Alexandra Kalev

Alexandra Kalev
Tel Aviv University | TAU · Department of Sociolgy and Antropology

Ph.D. Princeton 2005

About

64
Publications
85,387
Reads
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5,734
Citations
Additional affiliations
January 2007 - January 2010
The University of Arizona
Position
  • Professor (Assistant)
January 2005 - January 2007
University of California, Berkeley
Position
  • Post-Doctorate Fellow
Description
  • Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Scholars in Health Policy Research Program
Education
January 1998 - January 2005
Princeton University
Field of study

Publications

Publications (64)
Article
Full-text available
Employers have experimented with three broad approaches to promoting diversity. Some programs are designed to establish organizational responsibility for diversity, others to moderate managerial bias through training and feedback, and still others to reduce the social isolation of women and minority workers. These approaches find support in academi...
Article
Full-text available
Scholars and practitioners agree that referrals provide firms with better workers. Economists and sociologists debate whether the underlying mechanism behind such relations is a better match between workers and firms or an advantage conferred by social relations. Building on insights from network theory and cognitive psychology, we offer a new appr...
Book
Full-text available
Every year America becomes more diverse, but change in the makeup of the management ranks has stalled. The problem has become an urgent matter of national debate. How do we fix it? Bestselling books preach moral reformation. Employers, however well intentioned, follow guesswork and whatever their peers happen to be doing. Arguing that it’s time to...
Article
To succeed, almost every employee needs work/life support at some point. Women and people of color need it the most, research shows, because they face greater challenges and have fewer resources available to them. They are also the least likely to receive it, however, and as a result often are forced to change or leave jobs and lose out on opportun...
Article
A growing body of research examines discrimination within racialized organizations, but much less attention has been given to workers’ reactions to such experiences. We offer an identity-based theory for understanding varied career reactions to discrimination and apply it to minority professionals within the Israeli pharmaceutical retail industry....
Article
Full-text available
Managerial bias is a major source of workplace inequality and a central target of employer diversity efforts, yet we know little about the content of stereotypes and where they prevail. Stereotypes can be ambivalent, mixing negative and positive dimensions. Ambivalent stereotypes can rationalize discriminatory decision-making but they may also be m...
Conference Paper
Work-life policies designed to accommodate mothers often undermine their career advancement. We propose a theory of “organizational policy universalism,” arguing that work-life policies will be more effective at reducing gender inequality when they are universally applied. We examine tenure-clock extensions, adopted to mitigate career penalties fac...
Article
Research on how discrimination lawsuits affect corporate diversity has yielded mixed results. Qualitative studies highlight the limited efficacy of lawsuits in the typical workplace, finding that litigation frequently elicits resistance and even retribution from employers. But quantitative studies find that lawsuits can increase workforce diversity...
Article
Full-text available
The demographic composition of the U.S. professoriate affects student composition and, thus, the pipeline for professional and managerial jobs. Amid concern about the effects of the COVID-19 crisis on the labor market, much remains unknown about how economic downturns affect faculty hiring and the demographic makeup of hires. We examine the effects...
Article
Full-text available
Purpose Higher pensionable age in many countries that are part of Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) and a shrinking pension income force older people to postpone their retirement. Yet, age-based discrimination in employers' decisions is a significant barrier to their employment. Hence, this paper aims to explore employer...
Article
The civil rights and women's movements led to momentous changes in public policy and corporate practice that have made the United States the global paragon of equal opportunity. Yet diversity in the corporate hierarchy has increased incrementally. Lacking clear guidance from policymakers, personnel experts had devised their own arsenal of diversity...
Article
The civil rights and women's movements led to momentous changes in public policy and corporate practice that have made the United States the global paragon of equal opportunity. Yet diversity in the corporate hierarchy has increased incrementally. Lacking clear guidance from policymakers, personnel experts had devised their own arsenal of diversity...
Article
Research by the author and other scholars has shown that in times of layoffs, women and minorities suffer most—and the pattern is reasserting itself in the current crisis. Managers forced to make layoffs tend to base their decisions on the nature of people’s jobs (position), and how long they have served in them (tenure). For deep-seated societal r...
Research
Full-text available
