Does a High-Performance Culture Fix the Leaky Pipeline? A Closer Examination of Performance-Driven Talent Management Practices

This study examines whether the employee performance evaluation, promotion and retention practices inherent in high-performance cultures are associated with greater employee gender diversity across the corporate hierarchy. Combining international proprietary survey data on firms’ performance-driven talent management (PDTM) practices with employee-level data from online profiles, the authors find that performance-driven talent management practices are associated with more women in junior positions but fewer women in top management positions. This indicates that firms with PDTM are attractive to women early in their careers, perhaps when family is less of a priority, but that PDTM firms experience less gender diversity as employees progress through the corporate hierarchy. The authors also find evidence that these results are at least partially driven by a lower likelihood of female promotions. This study contributes to recent work on the relation between performance management practices and employee gender diversity.