The Responsive Workplace
How to Manage Gender Bias from Within: Women in Leadership
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Dr. Sharon Roberts
In this article, we discuss new knowledge related to managing gender bias in the context of women in leadership. The research explored how women on corporate boards cope with gender bias. Researchers Tajfel and Turner’s social identity theory to explain intergroup discrimination and Eagly and Karau’s role congruity theory of prejudice to explain the exclusion of women from corporate boards provided the conceptual lens of the study. Interviews with six women on corporate boards from Canada, journaling, and analysis of physical artifacts related to women were the data sources. Seven themes emerged in the data related to gender bias and experiences of the women using Yin’s five phases of analysis. The themes occur at the individual, organizational, and societal levels. This article is to set the foundation as to how women can transform themselves from within, skills needed, techniques to use, and effective preparation to manage the bias.
To Use or Not to Use Technology?: The Impact of Technostress and Moderators of Technostress
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Deborah Okolo
The proliferation of ICTs has changed the structure of modern organizations around the world making it compulsory for employees to interface with various kinds of technologies for work performance. ICTs is regarded as the basis of global and local competitiveness in business because of its ability to facilitate and enhance effective and efficient production and delivery of goods and services. Despite all the benefits associated with the use of technology by organizations, it is believed that technology is a double-edged sword that offers numerous advantages and disadvantages because of its impact on employees wellbeing. Researches have shown that ICTs is responsible for inducing stress in employees, this kind of stress is referred to as technostress. Technostress is a stress caused by the inability of individuals to cope with the use of technology or overexposure to ICTs. The speedy technological revolutions have created a knowledge gap for employees, multitasking, work overload and work-family conflict. The major objective of this paper is to investigate the current literature base of technostress and its antecedents, implications and moderators. This paper utilized a systematic literature review and content analysis was used to collect and analyse the literature. Findings revealed that technostress can affect job satisfaction organizational commitments, performance, productivity and intention to extend the use of ICTs. The antecedents, implications and moderators of technostress would be discussed.