Diversity training remains ubiquitous, despite decades of research suggesting that it may not work. We develop a theory of training efficacy. Training features and context can frame the motive for pursuing diversity as individual, organizational, or external/legal. According to job-autonomy and self-determination theories, individual and organizati...
Article
Full-text available
Two decades ago, the Supreme Court vetted the workplace harassment programs popular at the time: sexual harassment grievance procedures and training. However, harassment at work remains common. Do these programs reduce harassment? Program effects have been difficult to measure, but, because women frequently quit their jobs after being harassed, pro...
Conference Paper
Full-text available
Higher pensionable age in many OECD countries led to an increase in the share of workers over 60 years of age in the labor force. People who, not too long ago, were considered past the age of economic activity, increasingly apply for jobs and participate in the workforce. Yet, age-based discrimination in employers’ decisions is a significant barrie...
Chapter
Full-text available
The modern workplace is a pivotal arena for shaping societal gender inequalities. This chapter reviews theory and research on gender inequality in workplace organizations. We first provide a quick historical overview of the role of gender in the modern division of labor and present data on intersectional patterns of gender inequality in labor force...
Research
Full-text available
מדד הגיוון בודק את מצב הייצוג ושוויוניות השכר של קבוצות אוכלוסייה שונות בישראל. השנה הושם דגש בתחום ההשכלה הגבוהה. המדד הוא כלי מחקר חדשני, אשר פותח על ידי נציבות שוויון ההזדמנויות בעבודה, הלשכה המרכזית לסטטיסטיקה ופרופ' אלכסנדרה קלב מהחוג לסוציולוגיה ואנתרופולוגיה באוניברסיטת תל אביב. המדד הושק לראשונה בשנת 2016 וסיפק תמונת מצב על שילוב נשים, ערב...
Article
Full-text available
Do workplace sexual harassment programs help? We have now given training and grievanceprocedures a good two decades to work—most companies had them by 1998 when the SupremeCourt endorsed them — and they don’t appear to have helped much. Surveys using probabilitysamples showed that about 40 percent of women circa 1980 faced specific forms of “unwant...
Article
Full-text available
Sexual harassment flourishes in workplaces where men dominate in management and in fields where few women hold the “core” jobs (think law enforcement and tech). Research shows that bringing more women into these roles can solve the problem at its roots. But companies know they can get away with cosmetic fixes instead. They stay out of legal trouble...
Chapter
Andreas Müller: The editors of this volume are sitting here with Alexandra Kalev and Vincent Roscigno. Both professors of sociology, Alexandra works at the Tel Aviv University and Vincent works at the Ohio State University. There are some parallels in your respective work. Both of you have been doing empirical research exploring questions of inequa...
Article
Full-text available
Using a unique sample of 5,022 workers in 94 large German workplaces, the authors explore whether and how women’s access to higher level positions, firms’ human resources practices, and workers’ qualification levels are associated with gender differences in earnings. First, they find that having more women in management reduces the gender earnings...
Article
Full-text available
After Wall Street firms repeatedly had to shell out millions to settle discrimination lawsuits, businesses started to get serious about their efforts to increase diversity. But unfortunately, they don’t seem to be getting results: Women and minorities have not gained much ground in management over the past 20 years. The problem is, organizations a...
Article
Full-text available
Organization scholars since Max Weber have argued that formal personnel systems can prevent discrimination. We draw on sociological and psychological literatures to develop a theory of the varied effects of bureaucratic reforms on managerial motivation. Drawing on self-perception and cognitive-dissonance theories, we contend that initiatives that e...
Article
Full-text available
This paper examines the labor-market incorporation of minority women. Industrial transformations and the expansion of service and retail have increased women's labor-market participation, but there remains a large variation between minority women groups, where multiple boundaries may hinder labor-market integration. Past research has explored the r...
Article
Scholars and pundits argue that women and minorities are more likely to lose their jobs in downsizing because of segregation or outright discrimination. In contrast, this article explores how the formalization and legalization of downsizing affect inequalities. According to bureaucracy theory and management practitioners, formalization constrains d...
Article
Full-text available
Organization scholars since Max Weber have argued that formal personnel systems can prevent discrimination. Studies show both positive and negative effects. We draw on sociological and psychological literatures to develop a nuanced theory of the effects of bureaucracy. Drawing on self-perception and contact theories, we contend that initiatives tha...
Chapter
To keep pace with the changing business environment as globalization permeates both consumer and labor markets, this handbook offers the most current research in the workplace diversity, exploring what diversity means and its impact on group and organizational functioning. The volume is comprised of eight sections. The first section provides a fund...
Chapter
