Diverse boards, rather than CEOs, are key to advancing equity and diversity in companies

American companies face mounting pressure to advance workplace equity and diversity. From business consultants to human resource personnel, from shareholders to the media, the message to companies is clear: diversity and equity matter in today’s workplace. But what is the best path for companies to achieve these goals? Using data from Fortune 500 firms, Alison Cook and Christy Glass argue that the key is promoting diversity on the board of directors

Women are more likely than men to be appointed CEO of firms in crisis

And they do it with less support and more scrutiny than men CEOs, write Christy Glass and Alison Coo

Breathing in the Anthropocene: Thinking Through Scale with Containment Technologies

Thinking at the scale of the Anthropocene highlights the significant burden on all life imposed by the residues of industrialization as well as continued pollution. But it also risks a disconnect between the functioning of planetary atmospheres and the functioning of local airs. In this thought-piece, we consider together the potato chip bag, the asthma inhaler, and climate positive building design as scalar practices of Anthropocene air. By figuring Anthropocene air as an interscalar vehicle, we show connections between matter and relations that seem distant and disconnected. We do this by honing in on respiration as a transformative atmospheric process that has been designed in advanced capitalism to extend life for some, while denying life for others. We point to seconds, hours, days, weeks, and seasons to highlight how containment technologies and respiratory processes function in the Anthropocene to remake air. These technologies and practices, which all too often go unnoticed in consumption landscapes, demonstrate that despite Anthropocene air’s tendency to exceed human agency, it is liable to engineering. Doing this offers insight into where different scales of action can be mobilized

Institutional Predictors of Campus Sexual Misconduct Reporting: The Role of Gender in Leadership

Sexual misconduct remains at crisis levels on American college campuses and is vastly underreported. Most research focuses on individual level risks of assault and perpetration, yet campuses vary significantly in sexual offenses and reporting rates. The current study responds to calls to consider institutional factors that shape campus climates for sexual misconduct and reporting. We consider the role of gender in leadership, analyzing the impact of women\u27s appointment as college president on reporting rates over time. We consider individual and organizational mechanisms that may shape the impact of women\u27s appointment on reporting rates. Our analyses rely on data from U.S. colleges and universities between 2005-2020. We find that the appointment of women presidents is associated with a significant increase in reporting of sexual misconduct. We observe a significant increase in reporting during the first year following the appointment and a continued increase in reporting rates over time

In Jill Abramson\u27s Firing, Was the \u27Glass Cliff\u27 to Blame?

Our research on CEOs in the Fortune 500 finds that women leaders face two significant challenges: the “glass cliff” and the “savior effect”. First, we find that women are more likely than men to be appointed CEO to struggling firms or firms in crisis. This phenomenon is termed the “glass cliff” because it suggests that when women are appointed to top positions these positions are often precarious or risky. Second, we find that when firms struggle under the leadership of women CEOs, these leaders are likely to be replaced by men. We term this phenomenon the “savior effect” because when organizations struggle under the leadership of women, decision makers often revert to more traditional leaders who are perceived to be capable of “saving” the organization. Our research finds strong and significant evidence for both the glass cliff and the savior effect for women leaders. Overall, women leaders face greater challenges and are given fewer opportunities to demonstrate their capabilities than their male counterparts.https://digitalcommons.usu.edu/huntsman_news/1185/thumbnail.jp

Management Forecasts, Analyst Revisions, and Investor Reactions: The Effect of CEO Gender

In this study, we examine whether CEO gender affects the likelihood of management forecast issuance, forecast properties, and subsequent reactions from analysts and investors. We use a panel data set of CEO transitions between 2000 and 2015 to test our hypotheses. We find that while women CEOs are more likely to issue earnings forecasts after a CEO transition, the characteristics of forecasts issued by women and men CEOs do not differ. Furthermore, we find that CEO gender significantly affects analyst and investor reactions. In particular, we find that analysts and investors demonstrate a more tempered reaction to good news forecasts issued by women CEOs compared to men CEOs. Overall, our findings suggest that analysts and investors find management forecasts issued by women CEOs to be less credible than forecasts issued by men CEOs despite no apparent differences in their forecast properties

Galaxies Probing Galaxies at High Resolution: Co-Rotating Gas Associated with a Milky Way Analog at z=0.4

We present results on gas flows in the halo of a Milky Way-like galaxy at z=0.413 based on high-resolution spectroscopy of a background galaxy. This is the first study of circumgalactic gas at high spectral resolution towards an extended background source (i.e., a galaxy rather than a quasar). Using longslit spectroscopy of the foreground galaxy, we observe spatially extended H alpha emission with circular rotation velocity v=270 km/s. Using echelle spectroscopy of the background galaxy, we detect Mg II and Fe II absorption lines at impact parameter rho=27 kpc that are blueshifted from systemic in the sense of the foreground galaxy's rotation. The strongest absorber EW(2796) = 0.90 A has an estimated column density (N_H>10^19 cm-2) and line-of-sight velocity dispersion (sigma=17 km/s) that are consistent with the observed properties of extended H I disks in the local universe. Our analysis of the rotation curve also suggests that this r=30 kpc gaseous disk is warped with respect to the stellar disk. In addition, we detect two weak Mg II absorbers in the halo with small velocity dispersions (sigma<10 km/s). While the exact geometry is unclear, one component is consistent with an extraplanar gas cloud near the disk-halo interface that is co-rotating with the disk, and the other is consistent with a tidal feature similar to the Magellanic Stream. We can place lower limits on the cloud sizes (l>0.4 kpc) for these absorbers given the extended nature of the background source. We discuss the implications of these results for models of the geometry and kinematics of gas in the circumgalactic medium.Comment: 14 pages, 6 figures, submitted to ApJ, comments welcom

High-Velocity Outflows Without Agn Feedback: Eddington-Limited Star Formation in Compact Massive Galaxies

We present the discovery of compact, obscured star formation in galaxies at z ~ 0.6 that exhibit 1000 km s–1 outflows. Using optical morphologies from the Hubble Space Telescope and infrared photometry from the Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer, we estimate star formation rate (SFR) surface densities that approach ΣSFR ≈ 3000 M ☉ yr–1 kpc–2, comparable to the Eddington limit from radiation pressure on dust grains. We argue that feedback associated with a compact starburst in the form of radiation pressure from massive stars and ram pressure from supernovae and stellar winds is sufficient to produce the high-velocity outflows we observe, without the need to invoke feedback from an active galactic nucleus