Leadership, Power, and Politics @IPLS

What a delight it was to catch-up with so many colleagues (e.g., my former TU Munich team members, pictured below) at the Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Leadership Symposium in Corfu, Greece. As usual, Olga Epitropaki (Durham University) and Sophia Tzagaraki did a great job organizing. I also enjoyed the keynote by one of my Swiss colleagues, Christian Zehnder (University of Lausanne).

It was invigorating to present some new ideas we’re really excited about and to experience the impressive collective brain in the room for our papers on leadership, power, and humor (with Petra Schmid, ETH Zurich, and Sam Yam, NUS) and coauthor networks (with Brooke Gazdag).

I am grateful to the SAGW, who funded part of my conference travel.

Let's get digital! ...and inclusive.

Delighted to share that Prof. Brooke Gazdag (LMU) and my new big data research on digital inequality and collaboration in science has been accepted for presentation at the inaugural the ETH-organized conference on organizing in the digital era in Switzerland. *UPDATE* Due to a time conflict that arose after acceptance, however, we unfortunately had to withdraw our paper and miss out on this amazing conference.

Our symposium on humor (with Prof. Rashpal Densa-Khalon, University of Surrey, co-organizer, and Prof. Cecily Cooper, University of Miami, discussant) that includes my paper on humor in uncertainty, as well as the symposium on gender bias in organizations (led by Prof. Samantha Paustian-Underdahl, Florida State University, and Dr. Kate Frear, Center for Creative Leadership) that includes our paper on identity and motivated reasoning (with Profs. Tyler Okimoto, University of Queensland, and Xinxin Li, Shanghai Jiao Tong University) have been accepted for presentation at the 79th annual Academy of Management Conference in Boston.

Looking forward to meeting colleagues, coauthors, and new contacts, starting, joining, and continuing discussions, and sharing science on a local and global scale.

My 1st FINT in snowy St. Gallen

Earlier this month, I attended my first FINT (First International Network on Trust) conference, which was conveniently located in the nearby Swiss city of St. Gallen. The conference included a fantastic line-up of speakers from academia, banking, and non-profit organizations, including UZH’s own Prof. Roberto Weber and St. Gallen’s Prof. Antoinette Weibel (she and her team seamlessly organized/hosted this fantastic event this year). I presented a “first cut” paper on humor as a trust cue as part of our current Swiss National Science Foundation project. I also actively participated in the many social events and Swiss experiences, including an Apéro with alphorn, Swiss fondue in a cheese factory, and yodeling with Appenzellers.

Attendees were encouraging and inclusive, even for me–a diversity researcher “outsider” who is merely beginning to dabble in trust research. Indeed, my first FINT was a cool experience (both metaphorically and literally). I’m delighted to have started the year off right with such inspiring presentations, interactions, and discussions.

For more information about FINT, see here. All photos credited to the official FINT photographer, Altius Media.

"Improving Lives" @AOM 2018 in Chicago

78th Annual Meeting of the Academy of Management

The 5-day Academy of Management (AOM) Conference just concluded in Chicago, USA. With more than 11,000 experts from around the world, I joined 6 of my Munich team members and my UZH team member to actively engage in scholarly conversations about ways that leaders and organizations can improve employee well-being as well as our society as a whole.

Together with Claudia Peus (TUM), I organized a symposium on early career (female) leaders and fit, drawing from leading international scholars from China, Colombia, Germany, Ireland, Israel, and the USA. Together with Xinxin Li and Sandy Lim (NUS), I presented a new experimental study on gender, parenthood, and selective incivility at work. Finally, through the OB early career faculty workshop, the leadership research incubator and the GDO early career faculty paper workshop, I received invaluable advice on other papers, including my new humor project with Agnes Baeker (UZH).

It was fantastic to reconnect with colleagues and coauthors, make new connections over shared curiosities, start some new projects, and see a little bit of Chicago. However, 5 days of packed schedules with 11,000+ conference-goers and a 7-hour time change is enough to make even this extreme extrovert a bit tired...

What leaders actually do...

3rd Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Leadership Symposium

Last week, a small, interdisciplinary group of international leadership scholars gathered for the 3rd IPLS symposium in Crete, Greece. I presented a new paper coauthored with Agnes Baeker on humor in potential leaders (see below).

UZH was well-represented with our incoming chair of HRM and Leadership, Jochen Menges. TUM was also well-represented, as Peus chair alumni Susanne Braun, Brooke Gazdag, Tanja Hentschel, and Jennifer Sparr also presented their work (three of us pictured below).

We were encouraged and entertained by organizers Niels van Quaekebeke (KLU) and Olga Epitropaki (Durham), and challenged by critical keynotes from Jeff Edwards (UNC) and John Antonakis (Lausanne).

