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• Working Paper | HBS Working Paper Series | 2017

  Class Matters: The Role of Social Class in High-Achieving Women's Career Narratives

  Judith A. Clair, Kathleen L. McGinn, Beth K. Humberd and Rachel D. Arnett

  Our study explores the career narratives of women from diverse social class backgrounds as they describe how they ascended to elite organizational roles despite severe gender underrepresentation. We illuminate the varied ways that high-achieving women understand and retell their career stories, identifying five broad approaches to narrating their ascent against the odds: serendipity, competence, social ties, maneuvers, and aggressive action. We demonstrate the role that social class origins play in shaping the career narratives of these high achieving women. Women from lower social class backgrounds employ highly agentic narratives to fuel their success against the double obstacles of gender and class. In contrast, women from middle- and upper-class origins were constrained in their use of agentic narratives and were more likely to describe their success in terms of serendipity. The present findings shed light on the variation in women’s career narratives and demonstrate that some women deviate significantly from gender stereotypes by narrating their success using extreme levels of agency typically associated with men.

  Keywords: Personal Development and Career; Gender; Success; Diversity; Perception;

  Citation:

  Clair, Judith A., Kathleen L. McGinn, Beth K. Humberd, and Rachel D. Arnett. "Class Matters: The Role of Social Class in High-Achieving Women's Career Narratives." Harvard Business School Working Paper, No. 18-014, August 2017. (Revised for requested resubmission.)  View Details

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• Case | HBS Case Collection | July 2016

  Cataumet Boats, Inc.

  W. Earl Sasser and Mark Davis

  Jaime Giancola, an MBA student, has recently completed an operations management course in which aggregate production planning (APP) was one of the topics. She believes that her family's business, Cataumet Boats, which her grandparents started and which her mother and uncle now own, might benefit from applying APP concepts to identify the different ways they might schedule workers, which could be especially valuable during the peak demand seasons of fall and spring. The goal of using APP is to reduce labor costs without sacrificing the high level of customer service that Cataumet Boats is known for providing.

  Keywords: Business or Company Management; Family Business; Production; Cost Management; Transportation; Customer Satisfaction;

  Citation:

  Sasser, W. Earl, and Mark Davis. "Cataumet Boats, Inc." Harvard Business School Brief Case 917-509, July 2016.  View Details

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• Teaching Note | HBS Case Collection | July 2016

  Cataumet Boats, Inc. (Brief Case)

  W. Earl Sasser and Mark Davis

  Citation:

  Sasser, W. Earl, and Mark Davis. "Cataumet Boats, Inc. (Brief Case)." Harvard Business School Teaching Note 917-510, July 2016.  View Details

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