Executive Summary
This report provides a detailed analysis of gender dynamics within the technology industry and its impact on corporate success. We begin with a brief overview of the statistics on the gender employment gap within the industry, examining the cause of such imbalance and its role in constructing a toxic working environment for women. Then, we present a descriptive assessment of gender inequalities in three major companies: Uber, IBM, and Google by exploring how each company’s culture influences their policies (or lack thereof) on the matter. We utilize the competing values framework (CVF) to dissect the relationship between organizational norms and gender inequity in these companies, and examine their reasoning behind actions in terms of power and influence tactics. We found that the market focus on profitability is the driving factor behind gender imbalance, aggravated by differences in communication patterns and values between the sexes. As a result, firms that invest in improving gender equality in the workplace (i.e., IBM) benefit from higher organizational commitment, whereas those that fail to provide a safe working environment for women (i.e., Uber) experience high turnover rate and low morale. Using progressive companies as benchmarks, we have come up with the following recommendations for future practices at underperforming firms (but not limited to): (1) Design a transparent sexual misconduct reporting system to empower female employees. (2) Organize annual gender-equality trainings to raise awareness of sexual discrimination. (3) Encourage employees to participate in devising long-term gender policies to promote commitment. (4) Increase women representation in management in the future by introducing female executives as mentors, providing flexible work schedules for mothers, etc.
Introduction and Summary of Topics
With a tumultuous history of comprehending diversity, the global workplace has transcended itself tremendously within the past 50 years to seek out and embrace diversification, rather than suppress it. However, despite the rising popularity of organization-wide and government policies promoting inclusion, the United States technology sector has still unsuccessfully equalized the workplace for both men and women. While 57% of the U.S.’s comprehensive workforce may be comprised of women, the technology sector continues to be rampantly male-dominated as only 26% of proprietary software jobs are held by women. In an examination of the representation of women in management positions, only 17% of Fortune 500 Chief Information Officer (CIO) positions were held by women in 2017 (“By the Numbers”). As the global and U.S. workforce continues to expand and evolve itself, many organizations are now engaging in affirmative action hiring and issuing diversity quotas targeted at eliminating the glass ceiling, in order to adapt to a competitive marketplace where consumers’ decision-making processes have become increasingly driven by behavioral desires (Noland et al. 1). In addition to this hiring gap, there is also evidence of wage discrimination between men and women. Based on the statistics provided by the Census Bureau, the female-to-male earnings ratio was 0.805 meaning women earn roughly eighty cents for every dollar men earn. The female-to-male earnings ratio had experienced annual decreases from 2007 until 2015, though the recent amounts of growth have been quite minimal.
Summary of Management Topics
To best create a broad and comprehensive understanding of this gender disparity, the organizational structure and behavior of three companies in the U.S. technology sector were closely dissected and examined: (1) IBM; (2) Uber; and (3) Google. Standing at the helm of equalizing gender disparity in technology, IBM – or International Business Machines – has one of the highest representations of women in management with 24% of their executive level employees globally and 29% of their board of directors being female. Through its hiring practices, IBM has received numerous accolades over their diversity and inclusion initiatives. In the midst of its global transformation, IBM has strategically and purposefully focused on technical women’s career development and advancement. Following in IBM’s stead is Google, an American multinational technology company that specializes in Internet-related services and products. As a firm believer in transparency, Google publishes yearly reports that discusses their efforts to promote diversity in-depth, supported by self-reported statistics. Since 2014, Google has increased its female hires from 20.8% to 24.5%, resulting in 30% of Google’s total workforce to be women (greatly exceeding that of the industry’s average of 20%). Contrastingly, Uber, a popular ride-sharing platform, has come under large public scrutiny having amassed criticism and backlash as a result of its long string of sexism scandals. After a former engineer spoke out about the company’s failure to address her sexual harassment case, Uber lost 200,000 of customers in only one week while its stock price plummeted (Noguchi). Since then, Uber has been striving to create a safer and more inclusive workplace environment for its employees.
