Expert voices

EXPERT VOICES

▶ His business, her business: How different are men and women’s motives for entrepreneurship?

- Johan MAES ▶ Can You Force Change Within a Company? - Anna CANATO ▶ Identifying market mavens on social media - Kristof COUSSEMENT ▶ Keys to effective corporate branding - Kenneth DE ROECK and François MAON ▶ Employers prefer to promote men… but not always - Ann-Sophie DE PAUW

HIS BUSINESS, HER BUSINESS: HOW DIFFERENT ARE MEN AND WOMEN’S MOTIVES FOR ENTREPRENEURSHIP?

In some economies, male entrepreneurs outnumber female entrepreneurs four to one. How can public policies bridge such a large gender gap – and eventually boost growth? To encourage women to launch businesses, it’s necessary to first understand their precise motives, which are distinct from men’s, as a novel study shows.

Quick, name a famous entrepreneur! Was the first name to pop into your head Bill GATES? Steve JOBS? Maybe Richard BRANSON? But how many male names until you thought of Arianna HUFFINGTON or Oprah WINFREY? The test will probably work just as well for mom-and-pop shop as for multi-billion-dollar businesses. That’s because there are fewer female than male entrepreneurs, as the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor, an international study, notes in its annual reports.

This discrepancy exists in nearly every economy, except in a handful of countries among which Ecuador, Mexico, and Ghana (where businesses are likely to be roadside fruit stands, but businesses nonetheless). Still, all studies demonstrate striking differences between men and women in entrepreneurial activity. Belgium for instance has a whopping ratio of four male to one female entrepreneur. This means there is ample room to encourage women to launch business ventures, which is particularly strategic in the current context of economic downturn. “Stimulating entrepreneurship is the most obvious way to create economic growth and get out of the crisis. It’s a top priority on the agenda in many countries, and especially in Western Europe and North America,” says IESEG researcher Johan MAES. But in order to provide the right stimulus, it’s necessary first to identify what motivates entrepreneurs, male and female.

Modeling entrepreneurial behavior Research over the past decades has already shown the effectiveness of a psychological model, the Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB), to predict entrepreneurial intentions. Johan MAES and two co-authors, Hannes LEROY from Cornell University in the US and Luc SELS

from the KU Leuven in Belgium, used that model as a guiding framework to examine the gender gap in entrepreneurial intention. The Theory of Planned Behavior aims to explain many kinds of human behavior, from smoking to the pursuit of higher education, or in this case entrepreneurship, through three factors: personal attitude (is the person interested), perceived social norms (is the environment supportive), and perceived ability (does the person possess the necessary skills) regarding the said behavior.

The fact that the model is based on perceptions rather than solid facts does not make it any less relevant. As Johan MAES points out, “perceptions are the core drivers that push people to act or not to act.” In previous studies based on the TPB model, researchers have found a positive

and significant influence of gender on two of the three factors: men feel more attracted to an entrepreneurial career (attitude) and deem themselves more capable of achieving it (perceived control) compared to women. In an interesting cultural comparison, similar observations

BIOGRAPHY Johan MAES has been teaching human resources management, organization theory and quantitative research methodology at IÉSEG since 2010. He obtained his Master’s in commercial engineering in 1998, then his Ph.D. in applied economics in 2006 from the KU (Catholic University) Leuven in Belgium, where he is also a guest lecturer.

were made on a study on the entrepreneurial intentions of Chinese graduates. However, social norms were found to have little effect. Johan MAES qualifies these results, though, saying he believes general social norms do play some role, albeit less strongly than the opinions of immediate close circles of friends, families and partners. “If we distinguished between the reasons for entrepreneurship, I think social norms would be stronger, in the sense of approval if the motive is economic necessity, less so if the motive is simply to enjoy more autonomy than in salaried employment,” he says. But the researcher and his co-authors dug deeper into the actual measurement of the TPB model.

Measuring the interplay of gender and perceptions The researchers fine-tuned the measurement instruments by looking at the indicators behind the explicative factors.

For example, on the factor level, an individual may see entrepreneurship as more or less desirable, but men and women do so for different reasons: wealth, autonomy, self-fulfillment, and so on.

