Topic

Gender and Organizational Effectiveness

BASIC THEME

The effects of the intersection of race, gender and educational class on occupational

prestige

•Aspects of socioeconomic status are geographical socioeconomic dispersion of racial and ethnic groups results in regional differences •Some of the most progressive work is often unable to distinguish the effects of the intersection of race and gender•By the 1990s the scholarly leadership involved with race and gender studies began to claim social and economic progress for both women and dominated racial groups based on meritocracy values•Political legislation including the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and the Immigration Act of 1965, Equal Pay Equity Act (1963) and Title VII of the Civil Rights Act (1964)•It guarantees to men and women the same wages for the same work performed under the same conditions in employment because of sex, race, color, religion and national origin.•Many feminists were unwilling to concede that a class of males might not fit the essentialist model that saw all males as socially positioned higher than females •Most researchers focused their attention on income, wealth and assets

The effects of positive affect and gender on the influence tactics--job

performance relationship.

• Positive Affect (PA) will moderate the relationship between upward influence tactics and job performance ratings, and that the form of the relationship will differ for males and females.

• Influence Tactics--Job Performance Relationship • Influence tactics involve attempts by one individual (the

"agent") to change the behavior, attitudes, or beliefs of another individual (the "target").

• Surprisingly, the area has not received a large amount of attention in the organizational sciences, despite the fact that many researchers have argued that the ability to successfully influence people is critical to managerial effectiveness

• Managing relationships with superiors, colleagues, and subordinates appears to be critical to success in organizations.

• Organizations and managers should be interested in gaining a better understanding of influence tactics particularly because significant relationships between upward influence tactics and several important organizational outcomes have been found.

• Different strategies or combinations of influence tactics have been found to be significantly related to job performance

• Influence tactics have been significantly related to assessments of promotability salary increases and career progression

• Upward influence tactics play an important role in work environments, and are significantly related to several important organizational outcomes.

• Influence tactics also have been found to be related to performance through their influence on supervisor perceptions of similarity with subordinates and manager assessments of subordinate interpersonal skills

• The possibility that the style or manner in which influence attempts are delivered might determine whether the influence attempt has positive or negative outcomes.

• Recently, organizational scholars have called for increased attention to social effectiveness constructs that might play critical roles in the success of interpersonal interactions in organizations

• Such constructs as political skill, social intelligence, and social skill reflect a characteristic tendency or style of behavioral selection, presentation, and execution that influences the way specific behaviors (e.g., influence tactics) are perceived, interpreted, and reacted to.

• It is this interpersonal style, which is believed to address the "how" of influence in rendering the "what" (i.e., the actual tactics themselves) of influence effective.

• PA moderates the relationship between influence tactics and job performance ratings.

• An interest is the role of gender in the effectiveness of influence attempts.

• Increased female participation in the workforce has added to the complexity of interactions at work

• Past research has noted that females employ influence tactics differently than their male counterparts and may even be more effective at influence attempts than males

Six Influence tactics

• Ingratiation• Exchange• Rationality• Assertiveness• Upward Appeal• Coalitions

• Ingratiation influence tactics are those that are intended to establish a positive view to others

• Exchange tactics involve an individual offering to exchange services with another for mutual benefit

• Rationality consists of using logic, reason, or factual information to influence others.

• Assertiveness involves forceful, angry, or confrontational behaviors.• Upward Appeal is defined as attempts to obtain the support of

individuals at higher organizational levels• Coalitions involve obtaining the support of others for an individual's

idea or request.

types of influence tactics:

• Hard• Soft• Rational

• Assertiveness, Upward Appeal, and Coalitions have been identified by researchers as hard influence tactics

• Soft tactics include only Ingratiation• Rational tactics have been argued to include Rationality

and Exchange

Gender stereotyping- a key barrier

• Management stereotypes are likely to evolve as more women assume leadership roles in the workforce.

• Women still fill less than 2% of CEO leadership positions in the Fortune 500.

• Only 15.6 per cent of Fortune 500 corporate officers and 14.6 per cent of Fortune 500 board directors were women

• People have higher expectations for the performance of teams when the leader's gender is consistent with the gender typing of the industry in which the team works.

• Gender stereotyping was a key barrier to the advancement of women in corporate leadership, leaving women leaders with limited and conflicting options.

• The report argued that gender stereotyping results in organizations routinely underestimating and underutilizing women's leadership talent.

Ilene H. Lang, Catalyst president said:

"When companies fail to acknowledge and address the impact of gender stereotypic bias, they lose out on top female talent. Ultimately, it's not women's leadership styles that need to change. Only when organizations take action to address the impact of gender stereotyping will they be able to capitalize on the `full deck' of talent."

Three Common Dilemmas

• Extreme perceptions• High competence threshold/lower rewards• Competent but disliked

Organizations need to develop strategies to remove the pervasive and damaging impact of gender stereotyping from the work environment to take advantage of the expanding pool of female leadership talent.

Actions that organizations can take include:

• Providing all employees with tools and resources to increase awareness of women leaders' skills and the effects of stereotypic perceptions.

• Assessing the work environment to identify ways in which women are at risk of stereotypic bias.

