Jamie Gloor

The early career phase is a key period of identity maintenance and change. But, it is also ripe with important, attention-grabbing occurrences (i.e., critical events) that may modify these processes, particularly influencing women’s leadership pursuit. Because previous research has overlooked if or how such events might alter identifying or if these processes differ for people who identify as men and women, we integrate the identity and critical events literatures to elaborate on how positive and negative critical events may shape men and women’s identifying in the work- and non-work domains over time. We propose that critical events’ effects on identity salience will occur both within and across domains, but that these effects will be stronger within (vs. across) domains. While both positive and negative events can exert negative effects on subsequent identity salience, we propose that the effects of critical events on identity salience may be stronger for women (vs. men). Finally, we connect work identity salience with subsequent leadership status, including contextual moderators that enhance or undermine these effects (i.e., inclusive organizational climate and mega-threats, respectively). We conclude with theoretical and practical implications of this research, including for workforce efficiency and social sustainability. We also highlight calls for future research stemming from our review (e.g., sustainability critical events and gendered analyses for [more] accurate science) as well as fruitful research areas and innovative practices at the work-nonwork interface for professionals on the path to leadership.

Past research shows that decision-makers discriminate against applicants with career breaks. Career breaks are common due to caring responsibilities, especially for working mothers, thereby leaving job seekers with employment gaps on their résumés. In a preregistered audit field experiment in the United Kingdom (n = 9,022), we show that rewriting a résumé so that previously held jobs are listed with the number of years worked (instead of employment dates) increases callbacks from real employers compared to résumés without employment gaps by approximately 8%, and with employment gaps by 15%. A series of lab studies (an online pilot and two preregistered experiments; n = 2,650) shows that this effect holds for both female and male applicants—even when compared to applicants without employment gaps—as well as and for applicants with less and more total job experience. The effect is driven by making the applicant’s job experience salient, not as a result of novelty or ease of reading.

Leaders often engage in costly, self-interested behaviors when they have the power and discretion to do so. Because followers are well-positioned to reduce these behaviors, I test how a specific follower communication—sarcasm expression—affects a particularly costly behavior: leader overpay. In three behavioral experiments and a field study (Ns = 240–526), I test the effect of follower sarcasm on leaders' self-pay. I also test a moderator—leader moral identity—because leaders with low moral identity are more likely to overpay themselves and are more open to social norm violations (including follower sarcasm), as well as a mechanism—leader accountability—because I propose that follower sarcasm decreases leaders' overpay by increasing leaders' perceived accountability. As expected, follower sarcasm reduced leader overpay (vs. the control/no humor and vs. non-sarcastic humor), especially for leaders with weak moral identity. Study 3 replicated these results while showing explicit evidence of the accountability mechanism. Study 4 further supported these ideas with correlational data from real leaders recalling a more (vs. less) sarcastic follower, but only when the sarcasm was publicly (vs. privately) enacted. While talk is cheap, these results show that follower sarcasm can also be valuable, because it reduces leaders' overpay by increasing accountability.

Becoming a mother and taking care-related leaves from work contribute to economic gender inequality: Employers’ gender role stereotypes ascribe mothers less qualification and ambition (i.e., agency), which are reinforced by employment gaps in their résumé. We integrate the judgment and decision-making literature to redesign mothers’ résumés in a way that reduces mothers’ barriers to work re-entry. More specifically, integrating signal detection theory, we theorize that by replacing employment dates with the number of years the applicant worked in each job, applicants can better convey their relevant professional abilities and ambition to employers (i.e., signals) without disclosing these distracting employment gaps (i.e., noise). In a large- scale randomized field experiment (N = 9,022), results showed that mothers with this redesigned resume´ received more callbacks than those whose résumés showed employment dates. In an online experiment (N = 667), we replicated and extended these findings to show explicit evidence of our theorized mechanism: applicant agency. By integrating these literatures, we proposed and tested a cost-free, low-effort intervention to reduce inequality by reducing mothers’ résumé gap- related agency penalties and facilitating their return to work.

Humor is prolific across our professional lives. Most humor research in organizations has focused on leaders’ humor, showing that more humorous leaders are better leaders. But a key feature of professional contexts—hierarchy—deeply shapes the nature and effects of humor, particularly for understudied groups: followers and those who are relatively lower in the hierarchy. In this interdisciplinary review of upward humor, we consolidate key themes across theories and literatures to propose an overarching model of behavioral humor while also parsimoniously organizing key outcomes along agency and communality. So, as alluded in our title, upwardly humorous employees can be viewed as friend—or fiend—generating more variable reactions than leaders due to their relatively lower position in the hierarchy.

In a series of studies using mixed methods, we develop a new measure of leader narcissism to examine the competing effects of strategic leader narcissism and gender on firm Environmental Performance.