Women In Management Positions Research Articles

Men and women in positions of responsibility - A qualitative analysis of organizational readiness in France and Finland

This paper examines whether male and female managers hold different opinion on women in managerial and higher level positions, depending on their different cultural background. Furthermore, the paper deals with managers’ perception of organizational readiness to accept women in managerial positions. The paper is looking at this aspect from a cultural perspective, by comparing France to Finland. The research is based on 16 interviews, 9 from France and 7 from Finland, with individuals in different managerial positions in 10 private companies located in both countries. Findings indicate that regardless of the country and of the cultural backgrounds, organizations are not ready to let women climb the hierarchical ladder as men do. Results also show that despite a positive mind-set toward gender-equality, Finnish women still face a strong masculine corporate culture.

Factors influencing attainment of CEO position for women

Purpose This paper aims to determine possible differences in causes or characteristics between men and women in attaining the CEO position in large publicly listed companies in the USA. Design/methodology/approach T-test statistic, correlation analyses and logit model were used to determine the role individual factors (tenure in management roles, age of CEOs, number of children, years of education) and the firm-level factor (number of employees, net income) play in determining the likelihood of having a female CEO. Findings The research results show that years of education, the number of children and the number of employees in the business play significant roles in determining the likelihood of having a female CEO. An increase in the number of children and years spent in education lower the probability of the CEO being a woman, while having greater number of employees raises the likelihood of having a woman CEO. Research limitations/implications The findings are applicable to only the largest publicly traded firms in the USA and are not applicable to mid to small publicly listed, private or non-for-profit companies or institutions. This research is a starting point for future research of women and men CEOs of small and mid-size publicly traded and non-publicly traded firms in the USA. Originality/value Prior research has shown that having children is detrimental for women in management positions; this research specifically identifies this problem for the CEO position. It also reveals that having more of education does not translate to getting to the CEO position for women.

Managerial positions of women in Spanish exporting SMEs

ABSTRACTThe aim of this paper is to analyse the influence on Spanish Small and Medium Enterprises exporting activity of women in managerial positions. We distinguish women in three roles: as owners, as board members and as executive managers. Data were collected from System for Analysis of Iberian Balances database and the Spanish High Council of Chamber website. We built a sample of 266 Spanish exporting SMEs during the period 2000–2011, characterised by both financial stability and instability. Applying panel data methodology we observe that firms with executive women are more likely to export, have higher exported volumes, exhibit a more cautious selection of countries and exert a moderation effect in times of crisis. We also confirm the prudential character of women as owners while there are no significant results for women as board members. The paper has some implications for researches, SME’s governance and policymakers.

Analyzing the influence of learning orientation and innovativeness on performance of public organizations

Purpose– There is growing concern about the performance of public organizations (POs) in developing countries. Despite the fact that the advantages of innovation and learning orientation to organizations have been evidently documented in Western economies and private owned enterprises, there has been little research into these practices and their impact on enhancing competitive advantages in POs in transitional economies such as Iran. The purpose of this paper is to examine the effect of innovation and learning orientation on performance of POs in Iran.Design/methodology/approach– This paper draws on theory from innovation and learning orientation in conjunction with a strategic-centered model to carry out a survey-based study of 127 senior level managers (e.g. CEOs, planning, finance, HR and marketing managers) of POs and/or their cluster companies in six major developed and developing cities of Iran.Findings– The research findings show that learning orientation and innovativeness leads to better PO performance and should be encouraged. More specifically, the results suggest that higher levels of learning orientation and innovativeness led these organizations to higher levels of delivery speed, cost improvement, and quality confidence in firm future PO performance.Research limitations/implications– Data were gathered via a questionnaire administered to senior level managers of some POs and/or their clusters in some cities in Iran. Further research is required to understand the contextual factors that influence internal company culture. For example, there are relatively few women in managerial positions in Iranian companies; and the impact of a restricted business environment appears to vary from service to retail and manufacturing industries.Practical implications– This study is important for managers of public sectors. From empirical evidence, the authors found that PO managers must consider innovativeness and learning as two crucial strategic capabilities for a superior and sustainable performance.Originality/value– The study provides insights into the types of activities that PO management should undertake in order to enhance economic performance.

REVIEWING THE DEMOGRAPHIC CAUSES AND STATISTICS OF WOMEN’S ABSENCE IN MANAGERIAL POSITIONS

One of the challenges in the present era is lack of appropriate presence of women in managerial positions despite all the plans in this field and it seems that women are facing many obstacles and problems to reach managerial positions in their career advancement. However, women’s promotion to managerial positions like men for having similar abilities in different fields including managerial posts is of great importance in the modern society.The present study was conducted to review the causes and statistics of women’s absence in managerial positions. Methods The present study was conducted by using from articles That was extracted from databases Pub med, googlescholar, Elsevier, Proquest database for English resources and Iran Medax, Magiran and database SID for Persian resources with library research. Conclusions: Based on the finding of this review articles there are three barriers in women management position that are included organizational, cultural and personal and based on the opinions of the experts, the organizational barrier has the highest priority.