Analysis
A company’s workplace culture allows for an understanding of how gender discrimination can still be perpetuated. The type of workplace culture that a company adopts is driven by five elements: the founder’s values, the industry and business environment, national culture, leaders’ behaviors and the organization’s vision and strategies (Kinicki 548). These organizational characteristics play a significant role in dictating the employees’ attitudes and behaviors, as well as the outcomes of the company. For tech companies, the culture of sexism is reinforced starting from its discriminating recruiting process. According to a Stanford research study, nearly 84% of presenters of tech companies at university recruiting sessions are men, while female recruiters are in charge of setting up the food and other menial tasks (Wynn & Correll 154). In the few circumstances in which they present, women tend to cover “softer” topics (e.g., work-life balance, application process, etc.) and not the core technical aspect of the firm (155). Through this delegation of responsibilities, technology companies inadvertently imply that male employees play a more important role in the firms as they appear more knowledgeable than their female counterparts. As a result, male attendees are more likely to apply because they are influenced by the referent power that the presenters display.
Additionally, female applicants’ interest in the firms can dwindle as the lack of identification with the presenters can manifest itself as a perceived lack of organizational support. Nevertheless, gendered recruiting process is not the only cause of the disproportionately large population of male employees in the tech industry. Based on the competing values framework (CVF), the organizational cultures at technology companies are best categorized as market – that is, the companies are primarily focused on enhancing productivity and achieving profit goals in a highly competitive and rapidly modernizing arena, with lesser consideration for “softer” values such as employees’ wellbeing and workplace harmony. According to social role theory, girls are taught conversational skills that focus on building rapport and forming connections with others, while boys are more likely to learn skills geared towards achieving status and power. (Kinicki 349). Consequently, the goal-oriented values upheld by tech companies are much more likely to clash with those of female employees who are more concerned about interpersonal affairs.
In contrast to the typical market culture of most technology companies, IBM’s company culture encourages all employees in and at any level or position, to be unified together through a passion for motivation and to be thinkers. Upholding its reputation of innovation, IBM’s founder, Thomas J. Watson, was the first business leader to consciously and pervasively create a culture for his company. With such precedence, given its core beliefs and driving factors, IBM’s culture aligns best with that of an adhocracy. In adhocracy, there is an inherent desire for high flexibility and discretion, with a focus on external environment, customers, and shareholders (Kinicki 556). Along pursuit of their formal set of basic beliefs: (1) respect for the individual; (2) the best customer service in the world; (3) excellence, IBM has successfully created a workplace culture that embraces authenticity and full-heartedly embraces diversity.
This same culture can be also observed in Google, whose company culture like IBM’s, can be classified as an adhocracy culture. Google utilizes this culture to improve their diversity through the establishment of three main approaches: (1) extending diversity and inclusion; (2) increasing transparency; and (3) overarching strategy. As culture is perpetuated and instilled through an organization’s management, Google’s board members and managers have established an extreme focus and commitment to accelerating the diversity of their workforce. With a higher focus on external shareholders/customers, Google’s publications of their workforce representation data (from 2014 and onward) have reaffirmed their values to both internal and external stakeholders while also shaping the industry conversation regarding diversity in technology. In any organization, the goals and strategy must align with that of the culture in order for any organizational change to effectively take and stay in place. Google accomplishes this by creating an overarching strategy that is initiated company-wide anchored in furthering equity, inclusion, diversity, and integrity.
