Bachelor of Business Administration (BBA), Ohio University, 2012, Business Administration

The objective of the study is gain a better understanding of gender diversity efforts within organizations and their effectiveness. To this end the study develops a framework for characterizing and measuring the effectiveness of organizational efforts for gender diversity using a comparative case study. An extensive framework is developed that encompasses effort characteristics including catalysts, objectives, methods and practices, and measurement strategies. The framework also captures factors that help gauge effort effectiveness including perceived effort outcomes, barriers and challenge for women in IT, and informal ways women in IT overcome these barriers. The framework is further developed using an empirical comparative case study that evaluates the characteristics of nine organizational efforts. The data proves to be rich and full of interesting trends, as it was analyzed across different companies, industries, initiative types, and employee role types. As a result of the analysis, this study provides five recommendations to improve the current state of gender diversity in the IT workforce.

Committee: Hala Annabi PhD (Advisor) Subjects: Gender; Industrial Engineering; Information Systems; Information Technology