• Creating and implementing innovative work practices that target stereotypic bias; particularly effective when specific areas of risk, such as performance management procedures, are addressed.

• Managerial training and diversity education - educating managers and employees about the origin and consequences of bias, inconsistencies between values and actual behavior, and causes and effects of gender inequality in the workplace.

• Performance and evaluation management - employing objective and unambiguous evaluation criteria.

– What are the elements of organizational change that can lead to more opportunities for women—going beyond merely expanding the numbers of women in leadership functions?

– Q: What are the biggest challenges that organizations face in their attempts to transform their working environments and structures to increase the representation of women in leadership positions in business, government, and the professions?

– Q: How can women create change in their organizations?

GENDER ROLES, LEADERSHIP AND PUBLIC RELATIONS

• Women dominate public relations, making up 70 percent of its work force; however, women only fill 20 percent of the top leadership roles in major agencies.

• Examining the factors that make them successful • Gender is just part of the domination matrix that contributes to a lack

of women in public relations leadership • Public relations is a profession that gives women professional

opportunities not found in other industries • Public relations as an increasingly feminized• Field that pigeonholed women in subordinate roles. It also examined

how the public• Perceived a female-dominated field and stated that because of this

the profession would• Never reach professional status and even might lose prestige

• Salaries would drop based on comparing histories of other feminized professions like nursing, education and social work

• Anything that dominated by women was “women’s work” and not taken as seriously as male-dominated professions like law and medicine.

• Hierarchical organizational structure prevents women from advancement.

• The perception of women struggling to• Maintain work-life balance might make them a less attractive

candidate for a promotion.• Women cannot devote the time needed to be in a leadership role if

they are also responsible for children and a home. • Women can dominate a field in numbers• On the one hand, and on the other hand that same field can still

discriminate against• Women’s opportunities for advancement.

• The public relations technician role is deferred to women, who can act more transformational (using two-way communication styles) and make connections with the press and public.

• Men possess a more competitive style of interaction, jockeying for a position on a hierarchy of competitive accomplishment.

• Women are thought to be• More suited toward the transformational aspects of

public relations (communication)• While men are left to handle clients and management

issues that take on a hard-nosed• Approach thought to be characteristic of the corporate

world

“What are the factors that influence how women achieve equality with men in leadership roles at a major public relations firm?”

Literature Review

Four main subject areas

• Feminist Perspectives & Definitions

• Feminist Perspectives In Public Relations

• Gender and Management

• Female Leadership In Public Relations

Feminist Perspectives & Definitions

Feminist approaches to communication

• Gender roles are "the set of arrangements by which a society transforms biological sexuality into products of human activity, and in which these transformed needs are satisfied"

• Women perform certain activitimes based on their gender. Men perform certain activities based on the fact that they are men.

• Black women’s experiences…have been routinely distorted within or excluded from what counts as knowledge

• This control over knowledge does not just apply to black women, but all women and minorities.

• The most important theme is“feminist research strives for social change.”

Liberal feminism, Radical feminism &

Socialist feminism • Liberal feminist theory stems from liberal political

philosophy, viewing laws and politics as the way in which women can achieve equality

• Marxist/social feminists focus on class. Socialist feminism include race, sexual orientation, age and physical ability.

• Radical feminists describe women’s oppression as being grounded in reproduction. They call for women to remove themselves from men so they can realize their full potential

Reexamining feminist perspectives with intersectionality.

• The idea of intersectionality attempts to understand which factors and to what extent they oppress.

• “Intersectional paradigms remind us that oppression cannot be reduced to one fundamental type, and that oppressions work together in producing injustice”

• Analyzing black women’s experiences • Though the field of public relations has made

advancements toward equality between the sexes, the field has failed to acquire a substantial number of female executives compared with the overall numbers of women in lower -level positions

• Women do not hold nearly as many high-ranking positions as would be expected when they make up 70 percent of the public relations industry

• Intersectionality looks at various systems (sexism, racism, ageism, heterosexism, economic oppression, etc) to demonstrate the complexity of oppression, examining the many factors contributing to disparity.

• Adding to intersectionality, social role theory is an interesting layer to apply

• Social role theory is the principle that men and women behave differently in social situations and take on different roles due to society’s expectations

• Liberal feminism advocates that women should display more masculine traits (i.e. aggressiveness, competitiveness, authoritarian leadership style, etc.) to succeed in the male-dominated workplace.

• Once women make it to the top, they began acting more like men as an adaptation strategy

• An alternative to the liberal perspective is transforming the workplace by placing value on feminine leadership styles (i.e. compassion, egalitarian structure and charisma).

• Marxist feminism combats the idea that women are considered second-class citizens whose work is not properly compensated.

• Liberal and Marxist feminism look at the same issue from two separate perspectives, intersectionality provides a more inclusive look to all the factors involved.

Feminist Perspectives In Public Relations

The early days of women in public relations

• Gower says women were initially accepted into the profession because it was a new field with few entry barriers.