Upholding the dominant market culture prevalent in technology, Uber’s upper management has reinforced an unhealthy corporate identity that values growth and performance over other aspects of the company, causing the subdivisions to form subcultures in an indirect way to conform with the corporate core values. Such practices were demonstrated as Ingrid Avendaño, a former female engineer at Uber, reported that her male coworkers “repeatedly made unwelcome comments about women” in front of her and other employees, only to be ignored by Uber’s human resources and isolated by other male Uber managers and employees (O’Brien). The market culture of Uber, aimed to encourage competition and productivity, has not only been inherited by other branches within the organization, but also has been perpetuated through the non-actions and acquiescent hostility towards women, an already undermined group, in a deviant subculture in the lower level of Uber. Nevertheless, the formation of subcultures also depends on the strength of the culture, namely the members’ level of agreement with and approvals of those norms and values (Boisnier et al 7). With such a strong corporate culture as Uber’s, individual members of the organization might be afraid of the sanctions for violating core corporate values despite conflicting personal values, hence leading to the acquiescence of a scapegoat. By scapegoating the victims of its problematic culture, Uber made itself a scapegoat of a widespread and largely ignored issue in the technology industry.
Recommendations and/or Lessons Learned
By analyzing the cultures of these three technology companies (IBM, Google, and Uber) through an organizational lens, the derived learnings can be utilized to determine effective and sustainable recommendations for improving the gender disparity. Companies must examine the practices of others both in and outside of their industry to incorporate proven strategies and methods. For example, among the numerous awards earned for their diversity and inclusion initiatives, IBM’s practices have received the Catalyst Award, which recognizes outstanding “innovative organizational initiatives that address the recruitment, development, and advancement of all women” (Catalyst.org). With an understanding that the recruitment and cultivation of diverse talent is critical to maintaining its success, IBM utilizes strategic partnerships in diversity recruiting programs such as the Society of Women Engineers (SWE) and Women in Technology International (WITI). Through these robust recruitment and diverse slate practices, IBM has developed a variety of programs that help women continually develop their careers throughout the entire talent life cycle.
Among Google’s efforts to combat gender inequality within its company comes its newly widened recruitment process. Initially, Google only sought talent from select top universities which often carried particularly small minority populations, further skewing the demographics of their employees. To remedy this, Google has implemented a wider net in their recruiting through the expansion of its targeted schools, particularly pursuing those with more diverse student bodies. Instilling its organizational beliefs throughout all levels of its organization, Google recruiters participate in Unconscious Bias training courses and workshops to allow for a more equal chance of hiring those underrepresented at Google. Additionally, the company has established many programs that help to train and educate underrepresented groups for careers both in Google and the overall technology industry.
A great lesson can also be learned from Ubers’ decision to publish its first diversity report. Based on the report, from 2017 to 2018, Uber has increased its female engineer workforce by 4.3% (“Diversity and Inclusion”). Uber’s current progressive stance on diversity in the workplace can be interpreted as a conscious effort to improve organizational commitment among female employees. Based on McClelland’s theory of acquired needs, Uber’s dedication to gender equality will satisfy female employees’ need for affiliation by promoting feelings of belonging, as well as their needs for power and achievement by gradually making women an integral part of the company’s workforce. The statistics on workplace representation provided by Uber’s report also serves as a good benchmark for companies that are underperforming in that aspect, namely Facebook and Apple which only employ 32% female in their workforce. Thus, it is a good practice of a company to maintain annual diversity reports as a measure of its corporate success in the long-run, both externally and internally. However, a potential downside is when companies focus too much on achieving diversity targets at the expense of individual characteristics. In other words, as long as the company maintains a healthy representation of women in the workplace, its primary objective should be productivity.
Based on the practices of the companies, there are multiple recommendations that can be followed to ensure a higher level of gender equality in the technology sector. In light of the recent sexual harassment lawsuits that plagued the industry, it is of foremost importance for every company to implement a sexual misconduct recording and reporting system to protect its employees. In terms of Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, this system can satisfy the physiological need for safety and allow women to achieve higher-order needs (e.g., self-actualization, self-esteem) (Kinicki 165), which consequently leads to higher motivation. In the short term, companies can set a fixed percentage of female employees in the recruitment process. This increased percentage works to motivate more female candidates to join the technology workforce, who will in turn serve as referent powers and help create a safe place for other newcomers in the future. Firms can also reduce discrimination by organizing gender-equality training sessions to raise awareness, or by encouraging employees to assist in developing gender policies at the workplace. Both of these activities require active staff participation, which can instill a sense of personal responsibility towards maintaining a welcoming work environment. For the long-term, to increase the percentage of women in management, technology firms can provide resources that incentivize women to apply for executive positions. Such resources include (but are not limited to) women-only mentoring programs, setting diversity quotas for managerial roles, enabling flexible work schedules to accommodate working mothers, and/or creating a foreseeable roadmap for female employees to pursue the opportunities they desire. These practices, if implemented, will reinforce an inclusive workplace environment and heighten organizational commitment among female workers.