New Forms of Leadership Conference

We welcomed a great group for our "New Forms of Leadership" conference at TUM School of Management Executive Education on Friday, November 10, in Munich. Main themes included part-time and shared leadership models, leader's flexible accommodations (e.g., flex-place and -time) and family leaves, how digitization facilitates these new leadership and work models, and if such models are especially important for Generation Y (i.e., Millennials) or female employees.

Thanks again to our talented organizers, energizing speakers and science slammers, and engaged attendees from practice and research.

My science slam presentation of first results from our ForGenderCare Project, "Leaders who care," is here.

Dissertation Award for Jamie Gloor at Academy of Management 2017

Dr. Jamie L. Gloor has just been honored with the Emerald Best Dissertation Award. (Gender & Diversity in Organizations Division). She will be recognized at the upcoming Academy of Management annual meeting in Atlanta, Georgia (USA) this August. This is the largest international conference in the field of management with 10,000+ scholar and practitioner attendees annually and 18,000+ members.  

The winning paper based on her dissertation completed at the chair in HRM at the University of Zurich is titled, "An inconvenient truth? Interpersonal and career consequences of 'maybe baby' expectations;" this paper was also recently selected for inclusion in the prestigious Best Paper Proceedings of the Academy of Management. It is coauthored with Xinxin Li (NUS), Prof. Sandy Lim (NUS), and Dr. Anja Feierabend (UZH) and based on a research project funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation and swissuniversities' SUK Program 4 as part of the University of Zurich’s Action Plan Gender Equality (2013-16).

"Leaders who care: Better leaders by (not) being there?"

Last week, Jamie presented an empirical paper at the 50th European Association for Social Psychology in Granada, Spain titled, Caring leaders: The impact of parental leave on the perception of transformational leadership. Coauthored with Dr. Lisa Horvath, Professors Susanne Braun and Claudia Peus (abstract/more info here), this paper provides fresh, first results from the ForGenderCare project and was part of a stellar symposium titled, Barriers to achieving gender equality: Shortcomings of placing the burden on women with top gender, diversity, and leadership scholars (more info here).

EASP hosted ~1,200 scholars and practitioners from across Europe, the United States, Australia and beyond from disciplines such as social, developmental, and work psychology, management and organizational behavior. Jamie and her paper received a warm welcome with a room full of attendees and average temperatures that reached 30+ degrees... 

Just a few weeks prior, Jamie also presented the paper at the Executive Education Center of the Technical University of Munich as part of the Munich Leadership Colloquium, where she received encouraging and formative feedback.

Best Paper in EURAM Paris!

After 4 days in Paris, plenty of new people, a plethora of papers, and so many socials, another EURAM has now come to a close. We had super Swiss scholar representation from the University of Zurich (e.g., Drs. Christian Voegtlin and Matthias Beck) and CDI in St. Gallen (Dr. Kyrill Bourovoi). It was a lot of fun presenting my new paper (with coauthors Xinxin Li and Sandy Lim from NUS in Singapore, and Anja Feierabend from UZH), 

 “Maybe Baby” in Everyday Employment:
Incivility at the Intersection of Gender and Parenthood

which was nominated as "Most Inspirational Paper" of the entire conference (from 1,500 submissions) and won "Best Paper" of the Organisational Behaviour Strategic Interest Group (from 183 submissions). We're excited and honored for the recognition-I guess we better hurry and get this paper published now... ;-)

Looking forward to seeing some of these now familiar faces from across Europe (and the world) next year in Glasgow!  

Leadership Excellence & Gender Symposium with Thought-Leaders @Purdue

After a 3 day symposium filled with talks, discussions, break-out groups, and socials with an intimate group of 50 or so scholars and practitioners, I am reinvigorated with purpose, creativity (and criticism) of the persistent and pervasive gender inequality (as well as the research we conduct to improve the state of the science and practice).

A few thoughts and reflections:

• Thanks for the organization by the Purdue team and to my colleagues for their engaged participation! It takes a village. And resources. Bravo & danke!
• I am increasingly skeptical of the causal claims people make (or should make in order to inform practice and policy) in the areas of gender and diversity (Thanks, John, for recruiting me into your endogeneity army!). We need this sort of evidence to stir the pot and stimulate the snail's pace of progress towards gender parity!
• Since we as humans are so biased and inefficient in our decisions and in the management and selection of our talent, I also find it difficult to understand why nudges aren't being used to their full potential (e.g., see Dr. Iris Bohnet's (Harvard) "What Works: Gender Equality by Design."). 
• Isn't gender equality in unpaid labor just as important as gender equality and inclusion in paid labor? After all, paternity leave is just as important for women's careers as it is for men's involvement in their child(ren)'s lives and development. Let's not limit equality to half the population or one domain of life and lose sight of the bigger picture.
• Thanks to Professor Kevin Leicht, who reminded me of the ever-increasing social and economic inequality between classes. Let's not get wrapped up in making the privileged more privileged. After all, "A nation's greatness is measured by how it treats its weakest members." - Mahatma Ghandi