University of Toronto Mississauga, and holds a cross-appointment to the Organizational Behaviour and HR Management area at Rotman. Her research explores the challenges and opportunities of diversity, including strategies for mitigating the far-reaching effects of stigma and harnessing the power of diversity for society and organizations alike. Sonia’s research has been published in journals including the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, Psychological Science, Administrative Science Quarterly, and the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, and has been featured in media outlets such as The Globe and Mail and The Atlantic.
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Why Progress is Slow on Gender Parity
As part of our Rotman Short Talks series, hear from Professor Sarah Kaplan about why progress towards gender equality is slow. In it, she focuses on the risks of backlash and the discomfort associated with diversity. She argues that the myth of meritocracy is getting in the way of progress. And, she highlights that getting comfortable with discomfort is the only way to move forward.
Sarah Kaplan is Professor of Strategic Management at the Rotman School. She is author of the New York Times business bestseller, Creative Destruction, challenging the notion of sustainable competitive advantage and the myth of excellence, and the recently released Survive and Thrive: Winning Against Strategic Threats to Your Business. The research shows that long-established companies, instead of maintaining excellence, almost always under-perform the market over time. Ironically, the very culture and meticulously maintained systems that fuel the good times cause companies to stall out. Her work has focused on generating insights that can help companies avoid this cultural lock-in and innovate at the pace and scale of the market.
Her current research continues this exploration of how organizations participate in and respond to the emergence of new fields and technologies. Her studies examine the biotechnology, fiber optics, financial services, nanotechnology and most recently, the field emerging at the nexus of gender and finance. Her interest in gender lens investing is in understanding how whole new ecosystems can be built. She recently authored “Gender Equality as an Innovation Challenge” in the Rotman Magazine (2017), “The Risky Rhetoric of Female Risk Aversion” in the Stanford Social Innovation Review (2016), “Meritocracy: From Myth to Reality” in the Rotman Magazine (2015), “The Rise of Gender Capitalism,” in the Stanford Social Innovation Review (2014).
Formerly a professor at the Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania (where she remains a Senior Fellow), and a consultant and innovation specialist for nearly a decade at McKinsey & Company in New York, she completed her doctoral research at the Sloan School of Management at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).
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How Social Class Affects Our Behaviour
As part of our Rotman Short Talks series, hear from Professor Stéphane Côté about how social class affects our behaviour. Based on his research, he shows that those in upper economic classes are less inclined to help others, especially when they are made aware of social inequalities. He outlines that society would function better with only moderate levels of inequality — which raises a red flag about the risks of increasing inequality in many economies.
Stéphane Côté is Professor of Organizational Behaviour and Director of the PhD program at the Rotman School of Management at the University of Toronto. He received his PhD in organizational psychology from the University of Michigan. He studies how employees can use emotional intelligence to improve their well-being and performance, and how social class and economic inequality relate to prosocial behavior in social and organizational settings. He serves on the editorial boards of the Administrative Science Quarterly, Academy of Management Journal, and Personnel Psychology, and has served as Associate Editor of Emotion. He is a Fellow of the Society for Personality and Social Psychology. He teaches The Socially Intelligent Manager in the MBA program and seminars on organizational behavior and research methods in the PhD program.
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Gender Equality and the War for Talent
As part of our Rotman Short Talks series, hear from Tanya van Biesen, Executive Director of Canada, Catalyst, Inc. and Rotman alumna about how working towards gender equality can position firms to do better in the War for Talent. (12 mins)
Tanya van Biesen is Executive Director of Catalyst Canada, the leading global nonprofit working to accelerate progress for women through workplace inclusion. In this capacity, Tanya is responsible for leading the growth of Catalyst’s operations in Canada, shaping strategies to advance Catalyst’s mission with supporters, corporate partners, professional organizations, CEOs, senior leaders, and stakeholders.
A recognized leader and influencer with deep experience in the executive search sector at the most senior levels of corporate Canada, Tanya brings more than two decades of corporate leadership and diversity experience to Catalyst. Most recently, she co-led the Financial Services Practice at Spencer Stuart and was a key member of the Canadian Boards Practice, focusing on executive search assignments at the board, CEO, and general management levels. She also led the firm’s Canadian Diversity Practice, specializing in the placement of chief diversity officers and diverse slates of candidates across all search assignments.
Tanya began her career at Procter & Gamble, working in both Toronto and Calgary in regional and national sales leadership roles. A sought-after speaker on the topic of diversity in the boardroom, Tanya has contributed to several research studies and articles analyzing leadership trends and attributes. She holds an MBA from the University of Toronto’s Rotman School of Business and a Bachelor of Commerce from Queen’s University, and speaks English, French, and Dutch.
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‘Whitening’ and Self-Presentation in the Labour Market
by Sonia Kang, Katherine DeCelles, Andràs Tilcsik, and Sora Jun
Modern organizations continue to play a key role in perpetuating economic inequality in society. Despite the proliferation of equal opportunity and diversity initiatives, discrimination on the basis of race remains particularly pervasive in North American labour markets. The authors show that even companies that publicly espouse an inclusive environment continue to discriminate against candidates who appear to be from non-white backgrounds. Worse yet, many non-white job candidates are proactively ‘whitening’ their resumes in order to hide their racial identity.
