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Science, technology, engineering, mathematics and medicine (STEMM) workplaces worldwide remain stubbornly resistant to gender equality initiatives. Leaders are vital to driving change, but the extent to which their capabilities lead to change remains unknown. This article examines STEMM leaders' gender competence to achieving transformative changes in gender inequality.

This article examines the capability of STEMM leaders to act as change agents through an in-depth, qualitative analysis of perceptions of gender inequality, sexual harassment, sex discrimination and gender bias within their organisations. Findings are analysed using a customised tripartite gender competence schema, comprising commitment, knowledge and method (or know-how).

The findings suggest that while STEMM leaders may express a commitment to addressing gender inequality, misapprehensions about the nature and scope of the problem are likely to hamper efforts. Two key misapprehensions standout: a tendency to frame gender inequality in primarily numerical terms; and recourse to blaming external factors beyond STEMM for gender inequality in STEMM.

This article makes an original contribution by examining the gender competence of leaders in STEMM organisations, which has not been previously researched. The findings extend understanding of the salience of leaders' capabilities to lead change by identifying key gaps and misapprehensions in STEMM leaders' understanding of the nature and scope of the problem.

Despite some recent progress, gender inequality remains a persistent problem in science, technology, engineering, mathematics and medicine (STEMM) organisations. This article seeks to better understand resistance to gender equality (GE) in this context with the aim of shedding light on the workplace-based impediments to equality and unlocking remediation opportunities.

The article draws on in-depth interviews with 20 STEMM leaders to examine how they talk about the problem of gender inequality in the organisations they lead. Because resistance is rarely expressed directly, we adopt an in-depth, granular approach to examining what we call STEMM leaders’ “resistance talk” by decoding expressions of GE resistance that may appear, ostensibly, as something else.

We found various ideas, arguments and other discursive practices which function to legitimate or justify the status quo. These are both described by leaders in relation to what they are dealing with in their own organisations and expressed themselves. While similar “legitimating discourses” operate in other gender-segregated workplaces, our findings show how they manifest specifically in STEMM contexts.

Our results provide much-needed granular level evidence of the discursive tactics deployed to legitimate the status quo and obstruct progress toward GE in STEMM. This extends understanding of barriers to GE in STEMM and, importantly, highlights where attention might be directed to both counter resistance and harness potentially changing attitudes to expedite the necessary change required for GE in STEMM.

This paper describes a model of “Learning to care” derived from a study exploring how care workers in care homes learn to care for people living with dementia. The “Learning to care” model is primarily informal in nature in which influences such as formalised training and organisational culture impact care outcomes indirectly rather than directly.

This study used a focused, critical ethnographic approach in two care homes in England resulting in 63 h of observation of care of people living with advanced dementia, 15 semi-structured interviews and 90 in-situ ethnographic interviews with care staff.

The findings reveal a three-level model of learning to care. At the level of day-to-day interactions is a mechanism for learning that is wholly informal and follows the maxim “What Works is What Matters”. Workers draw on resources and information within this process derived from their personal experiences, resident influences and care home cultural knowledge. Cultural knowledge is created through a worker’s interactions with colleagues and the training they receive, meaning that these organisational level influences affect care practice only indirectly via the “What Works is What Matters” mechanism.

This study makes an original contribution by explaining the nature of day-to-day informal learning processes as experienced by care workers and those living with dementia in care homes. In particular, it illuminates the specific mechanisms by which organisational culture has an effect on care practice and the limitations of formal training in influencing such practice.

Unquestionably, the appraisal interview is a significant part of the performance appraisal process. It is in this formal interview that feedback on subordinate performance is communicated, salary/promotion discussions are held, ways of correcting performance deficiencies are discussed, training and development needs are explored, and future work goals and objectives are delineated (Eichel & Bender, 1984; Pratt, 1985).

Commentators have claimed that business schools encourage unethical behavior by using economic theory as a basis for education. We examine claims that exposure to agency theory acts as a self-fulfilling prophecy, reducing ethical behavior among business students. We experimentally test whether economics coursework or a manipulated competitive vs. cooperative frame affects measured ethical behavior in simulated decision settings. We measure ethical behavior using established tasks. We also measure ethical recognition to test whether agency theory reduces recognition of ethical issues. Exposure to agency theory in either prior classwork or the experiment increased wealth-increasing unethical behavior. We found no effect on unethical behavior that does not affect wealth. We found no effect of exposure to agency theory on ethical recognition. Usual laboratory experiment limitations apply. Future research can examine why agency theory reduces ethical behavior. Educators ought to consider unintended consequences of the language and assumptions of theories that underlie education. Students may assume descriptions of how people behave as prescriptions for how people ought to behave. This study contributes to the literature on economic education and ethics. We found no prior experimental studies of the effect of economics education on ethical behavior.