Conclusion
From its inception, IBM has led the way in the hiring of demographics typically underrepresented in the labor force, and specifically the tech industry. Recent success is largely due to the recruiting initiatives by established organizations that IBM has partnered with since Ginni Rometty, IBM’s first female CEO, took over in 2012. Although the diversity data of the executive positions and board of directors is promising, IBM’s refusal to release their company-wide data indicates they need to continue working hard and expanding their initiatives before they can truly be considered the “gold standard” in gender equity within the tech sector.
Google has recognized the significant gender inequality in the tech industry and has thus been making efforts to tighten the gap between men and women since 2014. Among their myriad of efforts are bias training for current recruiters and all new employees, the institution of programs to promote women in STEM, and broader recruitment from more diverse schools. Altogether, these efforts have vastly reshaped Google’s workplace culture and are slowly changing the company’s demographics.
Facing numerous controversies towards its allowance of a discriminated culture, Uber is still struggling with transforming its problematic corporate values internally. Employees who had been undermined or had succumbed to the company-led pressure will expect a more supported environment as a positive attitude change is finally seen in the company. With the release of its first Diversity and Inclusion Report, Uber has taken initiatives to provide more support for women, such as the “LadyEng” campaign for its female engineers and the “Women of Uber” community. These remedial actions undertaken by Uber will become a baseline for other companies to measure up to, or even to exceed what Uber has done.
While our report concentrates on the technology sector, our ultimate objective is to reveal detrimental practices that perpetuate gender inequality in a fast-changing and competitive workplace. Although gender discrimination continues to exist in the workplace, we believe that the revelations of these unacceptable industry practices have caused an increasing attention of the public, leading to more possible solutions to the gender issues. As the industry as a whole gradually realized the problem, more affirmative actions as seen in the case of IBM, Google and Uber will be undertaken to achieve an ideal yet enforceable goal in the technology industry, and ultimately contribute to the diversity in the general workplace.
Appendix: Group Process “Lessons Learned”
To accurately capture the flow of the project, we have separated our group process into two different components: planning and writing. We believe that the inception phase, or planning, was our biggest strength as we managed to set internal deadlines that allowed us to pace our work and effectively cater to each individual’s schedule. Although minor conflicts arose when we discussed potential topics for our research, they did not threaten nor diminish our team’s interests. In fact, the differences in our values and attitudes on the topic deepened our capacity for empathy with each other, and we learned to view such conflict as an opportunity for further communication. However, there were also lapses in our communication at times, which led to role confusion and may have lessened the quality of members’ contributions. In hindsight, we could have prevented this issue by setting clear expectations about communication frequency among members earlier on in the process. Regarding the writing phase, because our planning process was highly productive, we were able to formulate a detailed outline of important facts and concepts to be included in the paper which increased the efficiency of the second step. Nevertheless, the biggest challenge for us was performing cross-company analysis of gender inequity. During this phase, we experienced difficulty comparing one company’s policies to another, as the differences in their history and organizational cultures dictate the magnitude of their actions. For example, it is unfair to assume that Uber’s diversity is worse than Google just because they released their first diversity report in 2017 – in reality, Uber is taking more drastic measures to improve gender equality. As a result, it would have been more effective if we had deviated our attention from the hard data (i.e., policies, statistics, etc), and examined the scope of their diversity more subjectively.
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