To test where and how gender plays a role in shaping attitudes, etc., they asked 437 Belgian business students – on the verge of deciding on their career orientation – about their opinions regarding entrepreneurship.

The survey covered expectations (for example “as an entrepreneur you make a good living”) as well as preferences (“I think it is important to earn enough money”). The analysis confirmed several hypothesis regarding gender differences. When it came to personal attitudes, men were motivated mainly by money and the challenge of launching a business. Women, though also motivated by money, saw entrepreneurship more as an opportunity to strike a better work/life balance. Regarding perceived control, the overall picture showed that internal aspects (“is my idea valuable enough?”) were stronger predictors of entrepreneurship than external aspects (“is the market favorable?”), which did not weigh much. The

exception was the legislative environment (“will I make it through the administrative mumbo-jumbo?”), which seemed to daunt women. Also, women attributed more importance to having adequate capabilities than men, perhaps because entrepreneurial skills – decision making, problem solving, leadership, and so on - are more malestereotyped.

Finally, though women appeared more eager than men to comply with social expectations, the study did not detect any significant differences in the normative beliefs of men versus women.

Encouraging entrepreneurship With all these subtleties in mind, how can governments design public policies not just to encourage entrepreneurship in general, but also to encourage women to overcome the specific impediments obstructing their participation? Johan MAES suggests that advisory bodies need to be aware of gender differences in motivations so as to give adequate support. One example could be promoting entrepreneurship as a way to answer a femalegendered issue such as balancing work and family life.

“But it’s tricky,” he admits. “Setting up gender-specific advice could backfire: either men or women could get angry at the idea of being targeted differently.” Also, he figures that in some economies where telecommuting and flexible schedules are becoming more common, the flexibility driver could become less strong.

The researcher thinks that another way to encourage women to believe that they have what it takes is simply to have more female role models. “Female entrepreneurs need to be more present, to tell their stories in the media,” he says. He is also trying to convince his colleagues to invite more female businesswomen for chats with students in classrooms.

ZOOM sur la recherche à l’IÉSEG

Methodology Johan MAES and his co-authors conducted a survey on a sample of 437 business students from Ghent University and KU Leuven, the two largest universities in Flanders, Belgium.

The graduate students were asked to rate how much they agreed with items in 8 thematic sets about entrepreneurship, ranging from their personal intentions to their beliefs in terms of necessary skills and resources and support from the government or their friends, families and partners.

Les professeurs permanents de l’IÉSEG ont une mission de recherche : ce sont les membres du centre de recherche de l’École, IÉSEG Research.

Son objectif est de faire progresser les connaissances dans les différents domaines du management et de l’économie appliquée.

Ses membres publient dans les meilleures revues scientifiques internationales.

L’IÉSEG est la seule École de Management française, avec HEC, dont le centre de recherche est une composante essentielle d’une Unité Mixte de Recherche CNRS. Le LEM (Lille Économie et Management) regroupe plus de 100 chercheurs et permet de former des Docteurs en économie et gestion.

CAN YOU FORCE CHANGE WITHIN A COMPANY? Based on an interview with Anna CANATO and on her article, “Coerced Practice Implementation

in Cases of Low Cultural Fit: Cultural Change and Practice Adaptation During the Implementation of Six Sigma at 3M,” co-authored with Davide RAVASI, (Professor at City University, London) and

Nelson PHILLIPS (Professor at Imperial College London, , and at Aalto University, Finland), published in Academy of Management Journal, December 2013.

Change management consultants often say that it is necessary to create consensus in an organization before initiating large-scale changes. However, there has been little analysis of actual cases of change initiatives, and how they develop in the long term. A new study takes a look at what happened at 3M—a company known for its permissive, innovative culture — when a CEO came in and imposed the analytical, data-driven Six Sigma method.

“entrepreneurial spirit, serendipitous discovery and tolerance for mistakes.” Could a marriage between two such disparate approaches possibly work out?

Anna CANATO, the first author of the study, notes that traditional organizational theory and change management theories tend to hypothesize that “if a company isn’t ready for change, you can’t implement it. It would just be rejected, or you’d have a ceremonial implementation.”

