Samantha C. Paustian‐Underdahl

• PhD
• Professor (Assistant) at Florida International University

An important challenge faced by women CEOs is that their firms tend to receive more shareholder activism than firms with men CEOs. Frequently, this activism represents attempts by shareholders to direct or override the decisions made by the firms’ leaders. The current paper integrates micro and macro perspectives to explore the factors influencing...

Contrary to expectations about solidarity and sisterhood between women, women managers sometimes distance themselves from junior women in the workplace when facing identity threat, that is, the feeling that one's social identity—such as race or gender—is devalued or undermined. For example, women managers might distance themselves from lower status...

Advice is often given to junior scholars in the field of organization science to ostensibly facilitate their career success. In this commentary, we discuss insights from 19 elite scholars (i.e., Fellows and top journal editors) about the advice they received–and, often, did not follow–throughout their careers. We highlight some of the pitfalls from...

Background: Given that emotional exhaustion and nurse engagement have significant implications for nurse well-being and organizational performance, determining how to increase nurse engagement while reducing nurse exhaustion is of value. Purpose: Resource loss and gain cycles, as theorized in conservation of resources theory, are examined using...

The COVID‐19 pandemic has had a devastating impact on small businesses and nonprofit organizations worldwide, resulting in rising stress and worry for many small business owners. While stress is typically considered to be harmful to health and well‐being, recent work suggests that improving one's mindset about the benefits of stress can help one to...

Despite the efforts to increase female representation in male-dominated occupations, many organizations are still challenged by a female talent shortage and high turnover in such jobs. We look at perceived supervisor support (PSS) as one factor that may reduce turnover intentions of female employees in male-dominated occupations via enhanced percep...

Growing evidence suggests that gender diversity on boards of directors is important for corporate governance and overall organizational effectiveness. Yet, progress in increasing female board representation has been slow. Prior studies have focused primarily on either the role of organizational characteristics in board gender composition or the rol...

Over the last decade, more than 50,000 pregnancy discrimination claims were filed in the United States (United States Equal Employment Opportunity Commission [U.S. EEOC], 2018a). While pregnancy discrimination claims remain prevalent, research examining the effects of pregnancy discrimination on the well-being and health of working mothers and thei...

We used qualitative and quantitative data from 70 individuals at different life stages to examine work–family management strategies adopted by men and women across 4 career–family centrality profiles: career-centric, family-centric, dual-centric, and other-centric. Participant interview responses were analyzed using QSR NVivo Version 10. We used a...

In light of recent research suggesting mothers are more likely to withdraw from work than fathers are, we assess the relative contributions of popular "pushed-out" and "opting-out" perspectives over the course of their pregnancies. As pregnancy is a pivotal time for the reevaluation of work and life roles, we investigate the degree to which gender...

Despite women's advancements in the workplace, gender inequality persists. We classify and test two frameworks used to explain gender differences in career success: unequal attributes and unequal effects. The unequal attributes framework suggests that gender is related to other attributes, which result in unequal career outcomes for men and women (...

Unfortunately, not all organizations are supportive of employees’ family lives. Family unsupportive workplaces can be stressful for all employees and particularly for pregnant women, who carry a physical reminder of their family life. In the present study, we draw on conservation of resources (COR) theory (Hobfoll, 1989, 2001) to investigate how wo...

Relying on Conservation of Resources theory and a sample of 23,439 workers in 26 countries, we develop and test a multilevel moderated mediation of the effects of perceived job autonomy on work–life balance, engagement, and turnover intentions, depending on employee gender and country-level gender egalitarianism (GE), and indirectly through stress....

The leadership literature shows consistent, sizeable, and persistent effects indicating that female leaders face significant biases in the workplace compared with male leaders. However, the social identity leadership literature suggests these biases might be overcome at the team level by adjusting the number of women in the team. Building on this w...

This work reconciles previous discrepancies regarding when and how the demographic composition of supervisor-subordinate dyads relates to perceived supervisor support. We draw from social identity theory to argue that building relationships with higher status group members, while distancing oneself from the lower status group, is a contextually ind...

We draw on the economic institutions literature and on transactional stress theory to explain differences in employee reactions to mergers and acquisitions (M&As) across 29 nations. Using a sample of 10,803 middle managers and executives, we find that country-level economic development moderates the effects of an M&A on employee attitudes and outco...

The leadership literature shows consistent, sizeable, and persistent effects indicating that female leaders face significant biases in the workplace compared with male leaders. However, the social identity leadership literature suggests these biases might be overcome at the team level by adjusting the number of women in the team. Building on this w...

The leadership literature shows consistent, sizeable, and persistent effects indicating that female leaders face significant biases in the workplace compared with male leaders. However, the social identity leadership literature suggests these biases might be overcome at the team level by adjusting the number of women in the team. Building on this w...

With strong empirical evidence existing for conflicting models, the nature of burnout and engagement continues to be debated. Scholars have recognized the need to theoretically clarify the nature of the burnout–engagement relationship in order to advance empirical research related to both topics. The purpose of this paper is to reconcile existing p...

We contribute to the body of literature on the what is beautiful is good heuristic (Dion, Berscheid, & Walster, 1972, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 24, 285–290), the beauty is beastly effect (Heilman & Saruwatari, 1979, Organizational Behavior and Human Performance, 23, 360–372) and lack of fit theory (Heilman, 1983, Research in Org...

This symposium takes a first step in answering a call in the literature to highlight the intricacies of the work-family interface for employees in unique sub-populations by studying 4 understudied groups of workers in the U.S.: fast-food workers, mompreneurs, senior executives, and migrant farm workers. As such, we cover a broad spectrum of work-fa...

Proposed as a theory of motivation, the basic tenet of conservation of resources (COR) theory is that humans are motivated to protect their current resources and acquire new resources. Despite its recent popularity in the organizational behavior literature, several criticisms of the theory have emerged, primarily related to the central concept of r...

In this study, we assess a multilevel approach to work interference with family (WIF) by examining the influence of unit-level work–family climate, as well as the importance of supervisors' spoken guidance and their behavioral integrity in helping employees process social information about work–family issues. We propose that there are two important...

Despite evidence that men are typically perceived as more appropriate and effective than women in leadership positions, a recent debate has emerged in the popular press and academic literature over the potential existence of a female leadership advantage. This meta-analysis addresses this debate by quantitatively summarizing gender differences in p...

Based on role accumulation theory and boundary theory we propose and examine a model that represents the process by which family involvement influences promotability through enrichment, and the moderating roles of employees’ boundary management preferences (i.e., segmentation/integration) in that process. Data collected from 347 registered nurses a...

Research examining the outcomes of workplace injuries has focused on high costs to the organization. In this study, we utilize conservation of resources theory to develop and test a model that explains how and under what circumstances workplace injuries impact employees' perceptions of how their work interferes with their family. Results from 194 r...

The purpose of this study was to contribute to the limited body of knowledge of antecedents to supervisor support by utilizing the ecology model to explore the biographical information that differentiates highly supportive supervisors from those who are less supportive. We analysed qualitative biographical data from 65 supervisors rated as highly s...

A key theme from the previous commentaries is that the business case for developing supportive supervisors needs to be stronger for organizations to make the investments necessary to develop supportive supervisors. There are time constraints and other practical considerations for those in the role of supervisor that may get in the way of supportive...

The notion that strain can result as employees' resources are threatened or lost is well established. However, the transition from resource threats to resource losses is an important but understudied aspect of employee strain. We argue that the threat-to-loss transition triggers accelerated resource loss and a shift in how employees utilize their r...