Ravi Bapna

Bapna Wins “Best Publication” Award for Research on Diversifying IT

Wednesday, December 15, 2021

Carlson School Professor Ravi Bapna, and two co-authors, were honored with the “Best Publication of 2020” at the annual International Conference on Information Systems (ICIS). Bapna, along with Nishtha Langer from the Lally School of Management at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and Ram Gopal from the Warwick Business School, were recognized for their paper “Onward and Upward? An Empirical Investigation of Gender and Promotions in Information Technology Services.”

The paper explores how women can move up the organizational ladder and what that may contribute to the lack of women in information technology. Their research found, contrary to expectations, that women are more likely to be promoted, on average. However, women see fewer benefits from performance gains than men, fewer benefits from tenure, but they see more benefits from training than men. These results suggest that despite the disparity in returns to performance and experience, women can rely on such things as training to restore parity in promotions.

“This paper is critically important to understanding how we can improve diversity at the highest levels of IT,” Bapna says. “Our findings suggest there are several actionable insights that can potentially make IT firms more inclusive and attractive to women.”

Bapna, who holds the Curtis L. Carlson Chair in Business Analytics and Information Systems, previously has been honored with top awards in his field, including the INFORMS ISS Distinguished Fellow Award and the INFORMS ISS Inaugural Practical Impacts Award.