Propelling diverse leaders to the top: A developmental network approach

Stanford Network for Advancement and Promotion: The impact of a community building-focused leadership development program on the success of underrepresented groups in academic medicine

BACKGROUND

Leadership can be an isolating experience and leaders from underrepresented groups (URGs) may experience even greater isolation and vulnerability because of lack of representation. Given the collaborative nature of medicine, leadership programs for physicians need to address isolation. Social support is one mechanism to combat this isolation; however, most leadership programs focus exclusively on skills building.

PURPOSE

The Stanford Network for Advancement and Promotion (SNAP) program was developed to reduce isolation among physician leaders from URGs in academic medicine leadership by building a supportive network of peers.

METHODOLOGY/APPROACH

Ten women physicians from diverse racial/ethnic backgrounds were invited to participate in SNAP. Annual surveys were administered to participants to assess the effectiveness of SNAP on decreasing feelings of isolation and increasing professional leadership growth. The authors charted the expansion and adaptation of the program model across gender and in additional settings.

RESULTS

SNAP effectively created a sense of community among the physician leaders. Participants also reported feeling challenged by the program and that they had grown in terms of critical thinking, organizational knowledge, and empowerment as leaders. Participants found community building to be the most valuable program component. Because of this success, the SNAP model has been adapted to create 10 additional cohorts.

CONCLUSION

Leadership programs like SNAP that focus on reducing isolation are instrumental for retaining and promoting the career advancement of physicians from URGs.

PRACTICE IMPLICATIONS

Developing a diverse workforce of academic physicians is essential to providing high-quality and equitable clinical care, research, and medical education.

What's the point in even trying? Women's perception of glass ceiling drains hope

In this study, we focus on glass ceiling perceptions, characterized by women's subjective feelings about their ability to move upward in their organization. Drawing on social information processing and hope theory, we propose that glass ceiling perceptions decrease women's citizenship behaviors and increase their turnover intentions by draining their hope in the workplace. Moreover, we suggest that the strength of the association between glass ceiling perceptions, drained hope in the workplace, and these two outcomes is conditional upon women's perceptions of their work-family conflict. Using a two-study design, we tested our hypothesized relationships. We found a mediating effect of drained hope in the workplace between glass ceiling perceptions and (a) turnover intention and (b) organizational citizenship behaviors. This effect is significant when work-family conflict is high. Finally, we discuss the implications of our findings regarding the tensions that women experience with simultaneously managing their careers and conflict in the family.

Proactivity and Job Search: The Mediating Role of Psychological Closeness With External Mentors

Building on contest and sponsored-mobility perspectives, we explain how proactivity enables individuals to develop external mentoring support. By becoming psychologically close with external mentors, we predict that protégés engage in greater job search as additional job opportunities become visible. Results of two studies from different data sources (MTurk and Prolific Academic) support a connection between external mentoring and job search. Moreover, our first study suggests that gender alters the conditional indirect effect of psychological closeness with external mentors, such that women compared to men, who may have a smaller pool of internal mentors to connect with, initiate and benefit more from the influence of external mentors. In our second study, we find partial support for mediation from proactivity to job search self-efficacy (but not job search behavior) through psychological closeness with external mentors, but no gender effect. We urge career counselors to encourage individuals to consider diversifying mentoring outside of organizations.

Just and Inclusive Team Climates Affect Mentoring Satisfaction: The Roles of Negative Mentoring and Race

As more work is being conducted in teams, mentees have increased opportunities to develop non-traditional mentoring relationships. We investigate how and when three aspects of team climate (procedural justice, interpersonal justice, and inclusion) influence mentoring satisfaction among mentees with an informal secondary mentor. Using survey data from 116 researchers on environmental science teams, we test whether (a) just and inclusive team climates are related to mentoring satisfaction through positive and negative mentoring experiences and (b) race moderates the relationships between just and inclusive team climates and mentoring satisfaction. We found that negative mentoring experiences mediated the relationships between just and inclusive team climates and mentoring satisfaction. Further, just and inclusive team climates were positively related to mentoring satisfaction, especially for people of color. These results suggest that positive team climates support informal mentoring in teams by reducing negative mentoring experiences and creating a welcoming environment for individuals from marginalized groups.

