Female Leaders, Organizational Contexts and Active Representation

• In Event: Representative Bureaucracy

Abstract

The theory of representative bureaucracy suggests the shared social identity between bureaucrats and citizens is key to the wellbeing of those who are represented (Mosher 1968). There are three types of representation: passive representation, active representation, and symbolic representation. Research has found two necessary conditions for passive representation transits to active representation: bureaucrats’ discretion and the saliency of policy issues (Keiser et al., 2002; Wilkins and Keiser, 2004). Recent theoretical and empirical development the literature on representative bureaucracy suggests institutional contexts, such as organizational structure, the interactions between street-level bureaucrats and their managers, can influence how passive representation translates into active representation (Meier 2018). However, contextual factors such as organizational culture remain understudied in the current literature. In this paper, we explore how organizational culture, interplaying with top managers’ gender, affect the link between passive and active representation of women.
Taking an institutional approach, we conceptualize organizational culture as norms, values, and the patterns of accepted and expected behaviors (Al-Yahya 2008). While recognizing the presence of female leaders as a necessary condition of active representation of women, we deem an inclusive and equitable organizational culture as an enabling factor that can strengthen female leaders’ capability in actively representing women. Furthermore, managers can formulate an organizational culture that encourages representation through managerial practices, they could affect the formation of active representation at the street-level through organizational socialization processes. An organizational culture like that is likely to produce organizational norms that influence bureaucrats’ decisions to act.
The proposed empirical analysis uses a multilevel dataset on near 4,000 American hospitals from FY 2013 to 2017, merging the American Hospital Association Annual Hospital Survey Database with the State Inpatient Dataset. We gather original data on hospital CEOs’ gender and validate a measure for diverse and inclusive organizational culture, that captures hospitals’ workforce diversity, investment in cultural competence of care, and organizational commitment to diversity management programs. We expect that the presence of a female hospital manager, together with a more inclusive organizational culture, will improve the quality of health care service that benefits female patients. Using multilevel analysis, we examine female patients’ outcomes at both the individual and hospital levels, thus we are able to probe the representation effects of female hospital managers. This proposed research will offer new insights on the interactive effects of female leaders and organizational contexts on the active representation of women.

Authors

• Xiaoyang Xu, American University

• Ling Zhu, University of Houston

• Ken Meier, American University