Compared to Men, Women View Professional Advancement as Equally Attainable, but Less Desirable

Francesca  Gino; Caroline Ashley Wilmuth; Alison Wood  Brooks

Article | Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences | October 6, 2015

Compared to Men, Women View Professional Advancement as Equally Attainable, but Less Desirable

by Francesca Gino, Caroline Ashley Wilmuth and Alison Wood Brooks

Abstract

Women are underrepresented in most high-level positions in organizations. While a great deal of research has provided evidence that bias and discrimination give rise to and perpetuate this gender disparity, in the current research, we explore another explanation: men and women view professional advancement differently, and their views impact their decisions to climb the corporate ladder (or not). In Studies 1 and 2, when asked to list their core goals in life, women listed more life goals overall than men, and a smaller proportion of their goals related to achieving power at work. In Studies 3 and 4, compared to men, women viewed high-level positions as less desirable yet equally attainable. In Studies 5–7, when faced with the possibility of receiving a promotion at their current place of employment or obtaining a high-power position after graduating from school, women and men anticipated similar levels of positive outcomes (e.g., prestige, money), but women anticipated more negative outcomes (e.g., conflict, tradeoffs). In these studies, women associated high-level positions with conflict, which explained the relationship between gender and the desirability of professional advancement. Finally, in Studies 8 and 9, men and women alike rated power as one of the main consequences of professional advancement. Our findings reveal that men and women have different perceptions of what the experience of holding a high-level position will be like, with meaningful implications for the perpetuation of the gender disparity that exists at the top of organizational hierarchies.

Keywords: Personal Development and Career; Gender;

Format: Print

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Citation:

Gino, Francesca, Caroline Ashley Wilmuth, and Alison Wood Brooks. "Compared to Men, Women View Professional Advancement as Equally Attainable, but Less Desirable." Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 112, no. 40 (October 6, 2015).

Article | Management Science | October 2020

Task Selection and Workload: A Focus on Completing Easy Tasks Hurts Long-Term Performance

Diwas S. KC, Bradley R. Staats, Maryam Kouchaki and Francesca Gino

How individuals manage, organize, and complete their tasks is central to operations management. Recent research in operations focuses on how under conditions of increasing workload individuals can decrease their service time, up to a point, in order to complete work more quickly. As the number of tasks increases, however, workers may also manage their workload by a different process—task selection. Drawing on research on workload, individual discretion, and behavioral decision-making, we theorize and then test that under conditions of increased workload, individuals may choose to complete easier tasks in order to manage their load. We label this behavior task completion preference (TCP). Using six years of data from a hospital emergency department, we find that physicians engage in TCP, with implications for their performance. Specifically, TCP helps physicians manage variance in service times; however, while it initially appears to improve shift-level throughput volume, after adjusting for the complexity of the work completed, TCP is related to worse throughput. Moreover, we find that engaging in easier tasks, as compared to hard ones, is related to lower learning in service times. We then turn to the lab to replicate conceptually the short-term task selection effect under increased workload and show that it occurs due to both fatigue and the sense of progress individuals get from task completion. These findings provide another mechanism for the workload-speedup effect from the literature. We also discuss implications for both research and the practice of operations in building systems to help people succeed.

Keywords: healthcare; knowledge work; discretion; Workload; Employees; Health Care and Treatment; Decision Making; Performance Effectiveness; Performance Productivity;

Citation:

KC, Diwas S., Bradley R. Staats, Maryam Kouchaki, and Francesca Gino. "Task Selection and Workload: A Focus on Completing Easy Tasks Hurts Long-Term Performance." Management Science 66, no. 10 (October 2020). View Details

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Compared to Men, Women View Professional Advancement as Equally Attainable, but Less Desirable

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