In this study, we examine whether female entrepreneurs are held to a different standard than male entrepreneurs in obtaining financing from banks. To test this idea, we draw from the literature on signaling theory to propose that characteristics specific to the firm and the entrepreneur act as a means to communicate (i.e., signal) the inherent quality of the venture and thus impact the amount of capital the entrepreneur is able to obtain. We then explore the moderating role of gender based on gender role congruity theory to argue that capital providers reward the business characteristics of male and female entrepreneurs differently to the disadvantage of women.

Working parents often contend with how to effectively portray themselves as both devoted professionals and good parents. In this article we introduce the construct "work-family image" as a cross-domain, collective image representing how competent an individual is perceived to be as a parent and a professional by key constituents in both work and life domains. We present a theoretical framework to explicate a process in which work-family image management drives work-family identity adaptation. Specifically, we suggest that work-family image management occurs when work-family norms, derived from societal, organizational, and familial expectations, create image discrepancies that drive impression management behavior. These behaviors, in turn, can create image-identity asymmetries and lead to work-family identity adaptation. We contribute to existing research by highlighting the dynamic interplay between image management and identity adaptation and explain the process by which work-family norms can influence working parents' identities.

Through our grounded theory qualitative research, we explore how women begin to construct and react to images of possible multiple selves as professionals and mothers during the liminal period of pregnancy. Our study makes a contribution to identity transition scholarship by introducing and exploring the intricacies of cross-domain identity transitions, which we define as those identity transitions that occur when an individual's established work identity must be adapted to be integrated with a change in a nonwork identity (e.g., becoming a mother). Our work also contributes to work-family scholarship by demonstrating how women begin to experience and address inherent conflicts and enrichments between their maternal and professional identities during pregnancy, long before a child is born. We do so by demonstrating how organizational and personal context color the vision a woman builds of her possible multiple selves as mother and professional.

People routinely conceive of themselves in their career in both stable and dynamic ways. Individuals may draw common threads across their various career experiences and aspirations to form a stable anchor for their career identity, yet, at the same time, dynamically adapt their self-concept in the context of their career. In this paper, we call attention to the anchoring and evolving forces that people experience as a paradox for their career identity and theorize “career identifying” as an ongoing process of career identity maintenance and change. As individuals contend with career identity tensions, they make adjustments to maintain a balance of anchoring and evolving forces on their career identity or to make shifts that accumulate into career identity change. The career identifying process accounts for both career identity maintenance and change in a single theoretical model that explains how career identity can change over time while being stable enough to make coherent career choices.

The unique and complex experiences of and challenges for Black women, which are tied to their intersecting marginalized identities, have largely been overlooked in management research. Although Black women are physically visible in that they are different from most of their colleagues, intersectional invisibility research suggests that they can be simultaneously invisible—easily overlooked or disregarded—because they are non-prototypical members of their gender and racial identity groups. To shed new light on the role that intersectional invisibility plays in Black women’s perceptions and experiences, we conducted two waves of in-depth interviews across seven years with 59 Black women who occupy senior-level positions in organizations. We develop a theoretical model to explain the paradoxical effects of executive Black women’s “outsider within” status in which they simultaneously experience opportunities and constraints associated with two forms of intersectional invisibility: benign and hostile. To manage both forms of intersectional invisibility, executive Black Women adopt a number of critical strategies to gain credible visibility needed to ascend in their careers.