Can Female Leaders Mitigate Negative Effects of Diversity? The Case of National Leaders with Katherine Phillips

Ethnic diversity can have negative effects, increasing the potential for perceived inequities, negative conflict, and communication difficulties in groups and organizations that can lead to negative performance outcomes. Consistent with these findings, political economists have also shown that ethnic fractionalization, essentially a measure of country-level diversity, undermines GDP growth of a country. At this tealk, we use a multi-methods research approach to examine the perceived and actual influence of male and female national leaders in countries characterized by more or less ethnic fractionalization. We will examine people’s perceptions of male and female country leaders and how well they might fit as leaders of ethnically fractionalized countries. While causation is not possible to prove, the results suggest countries that have high ethnic fractionalization and difficulty to lead scores stand to uniquely benefit from female leadership. Implications for understanding the intersection of gender and ethnic diversity in complex environments are discussed. Speaker: Katherine Phillips, Professor of Management, Columbia Business School