Flash back to the year 2000 and the Internet bubble.

The American multinational company 3M had always been known for innovation and creativity, as popularized by the Post-it product, yet its board was beginning to feel that the company was too insular. The stock price was not growing as rapidly as it used to be, and business analysts were claiming that high-tech Silicon Valley based companies were more innovative than the wellestablished mid-west multinational.

However, the study found something different: initially there was a honeymoon period with the Six Sigma method because the company realized cost savings and increased profitability, and because 3M’s culture was favorable to new experiments. Also, the new CEO personally advocated the implementation of Six Sigma across the entire 3M organization worldwide. He forcefully emphasized its importance in helping the company to regain efficiency and profitability, and how crucial it was to him personally.

It was “at the top of [his] agenda,” he said. The 3M share price nearly doubled between 2001 and 2004.

The 3M board decided it was time to introduce new blood and hired Jim McNERNEY as the first CEO in 3M’s 100-year history to come from outside the company.

McNERNEY had been vice president of General Electric under Jack WELCH, and he quickly introduced into innovation-oriented 3M the Six Sigma practices that Welch popularized at GE. A GOOD MARRIAGE? As the authors of the paper “Coerced Practice Implementation in Cases of Low Cultural Fit” explain, “Six Sigma is a process management methodology originally developed to enhance efficiency in manufacturing: when applied to administrative processes, it enforces process standardization and efficiency improvement.”

Compare this to the culture at 3M, which encouraged

THE HONEYMOON IS OVER However, after this early period, doubts returned about the disconnect between Six Sigma and what many employees saw as the identity of the company. “Six Sigma has this terrifying thing of not wanting errors,” one 3M divisional director said in the study. “But if you do innovation the way we do, pure risk is something you have to be able to admit and accept.” He hypothesized that the company’s star product, Post-its, would never have been produced if Six Sigma had been in place at the time. “And if Six Sigma would block a hypothetical new Post-it, then Six Sigma is not for us.”

“detrimental to growth and innovation.” Eventually, eve McNERNEY himself seemed to back away from the methodology, and began to talk more about the importance of developing new products. But Six Sigma had taken on a life of its own, with some managers enforcing it more strictly than the CEO himself, regardless of fears of some 3M employees that it was undermining the “soul” of the organization.

ADAPTATION AND ACCOMODATION Then, in June 2005, McNERNEY unexpectedly left 3M to take a position at Boeing. His successor, George BUCKLEY, began to relax the emphasis on the Six Sigma structure. What happened at this point is perhaps the most revealing part of the study. “Eventually, after five or

Some employees acknowledged the value of having been forced to adopt the new methods: “Now that we have tried it, it is clear that we are something different,” one marketing manager said. For example, though certain Six Sigma tools might not be employed, the data-driven approach remained in some departments. “At first blush, it seemed impossible that Six Sigma would work at 3M,” Anna CANATO says, “and yet in the end, people were saying, ‘You know what? This methodology has enriched my way of doing things.’”

six years after the adoption, the Six Sigma practice was integrated into the company, which is surprising, because it started as a methodology that clashed with the culture of the company,” explains Professor CANATO. But it was perhaps a kinder, gentler Six Sigma that was accepted into the company, a version that was more in keeping with the company’s essence. The study observed that the relaxation of coerced adoption allowed employees to drop elements that were considered less useful and retain others.

One element of Six Sigma that was initially disliked but ultimately retained was standardization tools. In the end, these tools offered employees worldwide a common vocabulary with which to communicate. This facilitated collaboration and innovation —values in keeping with traditional 3M culture.

Many participants in the study felt that Six Sigma became

BIOGRAPHY Methodology

Anna CANATO worked for several years as a strategy and change management professional and taught in other major European business schools before joining IÉSEG in 2009, where she directs the management and strategy department. She has studied and published numerous articles on corporate culture and teams.

A DIFFERENT CULTURE It was not only how Six Sigma was used at the company that changed: Six Sigma changed the company’s culture as well. Even though past research suggests that implementation of a specific management practice would not have a substantial impact on an organization’s culture, this study found that 3M’s culture had indeed shifted after its experimentation with Six Sigma.

