Cuyahoga Community Considerations in Designing a Qualitative Study Paper For example, in the ongoing scenario for each of the weeks of this course, the qua

Cuyahoga Community Considerations in Designing a Qualitative Study Paper For example, in the ongoing scenario for each of the weeks of this course, the qualitative research question is formulated based on:

DO: The purpose of this study is to understand the narratives of childcare and support in families in impoverished communities.
DO: What is the meaning of a “well-behaved child” to early childhood caregivers in impoverished neighborhoods?

While as in this example, the research question is formulated based on quantitative information

DON’T: The purpose of this study is to examine the demographic and family factors that predict the use of childcare services in impoverished communities.
DON’T: What are the differences in early childhood social skill acquisition between children that do receive childcare services and those that do not?

For this Discussion, you will examine qualitative research as it relates to qualitative design considerations.

To prepare for this Discussion:

Review the Learning Resources and the Fundamentals of Qualitative Research Methods: Developing a Qualitative Research Question video and consider the basic guidelines for qualitative research design at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_0HxMpJsm0I
Use the Course Guide and Assignment Help found in this week’s Learning Resources and search for a qualitative research article. (Note: This article should be the research article you are using for your Major Assignment 1.)
Review the qualitative research article you found and identify each of the components of the research design and consider what is present and what is missing.
Identify what the authors did to document positionality, reflexivity, and bias.
BY DAY 4

Transform your notes from your preparation work into three paragraphs and post the following:

A brief statement of the purpose and primary research question the article addresses
An assessment of how thoroughly the research design was presented, including what was missing
An assessment of the extent of the researcher’s presentation of positionality, reflexivity, and bias

