UCLA’s Lingering Gender Equity Dilemma

A POET/QUANT DIVIDE AMONG FACULTY AT THE SCHOOL

Current Faculty Chair John Mamer

Only 18 months ago, in April of 2014, an internal academic review found by a group of university professors and outside business school deans found Anderson to be”inhospitable to women faculty.” That report, leaked to the media, found similar issues to the Korn Ferry review: that the school was inconsistent in its hiring and promotion practices as regards to women, that it had created “gender ghettos” in certain academic areas, and that it showed a “lack of confidence” in female faculty.

As a result of the earlier report, Olian had created a faculty gender task force, commissioned a gender pay study, brought in experts to speak with faculty about implicit bias, and sought to recruit more women to Anderson’s professorial ranks. “We talked about this deeply, but also felt we had to have our own study,” says Olian. “This is a really humbling lesson about leadership. This is a painful journey, but to the extent that others can learn from us it could help because everyone is grappling with this.”

Eduardo Schwartz, faculty chair for finance

Brett Trueman, faculty chair for accounting

Korn Ferry is recommending a large number of changes at the school, and Olian says she is committed to implementing those changes to dramatically improve things. Korn Ferry urged the creation of high level roadmap for change that would include collaborative exercises and workshops for faculty, the establishment of a working group to oversee change, the adoption of recruitment strategies to encourage the hiring of female faculty, a new process for tenure and promotion decisions, and an effort to more systematically measure progress over time.

HIRING AND PROMOTION LARGELY LEFT UP TO FACULTY IN DEPARTMENT CHAIRS

Some of the more insightful observations in the new report center around the fact that more women gravitate to the softer disciplines in business academia than men—a particularly troublesome issue at a school whose culture is more quant than poet. It is also a significant reason why Chicago, Columbia and Carnegie Mellon—schools where finance is dominant—have fewer women in tenure and tenure-track positions.

Sushil Bikhchandani, faculty chair for strategy

Kumar Rajaram, faculty chair for DOTM

“The strong institutional bias that favors quantitative disciplines and research over and above more qualitative or interdisciplinary research inherently puts female faculty, who are more heavily represented in non-quant areas, at a greater disadvantage when it comes to tenure and promotions,” Korn Ferry researchers noted in the report. “Further, data indicate that a small but powerful group of senior male faculty exert a disproportionate influence over decisions.”

At Anderson, the hiring, promotion and tenure decisions are mostly made by a male faculty chair, a job that rotates every three years, and the largely male department chairs for the seven core business disciplines in accounting, decisions, operations and technology management, finance, global economics and management, management and organizations, marketing, and strategy. The faculty chair position is currently held by John Mamer, who once served as interim dean of the school and is a professor in decisions, operations, and technology management. He took over the faculty chair in June and has been at the school since 1981.

The senior faculty who wield significant influence over the school and hold most of the department chair positions are Brett Trueman in accounting, Kumar Rajaram in decisions, operations and technology management; Eduardo Schwartz in finance, Noah Goldstein, in management and operations, and Sushil Bikhchandani in strategy. Together with Mamer, they have racked up more than 100 years of combined tenure at Anderson and they have been recently appointed to their roles. Bikhchandani has been at Anderson since 1985, Schwartz joined the school in 1986, while Rajaram started at Anderson in 1997. Their sway over recruitment, promotion and tenure decisions will be a key factor in moving the school forward. The lone female chair is Aimee Drolet Rossi, a psychologist who studies consumer decision making, who heads up the marketing area.