Combining lifelines to thrive: a stage-based need fulfilment network of international assignees

Purpose

The paper tries to understand the needs of the international assignees across the different stages of expatriation and how different developers in the professional and non-professional sphere render support and advice through these stages.

Design/methodology/approach

In this paper, the authors have interviewed 20 expatriates of various nationalities and tried to understand the various needs of the expatriates across the three initial stages of an assignment.

Findings

The paper finds that four important mentors in an expatriation assignment play multiple need-based mentoring functions at various assignment stages: host country nationals (HCNs), parent country nationals, fellow expatriates and family.

Research limitations/implications

This paper contributes to the literature on the need-based support rendered to expatriates during an international assignment. The paper, however, does not incorporate the perceptions of other vital stakeholders in the network and their intentions to contribute to the developmental network.

Practical implications

This paper lays down important practical implications for expatriates and the human resource management (HRM) professionals. This paper urges the practitioners to take a nuanced approach for developing expatriates than a generalized mentoring programme.

Originality/value

This study highlights the changing needs of the international assignees across the stages of an international assignment and demonstrates the important intra-organizational and extra-organizational developers such as family members in the fulfilment of these needs.

Increasing Career Advancement Opportunities Through Sponsorship: An Identity-Based Model With Illustrative Application to Cross-Race Mentorship of African Americans

The sponsorship function of mentoring has vast potential to increase career advancement for African American protégés in cross-race mentoring relationships but is not well understood. We conceptualize the processes, practices, and challenges involved in cross-race sponsorship of African American protégés through an identity perspective. We provide a theory regarding how identity processes are involved at different stages of cross-race sponsorship involving African American protégés, as well as for their mentors, by drawing on identity, diversity, and mentoring research. This work is suggestive of opportunities for improvement in the sponsorship function of mentoring in order to increase career advancement for African American protégés and provides theoretical contributions to research on identity, diversity, and career advancement.

International Top Managers on Corporate Boards: Dissimilarity and Tenure

The number of top managers with foreign nationality and of top managers with international work experience on corporate boards has increased over the last decades. In business and management literature, the common understanding is that board diversity and international work experience for board members go hand in hand with numerous positive consequences for MNCs. But how does dissimilarity in nationality and in international work experience affect a top manager and his or her tenure on the board? Drawing on interpersonal attraction research and analyzing 149 management board members from German DAX-30 firms, we find empirical evidence that dissimilarity in nationality and in international work experience have a negative association with tenure. Based on social capital theory, we also suggest that the nexus between a top manager with an international background and his or her tenure is moderated by ‘firm insidership’. Our data confirm that having work experience in a firm before being appointed to its board is indeed linked to longer tenure but does not alleviate the disadvantages of being international. In sum, the resulting implication of our research is that, contrary to widely accepted scholarly opinions, a top manager’s international background may also have detrimental effects—in our case negative effects on tenure.

Women’s Developmental Networks and Career Satisfaction: Developmental Functions as a Mediator

The current research empirically examined the developmental networks of female workers and how the network configurations influence their subjective career success, with particular attention to the gender and status composition of the network along with other network characteristics. Data from 427 female workers with a college degree or higher in the Republic of Korea were analyzed using egocentric network analysis and structural equation modeling methods. The findings suggested that (a) the network characteristics of intimacy and network size showed a direct positive effect on career satisfaction, while contact frequency and network range showed a direct negative effect; (b) intimacy, network size, and developers’ status indirectly affected career satisfaction mediated by the function of role modeling, while career support and psychosocial support played no mediating role between network characteristics and career satisfaction; and (c) women benefited from relationships with higher status developers, regardless of their gender, mainly through enhanced role modeling. Based on these, practical implications and recommendations for future research were presented.