The main point of this article is that very powerful and successful Black men often possess disarming mechanisms—traits, features, or behaviors that signal warmth or docility (e.g., babyfaceness). It is argued that these traits are beneficial to Black male leaders in white dominated organisations because it makes their power seem less threatening.

Much gender research has shown that women face backlash for behaving in ways that are too assertive or dominant, because these behaviors contradict feminine gender norms and prescriptions. However, this research has only looked at White women. The current paper shows that Black female leaders do not suffer an agency penalty for expressing dominant behavior, whereas White female leaders and Black male leaders do suffer a penalty for expressing dominant behavior.

If Black are free to express dominant and assertive behaviors, then why aren’t there more Black women in positions of leadership? This paper aims to
investigate this question by investigating the penalties that Black and White male and female leaders face for making mistakes on the job. Results show that Black women face ‘double jeopardy’ in that they are penalized more than White women or Black men for making competence-related mistakes on the job. This is because Black women are farther removed from the ‘White male leader prototype’ making their errors appear more diagnostic of an inherent inability to lead  

This paper assessed in the impact of benevolent behaviors (i.e., generosity) on leadership perceptions. Results show that benevolence increased prestige but actually decreased dominance. Furthermore, leader selection in the context of intergroup competition was predicted by dominance rather than prestige. This results suggest that, in some contexts, being benevolent can actually decrease the likelihood of leadership attainment because it makes the individual appear kind but weak. Implications for leader malfeasance and corruption are discussed.

Why do some organizations adopt human resources policies that support LGBT employees, but others do not? This paper examines external and internal influences to determine why organizations may choose to adopt LGBT-friendly HR policies. The results suggest that the political environment of the location in which the firm is headquartered, the representation of women in high status positions, and whether other companies in the same industry have adopted LGBT-friendly policies are all related to company policy toward LGBT-employees.

Supporters of policies that force gay and lesbian individuals to conceal their sexual orientation in the workplace argue that working with openly gay individuals undermines performance. We examine this claim in two studies and find the opposite effect. Specifically, participants working with openly gay partners performed better on a cognitive task and a sensory-motor task than individuals left to wonder about the sexual orientation of their partner.

We suggest that because racial discrimination claims made by Blacks potentially challenge the legitimacy of racial inequality, whereas racial discrimination claims made by Whites potentially reinforce the legitimacy of racial inequality, social dominance orientation (SDO) may differentially predict reactions to Black and White discrimination claimants. Consistent with this idea, Studies 1 and 2 suggest that negativity toward Blacks who make discrimination claims increases as a function of participants' SDO, while SDO predicts increased positivity toward Whites who make discrimination claims. Moreover, Study 3 demonstrates that differential reactions to White discrimination claimants as a function of SDO are particularly likely to occur when racial inequality is thought to be unstable; when racial inequality is thought to be stable, SDO does not predict positive reactions to White discrimination claimants. In all, the reported studies provide evidence for the idea that reactions to Black and White discrimination claimants may serve a role in respectively challenging or reinforcing racial inequality.

Three studies tested and confirmed the hypothesis that secure attachment relationships lead to feelings of security and energy, as well as willingness to explore. In Study 1, priming a secure attachment relationship increased felt security and energy. In Studies 2 and 3, felt energy mediated the effect of (primed) secure attachment relationships on willingness to explore. In Study 3, the effect of (primed) secure attachment relationships on felt energy and willingness to explore was independent of general positive affect. Secure attachments energize partners, thus enabling exploration.

The individual self, relational self, and collective self are important and meaningful aspects of identity. How- ever, they plausibly differ in their relative importance such that one self lies closer to the motivational core of the self-concept, better represent the “home base” of selfhood, or, simply stated, is motivationally primary. Four multi-method studies tested the relative motivational-primacy of the selves. Despite their disparate methods, the studies yielded consistent evidence of a three-tiered hierarchy with the individual self at the top, followed by the relational self, and trailed at the bottom by the collective self. The same hierarchy emerged in the Eastern culture of China and the Western cultures of the US and UK. Such pancultural consis- tency suggests that the motivational hierarchy is a fundamental pattern of the human self.

We focus on the core institution of the capital market and the institutional work of professional service firms that provide ratings on corporate issuers, initially in a bid to maintain this institution, which suffered when those involved relied solely on information from the issuers themselves. Through our analysis we identify a new type of decoupling—complicit decoupling. Complicit decoupling evolves over time, beginning with the creation of a new practice, here corporate ratings as a form of policing work, which emerges to help to maintain a core institution. This practice is then adopted, implemented and later becomes decoupled. Exposure does not undermine the legitimacy of the practice because external actors collude in the ‘window dressing’ and, because it has become normalized, only partial repairs are enacted. It is by nature field-level institutional work, benefiting the majority of the field and inherently involves a violation of promise keeping. We conclude with implications for managers and behavioral ethics researchers.

Although institutional theory has become a more dominant perspective in information systems research, studies have only paid scant attention to how field dynamics and organizational processes coevolve during information technology institutionalization. Against this backdrop, we present a new conceptualization based on the “traveling of ideas” metaphor that distinguishes between theorization of ideas about IT usage across an organizational field and translation of such ideas into practical use of IT within particular organizations. Drawing on these distinct analytical views, we posit that IT institutionalization is constituted through recursive intertwining of theorization and translation involving both linguistic and material objects. To illustrate the detailed workings of this conceptualization, we apply it to a longitudinal study of mobile IT institutionalization within Danish home care. We demonstrate how heterogeneous actors within the Danish home care field theorized ideas about mobile IT usage and how these ideas translated into different local arrangements. Further, our account reveals a complex institutionalization process in which mobile IT was first seen as a fashionable recipe for improvement but subsequently became the subject of controversy. The paper adds to the emerging process and discourse literature on IT institutionalization by shedding new light on how IT ideas travel across a field and within individual organizations, how they transform and become legitimized over time, and how they take on different linguistic and material forms across organizational settings.

Knowledge-intensive firms (KIFs) have been the subject of growing interest from researchers. However, investigations into the comparative experiences of men and women in KIFs remain sparse, and little is known about women’s participation in the processes of innovation and knowledge exchange and combination that are core features of KIFs. We report on the findings of a study in the UK and Ireland involving 498 male and female knowledge workers in KIFs. Despite equal levels of qualification and experience, women are more likely to be in lower status and more insecure jobs. They also predominantly occupy roles featuring less variety and autonomy than men and, despite comparable levels of knowledge exchange and combination, are less likely to be in a position to translate this into the innovative work behaviours necessary for career advancement. Our findings suggest that women’s experiences of and participation in knowledge processes within KIFs differ fundamentally from men’s..

TSecretarial work has been described as one of the most persistently gendered of all occupations. Historically, it has been characterized as a ghetto occupation with three key features: low status and poor pay, narrow and feminized job content and poor promotion prospects. Twenty years ago, when a major study last took place in the UK, it was thought that new office technologies might transform the role, leading to a newly defined occupation equally appealing to both men and women. In this article, we report on the findings of a questionnaire survey involving 1011 secretaries. We found evidence of continuity and change. Secretaries are now better qualified and generally well-paid. A minority is undertaking complex managerial tasks. However, most secretaries continue to perform traditional tasks and career prospects for all remain bleak. We conclude that processes of role gender-typing are deeply entrenched and that secretarial work remains largely a ghetto occupation.