Bridging the Gap: Gender, Work-Family Practices And Productivity

In spite of women making up increasing parts of the workforce, we are still far from gender equality when it comes to higher ranked positions. Work-family practices might help to bridge this gap. The doctoral thesis contains four essays in the context of gender, work family practices and productivity. In a first essay, the relation between the share of women serving on the supervisory board and firm performance is analyzed. The second essay studies whether firms that are characterized by a family-friendly culture are more likely to have women serving on their boards. The third essay studies a) potential institutional effects (country and industry) in the provision of work-family practices and b) the relation between the provision of work-family practices and extraordinary turnover. The fourth essay analyzes the role of parenthood for the publication productivity of researchers

Childbearing and (female) research productivity: a personnel economics perspective on the leaky pipeline

Despite the fact that childbearing is time-consuming (i.e., associated with a negative resource effect), we descriptively find female researchers with children in business and economics to be more productive than female researchers without children. Hence, female researchers with children either manage to overcompensate the negative resource effect associated with childbearing by working harder (positive incentive effect), or only the most productive female researchers decide to go for a career in academia and have children at the same time (positive self-selection effect). Our first descriptive evidence on the timing of parenthood among more than 400 researchers in business and economics from Austria, Germany and the German-speaking part of Switzerland hints at the latter being the case: only the most productive female researchers with children dare to self-select (or are selected) into an academic career. Our results have important policy implications when it comes to reducing the "leaky pipeline” in academia

Childbearing and (female) research productivity: a personnel economics perspective on the leaky pipeline

Despite the fact that childbearing is time-consuming (i.e., associated with a negative resource effect), we descriptively find female researchers with children in business and economics to be more productive than female researchers without children. Hence, female researchers with children either manage to overcompensate the negative resource effect associated with childbearing by working harder (positive incentive effect), or only the most productive female researchers decide to go for a career in academia and have children at the same time (positive self-selection effect). Our first descriptive evidence on the timing of parenthood among more than 400 researchers in business and economics from Austria, Germany and the German-speaking part of Switzerland hints at the latter being the case: only the most productive female researchers with children dare to self-select (or are selected) into an academic career. Our results have important policy implications when it comes to reducing the “leaky pipeline” in academia

Perceived roles of women directors on supervisory boards: Insights from a qualitative study

Joecks J, Pull K, Scharfenkamp K. Perceived roles of women directors on supervisory boards: Insights from a qualitative study. German Journal of Human Resource Management: Zeitschrift für Personalforschung. 2019;33(1):5-31.The (under-)representation of women on corporate boards is much debated among the public as well as in academia. In our exploratory article, we contribute to the literature by investigating women directors’ perceived roles by interviewing female as well as male board members and by employing the critical incident technique to address potential problems of social acceptancy. In the perception of board members, women directors fulfil three roles: they widen the boards’ perspectives and thus act as (unique) experts, they objectify discussions and they act as mediators

Neue Perspektiven im Aufsichtsrat

Joecks J, Pull K, Scharfenkamp K. Neue Perspektiven im Aufsichtsrat. Böckler Impuls. 2019