Justice rules are standards that serve as criteria for formulating fairness judgments. Though justice rules play a role in the organizational justice literature, they have seldom been the subject of analysis in their own right. To address this limitation, we first consider three meta-theoretical dualities that are highlighted by justice rules – the distinction between justice versus fairness, indirect versus direct measurement, and normative versus descriptive paradigms. Second, we review existing justice rules and organize them into four types of justice: distributive (e.g., equity, equality), procedural (e.g., voice, consistent treatment), interpersonal (e.g., politeness, respectfulness), and informational (e.g., candor, timeliness). We also emphasize emergent rules that have not received sufficient research attention. Third, we consider various computation models purporting to explain how justice rules are assessed and aggregated to form fairness judgments. Fourth and last, we conclude by reviewing research that enriches our understanding of justice rules by showing how they are cognitively processed. We observe that there are a number of influences on fairness judgments, and situations exist in which individuals do not systematically consider justice rules.

Today, long-term success requires firms to sense changes in their environments early and react efficiently to them. Increasing middle managers’ participation in decision-making about market-related and product-related questions has been suggested as one way of enhancing this strategic responsiveness; abandoning formal planning, such as annual budgets, has been another. Yet, empirical evidence on the matter is scarce and conflicting. Drawing on data from Denmark’s 500 largest firms, we show that participation of middle managers in decision-making about new products and markets to serve, in-deed, increases firms’ strategic responsiveness as assessed by a reduction in firms’ downside risk. However, this effect is not a direct one. Nor does it interact positively or negatively with the emphasis put on formal planning as submitted in literature. Our evidence suggests that emphasis on planning mediates the relation between stronger participation of middle managers in decision-making and the increase in firms’ strategic responsiveness. This has implications for ongoing theory building and practice.

In an able article upon Sir WILLIAM MCCORMICK's Report on five years' work of the Department of Scientific and Industrial Research. The Daily Telegraph observes that “five years ago, when a twelvemonth of the war had compelled us to realise that winning it would be the hardest task ever laid upon the nation, a beginning was made with organised encouragement and assistance of research by the State. It had long been realised only too well by scientific workers that Great Britain was singular among the leading civilised countries in its obstinate neglect of this vital interest of a modern State; and the course of the war very rapidly brought all of us, and not only the savants, to a recognition of the fact that our principal enemy was foremost of all the Powers in the care which it had given to that interest. The army of technical experts mobilised by Germany for the scientific war was far larger and better equipped than our own. In setting‐out to remedy this state of things, the Government was looking, necessarily, far ahead of the war, which was likely to be ended one way or another long before the benefits of a Department of Scientific and Industrial Research could begin to materialise. Now, five years after the inception of the scheme by the Committee of the Privy Council, it is beginning to bear fruit; but the real harvest is in the not immediate future still. Sir WILLIAM MCCORMICK'S Report, however, as summarised yesterday in our columns, shows in its review of those five years’ work how well the foundations have been laid, and how excellent are the prospects of useful development along the lines now clearly marked out for the activity of the Department. Backwardness in the application of scientific research to industry has cost us dear in many ways. It is a reproach which is now in a fair way to be lifted from us altogether, thanks to that general awakening of the national intelligence of which the new Department was only one result; for its work would be of little avail without the active co‐operation of the industrial world. That is, as the Report brings clearly out, being given; and it will be given in increasing measure as time reveals the inestimable value of what can be done by combined enterprise, directed and fostered by the State. This is only one branch of the Department's work; but it is in this connection, perhaps, that the practical utility of it will be most generally appreciated. Eighteen associations of industrial firms have now been established, each association undertaking co‐operative scientific investigation of the problems of its particular industry; five more are about to be set up and to receive their licenses from the Board of Trade. Ten of the associations are actually at work, and the 2,300 firms organised in them have raised, in the first year, an aggregate income of nearly £40,000 to add to the contribution made by the Department out of the million fund granted by Parliament for the encouragement of such associations. That this expenditure on co‐operative research will be returned many limes over is not open to doubt; the value of it is written on every page of the history of Germany's colossal industrial development in the decades before the war, and it is, indeed, in great part the explanation of that development.