The study consisted of a qualitative, longitudinal case analysis that examined a European subsidiary of 3M and its American.

The researchers conducted several interviews and noted their observations during extensive company visits in Europe and in the US in the period between 2005 and 2008.

BUSINESS APPLICATIONS In situations where it’s important from a business, market and/ or financial perspective to make a radical change in a company’s culture, it may be more effective to test a new initiative rather than try to convince everyone of its benefits.

“Observing the 3M case, we realized that, in certain cases, you don’t know the value of something, and whether it would be beneficial, until you try it,” say Anna Canato. “We always tend to believe that a certain organizional culture can’t be changed, but in practice we observed that they are more malleable and prone to evolution than what predicted by the current literature”.

She also points out, that the study indicates that a change initiative works best when leaders take the time to analyze a company’s culture and identity to work out a plan to ease the shift in culture. Although the study looked at change initiated from the highest level (the CEO), the information from the study could be also applied to a business unit or other division within a company.

For example, if a unit manager had to begin the implementation of a new software but the unit’s team members were resistant, it might make sense to spend some time to analyze where the biggest difficulties lie, and where are the opportunities to have a fit between the company values and the new application.

IDENTIFYING MARKET MAVENS ON SOCIAL MEDIA Based on an interview with Kristof COUSSEMENT and his paper “Identification of Market Mavens on Social Media,” coauthored with Paul HARRIGAN, Tim DALY, Julie LEE, and Geoff SOUTAR. Social media networks such as Twitter are rife with opportunities for creating more effective online marketing campaigns. But there are huge problems with trying to gather and analyze the valuable data created on these networks. Marketing analytics professor Kristof COUSSEMENT explains how his research sheds light on one of the most pressing problems confronting online marketers: identifying influential consumers, or market mavens, on social networks.

Kristof COUSSEMENT and his coauthors have published a study that provides a framework for identifying market mavens (see definition) active on Twitter using only empirical measures. “Previously, market mavens could only be identified through self-reporting,” explains COUSSEMENT. “With our new decision support framework, you don’t have to survey people any longer. You can use empirical measures derived from the social media environment to identify them automatically.” COUSSEMENT et al. believe their research is an important step forward. As they have written in their paper, “Marketers will still need to make decisions about what mavens can do for their campaigns, and how they will engage with them, but having built a first step in identifying mavens we believe the way forward is bright with possibilities.”

Market mavens play increasingly important role Thanks to the proliferation of social media tools, consumers have gone from simple message receivers to message generators and propagators, and those who exert the most influence over consumer-generated word-of-mouth — i.e., market mavens — are more important than ever to marketers. Coussement notes, however, that the rich new opportunities for targeting market mavens on social media networks has its challenges. The first challenge that needs to be addressed, he says, is the problem of how to identify them. This is the central problem that COUSSEMENT et al. address in their research.

Company and brand mentions on Twitter Of all the social networks out there, COUSSEMENT et al. chose to study Twitter. “From a company’s perspective, Twitter was challenging to us,” explains COUSSEMENT. “There are huge problems with handling the abundance of the data on social media networks, and Twitter is one of the social media platforms where the most data is created. For any large corporation, such as Apple or Coca-Cola, tweets that mention their brands appear constantly.” Indeed, around 500 million tweets are sent per day, and about 20% contain brand mentions. In short, Coussement et al. chose to study Twitter due to its high volume, high number of users, the fact that the data is in real-time and highvelocity, and requires textual processing — characteristics that make this space particularly challenging and, at the same time, potentially highly rewarding for companies.

Definition of market maven

2. User behavior: COUSSEMENT et al. hypothesized that market mavens are more active than non-mavens.

Specifically, they hypothesized that market mavens have: 1) a significantly higher number of tweets compared to non-mavens; 2) a significantly higher number of retweets compared to non-mavens; 3) a significantly higher percentage of interactions compared to non-mavens.

