It's a man's world! The role of political ideology in the early stages of leader recruitment

Publication Type

Journal Article

Publication Date

1-2021

Abstract

Previous research has demonstrated the impact of political ideology on a wide variety of psychological and behavioral processes. Contributing to this research, we examine the effect of organizational decision makers' political ideology and job candidates' gender on how the decision makers communicate information about leadership positions to the candidate. In five studies, we demonstrate that decision makers who are more conservative exhibit gender bias by providing a female (versus male) candidate with a less positive description of a leadership position, an effect driven by the decision makers' felt anxiety. We further show that making information on women's success in leadership positions salient diminishes the effect of political ideology insofar as both more and less conservative decision makers will exhibit similar levels of positivity when communicating with a prospective female candidate. Finally, we discuss the theoretical and practical implications of our findings.

Keywords

Political ideology, Leadership, Gender bias, Threat, Anxiety

Discipline

Human Resources Management | Leadership Studies | Organizational Behavior and Theory

Research Areas

Organisational Behaviour and Human Resources

Publication

Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes

Volume

162

First Page

24

Last Page

41

ISSN

0749-5978

Identifier

10.1016/j.obhdp.2020.10.017

Publisher

Elsevier

Additional URL

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.obhdp.2020.10.017

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