SI seminar with Isabel Fernandez-Mateo

We use mathematical modeling and re-analyze field data to reveal a novel approach for improving women’s representation in talent pipelines: managing gender-undifferentiated rejection rates in selection processes. Our model shows that a recently documented behavioral regularity – gender differences in reapplication after rejection – can have substantial long-term effects on women’s representation in real-world talent pipelines. These effects are more effectively mitigated by a variety of tools to reduce the overall rejection rate than by reducing the gender differences in reapplication themselves. Hence, the popular strategy of expanding applicant pools to promote diversity can yield perverse outcomes absent sufficient changes in the pool’s gender composition. We ground and test the implications of our model using talent pipeline data from executive recruitment, innovation, and entrepreneurship settings. We examine the theoretical and practical implications of our findings for organizational scholarship and management.

The seminar takes place in Kilen, room 2.53.