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We introduce a novel stakeholder-oriented framework that highlights variance in the application and expression of gender bias in the upper echelons. Directed by their relationship with the firm's leadership, we theorize that stakeholders' appraisals of top female leaders map onto a categorical and complex continuum. At the "categorical" end of this continuum, stakeholders neither have access nor are attentive to capability cues from the leader, increasing their reliance on stereotypes and gender biases in their leader evaluations. At the "complex" end of the continuum, stakeholders have access and are attentive to capability cues from the leader, decreasing their reliance on stereotypes and increasing their ability to accurately evaluate the leader. Between these ends, stakeholders evaluate female leaders by applying stereotypes and striving for accuracy to varying degrees. Each region on this continuum is linked to an array of behavioral responses, directed by stakeholders toward a target leader, that differ in valence and intensity. Our framework has significant implications for understanding a variety of social biases beyond gender, and enables the development of tailored strategies that can be used to facilitate accurate leader evaluations by all stakeholders. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We theorize that ally work (actions by employees belonging to advantaged social groups to support employees belonging to disadvantaged social groups) can be organized into three modalities: self ally work that is oriented toward developing skills and capabilities, relational ally work that is focused on building positive work relationships, and organizational ally work aimed at changing organizational practices to support disadvantaged coworkers. Drawing from the theory of political ideology as motivated cognition, across multiple pre-registered field studies we found that employees who were more liberal-leaning (vs. conservative-leaning) reported higher engagement in all three modalities. We also examined whether contextual affordances amplified the liberalism effect. Specifically, we tested whether personal accountability for diversity, colleague diversity, and organizational ideology directed liberals toward greater engagement in self, relational, and organizational work, respectively. As hypothesized, more liberal-leaning employees reported higher engagement in organizational ally work in more ideologically liberal organizations. However, the hypothesized effects of personal accountability were not supported. Notably, personal accountability had a positive effect on self ally work among more conservative-leaning employees. The moderating effects of colleague diversity were also mixed across studies. Highlighting both the plurality and politics of ally work, we discuss theoretical and practical implications of our findings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Social activists sometimes engage in a form of workplace activism that involves using their employer organization as an unofficial platform to communicate social issue messages to external stakeholders. This type of activism follows a different logic from that of more-familiar citizen activism, in which citizens directly target society and its institutions, and that of organizational-change activism, in which employees aim to influence their employer organization. This article develops and tests theory to understand this phenomenon of organization-as-platform activism, using the National Football League "Take a Knee" employee athlete protests as an empirical context. Drawing on past research on social movements and employee activism, we offer a theoretical comparison of these three forms of activism—citizen, organizational-change, and organization-as-platform—to conceptually distinguish them and to theorize factors that uniquely predict the occurrence of platform activism. We find evidence of predictors associated with the attributes of the organizational platform and those of the intended stakeholder audience. Organization-as-platform activism is associated with the accessibility and openness of the organizational platform for messaging use, the visibility of the organizational platform for message transmission, and the receptivity of the targeted stakeholder audience. As employees increasingly bring their non-work identities and beliefs into the workplace, our findings invite new research on the outcomes of platform activism for organizations, the implications of such activism for organizational stakeholder strategy, and the relation between platform activism and employee prosocial voice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]