The effect of family control on value and risk-taking in Mexico: A socioemotional wealth approach

We construct an analytical framework to incorporate agency and stewardship perspectives, and the concept of socioemotional wealth (SEW), to analyse the effect of family participation on firm value and corporate risk-taking in Mexico. We find family firms enjoy higher value and tolerate higher levels of risk than non-family concerns. This differential becomes more important in more highly valued firms and more risk tolerant firms. Whereas the differential is also positively associated with the cash ownership of controlling families, the observed value/risk effects entrench at higher levels of family ownership (i.e. above 40%–50%). We test whether the risk-taking preference of family firms is a mixture of two types of risk, performance hazard risk, which captures the familial desire to preserve SEW; and venturing risk, which firms take in expectation of improving future performance. Family firms seem to take more performance hazard risk independently of their cash flow ownership, which suggests that family firms perceive patrimony as a means of safeguarding resources for heirs, which raises tolerance to performance hazard risk. Firm value increases when firms follow good corporate governance practices

Key issues for gender research in HRD: a multi-stakeholder framework for analysing gendered media constructions of women leaders

YesGender research can be a highly political process with significant impact, positively or negatively, on the researcher(s) and research participants. As a result there are key issues for consideration when preparing to undertake gender research in Human Resource Development (HRD). Gender research in HRD requires a mature level of researcher reflexivity in terms of personal understandings of gender; individual researcher values, philosophical positions and standpoints on gender; motivations for research; awareness of how gender research may construct researchers in their own professional settings and how research participants may respond to gender research. We contend that a process of researcher reflexivity, in critically reflecting upon and reviewing individual assumptions and standpoints, is essential before beginning gender research. Gender is a significant dimension of personal life, social relations and culture: an arena where we face difficult practical issues about justice, identity and even survival; where there is much prejudice, myth and falsehood, and where social sciences gender research is producing a relatively new form of knowledge (Connell, 2009). This chapter outlines key issues for gender researchers illustrated through research into gendered media constructions of women leaders. We introduce the importance of women leaders and gender aware learning and HRD and outline understandings of gender; diverse advances in gender research; consistency, harm, pleasure and power; participant-research relationships and the researcher’s position in gender research, by drawing upon our previous studies. We then present the key issues in practice, through our operationalization of a Multi-Stakeholder Framework for analysing gendered media constructions of women leaders. We utilize a mixed method design (Saunders, 2012) of statistical analysis of secondary data on women in senior positions in a UK region (geographies of gender); analysis of three Supplements of the Top 500 Influential Leaders via discourse analysis; a semi-structured interview with a media producer; group and individual interviews with selected aspiring and current women leaders and stages of on-going researcher reflexivity and accountability. We conclude with reflections on the constraints and possibilities of the multi-stakeholder framework approach

Key issues for gender research in HRD: a multi-stakeholder framework for analysing gendered media constructions of women leaders

YesGender research can be a highly political process with significant impact, positively or negatively, on the researcher(s) and research participants. As a result there are key issues for consideration when preparing to undertake gender research in Human Resource Development (HRD). Gender research in HRD requires a mature level of researcher reflexivity in terms of personal understandings of gender; individual researcher values, philosophical positions and standpoints on gender; motivations for research; awareness of how gender research may construct researchers in their own professional settings and how research participants may respond to gender research. We contend that a process of researcher reflexivity, in critically reflecting upon and reviewing individual assumptions and standpoints, is essential before beginning gender research. Gender is a significant dimension of personal life, social relations and culture: an arena where we face difficult practical issues about justice, identity and even survival; where there is much prejudice, myth and falsehood, and where social sciences gender research is producing a relatively new form of knowledge (Connell, 2009). This chapter outlines key issues for gender researchers illustrated through research into gendered media constructions of women leaders. We introduce the importance of women leaders and gender aware learning and HRD and outline understandings of gender; diverse advances in gender research; consistency, harm, pleasure and power; participant-research relationships and the researcher’s position in gender research, by drawing upon our previous studies. We then present the key issues in practice, through our operationalization of a Multi-Stakeholder Framework for analysing gendered media constructions of women leaders. We utilize a mixed method design (Saunders, 2012) of statistical analysis of secondary data on women in senior positions in a UK region (geographies of gender); analysis of three Supplements of the Top 500 Influential Leaders via discourse analysis; a semi-structured interview with a media producer; group and individual interviews with selected aspiring and current women leaders and stages of on-going researcher reflexivity and accountability. We conclude with reflections on the constraints and possibilities of the multi-stakeholder framework approach

Negative Intra-gender Relations between Women: Friendships, Competition, and Female Misogyny

The following chapter explores the nature of women’s negative intra-gender social relations, offering new insights into gendered organizations and how gendered organizing processes impact upon social interactions and relationships between women. We theorize women’s negative intra-gender relations by fusing theory in the areas of doing gender well and differently (Mavin and Grandy 2011); gendered contexts; homophily (Lazarsfeld and Merton 1954) and homosociality (Gruenfeld and Tiedens 2005); women’s intra-gender competition (Campbell, 2004), and processes of female misogyny (Mavin, 2006a, b), as complex interlocking gendered practices and processes (Acker 2009). Our contribution is a conceptual framework of women’s intra-gender relations, which reveals under-researched, often hidden forms of gender in action. We extend the theoretical development of women’s negative relations by recognizing that they have the power to limit the potential for homosocial and homophilous relations between women and conclude by offering questions to guide future research agendas

Gender, disability and professional work: The need to question established norms

This paper will explore the situation and experiences of disabled professionals by presenting a review of existing literature, with the purpose of developing a research agenda for the collection of further empirical data. Our focus is on disabled workers in professions who, because of their educational qualifications and status in the labour market, are a group that should potentially have access to working practices that are positively associated with continued employment amongst disabled people