3. Message readability: Using the Automated Readability Index (ARI), which generates the approximate American education level required to understand the tweet, COUSSEMENT et al. hypothesized that market mavens have significantly more readable tweets compared to nonmavens.

4. Message structure: COUSSEMENT et al. hypothesized that market mavens 1) have a significantly higher percentage of uppercase letters per tweet, which is the equivalent of shouting, or attention seeking on Twitter; 2) keep their tweets shorter, using fewer distinct words, as this tends to result in higher levels of interest from others; 3) have a significantly higher percentage of hashtags per tweet compared to non-mavens in order to increase the dissemination of their messages.

“Market mavens are individuals who act as hubs, gatherers and disseminators of general market information, and who have a perceived high level of credibility and expertise. Mavens are knowledgeable about many products, and their marketing mix.”

“Results indeed demonstrate that market mavens can be identified based on their user network, behavior, and message characteristics,” says COUSSEMENT. “Revealing these links makes it possible for marketers to easily identify market mavens just by looking at the free, publicly available Twitter data.”

Market maven characteristics and behaviors After reviewing the market maven literature, COUSSEMENT et al. came up with four dimensions relating to the characteristics and behaviors of market mavens on social media networks. Within those four dimensions, they developed specific hypotheses and observable Twitter variables.

1. User network: COUSSEMENT et al. hypothesized that, because they are regarded as experts, market mavens 1) have more followers than other Twitter users and 2) are listed more than non-mavens by their followers.

BIOGRAPHY Kristof COUSSEMENT (PhD, HDR) joined IÉSEG School of Management as professor of marketing analytics in 2009. At IÉSEG School of Management, Kristof COUSSEMENT heads the IÉSEG Excellence Center for Database Marketing, and he is academic director for the MSc. in Big Data Analytics for Business.

Results confirm hypotheses, with a few surprises Most of the findings confirmed the researchers’ original hypotheses: market mavens tend to have more followers, send more tweets, and engage in more interactions. They also tend to use more uppercase letters, more hashtags, and write shorter messages with fewer distinct words. But there were three surprises: • Market mavens are not listed more by their followers.

COUSSEMENT et al. suggest that this may be due to the fact that it is hard for the influence and expertise of market mavens to stand out in the crowded Twitter space. Alternatively, it is possible that the general nature of their expertise does not conform well to the narrow categories of the Twitter listing function.

• Market mavens do not have more retweets than nonmavens. “We had hypothesized a positive relationship between mavenism and retweeting behavior, which represents information sharing,” write Coussement et al. “…Perhaps this finding can be explained in that market mavens on social media tend to be content creators, more than content sharers.”

• Market mavens do not write more readable tweets than non-mavens. “Perhaps mavens try to achieve a higher position by communicating their expertise through the complexity of language in their messages,” suggest Coussement et al. “This is the opposite approach to communicating to the wider consumer group by creating easily readable messages, and is certainly an interesting finding regarding mavens on social media.”

METHODOLOGY The researchers used a two-phased methodology. First, they surveyed 423 active Twitter users, adapting the questions for the survey from the original market maven scale developed in 1987 by Feick and Price to the social network context. In addition to the survey, the researchers analyzed empirical data from the survey participants’ Twitter accounts, studying a total of 520,700 Tweets. They studied the tweets on four empirical measures linked to the user network, user behavior, message readability, and message structure, and linked them to market mavenism, as identified by the survey. The researchers indeed found links between the empirical measures and market mavenism; in this way, they were able to create a framework for identifying market mavens automatically, using only the empirical dimensions as input.

PRACTICAL APPLICATIONS According to COUSSEMENT, companies can now use publicly available social media data to identify market mavens, rather than having to survey tons of consumers. “By using a similar framework to the one that we created in our research, marketers could very quickly identify who has influence and then proceed to target them in their marketing communications campaigns,” he says.

“This has the potential to increase the effectiveness and efficiency of their marketing efforts and, ultimately, increase return on investment.”

KEYS TO EFFECTIVE CORPORATE BRANDING

coherent image among customers and suppliers. However, the company sometimes has difficulties with non-market stakeholders like NGOs, local communities, and governments.

This group is more complex and naturally more critical.”

