Publications
Publications
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- All HBS Web
(120,064)
- Faculty Publications (118)
- May–June 2018
- Article
What Most People Get Wrong about Men and Women: Research Shows the Sexes Aren't So Different
By: Catherine H. Tinsley and Robin J. Ely
Why have women failed to achieve parity with men in the workplace? Contrary to popular belief, it’s not because women prioritize their families over their careers, negotiate poorly, lack confidence, or are too risk averse. Meta-analyses of published studies show that... View Details
- Article
Beating the Odds: Leadership Lessons from Senior African-American Women
Any list of top CEOs reveals a stunning lack of diversity. Among the leaders of Fortune 500 companies, for example, just 32 are women, three are African-American, and not one is an African-American woman. What’s going on? The authors studied the careers of the roughly... View Details
- 2018
- Chapter
Organizational Remedies for Discrimination
By: R. Ely and A. Feldberg
Laws now exist to protect employees from blatant forms of discrimination in hiring and promotion, but workplace discrimination persists in latent forms. These “second-generation” forms of bias arise in workplace structures, practices, and patterns of interaction that... View Details
- 2016
- Working Paper
Explaining the Persistence of Gender Inequality: The Work-Family Narrative as a Social Defense Against the 24/7 Work Culture
By: Irene Padavic, Robin J. Ely and Erin M. Reid
It is widely accepted that the conflict women experience between family obligations and professional jobs’ long hours lies at the heart of their stalled advancement. Yet research suggests that this “work-family narrative” is partial at best: men, too, experience... View Details
- December 2014
- Article
Rethink What You 'Know' about High-Achieving Women
By: Robin Ely, Pamela Stone and Colleen Ammerman
On the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the admission of women to Harvard Business School's MBA program, the authors, who have spent more than 20 years studying professional women, set out to learn what HBS graduates had to say about work and family and how their... View Details
- September 2013
- Article
Women Rising: The Unseen Barriers
By: Herminia Ibarra, Robin Ely and Deborah Kolb
Even when CEOs make gender diversity a priority—by setting aspirational goals for the proportion of women in leadership roles, insisting on diverse slates of candidates for senior positions, and developing mentoring and training programs—they are often frustrated by a... View Details
- January 2013
- Case
Zappos.com 2009: Clothing, Customer Service, and Company Culture (MM)
By: Frances X. Frei and Robin J. Ely
On July 17, 2009, Zappos.com, a privately-held online retailer of shoes, clothing, and other soft-line retail categories, learned that Amazon.com, a $19 billion multinational online retailer, had won its Board of Directors' approval to offer to merge the two companies.... View Details
- September 2012 (Revised September 2015)
- Case
Doing Business in Turkey
By: Felix Oberholzer-Gee, Robin J. Ely, Daniela Beyersdorfer, Emilie Billaud and Cigdem Çelik
In a rather flat international business environment characterized by shrinking markets and economic turmoil, Turkey promoted itself as one of the safe havens for investments. Led by the strong domestic demand of a young population, the country had tripled its GDP... View Details
- 27 Jun 2012 - 29 Jun 2012
- Keynote Speech
An Organizational Approach to Undoing Gender: Lessons From Men in a Macho Occupation
By: R. Ely
- March 2012
- Article
Racial Diversity, Racial Asymmetries, and Team Learning Environment: Effects on Performance
By: Robin J. Ely, Irene Padavic and David A. Thomas
This paper argues that learning in cross-race interactions is critical for work teams to realize performance benefits from racial diversity but that diversity is a liability when society's negative stereotypes about racial minorities' competence inhibit such... View Details
- September 2011
- Article
Taking Gender into Account: Theory and Design for Women's Leadership Development Programs
By: Robin J. Ely, Herminia Ibarra and Deborah Kolb
We conceptualize leadership development as identity work and show how subtle forms of gender bias in the culture and in organizations interfere with the identity work of women leaders. Based on this insight, we revisit traditional approaches to standard leadership... View Details