Using survey findings and sociolinguistic research, Carroll and Yang explain why executives should enlist women as informal leaders to change organizational culture.
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References
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KruegerDeborah L., “Informal Leaders and Cultural Change,” American Nurse Today8, no. 8 (2013); Larry Reyes, “Informal Leaders – Do You Know Where They Live?” Culturati Magazine, Medium, June 7, 2018, https://medium.com/culturati/informal-leaders-do-you-know-where-they-live-8318de7b0f7b; Tabitha C. Stephens, “The Effect of Informal Leadership on Organizational Culture: A Qualitative Study” (PhD diss, Northcentral University, 2021).
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The first two facts are empirical findings from a survey we conducted in 2021-22 (see Carroll and Yang 2023). We surveyed a broad cross-section of the American labor force with employees of different demographic make-up and work experience. We took care to ensure a balanced sample across managerial status so that any gender effects we find are unaffected by the gender gap extant in managerial positions. A respondent is deemed a manager if they have responded ‘Yes’ to the question “Do you supervise or manage others?” After removing responses from individuals who did not complete attention checks and individuals who failed to complete a meaningful portion of the survey (20 percent), 988 non-managers and 990 managers remained in the sample. Out of these respondents, 1013 identified as male and 913 identified as female. We used linear regression models to analyze the survey responses. For each question, we estimated three sets of models: one model that only includes dummies, one model that includes gender and manage-rial status dummies, and one model that includes both gender and managerial status as well as their interaction. We found it essential to control for the effect of managerial status when examining the effect of gender on cultural perceptions, as the effect of managerial status and gender may be conflated due to the inequitable access to positions of power within organizations. We report models that show the basic findings. We also ran models that include different controls such as organizational size and organiza-tional tenure.
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CarrollGlenn R.YangLara, “Gender and Culture in Organizations: Perceptions, Beliefs and Experiences” (presentation, Berkeley Culture Conference, Haas School of Business, University of California, Berkeley, 2023).
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The specific mechanism(s) which drive the relationship between language and culture have long been speculated, but there is not yet any scientific consensus on the issue. See also: Culture Change, Language Change: Case Studies from Melanesia, ed. Tom Dutton (Department of Linguistics, Research School of Pacific Studies, The Australian National University, Canberra, 1992); Don Kulick, Language Shift and Cultural Reproduction: Socializa-tion, Self and Syncretism in a Papua New Guinean Village (no. 14) (Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press, 1997); Susan A. Gelman and Steven O. Roberts, “How Language Shapes the Cultural Inheritance of Categories,” PNAS Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the Unit-ed States of America 114, (2017): 7900-7907, https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1621073114.
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Given the smaller scale of organizational culture, the authority structure in place, and the known identities and roles of organizational members, there is also reason to doubt language operates the same way.
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RyanMichelleHaslamS. Alexander, “The Glass Cliff: Exploring the Dynamics Surrounding the Appointment of Women to Precarious Leadership Positions,” Acad-emy of Management Review32, no. 2 (2007): 549-572.