Based on an interview with Kenneth DE ROECK and François MAON and the article “Taking Up the Challenge of Corporate Branding: An Integrative Framework” by Kenneth DE ROECK, François MAON, and Christophe LEJEUNE (European Management Review, vol. 10, 2013)

In fact, when DE ROECK and MAON interviewed NGOs for the study, they discovered negative perceptions of the firm. “In the 1990s, IKEA was criticized for environmentally irresponsible practices,” MAON explains. “The discrepancy between the company discourse and their actions was perceived as hypocritical. It caused a scandal and resulted in reputational damages on several markets. That’s why this is an important issue.”

Business success depends on customer support, but it also requires the support of employees, suppliers, and government and non-government organizations. A study

by IÉSEG researchers shows how to go about creating an effective corporate branding strategy that strengthens organizational relationships with both internal and external stakeholders.

Corporate branding enables companies to build competitive advantage and improve business performance by fostering identification and support among customers, employees, suppliers, NGOs, etc. Such support translates into employees who are willing to go the extra mile, suppliers that offer privileged access to resources, and even greater legitimacy with governments.

Up until now, the traditional corporate branding model has consisted of three pillars: organizational reputation, strategic vision, and culture. Kenneth DE ROECK and François MAON consider these concepts too abstract to be useful in managerial practice, which is why they have introduced more tangible concepts that connect the pillars of the traditional framework. Their additional concepts can help managers to reap the benefits of their corporate branding strategy more effectively and ensure greater consistency between internal and external corporate messages.

How to connect strategic vision with organizational reputation and identity To create a link between top management’s vision for their firm and the company’s reputation and identity, DE ROECK and MAON highlight the need to promote consistent

“intended images”. Such images represent the company in the way that company leaders want it to be seen, and actions that communicate these images should reach both external stakeholders and company employees. For example, IKEA (the company used to illustrate all of the concepts that they present) would like to be seen in the same way — nice design, good value — by all stakeholders and on all types of markets. The firm promotes this unified image by presenting catalogs, websites, and stores that are virtually identical worldwide. Such consistency with regard to both internal and external stakeholders is a key component of corporate branding effectiveness. Indeed, IKEA is willing to adapt business policies to ensure a consistent intended image that coherently promotes the strategic vision. In other words, if, for example, a survey showed that IKEA was seen as a luxury brand on the Chinese market, the company might lower prices to send the opposite message and strengthen its intended image as an affordable brand.

Find out what stakeholders think In order for a company to determine appropriate “intended images,” they must understand how the organization is perceived. Market and employee surveys, customer and supplier interviews, and meetings with government authorities and NGOs are all concrete means to acquire such insight. The researchers refer to the resulting stakeholder view as the company’s “construed image,” and it is the second component for building the connection between a company’s reputation, vision, and culture.

DE ROECK comments: “IKEA is very good at finding out what market stakeholders think of it and of constructing a

BIOGRAPHIES Assistant professor Kenneth De Roeck joined IÉSEG in 2013. He previously taught strategic marketing at the Louvain School of Management (Belgium), where he also earned his PhD in management and economic sciences. His research focuses on CSR, organizational behavior, and corporate branding and identity management.

Associate professor François Maon joined IÉSEG in 2009 after holding teaching and research positions at Louvain School of Management (Belgium), where he also earned a PhD in management sciences. In addition to corporate branding and identity management, his research focuses on CSR and stakeholder engagement and influence practices.

The researchers add that external criticism generally makes its way into a firm and can cause further damage by eroding employee pride and engagement. Still, companies can learn from such negative experiences. “IKEA now takes a more proactive approach to non-market stakeholder relationships,” he notes.

on from generation to generation of company members.

Especially remarkable is IKEA’s use of HR policies and practices to generate organizational identification. Firstly, when it comes to hiring, IKEA strives only to hire people whose values correspond to those of the company; CVs and technical skills are far less significant than personal attitudes and values. Secondly, the company extends this idea to their promotional policy, only promoting people who have firmly identified with the firm and whose personal values have proven coherent with the organizational outlook.