There is a growing debate among policy makers in Israel regarding Palestinian female citizens’ (hereafter Palestinian women) low labor force participation (LFP) (OECD 2011). This debate revolves mainly around the political and social actions that should be applied to the labor market to motivate Palestinian women’s employment.1 In this debate, howe...
Chapter
Full-text available
A glass cage is a sociological image denoting the structural location of disadvantaged groups at work. It refers to women's and minorities’ segregated jobs as a source of informal and persistent barriers for lateral and vertical career transitions.
Article
Full-text available
During the civil rights era in the 1960s, the federal government passed a series of measures to end racial and gender discrimination in the workplace. Yet the laws and regulations did not clearly define what constituted illegal discrimination and gave only weak enforcement power to federal agencies. As a result, over the following decades, corporat...
Article
Full-text available
While some U.S. corporations have adopted a host of diversity management programs, many have done little or nothing. We explore the forces promoting six diversity programs in a national sample of 816 firms over 23 years. Institutional theory suggests that external pressure for innovation reinforces internal advocacy. We argue that external pressure...
Article
Full-text available
Corporations have implemented a wide range of equal opportunity and diversity programs since the 1960s. This chapter reviews studies of the origins of these programs, surveys that assess the popularity of different programs, and research on the effects of programs on the workforce. Human resources managers championed several waves of innovations, f...
Article
Full-text available
Research on race stratification and employment usually implies discrimination as a key mechanism in race stratification, although few if any analyses bring attitudes, employee-employer interpretations, and established discriminatory behavior into a singular analysis. In this article, the authors do so and offer a relational account of how discrimin...
Article
Full-text available
This study shows that the organization of work, particularly the structure of jobs, can sustain or erode gender and racial disadvantage. Restructuring work around team work and weaker job boundaries can improve women’s and minorities’ visibility and reduce stereotyping and thus should reduce their career disadvantage. Proponents of bureaucratic for...
Article
Full-text available
Social scientists have shown that bias and stereotypes are executed and reinforced not only in moments of decision making, like hiring or promotion, but also in day-to-day interactions and social relations (or lack thereof) at work. This article argues that discrimination-reducing measures taken by employers should address the relational level in a...
Article
Full-text available
This study examines the autonomous goals of state actors and their administrative and cultural capacities to pursue them. Analyzing qualitative and quantitative data from Palestine/Israel during the years 1940–1960, we study the diffusion of joint productivity councils that use scientific management principles (scientific JPCs). We assess explanati...
Article
Do America's costly diversity-management programs work? Some do and some don't. The best idea is to assign clear responsibility for change.
Article
Full-text available
Ever since the Civil Rights Act of 1964 outlawed employment discrimi-nation, governments, colleges, and corporations have tried to understand what the law means.' Employers have tried to integrate workforces, some with more enthusiasm than ~ t h e r s . ~ Change has been slower than1 those who passed the Civil Rights Act might have imagined it woul...
Article
Has federal antidiscrimination law been effective in moving women and minorities into management? Early studies show that government affirmative action reviews improved the numbers, and rank, of blacks, but evidence of what has happened since 1980 is sparse. There is little evidence that civil rights lawsuits improved the employment status of women...
Article
Full-text available
Employers have experimented with three broad approaches to promoting diversity. Some programs are designed to establish organizational responsibility for diversity, others to moderate managerial bias through training and feedback, and still others to reduce the social isolation of women and minority workers. These approaches find support in academi...
Article
Full-text available
Scholars of the American workplace agree that the employment relationship has changed in significant ways but disagree about whether workplaces are now best characterized as ‘legalized’ or ‘restructured’, a designation that implies a market orientation in the treatment of workers. We investigate whether a new set of employment practices, namely fle...
Article
Full-text available
Has federal antidiscrimination law been effective in moving women and minorities into management? Early studies show that government affirmative action reviews improved the numbers, and rank, of blacks, but evidence of what has happened since 1980 is sparse. There is little evidence that civil rights lawsuits improved the employment status of women...
Article
Acknowledgments:For useful comments the authors with to thank Nina Bandelj, Nitsan Chorev, Paul DiMaggio, Frank Dobbin, Michal Frenkel, Marion Fourcade- Gourinchas, Joshua Guetzkow, GregoireMallard, Don Palmer, Tom Pessah, Akos

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