• Public relations was a new field that developed during wartime. With men off at war, unable to shape and fill the majority of public relations jobs, women had greater access to positions in the field

• As the profession matured, however, top management positions became male-dominated

Gender discrepancies in a gendered profession — how it came to be

• Women make up nearly 70 percent of the public relations workforce; however, it is men who are often favored for hiring, salary increases and promotions

• As the number of men in public relations begins to decrease, the effort to hire and retain male employees increases — by both male and female executives.

• This is one justification for giving salary raises and promotions to men.

• As attention and grooming for higher positions turns to men, young women are left to fill the technician roles.

• Women’s socialization suggests they avoid aggressive behavior or fail to demand change and are constrained to lower-ranking, lesser-paying positions.

• Both women and men will tend to favor male candidates for promotions and hiring due to this type of mental filtering.

• Feminist public relations scholars suggested the organizational environment may be to blame for the powerlessness of some female public relations practitioners in terms of advancement and pay.

• The public relations practitioner’s influence was related to both their formal structural power and relationship power — but not gender.

Gender and Management

Perceptions

• The results revealed that people continue to perceive males and managers to have innately different characteristics than females.

• Males are perceived to be more qualified than females, regardless of professional achievement labels

• Individuals of both sexes with feminine characteristics believe males and females do not differ with respect to crucial leadership qualities.

Leadership values

• The study found women managers possessed more feminine characteristics in their leadership style while men demonstrated more masculine behavior

• Females typically demonstrate transformational leadership styles desired in managers

• Leadership styles are categorized as transformational or transactional

• Transformational leadership is defined as charismatic, democratic, egalitarian (feminine).

• Transactional leadership is defined as authoritarian and hierarchical (masculine).

• Transformational leadership places an emphasis on vision, development of the individual, empowerment and challenging traditional assumptions

• Evidence shows this leadership style contributes to a leader’s effectiveness

• The findings indicated superiors, who were mostly male, evaluated female managers as more transformational than male managers

• Subordinates evaluated their female and male leaders equally

Barriers from the top

• Women are less attracted to management jobs because of their weaker masculine culture preferences — that is, women do not have the same competitive edge as men

• Women are traditionally primary caretakers and have biological ties to children, striking the desired balance between work and home poses challenge, especially when leadership roles require an intense dedication to work.

• Restructuring the work-force and implementing more progressive polices (on-site day care, flex-time, etc.) will allow both men and women to succeed in the home and in the workplace, showing dedication to both spheres.

Female Leadership In Public Relations

Building a theory in public relations leadership

Women may be more suited to leadership roles in public relations because of similarities in feminine traits and transformational leadership styles. Yet organizational culture, socialized gender stereotypes, and business and economic environments may prevent many women from taking on leadership roles.

How women in public relations lead

• Women leaders are just as capable of offering helpful career advice as male leaders, but only do so for junior level men

• For women of color, the problem is not the quality of mentoring they receive, but a lack of mentorship

• In a survey asking women of color which of the following do you perceive as potential barriers to professional advancement, 47 percent indicated not having a mentor was a barrier

Future Professionals’ Perceptions of Women in Public Relations

• Findings suggest female students perceive women in the field are paid less than men for comparable work.

• Men tend to believe gender discrimination in public relations has been eradicated.

• Women in the industry will have stronger opinions about gender discrimination, whereas men will be less likely to acknowledge that there is a problem.

Results

Mentoring Relationships: Friendships vs. Mentorship

• The group of subordinates expressed that there was no formal mentoring program established

• One interesting finding that emerged from questions about mentoring is that the junior level women desired nurturing mentors whereas men sought out mentors that they respected for their work

• Many of the women looked towards the men in their groups as people with whom they could discuss their careers and worklife

Perceptions about Leadership Styles: Personality makes all the difference

• The subordinates appreciated transformational leaders who gave them autonomy, but were still available for help and guidance when needed.

• Another key attribute according to the junior level counselors was relatability

• Traits could be seen in both the men and women • Favorable qualities are in both men and women,

the less favorable qualities are more associated with women

Work-life balance: Personal choice or in the hands of the agency?

• The junior level men did not mention work-life balance issues deterring them from advancing through the company.

• The married junior level women did mention that they had concerns.

• The women with children had to adjust their work schedules (going part-time) around their families whereas the men did not.

• Men don’t get paternity leave in most industries.

Gender discrimination: Sexism or Strategy?

• There are more women

• One of the male subordinates said he was part of a “targeted e-mail” invitation to a brainstorm about paintball because he was a guy.

• It is all strategy when they are asked to contribute to a project because of gender, race, ethnicity, etc.

Diversity in the Workplace: “Diversity is a strategic weapon”

• All employees suggested the need for diversity within this field

• A diverse agency also provides a competitive edge in the marketplace.

• It will help you attract the best talent.

• It can be a competitive weapon when a client approaches you with a multi-cultural target.

Personnel Decisions: Talent, Big Thinking and Collaborative Spirit

• For questions revolving around personnel decisions, managers all said foundational skills like writing and excellent communication are paramount.

• Intangible qualities also had a high place along requirements for hiring and promoting.

• Big picture thinking will take you pretty far. • Personal commitment • One of the most important qualities is

collaboration. • Everything is done in teams and lone wolves just

won’t cut it.