How Do Organisations Produce Disparities When Narrowing Diverse Pipelines? Evaluating Entrepreneurial Potential
23 May 2025
12:00 -13:30
Times are shown in local time.
Open to: Members of the University of Cambridge
Room W4.05 (Cambridge Judge Business School)
Trumpington St
Cambridge
CB2 1AG
United Kingdom
Join our Strategy and International Business seminar
Speaker: Professor Siobhán O’Mahony, Boston University
About the seminar topic
Organisations routinely narrow large pipelines of data on diverse candidates to hire, promote or fund the few, but all too often, they (re)produce gender or race disparities. Even when organisations are motivated, inclusive, and follow structured, transparent evaluation practices, disparities can persist, but where and how these occur is understudied. How are disparities produced when organisations narrow pipelines? We conducted a three-year field study with Connect, a global investment organisation that routinely evaluated broad pipelines of startups with varying data. Leveraging 59 interviews, 171 hours of observed evaluation, and pipeline data for 665 startups, we traced Connect’s evaluation process: how they defined measurement, quantified, and compared startup data. Comparison with Connect’s 31 investment partners corroborated our results, validating our grounded process model. We explain how reducing complex data to a single score generated a veneer of certainty, relied upon for investment decisions. We unmask the sources of disparity – where behavioural data, assumptions, and individual scores disappeared from collective view and produced gender disparities in the startups advanced or rejected. These disparities were reversed for a minority, when organisations elaborated data and exposed evaluation components to collective scrutiny. We explain how organisations navigate a time-diligence tradeoff: between efficiency for the majority and comprehensiveness for the minority, which inhibits evaluation of potential in equitable ways.
Speaker bio
Siobhán O’Mahony is a tenured Associate Professor in Strategy and Innovation at the Boston University Questrom School of Business and the Academic Director of Research and Curriculum for Innovate at Boston University, a campus wide initiative to spur innovation. O’Mahony studies how collective technical and creative projects organise, and how they manage the tension between maintaining open, participatory and pluralistic organising approaches and preserving project boundaries, purpose and mission. She is interested in how people organise for innovation, creativity and growth without replicating the bureaucratic structures they strive to avoid.
Her work has been published in the top journals in her field including Administrative Science Quarterly, Organization Science, Academy of Management Journal, Research Policy, Research in Organizational Behavior, Research in the Sociology of Organizations, Industry and Innovation, the Journal of Management and Governance among other edited volumes. O’Mahony has provided expert testimony on innovation to the European Union, the National Academy of Science and Engineering, and the National Science Foundation. Her research has been mentioned in the New York Times and she has provided expertise on CNBC. She is a member of the editorial boards of Administrative Science Quarterly and the Academy of Management Journal.
Register
No registration required. If you have any questions about this seminar, please email Luke Slater.