| Contesting Valuation of "The Feminine" on the Op-Ed Pages of the Wall Street Journal: One Response to Fondas' Challenge |
| | Krefting, Linda A. | Texas Tech U. | odkrt@coba.ttu.edu | 806-742-2157 |
| | Finding unacknowledged "feminization" in selected management writings, Fondas (1997) challenges scholars to examine a wide variety of texts for treatment of qualities traditionally associated with the feminine. Critical discourse analysis of the Op-Ed pages of the Wall Street Journal indicate that the value of feminine qualities is actively contested. For the last half of 1997, 161 texts (unsigned and signed comments, letters to the editor) were identified as dealing with specific women or women-in-general. Masculine qualities were valorized in some signed and unsigned comments, while feminine qualities and women's advocacy were devalorized in others. Letters from readers often defended the feminine and women's advocacy. Rather than a battle of the sexes, differences in assessment of the feminine were found among women authors as well as among men and between women and men. A discursive struggle over the feminine in a publication as influential as the Wall Street Journal has implications for the interpretation of Fondas' findings as well as for the glass ceiling. |
| | Keywords: feminization of management; critical discourse analysis; gender |
| The Impact of Organizational Culture on Women's Advancement in Organizations |
| | Bajdo, Linda M. | Wayne State U. | lbajdo@sun.science.wayne.edu | (313)-577-2800 |
| | Dickson, Marcus W. | Wayne State U. | mdickson@sun.science.wayne.edu | (313)-577-0753 |
| | In a cross-cultural examination of the impact of organizational culture on women’s advancement in organizations, aspects of organizational culture typically associated with women were found to be related to women’s progress. In organizations in which organization members reported shared values and/or practices that emphasized high humane orientation, low power distance, high performance orientation, and high gender equity, organization members also reported relatively high percentages of women in management. Organizational cultural practices related to gender equity were found to be the most important predictor of the percentage of women in management. This study adds to the literature on women’s progress in organizations by further extending the focus from individual and structural characteristics to organizational culture. The findings suggest that change agents focused on providing increased opportunities for women in management should focus on organizational culture, particularly aspects of organizational culture related to gender equity practices.
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| | Keywords: gender; organizational culture; management |
| Breaking the Glass Ceiling to Get to the Top: A Review of Recent Evidence |
| | Tharenou, Phyllis | Monash U., Caulfield | phyllis.tharenou@BusEco.monash.edu.au | 03-990-32933 |
| | Women's underrepresentation in upper management and executive ranks continues to be a significant social problem, one that
has resulted in much research. This paper reviews the recent evidence explaining why women do not break the glass ceiling
and advance to the top of organizations from studies that use rigorous designs. There appear to be several major conclusions from studies that use rigorous designs.
First, these studies find that interpersonal factors such as male-dominated environments most consistently explain why women
do not advance to the top, based on similarity-attraction and homosocial reproduction processes. Second, networks of women
help women advance to the top. Third, there is empirical support for a resource-development explanation of why women do not
get to the top. Women accumulate fewer resources at each major career transition than men, incrementally reducing their
opportunities to advance. Fourth, lack of managerial traits and, fifth, of knowledge, skills and expertise are not the reasons
women do not advance. And sixth, women at higher management levels may be need to be better performers than men.
Despite these conclusions, there are substantial research questions which have not been addressed using rigorous designs.
There are therefore fewer conclusions than needed to help organizations develop initiatives for women in early career and
mid-career to enable them to advance to the top as comparable men do. |
| | Keywords: glass ceiling; advancement; gender |
| Red Light, Green Light: How Female Managers Read the Context for Selling Gender-Equity Issues in Their Work Organizations |
| | Dutton, Jane E. | U. of Michigan | Janedut@umich.edu | 734-764-1376 |
| | Ashford, Susan J. | U. of Michigan | sja@umich.edu | 734-763-5484 |
| | This paper explores the basic issue of what cues individuals attend to in initiating discretionary action in their work organizations. In particular, the study focuses on the cues that female managers rely on to discern whether or not an organizational context is favorable for raising issues about gender-equity in their work organizations. Data from a sample of 218 female managers reveal the range of red lights (unfavorable) and green lights(favorable) that these managers identified as informative in initiating the process of issue selling about gender-equity issues. The results suggest that demographic patterns, qualities of top management and qualities of the organization's culture are seen as diagnostic of a context's favorability. However, different aspects of each of these categories of cues encourage vs. discourage issue selling about gender-equity issues. In addition, a far wider range of cues was identified as green lights, including external as well as internal conditions to the firm. We use the pattern of results to develop theoretical and practical implications for how, when and why women managers may raise gender-equity issues in organizations. |
| | Keywords: Issue-selling; Gender-equity; Contextual cues |
| Taking the Next Step in Adjusting to One's Disability at Work: Organizational, Social, and Individual Influences on Decisions to Make Accommodation Rrequests |
| | Florey, Anna T. | U. of Texas, Arlington | aflorey@uta.edu | (817)272-3166 |
| | This dissertation examined the decision processes of employees with disabilities for requesting work accommodations. Ajzen's theory of planned behavior served as a foundation for building a model describing this process such that attitude, subjective norm, and perceived behavioral control associated with making a request would predict an employee's intention to request an accommodation. Predicted antecedents to this cognitive request process were characteristics of the employee with a disability, his or her work environment, the disability, the accommodation, and the request path. Qualitative elicitation questionnaires and personal interviews validated the proposed model and provided suggestions for creating items in the final survey. Quantitative results demonstrated that attitude and perceived behavioral control had unique predictive effects on an employee's intention to make an accommodation request, but subjective norm did not. Two characteristics of the employee with a disability were also important in the decision making process: personality and organizational reactions to past requests. Disability severity and request formality were also influential in this process. All of the proposed organizational factors emerged as effective predictors of an employee's request decision. That is, employees considering making a request for an accommodation focus, in part, on resource availability, progressiveness of work practices, perceived organizational support, their relationship with their supervisor, and the cohesiveness of their workgroup. Patterns in the data also suggest that the importance of those inputs depends on whether they have previously disclosed their disability and on the formality of the request. |
| | Keywords: disability; accommodation; decision making |