Faculty & Research
Research
Research
11
Results
- September 2022
- Teaching Material
Marsha Simms: Trailblazer in Corporate Law
By: Robin Ely, Boris Groysberg and Colleen Ammerman
| Teaching Note for HBS Case No. 422-012. |
- April 2022
- Case
Marsha Simms: Trailblazer in Corporate Law
By: Robin Ely, Boris Groysberg, Colleen Ammerman and Olivia Hull
| Follows the journey of lawyer Marsha Simms from her childhood in racially-segregated St. Louis to the upper echelons of the New York legal community. Describes her education, career choices, accomplishments, and setbacks. Highlights significant moments such as her... |
- 2021
- Working Paper
A Systems Psychodynamic Perspective on the Persistence of Racial Inequality at Work
By: Sanaz Mobasseri, William Kahn and Robin Ely
| This paper uses systems psychodynamic concepts to develop a theory about the persistence of racial inequality in U.S. companies, treating White men as the dominant group and Black people as an illustrative subordinate group. We theorize that this persistence is rooted... |
- March–April 2020
- Harvard Business Review
What's Really Holding Women Back? It's Not What Most People Think
By: R. Ely and Irene Padavic
| Ask people to explain why women remain so dramatically underrepresented in the senior ranks of most companies, and you will hear from the vast majority a lament that goes something like this: High-level jobs require extremely long hours, women's devotion to family... |
- March 2020
- Administrative Science Quarterly
Explaining the Persistence of Gender Inequality: The Work-family Narrative as a Social Defense Against 24/7 Work Culture
By: Irene Padavic, Robin J. Ely and Erin M. Reid
| It is widely accepted that the conflict between women’s family obligations and professional jobs’ long hours lies at the heart of their stalled advancement. Yet research suggests that this “work-family narrative” is incomplete: men also experience it and nevertheless... |
- September 2018
- Journal of Social Issues
Thoughts on the Workplace as a Masculinity Contest
By: R. Ely and Michael Kimmel
- May–June 2018
- Harvard Business Review
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... |
- Harvard Business Review
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... |
- 2018
- Book 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... |