The Diversity Challenge: Part 2 of 5

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Editor’s note: Today we’re continuing our series on diversity, targeting specific questions to invite discussion and exploration of related topics. If you have a question that you’d like to see addressed, add it in the comments below!

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Part 2: Why do men outnumber women in academic leadership positions?

It’s been almost fifty years since gender discrimination in employment was outlawed in the U.S., but it’s been a lot longer since many of our nation’s patriarchal academic institutions were established.

Niki Murray, Marianne Tremaine, and Susan Fountaine, all of Massey University, published “Breaking Through the Glass Ceiling in the Ivory Tower: Using a Case Study to Gain New Understandings of Old Gender Issues” in the May 2012 issue of Advances in Developing Human Resources.

The abstract:

The Problem.

Universities are patriarchal institutions. More males reach upper levels of the academic hierarchy than females. The authors were concerned that their university had a marginally lower percentage of female professors than others in their country and used a survey and interviews to explore the facts behind the figures.

The Solution.

Statistics showed that though fewer females applied for promotion, proportionately more female applicants were successful. The authors researched what helped female professors and associate professors gain promotion and explored views on the spillover between work and family/community roles. Promotion enhancement factors included encouragement from department heads and senior colleagues. Family/community roles were seen to spillover positively to work, though work could negatively affect time for family and community involvement.

The Stakeholders.

These findings could encourage proactive mentoring of female academic staff by managers, and increase HR and HRD support for family-friendly policies and training programs.

To learn more about Advances in Developing Human Resources, please follow this link. To receive email alerts about newly published articles, click here.

Up next in the series: Which “minority” group is possibly the most underrepresented in the HRD diversity literature?

Advances in Developing Human Resources: February 2012 Issue Now Online!

Volume 14, Number 1 (February 2012) of Advances in Developing Human Resources is now available online. This special issue highlights Women and Leadership in Higher Education. We hope you will find it enjoyable and thought-provoking. You can view the Table of Contents here.

The lead article, “HERS Institutes: Curriculum for Advancing Women Leaders in Higher Education,” was published by Judith S. White, University of Denver.

The abstract:

The Problem.

At this critical time, higher education needs more women prepared to assume senior leadership roles, both to fill the openings from anticipated presidential retirements and to provide higher quality decision making through more diverse perspective at all levels of leadership.

The Solution.

Higher Education Resource Services (HERS), founded in 1972, has provided leadership development opportunities for more than 4,300 women faculty and administrators sponsored by1,100 institutions in the United States and abroad. HERS has recently implemented significant revisions of its signature HERS Institutes to address the new circumstances and challenges women leaders will face in guiding institutions in the decade ahead. This article examines the historical development of HERS, recent revisions, and future plans for expanding programs.

The Stakeholders.

Revisions to HERS Institutes suggestimplications for those developing women in HRD, conducting research on leadership development, or concerned about higher education as a new leadership cadre faces the demands of the future.

To learn more about Advances in Developing Human Resources, please follow this link.

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Are Universities Creating Millennial Narcissistic Employees?

James W. Westerman, Jacqueline Z. Bergman, Shawn M. Bergman and Joseph P. Daly, all of Appalachian State University, published “Are Universities Creating Millennial Narcissistic Employees? An Empirical Examination of Narcissism in Business Students and Its Implications,” in the May 2011 issue of the Journal of Management Education. Professor Westerman and Dr. Daly kindly provided the following responses on the article.

Who is the target audience for this article?

This article was targeted toward business instructors and business school administrators at the undergraduate and graduate levels – particularly instructors of management.  We also believe that there are implications from this research for business school career services and career development professionals.

Were there findings that were surprising to you?

One of our biggest surprises was a non-finding, that narcissism was not associated with better classroom performance among students.  We had thought that, since business courses are a short-term instructional setting and narcissists have been shown to excel in short-term learning settings, that they would outperform their non-narcissistic counterparts in that context.  The fact that the hypothesis was not supported by the data was a heartening development – it suggested that business professors in our sample are not cutting any slack or catering to their narcissistic students.  I think the other big surprise was the enhanced salary and career opportunities anticipated by narcissists, which were unrelated to their academic performance.  It seems interesting that narcissists expect to prosper in the business world.  

How do you see this study influencing future practice?

We see this study as influencing future management educators, raising their awareness of narcissism and its effects in the classroom.  In the article, we suggest some interventions that educators can try.  A more extensive discussion of corrective actions that includes administrative interventions is presented in our 2010 article in Academy of Management Learning & Education.

How does this study fit into your body of work/line of research?

Our previous work on narcissism in the business classroom extrapolated from previous research in other disciplines that narcissism was likely to be an increasingly difficult problem in management education.  This study was the first to test that proposition with regard to preparing students for managerial positions.

 How did your paper change during the review process?

One issue that kept coming up among reviewers was, given that our young professors are increasingly coming from Generation Y, what effect would that have on one’s teaching style?  We did measure narcissism levels among the instructors of our sample, but there were not enough observations to draw any meaningful conclusions. 

 What, if anything, would you do differently if you could go back and do this study again?

We would like to replicate this study, only with a Chinese sample to compare to our existing American sample.  China is a land of contrasts.  One the one hand, we would expect narcissism to be lower among the Chinese because their culture is a collectivistic one, which would mitigate against the self-absorption that is a hallmark among narcissists.  However, on the other hand, Chinese students in Generation Y are overwhelmingly from one child families.  Many of their countrymen refer to them as “little emperors” because their parents dote on them so much.  Parental doting is thought to be a root cause of narcissism.