Be sure to support your main post and response post with three reference to the week’s Learning Resources and other scholarly evidence in APA style. 795384
research-article2018
GOMXXX10.1177/1059601118795384Group & Organization ManagementMarrone et al.
Article
A Theoretical Approach
to Female Team Leaders’
Boundary Work Choices
Group & Organization Management
2018, Vol. 43(5) 825­–856
© The Author(s) 2018
Article reuse guidelines:
sagepub.com/journals-permissions
https://doi.org/10.1177/1059601118795384
DOI: 10.1177/1059601118795384
journals.sagepub.com/home/gom
Jennifer A. Marrone1, Holly Slay Ferraro1,
and Therese Huston1
Abstract
As organizations face progressively complex challenges, team leader boundary
work that is relational and inclusive (i.e., work that relates to others across
team boundaries and includes a wide variety of stakeholder perspectives
and concerns) is more and more valued. These trends pose advantages and
disadvantages for women team leaders. Although the desired leadership
competencies align well with the communal qualities often attributed to and
expected of women leaders, displaying boundary work behaviors that are
relational and inclusive may paradoxically result in a questioning of women’s
leadership competence by team members and parties external to the team.
Moreover, concerns about gender stereotyping and discrimination may
pressure women to adapt their boundary work behaviors to downplay or
negate “femininity” as they lead. Reflective of these dilemmas, we propose
that female team leaders experience conflicting internal motivations about
the boundary work behaviors they display. Drawing from social role,
impression management, and social identity perspectives, we examine the
motives that drive women leaders to engage in or avoid boundary work
that aligns with female gender roles, the contextual influences affecting the
likelihood women leaders will act on these motives, and the implications of
this boundary work for teams and female team leaders.
1Seattle
University, Seattle, WA, USA
Corresponding Author:
Jennifer A. Marrone, Albers School of Business and Economics, Seattle University,
901 12th Avenue, P.O. Box 222000, Seattle, WA 98122-1090, USA.
Email: marronej@seattleu.edu
826
Group & Organization Management 43(5)
Keywords
leader behavior, gender, social identity, group or team dynamics/
processes, boundary work/spanning
Media outlets frequently describe women leaders as more relational and
inclusive than male leaders (see Liu, Cutcher, & Grant, 2015) and assert that
this tendency has positive impacts on both organizational functioning and
leadership attributions (“Women leaders: The hard truth about soft skills
[Web log],” 2010; Koplovitz, 2013). However, although organizational
scholars have also found that women are often evaluated as relational and
inclusive leaders (Anderson, Lievens, Van Dam, & Born, 2006; Eagly &
Johannesen-Schmidt, 2001), scholarly data on women leaders’ impact are
mixed. Some studies find that women leaders often lead firms to superior
performance (Adams, 2014) and better stock market returns (Campbell &
Vera, 2010) and that employees give female leaders higher ratings than they
give male leaders (Paustian-Underdahl, Walker, & Woehr, 2014), whereas
others suggest that women in organizational leadership positions are, on
average, seen as less competent and less effective than male leaders (see
Eagly & Karau, 2002), and are judged more harshly for making mistakes
(Brescoll, Dawson, & Uhlmann, 2010). Scholars conclude there is a female
leadership advantage and disadvantage, “that research has established a
mixed picture for contemporary female leadership” (Eagly, 2007, p. 9).
In this article, we examine this “mixed picture” of women as leaders of
teams in organizational settings, with a focus on an area of team leadership
that has garnered growing research attention: team leader boundary work.
Team leader boundary work broadly refers to the team leader’s efforts to (a)
interact with key parties who reside outside a team’s boundaries and (b) support and defend a team’s boundaries (Faraj & Yan, 2009). Through boundary
work, a team leader influences the extent and manner in which her team interfaces with its broader organizational environment (Ancona, 1990). Essential
to leader boundary work is the degree to which leaders enable their teams to
consider the perspectives of important external parties or to remain relatively
isolated from external influences (Druskat & Wheeler, 2003). One way a
leader opens the team to outsider influence is by actively soliciting diverse
expertise from outside the team to inform her team’s idea generation.
Buffering her team from the pressures from upper management is another
type of leader boundary work, one that tightens the team’s boundary and
enables the team to work autonomously and without interference.
Recent trends in leader boundary work suggest potential advantages for
female team leaders, particularly within knowledge-based organizational
Marrone et al.
827
environments that rely on cross-boundary collaboration and information
sharing among work units. Ample evidence supports that as businesses face
increasingly complex challenges, such as creating products sustainably,
leader boundary work that skillfully includes a wide variety of stakeholder
perspectives and concerns advances organizational learning (Edmondson,
1999), innovation (Hargadon, 2002), and team effectiveness (Ancona,
1990). Because these team leadership competencies align with the relational styles attributed to women, this increases the likelihood, frequency,
and/or ease with which women leaders will adopt such beneficial boundary
work. Furthermore, engaging in inclusive boundary work may be highly
motivating to female team leaders as it enables them to meet the strong
expectations of women to display “feminine” qualities, namely, communality and consideration of others, while they lead in organizational settings
(Eagly & Karau, 2002).
Yet, paradoxically, these same trends may also pose distinct disadvantages
for female team leaders who may be disproportionately expected to engage in
relational and inclusive boundary work but be evaluated negatively for doing
so. According to social role theory (Eagly, 1987; Eagly & Karau, 2002), this
potential for prejudice exists because perceivers infer that a female’s display
of culturally defined “feminine” behavior confirms stereotypes that women
lack the attributes required for effective leadership. For example, demonstrating concern and consideration for others’ perspectives, such as soliciting outsider input into a team’s decision-making, is seen as evidence of women’s
