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Managing Organizational Gender Diversity Images: A Content Analysis of German Corporate Websites

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Abstract

Although establishing gender equality in board and managerial positions has recently become more important for organizations, companies with low levels of gender diversity seem to perceive an ethical dilemma regarding the ways, in which they attempt to attain it. One way that organizations try to move toward gender equality is through the use of their corporate websites to manage potential applicants’ impressions of their current levels of, and actions to improve, gender diversity. The dilemma is whether to truthfully communicate their low level of gender diversity, conceal it, or exaggerate it. On the one hand, organizations that are truthful may find it difficult to achieve equality because women are less attracted to companies that lack diversity. On the other hand, organizations that are untruthful risk their moral legitimacy. The present work investigates gender diversity-related communication on the corporate websites of 99 major German companies. Based on theoretical work on minority attraction, we apply an organizational impression management taxonomy to guide our in-depth content analysis. With this approach, we hope to advance the understanding of how the issue of gender diversity is presented on corporate websites, which is useful for both organizational decision makers as well as diversity researchers. We found that although gender diversity-related communications on corporate websites contain both assertive and defensive organizational impression management tactics, as well as a third type of tactic we refer to as “acknowledgement,” assertive tactics were used more frequently. We argue the existence of a paradox whereby organizations use assertive impression management tactics to maintain pragmatic legitimacy but compromise their moral legitimacy by doing so. Furthermore, we argue that moral legitimacy can be maintained or restored through the sincere use of defensive impression management tactics and acknowledgement.

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Notes

  1. We excluded Porsche SE that operates exclusively as investment holding; with less than 50 employees.

  2. The corporate governance system in Germany is two-tiered, with a supervisory board making appointment decisions for and monitoring of the board of directors, which is responsible for the operations of a company (Jansson 2005; Joecks et al. 2013).

  3. The sampled companies had on average more than 50,000 employees. Common classification standards of organization size were hence not applicable, which is why we decided to split the sample into three equal groups.

  4. Due to the sample size of N = 99, absolute values are reported as they come close to measurements in percentage.

  5. Some company quotes were slightly changed to maintain consistency in spelling words (British vs. American) or ensure proper grammar.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Reinhard-Mohn-Institute for Management and Corporate Governance, Witten/Herdecke University, Alfred-Herrhausen-Straße 50, 58448, Witten, Germany

    Leon Windscheid & Michèle Morner

  2. College of Business, Western New England University, Springfield, MA, USA

    Lynn Bowes-Sperry

  3. IMD, Lausanne, Switzerland

    Karsten Jonsen

  4. German University of Administrative Sciences Speyer, Speyer, Germany

    Michèle Morner

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  1. Leon Windscheid
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  2. Lynn Bowes-Sperry
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Correspondence to Leon Windscheid.

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We wish to thank Derek Avery for his helpful comment and advice on this research project.

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Windscheid, L., Bowes-Sperry, L., Jonsen, K. et al. Managing Organizational Gender Diversity Images: A Content Analysis of German Corporate Websites. J Bus Ethics 152, 997–1013 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10551-016-3292-6

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