Gender Gaps and Disparities in Negotiations, Organizations, and Conflict Management

Abstract: This symposium examines how gender gaps and disparities are evolving and/or persisting within negotiations, organizations, and conflict management settings. Our first paper tests for gender differences in self-reported propensity to initiate salary negotiations (n=8,482) among MBA students from a top U.S. business school and in research included in a recent meta-analysis (Kugler et al., 2018), finding that women negotiate more than men, a gap that has grown over time. Our second paper shows that both a “female penalty” (a gender pay gap) for most women, and also a “female premium” for high-potential women, emerge from the interplay between first offers and gender in online job negotiations (n=19,878). Our third paper demonstrates that female writers are rated by themselves and others as more receptive, and that female raters perceive others’ text as more receptive. These findings illuminate a gap between women’s and men’s communication strategies in conversational conflict. Our fourth paper conducts a qualitative investigation of male and female leaders which reveals that, due to conflicting organizational rewards and values, providing career support is seen as costly. Leaders display distinct mental models for rationalizing providing career support despite this perceived cost, which perpetuates gendered career support processes. Our fifth paper uses qualitative methods to understand how reputation influences negotiations for women, including minority women, in the wine industry. Overall, the symposium explores how gender gaps and disparities are evolving and/or persisting, providing new answers and new questions about gender differences in contexts that are both theoretically important and practically relevant.

Keywords: gender, negotiations, organizations, conflict management