Aeres Zhou
Pronouns:
Research Mentor(s): Yue Zhou
Research Mentor School/College/Department: Strategy / Business
Program:
Authors: Jinting Zhou, Yue Maggie Zhou
Session: Session 6: 3:40 pm – 4:30 pm
Poster: 79
Abstract
My project’s research topic is the labor market, specifically career mobility, and how that can affect executives and managers, especially women. We are in a more general research phase where we’re just trying to gather information and understanding. Although previous research has been done on the labor market for executives or on gender inequality in the workplace, no study has attempted to analyze the effects of these factors simultaneously. The main portion of my work is literature reviews and data analysis. For literature reviews, I summarize the findings of the papers I’m given, and I enter the relevant information into a spreadsheet. For data analysis, I gather data on executives like education, gender, etc., and input it into a spreadsheet. I also use programs like Stata to match US Patent Office data with AI startups to see the impact of executives on their rate of innovation. We hope to determine whether or not, at the managerial/executive level, women are treated differently or have advanced differently than men, especially concerning hiring. I think there will be a difference, but based on some of the research I’ve already done, the results might not necessarily show that women are discriminated against. We also are trying to determine how much more likely startups are to succeed when they bring in experienced industry executives. Previous research suggests that those executives will be more successful at startups, where they can build their own routines, compared to established companies, where they may not fit the company culture and procedures. However, since the project is still in a preliminary research phase, we haven’t reached any conclusions. Our research could help people better understand their career progression and possibly expose trends of biases in the labor market. Companies could use this information to improve hiring practices and efficiency. Social groups could also pressure politicians for new laws or pressure companies to change policies depending on the results.
