Representation and underrepresentation: a phenomenological study of barriers facing female leaders in the contract management profession

Theoretical literature and empirical research confirmed the contracting profession is male dominated. Although there has been progression in the total representation, women remain critically underrepresented in leadership roles, specifically, executive management within the contracting profession. The number of women holding C-suite titles such as, Chief Executive Officer (CEO), Chief Operations Officer (COO), Chief Financial Officer (CFO), and Executive Vice President remain low. A democratic leadership view ceases to exist if there is a lack in representation, despite gender. An equitable distribution of organizational power between genders is imperative. The primary focus of this qualitative study is to understand barriers faced by women in the contracting profession and how these barriers impact underrepresentation of women in leadership. A phenomenological approach was used to interview participants, which allowed the researcher to capture real life experiences to infer similarities and differences. In-depth interviews were conducted with 19 female professionals in the field of contract management who were employed in Government, Nonprofit and Private sectors. Participants in this study varied from different states, career backgrounds and organizational culture. Several themes emerged during the interviews concerning current representation, obstacles, strategies, best practices and recommendations. This study is a representation of today’s contracting environment and best practices employed by todays contracting professionals. Understanding the obstacles women face and strategies used to influence career advancement will help women prepare for challenges. Many women spoke about experienced biases in the sense of pre-conceived ideas or knowledge that resulted in unfair treatment. Conclusions of this study reveal there has been progression in the contracting profession as findings reveal there is now equal representation of genders in leadership. The findings of this study cannot be generalized to a larger population but results conclude there are initiatives in place for diversity, equity and inclusion within the field

Walking in the Woods: A Phenomenological Study of Online Communities of Practice and Army Mentoring

Recent changes in written Army leader doctrine have reaffirmed the informal practice of mentorship as a component of subordinate leader development. At the same time, the use of Professional Forums in the Army has the potential to alter commonly accepted norms, policies, and practices of mentoring. This dissertation conducted a phenomenological study of how lived experience in the Forums complemented or detracted from the practice of Army mentoring. The study found that the lived experience closely corresponded to Kram’s mentoring functions, with additional documented experiences in the areas of peer and computer-mediated communications mentoring. The participants’ practices of mentoring within the chain of command and crossgender mentoring were significantly impacted by unique aspects of Army culture. The researcher found that the Professional Forums were supportive of mentoring practice, but were not mentoring spaces themselves. Participants credited the Forums with helping them identify viable mentoring partners and refining their own mentoring practices. Forum participants believed that their engagement in those spaces gave them a positive outlook on Army mentoring. The study’s findings suggest best practices for informal Army mentoring while illuminating new directions for quantitative research in cross-gender and CMC-based mentoring

The Reckless Pursuit of Dominion: A Situational Analysis of the NBA and Diminishing Player Autonomy

This Article examines required genetic testing of NBA players from a situational vantage point, integrating socio-psychological, legal, and ethical analyses. The core argument may be expressed as follows: required genetic testing of NBA players appears consistent with a broader and largely deleterious agenda by the NBA to control players. Since implementation of the rookie wage scale in 1995 through the recent imposition of a paternalistic player dress code, the NBA has increasingly usurped player autonomy. The NBA\u27s capacity to do so largely rests in its adroit manipulation of the situational influences that influence fans and media. For instance, because of unappreciated cognitive biases, fans and media often embrace distorted views of player\u27s maturity, arrest propensity, and collegiate experiences. As a result, NBA players tend to be wrongly identified as immature, out-of-control, and hopelessly uneducated. In turn, the NBA has designed policies that ostensibly remedy these feigned problems while less-detectably transferring autonomy from player to league. In short, the league sees that others often fail to see, and that enables it to surreptitiously control players

Moving Right Along: Examining The Venture Gestation Process For Black Women Entrepreneurs

Entrepreneurship is becoming one of the most sault after professions due to factors such as locus of control, flexibility, need for achievement, autonomy, and escaping corporate America. Many have come to realize that some of the most common reasons for pursuing entrepreneurship are not as convenient as expected. In fact, some of the inequalities experienced in corporate America are also experienced during venture creation. This is more so apparent for marginalized groups such as people of color, people with disabilities, and women. This study explores the barriers faced by African American women during the venture creation process and some of the contributing factors that play a role in successful creation of new ventures. This study will explore two of the more popular avenues to gaining access to experience social capital and human capital, what the experience of Black women entrepreneurs have been in terms of gain access to those forms of capital, as well as how this particular group of entrepreneurs are creating ventures inspire of the challenges. The results revealed that there was a statistically significant negative relationship between gendered racial microaggressions and individual factors among black women xii entrepreneurs. The results expand the findings of Lewis and Neville (2015), A. M. Jones (2020), Sue (2010), Capodilupo et al. (2010), and other researchers in the literature who concluded with the negative impact microaggressions have on Black women to include the also negative impact on Black women entrepreneurs during the venture creation process. The results also reveal that although the moderating effect of superwoman schema on the relationship between individual factors and venture gestation activity was not significant, the findings show a pattern of moderation. However, a recent study concluded that the superwoman schema can negatively impact both the mental and physical health of Black women (Woods-Giscombé et al., 2019). The findings from this research is two-fold, entrepreneurs can utilize the study to create a playbook for eliminating risk associated with their encounters with microaggressions while presenting researchers with preliminary data around microaggressions in the field of entrepreneurship. Future research should explore other control variables to determine whether moderating effects exist between the individual factors and the levels of superwoman schema