innate communal qualities (i.e., warm, congenial, collaborative), which are
simultaneously considered to be incongruent with the agentic qualities (i.e.,
dominant, assertive, independent) of competent leaders (Eagly, 1987; Eagly
& Karau, 2002). Thus, while trends toward more inclusive boundary work
may align with societal expectations that women are and should be communal, displaying these boundary work behaviors may paradoxically result in a
questioning of her leadership fitness by her team and/or the external parties
she engages, impeding her ability to effectively lead. Furthermore, when
female leaders are concerned about stereotyping, they are likely to experience strong internal motivations to adapt their boundary work behaviors in
ways that downplay or negate “femininity” as they lead (Carbado & Gulati,
2000; Klein, Spears, & Reicher, 2007).
In the sections that follow, we unpack team leader boundary work and
describe three types of boundary work behaviors commonly used by team
leaders to “loosen” team boundaries to include outsider input and to “tighten”
team boundaries to restrict external engagement and strengthen the team’s
distinction from other teams (Somech & Khalaili, 2014). After considering
how leader boundary work aligns with female gender role expectations, we
828
Group & Organization Management 43(5)
apply social role, impression management, and social identity perspectives to
describe the conflicting internal motivations that female team leaders experience about the boundary work behaviors they display as they lead their teams.
Reflective of the mixed picture above, we expect that a woman team leader’s
approach to boundary work is not likely to be static, but instead is dynamically tailored depending upon her team, organizational context, and the conflicting internal motives she experiences as she leads. A female leader might
engage in relational and inclusive boundary work behavior, for example, to
meet the expectations that she and others have for her to behave communally,
yet her concerns about prejudicial beliefs and discriminatory treatment provide additional incentives to at times, temper or avoid (though at other times
to engage) such behaviors. We also illuminate contextual and individual level
variables, such as a woman’s personal beliefs, team sex composition, and
organizational human resource policies that strengthen or weaken relationships between a woman’s motives about her boundary work and her behavior.
We then propose implications of boundary work that aligns with female gender roles for teams and women leaders.
Our article moves beyond extant research on female leadership in three
important ways. First, we examine boundary work, a topic not yet considered
within the scholarship on gender and leadership. We chose to focus on leader
boundary work given its increasing relevance to team, leader, and organizational effectiveness (see Ancona & Bresman, 2007; Druskat & Wheeler,
2003; Morgeson, DeRue, & Karam, 2010), coupled with our belief that
boundary work introduces a dilemma for female team leaders. When doing
boundary work, it is likely that female leaders’ displays of communality are
simultaneously expected, valued, and devalued, presenting an important
conundrum for women to understand and navigate as they lead work teams.
Our second contribution is to address identity and power considerations in
boundary work, as understood through social identity–based impression
management (Roberts, 2005), identity performance theory (Carbado &
Gulati, 2000), and facades of conformity (Hewlin, 2003). These frameworks
help us consider more fully the internal pressures female team leaders face
and the implications for their boundary work behaviors. These frameworks
illuminate that, by virtue of their membership in a subordinated social identity group, women must negotiate conflicting internal motives to either affirm
or negate their identities. This conflict requires cognitive attention and
resources to resolve and arises in response to pressures to conform to organizational values and to circumvent negative stereotypes. This is significant
because we believe that the time and investment required of female team
leaders to resolve conflicting internal motives results in “hidden” costs that
can significantly reduce women team leaders’ effectiveness.
Marrone et al.
829
Our final contribution is to suggest that women leaders’ boundary work
choices influence group- or team-level outcomes in meaningful ways (please
see Figure 1 for an illustration of our full conceptual model). Researchers
have explored how women lead individuals and how women lead through
creating high-quality one-on-one relationships with followers (e.g.,
Yammarino, Dubinsky, Comer, & Jolson, 1997), but less is known about how
women lead groups as a whole. Our focus on female leader boundary work
provides new insights into how women lead teams. We begin with a discussion of team leader boundary work.
Theoretical Background
Team Leader Boundary Work
Team leader boundary work broadly refers to the leader’s efforts to interact
with key parties who reside outside a team’s boundaries as well as to support
and defend a team’s boundaries (Faraj & Yan, 2009). Leader boundary work
is necessary because every work team is embedded within a larger organizational system (Ancona, 1990; Sundstrom, De Meuse, & Futrell, 1990), and a
team’s success and survival depends on effective engagement with its environment. Particularly important is balancing the need to relate to key external
parties who can supply the team with resources, ideas, information, and support with the need to protect team identity and cohesion (Friedlander, 1987;
Leifer & Delbecq, 1978). Leader boundary work can thus be conceptualized
at the group-level of analysis because it reflects a leader’s efforts to influence
collective phenomenon, such as obtaining resources from outsiders or
restricting the team’s external engagement, that affect team-level outcomes
(Hackman, 2002; Yukl, 2013).1 Friedlander (1987) emphasizes what he states
as the “obvious effects” boundary work can have on relationships between
and within teams as follows:
Work groups with insufficient definition and with diffuse boundaries tend to be
overwhelmed, to lose their unique capabilities, and to be less cohesive. Groups
with boundaries that are overly rigid and thick become fortresses unto
themselves (p. 305).
Capturing similar sentiments, Somech and Khalaili (2014) distinguished
“boundary-loosening” activities from “boundary-tightening” activities; while the
former opens the team to its environment, the latter restricts team engagement
