Bachelor Thesis, Master Thesis
📌 Key facts
Contents
- 💡 Background
- 🦾Who We Are
- 🎯 Goals
- 🧠 Topics of Interest
- 🎓 Profile
- 📚 Further Reading
- 📄 Requirements to any Work
- 📬 How to Apply
💡 Background
In LinkedIn’s Gender Insights Report the authors report that while the average number of jobs viewed by men and women in 2018 were roughly the same (44 for women and 46 for men), women are 16% less likely to apply for a job after viewing it. However, they’re also 16% more likely to get hired after they apply. If women apply for jobs at a lower rate, but tend to be the right candidates, why are they more selective about the jobs they apply to, and how can companies more effectively reach them?
In 2010, Google noticed that women software engineers were not getting promoted, so a senior leader sent out emails about promotion opportunities to eligible women, encouraging them to apply. As a result, applications from women increased, as did women’s overall promotion rates. Increasing the number of women and minorities in the applicant pool might be as easy as reminding them of the opportunity and the process and encouraging them to apply.
However, there is also evidence that “encouragement” doesn’t always work. For instance, researchers found that a “vote of confidence” from a sponsor (i.e., being tapped on the shoulder) increased men’s likelihood to apply, but it didn’t change women’s likelihood, thereby maintaining the gender gap. These conflicting findings suggest that there is still work to be done to understand exactly how information and encouragement can be used to close the gender gap and how to attract diverse talent.
🦾Who We Are
The Chair for Strategy and Organization is focused on research with impact. This means we do not want to repeat old ideas and base our research solely on the research people did 10 years ago. Instead, we currently research topics that will shape the future. Topics such as Agile Organizations and Digital Disruption, Blockchain Technology, Creativity and Innovation, Digital Transformation and Business Model Innovation, Diversity, Education: Education Technology and Performance Management, HRTech, Leadership, and Teams. We are always early in noticing trends, technologies, strategies, and organizations that shape the future, which has its ups and downs.
🎯 Goals
- Explore the state-of-the-art of talent acquisition and diversity, equity, & inclusion
- Investigate the following questions:
- Why are women often times more selective about the jobs they apply to?
- How can companies more effectively reach diverse talent?
- Which factors determine the effectiveness of talent attraction interventions?
- Make your results visible
The scope of your thesis will be determined based on your background, type of thesis, and personal interests.
🧠 Topics of Interest
- (Gender) Stereotypes & Biases
- Interventions for Diversity, Equity, & Inclusion
- Talent Attraction & Acquisition
- Empowerment
- Social Identity & Social Norms
- Male dominated fields such as Tech, Politics, Entrepreneurship,…
🎓 Profile
- Reliable and self-driven
- Enthusiasm for DEI
- Ability to do sophisticated internet and desk research
- Ability connect with practitioners and collaborate with an industry partner
- Passionate to learn more about the future and do research with impact
📚 Further Reading
How to Recruit More Women to Your Company
Many leaders care about gender diversity. And there has been some progress in getting more women into all levels of organizations but they remain underrepresented. To explore the disconnect between leaders' intentions and true progress on closing the gender gap, LinkedIn undertook several studies around gender and work over the past year.
www.google.com
Gender Insights Report
Learn how women and men differ when searching for jobs and find out how to improve gender balance in your recruiting pipeline.
business.linkedin.com
Does Encouragement Matter in Improving Gender Imbalances in Technical Fields? Evidence from a Randomized Controlled Trial
Women are traditionally underrepresented in the fields of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM), perhaps due in part to a lack of female mentors and role models, concerns about managing a work-life balance, and a relative lack of access to professional support structures and networks.
gap.hks.harvard.edu
More Women in Tech? Evidence from a field experiment addressing social identity
Despite evidence that suggests women have made gains in most sectors of the global economy, significant gender wage gaps remain. A large portion of the wage gap can be explained by the different occupational and industry choices made by men and women. For example, in Peru women only make up 7% of the coding industry.
gap.hks.harvard.edu
Do mentoring, information, and nudge reduce the gender gap in economics majors?
The gender gap in economics majors (i.e., male students are much more likely to major in economics than are their female counterparts) has remained large, despite narrowing gaps observed in many other fields.
www.sciencedirect.com
Google data-mines its approach to promoting women
Four years ago, Google was confronted with a troubling stat: Its male engineers were raising their hands for promotions at higher rates than women. Google couldn't understand why women weren't going for better titles and higher pay when it had a system where anyone could apply for a promotion.
www.washingtonpost.com
How Blizzard Increased Its Number of Female Interns by 166% in One Year
The video game community isn't known for its gender diversity. With women making up just 22% of all game developers internationally, the industry really needs to welcome more women into the workforce. One company breaking that mold is Blizzard Entertainment, publisher of games like World of Warcraft and one of Fortune's 100 Best Companies to Work For in 2017.
www.linkedin.com
Sara Sanford: How to design gender bias out of your workplace
Equity expert Sara Sanford offers a certified playbook that helps companies go beyond good intentions, using a data-driven standard to actively counter unconscious bias and foster gender equity -- by changing how workplaces operate, not just how people think.
www.ted.com
📄 Requirements to any Work
We do not want your research to gather dust in some corner of bookshelf but make it accessible to the world. Thus, we warmly encourage you to create some or all of the following:
- Infograph - visually represent some of your work (find examples here)
- Slide Deck - summarize your research and possibly present it
- Extract most important sequences from podcasts, videos, and other media
- 3-4 Tweets about the most important findings and summarizing the topic
- optional: Medium Article - let people outside the university know about your research and start your personal brand
📬 How to Apply
If you are interested, please contact Nadja Born (e-mail below) by submitting your CV and grade report. Please also briefly outline your tentative research idea (research question, data and methods, possible outcomes with a tentative outline all in word as *.docx)
We're greatly looking forward to hearing more about you!
👉 nadja.born@tum.de