Exploration of the Relationship Between Employee Resource Groups (ERGs) and Career Development of Asian American Women in STEM

Abstract: Women in the fields of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) face gender-associated challenges including individual, organizational, and societal levels (Makarem & Wang, 2020). During the COVID-19 pandemic, STEM women were challenged by their caregiver social roles while balancing workplace obligations (Roulson, 2022). Concurrently, employee resource groups (ERGs) in organizations were highlighted as an important support to advocate for professional women (Kaplowitz & Sutton, 2022). From the community of practice (CoP) (Green, 2018; Wenger, 1998) perspective, ERGs in the workplace as an informal learning channel for organization stakeholders. Green (2018) highlighted the fact that ERG members learn and develop as a community with mutual interests, goals, identities, or visions. As an informal workplace learning channel, ERGs also facilitate individuals to build social capital (McGrath et al., 2005), share knowledge and information, and achieve potential career success (Sheerin & Hughes, 2018).

Women of color experience additional sexism and racism in STEM and the phenomenon is described as “double-blind” (Castro & Collins, 2020; Malcom et al., 1976). Although HRD scholars have addressed the issue (Alfred et al., 2019; Makarem & Wang, 2020), Asian American women (AAW) are often excluded from the center of the discussions (Amon, 2017; Castro & Collins, 2020; Varma, 2023; Wu & Jing, 2011) because they are not as severely underrepresented compared with other women of color. AAW are viewed as “have overcome” some challenges and overshadowed by the “model minority” myth (Castro & Collins, 2020; Varma, 2023). Nevertheless, AAW not only represents rich cultural diversity, but also often lacks mentors (Makarem & Wang, 2020) in professional development, as all STEM women.

In the career choice model in Social Cognitive Career Theory (SCCT) (Lent et al., 1994; Lent, 2013), positive and negative proximal contextual factors, such as mentorship and discrimination, affect individuals’ career choices. From the social capital perspective, in this study, ERGs are considered a social resource for organizational employee engagement (Lee et al., 2020). ERGs are positioned as a positive resource for establishing person-to-person, person-to- network, and network-to-network connections and information-sharing systems (Han et al., 2019). A recent study (Zulauf & Oh, 2023) indicated that exchanging information as informal workplace learning played a crucial role in career choice and work satisfaction for the U.S. Mandarin native-speaking immigrants. The informal learning contexts include domain knowledge, people skills, receiving and providing informal mentorship, a sense of self-growth, and expanding relationships with colleagues. However, the positive contextual influence in the study (Zulauf & Oh, 2023) are mainly driven by the organizational or managerial level.

In the existing literature, although women’s peer support (Kaeppel et al., 2020) received HRD scholars’ attention, studies focused on STEM women (Amon, 2017; San Miguel & Kim, 2015) are scarce. To the best of our knowledge, only one study applied a peer mentoring network (Esnard et al., 2015; Kram & Isabella, 1985) to investigate cross-cultural psychological and career peer support in an academic setting. The current research gaps permit this study to explore the relationship between ERGs and STEM AAW’s career development.

The purpose of the study is to examine how ERGs serve as a contextual factor career development mechanism of STEM AAW guided by the choice model in SCCT. Three research questions are included: (1) From a community of practice (CoP) perspective, what do ERG members gain from the groups? (2) What are ERG participants’ perceptions of the groups from social capital building, informal workplace learning, and informal peer mentoring perspectives? (3) How does individuals’ ERG involvement associate with career development outcomes? To answer these questions, an explanatory sequential (QUAN qual) embedded mixed methods design (DeCuir-Gunby & Schutz, 2017) will be used to identify and enhance STEM AAW’s workplace career development support.

Study participants will include (1) STEM AAW first-generation immigrants who have a minimum of 10 years’ working experience in the U.S., (2) those currently working in Fortune 1,000 organizations in the STEM domains, (3) those participating in one or more ERGs currently or in past year. A tailored version of the Employee Resource Groups Scale (ERGS) (Green et al.,2022) will be administered followed by a power analysis (Faul et al., 2007). After the quantitative data is collected and analyzed, 20-30 selected participants will be invited for a semi-structured 45-minute interview via Zoom until the study reaches its data saturation.

The study findings can expand HRD career development topics in diversity and inclusion with the STEM AAW population. It also further develops the contextual factors in the SCCT choice model, with EGRs from informal workplace learning and social capital building via peer mentorship perspectives.