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The goal of this study was to help explain the underrepresentation of lesbian women and gay men (LG) in senior leadership positions by examining bias in the allocation of developmental opportunities (sponsorship/coaching and challenging work assignments). It further sought to test stigma-by-association as one reason for the biased allocation of developmental opportunities.

An online experimental vignette study (N = 273) using a 2 (target gender: male vs female) by 2 (sexual orientation: LG vs heterosexual) design was conducted.

LG workers were less likely to be allocated developmental opportunities than heterosexual workers overall and relative to their same-sex heterosexual counterparts. Further, lesbian women were least likely to be allocated developmental opportunities. These effects also operated indirectly via participants concerns about stigma-by-association.

Sexual orientation and gender identity minority workers remain underrepresented in senior leadership positions and oftentimes despite having better objective qualifications. Research has begun examining bias in leader selection. This study, however, directs attention to the biased allocation of developmental opportunities which make one competitive for senior leadership positions and occur prior to leader selection. In doing so, the authors provide a baseline understanding of an important reason why LG might be underrepresented in leadership positions.

The authors incorporated leadership and gender theories with research on trust to propose a model relating interpersonal emotion management (IEM, a type of relational leadership) and task-oriented (T-O) leadership to follower adaptive performance. The authors also examine the indirect effect of IEM and T-O on adaptive performance via trust and the possible moderating role of gender on these relationships.

The authors tested this model using a sample of 314 workers who rated their direct leaders (supervisors).

Overall, results supported the model for IEM as it was directly and indirectly related (via trust) to adaptive job performance (even after controlling for transformational leadership) and these relationships were more positive for women leaders. T-O leadership was related to adaptive job performance as expected but was unrelated to trust or, via trust, to adaptive performance. Findings also suggest that women direct leaders may garner more trust and adaptive performance from followers by engaging in higher levels of IEM, while also not experiencing backlash for engaging in the more agentic T-O behaviors during a crisis.

Despite an emphasis on women's relational leadership during a crisis, the authors findings show organizations are best served by ambidextrous leaders who can manage the emotions and tasks of their followers and that both women and men can engage in these leadership styles without penalty.

Much research regarding women's leadership advantage during a crisis is based on political leaders or has been conducted in lab settings. Further, it has focused on attitudes toward the women leaders rather than their performance. Research has also not considered both IEM along with the possible backlash women may experience for engaging in T-O leadership.

The purpose of this paper is to develop a measure of occupational embeddedness.

The construct of occupational embeddedness was defined in terms of the forces that bind people to their occupation. Then a four‐part study was conducted to develop a measure of it.

In Part 1, items were developed and judgmental evidence for their content validity was generated. In Part 2 the initial psychometric characteristics were examined. The results supported the internal consistency reliability and factor structure of the measure. In Part 3, Part 2 was replicated and showed that occupational embeddedness had a negative relationship to occupational withdrawal intentions. In Part 4 a confirmatory factor analysis was conducted to demonstrate that occupational embeddedness was distinguishable from occupational commitment. The paper also found that occupational embeddedness was correlated with occupational commitment but not social desirability. In addition, the paper found that it accounted for incremental variance in occupational withdrawal intentions beyond occupational commitment.

Limitations include the fact that occupational withdrawal intentions rather than actual behaviors were measured. Overall, the results suggest that the new measure has sound psychometric qualities, and adequate discriminant, convergent and predictive validity. The paper concludes that use of the measure may contribute to the prediction/understanding of career withdrawal.

A new measure of a construct that may be used to complement existing research and measures of work‐role attachment was developed.