promotion | Kathryn Welds, PhD | Curated Research + Commentary

Herminia Ibarra

Men received 15% more promotions than women, according to a Catalyst Benchmarking Survey.

Similar numbers of “high potential” women and men were selected for lateral moves to other parts of the business.
However, men but not women, received promotions after the career-developing lateral moves.

Nancy M. Carter

Women’s developmental lateral moves were substitutes for actual career advancement, suggested INSEAD’s Hermina Ibarra with Nancy M. Carter and Christine Silva of Catalyst.
Similarly, women receive social accounts – or explanations – as substitutes for salary increases.

Virginia Valian

Hunter College’s Virginia Valian suggested that implicit bias may explain men’s performance is consistently overrated while women’s accomplishments are underrated by coworkers, bosses and themselves, .
Resulting discrepancies in opportunity accrue over time to create large gaps in advancement, she asserted.

In addition, women are typically evaluated in relation to a “masculine” standard of leadership, reported Catalyst’s earlier research.
Three consequences of this rating standard undermine leadership and advancement opportunities:

Extreme Perceptions, in which women are attributed behavioral excesses, such as “toughness” or “niceness,”
High Competence Threshold, when women leaders are held to higher standards and receive lower and fewer rewards than men,
Competent but Disliked, when women may be perceived either as “competent” or “likeable” but not both.

Phyllis Tharenou

Family structure can accelerate or slow career progress in unexpected ways.
Both “post traditional” mothers who have employed spouses, and “traditional” fathers whose wives are engaged in childcare only, more rapidly advanced in private sector careers than women and men with other family configurations, reported Phyllis Tharenou of Flinders University.
Somewhat surprisingly, non-parent women and men, and unmarried fathers advanced more slowly in their careers.

Employment disruption, such as maternity leave or layoff, did not impair career advancement for women and men, but the industry sector was associated with differing rates of career advancement.

Alice Eagly

In a separate analysis, Tharenou noted that the strongest predictors of advancing in management were managerial aspirations and masculinity.
Women were more likely to advance when they received career encouragement and when organizational hierarchies included both women and men.

To explain these career advancement rate discrepancies, University of Massachusetts’ Alice H. Eagly and Linda L. Carli of Wellesley suggested that women encounter a career labyrinth rather than a glass ceiling.

Linda Carli

Differences in career advancement rates may be narrowed by sponsorship rather than mentorship, argued Catalyst and Center for Talent Innovation.
Male advocates can support female sponsees by focusing attention on the challenges women face at work and can advocate for organizational processes and structures that normalize equivalent competence in women and men.

What type of “career encouragement” enable women to advance in careers at a rate similar to men?

RELATED POSTS:

Twitter @kathryn.welds
Facebook Notes

©Kathryn Welds

Iris Bohnet

An “evaluation nudge” is a decision framing aid that may reduce biased judgments in hiring, promotion, and job assignments, according to Harvard’s Iris Bohnet, Alexandra van Geen, and Max H. Bazerman.

Alexandra van Geen

They recommended that organizations evaluate multiple employees simultaneously rather than each person independently.
This approach differs from “Stack Ranking” (“Rank and Yank”), advocated by GE’s Jack Welch and critiqued by many.

Multiple simultaneous evaluations are frequently used for hiring decisions, but less frequently when considering employee candidates for developmental job assignments and promotions.

Max Bazerman

Bazerman and Sally B. White, then of Northwestern with George F. Loewenstein of Carnegie Mellon demonstrated preference reversals between joint and separate evaluation.

George F. Loewenstein

Lack of comparison information in separate evaluation typically leads people to rely on internal referents as decision norms. These internal criteria may be biased preferences, according to Princeton’s Nobel laureate Daniel Kahneman and Dale T. Miller of Stanford.

Dale T. Miller

Lack of comparative referents also can lead evaluators to rely on easily calibrated attributes, found University of Chicago’s Christopher K. Hsee.
Both of these mental shortcuts can systematically exclude members of under-represented groups.

Christopher K. Hsee

Another problem is the “want/should” battle of emotions and preferences, outlined by Bazerman and Ann E. Tenbrunsel of Notre Dame, with Duke’s Kimberly A. Wade-Benzoni in their provocatively titled article, “Negotiating with Yourself and Losing.”

Ann E. Tenbrunsel

They argue that the “want self” tends to dominate when deciding on a single option because there’s less information and less need to justify the decision.
In contrast, the more analytic “should self” is activated by the need to explain decision rationales.

Kimberly Wade-Benzoni

Bohnet’s team asked more than 175 volunteer “employees” to perform a math task or a verbal task, then 554 “employer” evaluators (44% male, 56% female) received information on “employees’” past performance, gender, and the average past performance for all “employees.”

“Employers” were paid based on their “employees’’” performance in future tasks, similar to managerial incentives in many organizations.
Consequently, “employers” were rewarded for selecting people they considered effective performers.
Based on information about “employee” performance, evaluators decided to:

“Hire” the “employees,” or
Recommend the “employees” to perform the task in future, or
Return “employees” to the pool for random assignment to an employer.

Keith E. Stanovich

The Harvard team found that “employers” who evaluated “employees” in relation to each other’s performance were more likely to select employees based on past performance, rather than relying on irrelevant criteria like gender.

Richard F. West

In contrast, more than 50% of “employers” evaluated each candidate separately without reference to other “employees,” selected under-performing people for advancement.
Only 8% of employers selected under-performers when comparing “employees” to each other, and multiple raters for multiple candidates also tended to select the higher performing “employees.”

Team Bohnet suggested that people have two distinct and situation-specific modes of thinking, “System 1” and “System 2,” illustrated by University of Toronto’s Keith E. Stanovich and Richard F. West of James Mason University.

These cognitive patterns can lead evaluators to select incorrect decision norms, leading to biased outcomes.

Decision tools like the “evaluative nudge” decision-framing can reduce bias in hiring and promotion decisions, leading to a more equitable workplace opportunity across demographic groups.

-*What other evaluation procedures can reduce unconscious bias in performance appraisal and career advancement selection processes?

Related Posts:

Twitter: @kathrynwelds
Facebook

Kathryn Welds, PhD | Curated Research + Commentary

Consulting Organizational Psychologist | Change Consultant | Leadership+Career Master Coach | Coach Supervisor+Mentor Coach |

Tag Archives: promotion

Comparative Rankings May Reduce Gender Bias in Career Advancement

Share this:

Like this:

Share this:

Like this: