Breaking the Bamboo Ceiling and Empowering Asians’ Leadership Advancement with Debate Training: A Preregistered, 18-Month Longitudinal Field Experiment

Abstract: Despite East Asians’ educational and economic achievements in the US, they are underrepresented in leadership partly because their verbal unassertiveness is culturally incongruent with the American leader prototype. A preregistered, 3-wave longitudinal field experiment tested whether a 9-week debate training could empower Asian employees’ leadership advancement by improving their assertiveness.

Keywords: race, negotiations, organizations, conflict management