across its boundary and strengthens the team’s distinction from other teams.
When leaders choose boundary-loosening activities, they engage in high levels of
external interaction, resulting in teams that are externally oriented, integrated
830
*
Gender role norms
Role incongruity
awareness
Social identity- related
impression
management: Positive
distinctiveness needs
Leader social role
requirements
Social identity – related
impression
management: S ocial
recategorization needs
Conformity pressures
•
•
•
•
(P2)
Work team and
organizational sex
composition (P3, P4)
Stakeholder salience (P5)
Visibility of women in
the organization (P6)
Identity – conscious HRM
practices (P7)
Contextual influences:
(P1)
•
•
Female gender
identification
(P8)
Collective
action beliefs
(P9)
Individual
differences:
MODERATING
VARIABLES
Display high
inclusivity and
consideration
Avoid displaying
independence and
control of others
•
Avoid displaying
high inclusivity
and consideration
Avoid boundary
work that aligns with
female gender role:
•
•
Engage in boundary
work that aligns
with female gender
roles:
BOUNDARY WORK
CHOICES
Improved working
relationships
between team and
diverse external
parties (P10a)
Improved working
relationships within
a diverse team
(P10b)
•
•
•
•
Well-being (P11a)
Satisfaction (P11b)
Positive
relationships with
others (P11c)
Enhanced and
diminished leader
influence (P12 )
Female leader-level
outcomes:
•
•
Team-level outcomes:
CONSEQUENCES
Note. *P13a and P13b propose that the experience of these conflicting motivations affect female leader well-being and performance, respectively,
and are not shown for simplicity. HRM = human resource management.
Figure 1. Proposed conceptual model of female team leaders’ boundary work motivations, choices, and consequences.
•
•
•
Motives to avoid gender
aligned boundary work:
rk:
•
•
•
Motives to engage in
gender-aligned boundary
work:
BOUNDARY WORK
MOTIVATIONS
Marrone et al.
831
with the directives of their larger organizational system, and influenced by diverse
expertise and opinions outside the team (Druskat & Wheeler, 2003). This work
enables coordination, adaptation, and collaboration between the leader’s team
and other work units, which supports the stability of the larger organizational
system (Friedlander, 1987). When leader boundary work tightens, strengthens,
and defends team boundaries, this results in teams that are internally oriented,
autonomous, and, although these teams are distinctive and clearly identified, they
are also more isolated and segmented (Ancona, 1990). Through tightening
boundary work, leaders provide their teams with demarcated space and energy to
execute teamwork and to produce novel contributions unencumbered by larger
organizational pressures or demands (Yan & Louis, 1999).
Leaders accomplish boundary loosening predominately through what is
known as boundary spanning. Boundary spanning involves transacting
across team boundaries to gain important resources, information, and support
from key external parties (Ancona, 1990; Faraj & Yan, 2009; Marrone, 2010;
Marrone, Tesluk, & Carson, 2007). Boundary spanning includes three subactivities: (a) connecting with key outsiders and relating to their concerns, (b)
scouting or probing for external information, and (c) persuading others to
support team decisions (Ancona, 1990; Druskat & Wheeler, 2003). Although
relating, scouting, and persuading are distinct boundary spanning activities,
research demonstrates they are nonetheless highly interrelated and mutually
reinforcing. For example, data from Druskat and Wheeler’s (2003) study of
leaders of self-managing manufacturing teams showed that when team leaders built relationships through understanding the perspectives, needs, and
concerns of key external parties (e.g., upper management, neighboring work
units, technical experts, etc.), the leaders gained greater access to external
sources of information and were better positioned to both request and secure
needed support from these external parties.
Tightening boundaries occurs through two activities: boundary buffering
and boundary reinforcement (Faraj & Yan, 2009; Yan & Louis, 1999).
Boundary buffering defends and insulates the team from outside pressures and
influences, which enables team members to work autonomously toward team
objectives and purpose (Leifer & Delbecq, 1978) and to learn from one another
free from otherwise disruptive forces in the organization (Faraj & Yan, 2009).
An example of boundary buffering is refusing to acquiesce to pressures from
other teams to consider alternative viewpoints or to release team information
before the team is ready. Boundary reinforcement distinguishes the team from
other entities by creating internally cohesive team conditions and clarifying
the team’s identity (Yan & Louis, 1999), which are essential for growing the
team’s specialized objectives, purpose, and contributions (Friedlander, 1987;
Hackman, 2002). An example of reinforcement is establishing team rituals,
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Group & Organization Management 43(5)
such as “kickoffs” that clarify and celebrate who is on the team and reinforce
internal ties between members. Boundary reinforcement activities conceptually entail “generating a sufficient and sustained centripetal or attracting force
that establishes the perimeter of the team’s space” (Faraj & Yan, 2009, p. 607).
An important distinction between boundary reinforcement and boundary buffering is the locus of the leader’s attention. When defending the team’s boundary (boundary buffering), leader actions are directed outward on setting limits
on external influences, whereas leader actions are directed inward on team
cohesion and identity when reinforcing the team’s boundary. In sum, when
doing boundary work, team leaders balance their attention between a team’s
needs for autonomy and independence and external parties’ needs for inclusion and collaboration. For a summary of these boundary work behaviors
commonly used by team leaders,2 see Table 1.
Before considering the motives that influence female team leaders’ boundary work choices, and the implications of those choices, it is fruitful to consider briefly the extent to which a leader’s boundary work behavior aligns
with both female and male gender roles. Gender roles are the socially shared
expectations about how men and women do and should behave. The predominant feature of female gender roles is that women are and should be
communal (Fiske & Stevens, 1993). Communality is characterized by displ…
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