Women are conspicuously absent from the top tiers of Corporate America, representing less than five percent of executive level positions. Despite changing family roles and increases in education, workforce participation, and career commitment, women are not assuming organizational positions of leadership and power. Research suggests three theoretical perspectives for causal explanation, each with its own implications for organization development strategies: the person-centered, organization-centered, and gender-organization-centered views. Recent demographic, economic, and social change has altered the face of labor and consumer markets motivating corporate leaders to initiate responses to attract and retain women managers. This study provides a synopsis of the corporate responses of 110 of "The Best Companies for Women" (Zeitz and Dusky, 1988). The purpose of this research is to define the extensiveness and developmental level of programming to promote women manager's upward mobility in these bellwether companies, and to determine organizational characteristics or antecedents that may be conducive to efforts supporting women managers. The research is a quantitative analysis based on responses to a mailed survey consisting of 36 questions addressed to corporate executives. Data analyses include descriptive statistics summarizing and reporting the findings, and correlational statistics testing the hypotheses. Results indicate that the sample organizations are addressing women's underrepresentation in upper-level management through the development of extensive, fairly highly evolved programs. The trend is shifting from exclusively individual-centered approaches toward organization-centered and combination strategies representing integrated, multi-pronged solutions. These organizations recognize the need to alter structural barriers limiting access based on gender, and are accepting their responsibility to change. Findings suggest that programs promoting women's upward mobility are supported by companies tending to: be large and non-unionized, have higher proportions of female workers/leaders, have high levels of EEO accountability and CEO support for women's agendas, maintain a high degree of formalization including EEO tracking systems, and exercise innovative management practices within moderately hierarchical or flattened organization structures. Hypotheses testing indicates significant positive associations between company size, level of EEO accountability, CEO involvement, and formalization of EEO record-keeping systems, and the level of corporate policy development to advance women's status.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:UMASS/oai:scholarworks.umass.edu:dissertations-7598 |
| Date | 01 January 1996 |
| Creators | Mirante, Diane |
| Publisher | ScholarWorks@UMass Amherst |
| Source Sets | University of Massachusetts, Amherst |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | text |
| Source | Doctoral Dissertations Available from Proquest |
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