DE ROECK explains that organizational identity is linked to company culture but easier to act on. “Identity is more tangible than culture and easier to change. It refers to the distinctive, enduring attributes of a company and offers a concrete means to connect vision and culture. You can act upon identity, because it implies mental associations, whereas culture is a long term development that is difficult to change.”

DE ROECK and MAON stress that their detailed framework for corporate branding can be used as a practical aid. “Our study pinpoints critical factors and significant connections.

Companies should pay close attention to internal and external stakeholder relationships and interaction.”

Corporate branding is worthy of investment, because it creates competitive advantage through stakeholder support and loyalty.

The central role of organizational identification The third connecting factor is employee identification with the organization. The idea is that effective branding starts in-house, with company members viewing the company in the way management desires (internal intended image).

There are many actions companies can take to foster organizational identification and turn employees into genuine brand ambassadors. Specific, representative language and storytelling are effective actions.

Applications in the work place

At IKEA, employees are called “family” members, and stories about the company’s founder circulate and are passed

The study shows how HR can contribute to effective corporate branding.

METHODOLOGY Kenneth DE ROECK, François MAON, and ESTA School of Business and Engineering’s Christophe LEJEUNE draw on extensive conceptual and theoretical work to propose an integrated framework for corporate branding. They illustrate their proposals with a case study of furniture retailer IKEA (130,000 employees in 287 stores in 38 countries). Case study data came from promotional materials, press articles, and corporate websites as well as interviews with 5 IKEA managers, 5 employees, 6 customers, and 5 representatives of NGOs in contact with IKEA.

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HR can make a point of hiring people whose personal values correspond to organizational values to gain brand ambassadors as they fill jobs.

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Using value coherency as a key criterion for promotion is a way to ensure that managers represent the desired company image.

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Because consistency and coherency are critical to the effectiveness of the corporate brand, companies should focus on coordinating corporate branding initiatives. Instead of external messages generated by PR and marketing, and internal messages from HR or managers, a dedicated team might be created to deal with corporate branding creation and communication to all stakeholders.

EMPLOYERS PREFER TO PROMOTE MEN… BUT NOT ALWAYS Based on an interview with Ann-Sophie DE PAUW from IÉSEG School of Management and the forthcoming research article in Industrial and Labor Relations Review “Do Employer Preferences Contribute to Sticky Floors?” by Stijn BAERT (Ghent University, Belgium), Ann-Sophie DE PAUW and Nick DESCHACHT (KU Leuven, Belgium)”.

A recent study shows that when women try to take a first step up the corporate ladder, they have trouble pulling their feet up from “sticky floors”. Women job applicants are significantly less likely than men to be called in for an interview for jobs implying a functional promotion; however, women and men seem to be on equal footing when it comes to jobs offering an increase in authority.

Most people are familiar with the notion of the glass ceiling, which expresses the difficulty for women to reach the very top of business organizations. ‘Sticky floors’ refers to the difficulty for women to receive promotions early on in their careers as well, or, in other words, the fact that it is also harder for women than for men to start to climb up the corporate ladder.

Ann-Sophie DE PAUW and her co-researchers hypothesized that early in careers, employers often prefer to hire men. To find out if such preferences can explain sticky floors, they designed a study in the Belgian labour market and measured differences in call-back rates for men vs. women applying for the same job.

The correspondence experiment: novel and reliable When DE PAUW and her co-researchers decided to investigate gender discrimination, they were faced with a fundamental obstacle. “You cannot just ask employers whether they prefer to hire men over women,” DE PAUW explains. “And traditional research methods like questionnaires and lab experiments present methodological limitations.”

The promise of rich real-life data led the team to take on the challenge of developing a feasible field experiment.

Ultimately, they designed a correspondence test to find out whether employer preferences lead to unequal treatment of

male and female job candidates.

The researchers created fictitious yet reality-based CVs that they sent to real employers seeking to fill job vacancies. The employers were unaware of their participation in the test.

When a positive response from employers was received, the researchers promptly declined the interview request to limit further disruption for the employer.

DE PAUW stresses, “Our method was truly original; it has almost never been used in this context. It offers the advantages of both field studies and controlled lab work. Importantly, it is one of the first studies to clearly pinpoint gender discrimination and measure real employer preferences in the current labor market.”

