Minding the Gap: How Perspective-Taking and Status Reflexivity Help Black Women Executives to Relate Across Difference at Work

Jamie Jocelyn Ladge (), Keimei Sugiyama (), Alexis Nicole Smith (), Marla Baskerville Watkins () and Pamela Carlton ()
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Jamie Jocelyn Ladge: Carroll School of Management, Boston College, Chestnut Hill, Massachusetts 02467
Keimei Sugiyama: Lubar College of Business, University of Wisconsin Milwaukee, Milwaukee, Wisconsin 53201
Alexis Nicole Smith: Spears School of Business, Oklahoma State University, Stillwater, Oklahoma 74074
Marla Baskerville Watkins: D’Amore-McKim School of Business, Northeastern University, Boston, Massachusetts 02115
Pamela Carlton: Springboard—Partners in Cross Cultural Leadership, New York, New York 10069

Organization Science, 2025, vol. 36, issue 4, 1357-1383

Abstract: Workplace relationships are a necessary and critical component of being able to perform one’s job and advance in one’s career. The personal and professional resources required for navigating relationships with dissimilar work colleagues can be particularly costly for those in minority groups who are most often different from their relational partners. Drawing from interviews conducted with Black women executives, we examined how these women experience relational triggers that emphasize their differences from others because of their limited numbers at their level. Our findings indicate that Black women executives respond to these relational triggers by engaging in perspective-taking and status reflexivity to understand others’, and their own, perspectives on the identity and status differentials present in the interaction. Through an introspective process, these women assess and address gaps in how they believe their partners see them and how they see themselves, which prompts them to either reduce or maintain perceived gaps depending on the importance of the interaction partner. We also explore how reducing or maintaining the perceived gap ultimately influences how Black women think, feel, or behave toward their relational partner (i.e., relational valence) in ways that may shape how they interpret future interactions. This study advances workplace relationships research by integrating intersectionality literature and by considering how minority perspective-taking and status reflexivity can be useful in navigating relationships across difference.

Keywords: demographic differences; workplace relationships; intersectionality; perspective-taking; status reflexivity (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:inm:ororsc:v:36:y:2025:i:4:p:1357-1383

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