Ph.D. graduate, faculty members receive best paper award

A UNC Charlotte doctoral graduate and two faculty members have received a best paper award for research on gender and leadership.

Samantha Paustian-Underdahl, a faculty member at Florida International University who received her Ph.D. in organizational science from UNC Charlotte, along with Lisa Slattery Walker, professor of sociology, and David Woehr, professor of management, were recognized at the Academy of Management annual meeting.

The researchers received the Saroj Parasuraman Outstanding Publication Award for the article “Gender and Perceptions of Leadership Effectiveness: A Meta-Analysis of Contextual Moderators.”

The Parasuraman Award is presented annually by the Gender and Diversity in Organizations Division to the individual or individuals who published the best journal article in the field of gender and diversity in the calendar year preceding the award. The intent of the award is to highlight scholarly activity in the field of gender and diversity and to encourage further scholarly activity within the field.

The researchers studied ratings of leaders across 99 studies across industries. They found that women leaders are perceived to be equally as effective as their male counterparts by their employees.

“When all leadership contexts are considered, men and women do not differ in perceived leadership effectiveness,” said Paustian-Underdahl. “As more women have entered into and succeeded in leadership positions, it is likely that people’s stereotypes associating leadership with masculinity have been dissolving slowly over time.”

Men had a tendency to rate themselves as more effective than women rated themselves, compared with the ratings by others.

“These findings are surprising given that men on average continue to be paid more and advance into higher managerial levels than women,” Paustian-Underdahl said. “Future research needs to examine why women are seen as equally (or more) effective leaders than men yet are not being rewarded in the same ways.”

The Academy of Management annual meeting is the premier conference for more than 10,000 students, academics and scholars in the field of management and organization science.

The researchers’ meta-analysis was published by the American Psychological Association in the Journal of Applied Psychology in 2014.