Overall equality, specific discrimination In general, employers have no significant preference when it comes to hiring men or women. “We found no difference in treatment of men vs. women overall. One out of four job candidates received a call-back.”

“In this circumstance, we found that men are 23% more likely than women to get a positive reaction (expression of interest in their profile, request for more information) from a potential employer, and they are 50% more likely to be called back specifically for an interview.”

Although the study did not focus on the reasons for this, DE PAUW reports that international research on the subject suggests that women may be penalized early in their careers due to stereotypes and issues associated with work-life balance. Moreover, traditional expectations of higher productivity from men and preferences for masculine characteristics including dominance, autonomy, and assertiveness would partly explain preferences.

Still, the issue is more nuanced than it first appears. DE PAUW explains that there are two types of promotion, one implying more complex job content, and the other involving increased authority.

“People often think that greater job complexity goes hand in hand with greater authority, but there is a relatively low correlation between the two factors.”

Indeed, the correspondence study shows preferences for male candidates only when the vacant job involves an increase in complexity, not greater authority. “This is an intriguing finding that gave our research team food for thought,” says DE PAUW. “It was interesting to isolate two different dimensions in promotion, and we need to follow up to further disentangle the issue.”

She speculates that for more complex jobs, women may be subject to traditional factors of discrimination and assumptions of lesser productivity. This is not so when jobs imply more authority. “Women are considered to be good team leaders. They are not subject to any specific expectations in relation to men.”

However, when the researchers looked specifically at jobs implying a step up from the current level, they found a very different story.

BIOGRAPHY Ann-Sophie DE PAUW is a professor of International Negotiation at IÉSEG School of Management. She conducts research on negotiation and conflict management, decisionmaking, social dilemmas, and gender. She is the coordinator of the IÉSEG Negotiation and Sales Management department, as well as Representative-at-Large for the Academy of Management (Conflict Management Division), and a member of the International Association of Conflict Management (IACM).

Legal frameworks for preventing gender discrimination already exist, but they focus on punishing discrimination once it has been detected.

“We should actively search for employer preferences,” says DE PAUW. “’Mystery calls’ have been used by researchers to show hiring preferences towards non-union supporters, and the same method might help detect gender preferences.”

Additional methods would be for example voluntary assessment of gender preferences, anonymous job applications, and quotas. But, according to DE PAUW, what’s most important is to break through traditional role patterns.

“This is not just a woman’s issue. We need government and corporate policies that support both men and women.

Child care, home services, and work/life balance should be recognized as significant for everyone. Both women and men would benefit from more flexible career paths.”

In a joint television interview about the study that DE PAUW gave with Saskia VAN UFFELEN, CEO of Ericsson Belgium, focus is given to the generational component of gender discrimination (please see below).

Since completing the study, DE PAUW and her co-researchers have focused on a second hypothesis about sticky floors.

Indeed, in addition to employer preferences, they might stem from women’s reluctance to start climbing the corporate ladder. The team is exploring the issue in a study where men and women are presented with various job scenarios and asked whether or not they would accept a promotion in different circumstances. According to DE PAUW, preliminary data suggest that women hold themselves back because of risk aversion and anticipation of discrimination.

How to remove the glue Understanding that sticky floors are specifically related to employer preferences in promotional situations is a first step toward designing policies to deal with the phenomenon.

Research method

Applications in the workplace

The researchers sent 576 male-female pairs of fictitious CVs to apply for real vacant positions in as many companies. In each male-female applicant pair, both applicants held junior positions in a similar field, had 5 years’ experience, and had the same level of skill and education. The only difference was their gender.

The researchers measured call-back rates to uncover employer preferences for hiring men vs. women, comparing rates for jobs implying a first promotion and those implying a same-level position.

Gender discrimination is a multi-dimensional issue and a multi-party responsibility. Here are several of the key steps that businesses can take to prevent it: - Heterogeneous teams - Coaching for women and men – not just women - Greater flexibility for all workers - New ways of working that take into account and address the work/life balance of both men and women.

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