Role of gender in workplace negotiations
A study conducted by Columbia Business School Professor Michael Morris, Chavkin-Chang Professor of Leadership, and Emily Amanatullah, now an Assistant Professor of Management at McCombs School of Business of the University of Texas at Austin, finds that while women fare worse economically than men in many distributive negotiations, including salary negotiations, women do not lack the capability or motivation to bargain effectively. Instead, women are simultaneously negotiating social approval in light of gender role expectations and hence hedge their assertiveness in some contexts, such as when bargaining for themselves. They do not hedge or do worse when bargaining on behalf of others, a context where assertive negotiation reads as caring and therefore consistent with the feminine gender role.