The advancement of women leaders: Case study of the city administration of Belgrade

The position of women in our society today is such that they constantly have to prove that they are capable of achieving the set targets and goals in their careers. In the world, as well as in Serbia, a lot has been done in this area and women still continue to work on gender equality and aim at constantly improving their position in all segments of society. Women who strive to achieve leadership positions in their careers have to continuously work on their professional development and show initiative to solve everyday tasks set before them. In Serbia, the trend of placing women in managerial positions is increasing rapidly each year, which leads to increased significance of the role of women in business decision making and society at large. The goal of conducted research in the City Administration of Belgrade was to prove the existence of gender equality and the equal status of women, as well as to show that there are opportunities which they can use to advance in their careers and become equal with men.

The influence of gender on financial decisions: evidence from small start-up firms in spain

The presence of women in management positions in companies is one of the topics that have generated the most interest and controversy over recent years. This has also been the case in Spain, where several legal initiatives have promoted the presence of women on decision-making bodies of companies. These important and pioneering legislative initiatives focus on the recommendation of positive discrimination in favour of women in large firms. This measure is justified not only for reasons of ethics or social justice, but also for the purposes of efficiency and rational economic behaviour. These laws have created an open debate in Spain and in other countries where they have been enacted and they have attracted the attention of researchers. In this context, the majority of the studies have attempted to analyse the effect of gender diversity among top managers on corporate performance of listed firms. On the contrary, this paper analyses the influence of gender on some financial decisions, using a sample of 12,376 Spanish small and micro start-up firms. Unlike previous papers, this manuscript examines not only the level of debt but also the cost and maturity of the debt. To control the endogeneity of the variables, a system of simultaneous equation with Three Stage Least Squares methodology is employed. The results show that companies run by women and boards with gender diversity tend to borrow less, have lower costs for debt and longer term debt, reinforcing the hypothesis that females are more risk averse. These results are robust for diverse measures of gender diversity (the presence of a woman as CEO, the percentage of female directors and Blau and Shannon diversity indexes).

At the leading edge – does gender still matter? A qualitative study of prevailing obstacles and successful coping strategies in academia

Recent developments indicate positive changes for women in academia, especially for those in higher positions. Statistics on the situation in Austria show that the proportion of female academics and of women in management positions in academia is increasing slowly but steadily. The present article examines explanations for this development and analyses female biographies in academia. The analysis is based on qualitative interviews conducted with the most successful women at Austrian universities, focusing on the obstacles these women encountered and how they managed to overcome them. The findings are arranged in two sections: (1) the results point to the existence of significant impediments to female academic careers; these include informal encounters, social networks (which are usually male-dominated) and the requirement to be both geographically mobile and to cope with family issues at the same time; (2) the analysis elaborates on various coping strategies designed to overcome these obstacles in an effort to attain leading positions.

Political parallelism and the case of women in management positions in public media in Poland. An ethnographic study.

In this research, I analyze the collective and historical processes, which create the necessary conditions for the practice of gender discrimination to persist in one of the biggest public media intuitions in Poland, namely in the Polish Television (TVP). Through extensive ethnographic research and in-depth interviews, I documented how an oppressive organizational structure, first created during communism and today maintained through political parallelism (Dobek Ostrowska, 2011), became part of TVP’s organizational culture. This culture has significant consequences for women’s career prospects, as top power positions in public media in Poland remain associated with politics and masculinity. Herein, I first examine the oppressive organizational structure of TVP, as experienced by its employees; and next I argue that the resulting organizational culture, imposes unequal work demands on women in the organization and leads, even the female senior managers in TVP, to engage in defending the status quo by resisting women who violate the existing gender order by reaching for the “forbidden” top positions in the organization (Rudman, et. all. 2012).

Women managers and corporate social responsibility (CSR) in Spain: Perceptions and drivers

Synopsis Companies' perceptions of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) have been partially analysed based on top managers and mostly offer comparisons between men and women. According to our best knowledge, no study has focused on women managers and identified how their personal characteristics and values influence their perceptions of CSR. This paper analyses the differences in attitudes towards the different dimensions of CSR focusing on the viewpoint of women managers. Moreover, it measures how personal and professional backgrounds influence the perception of CSR. A total of 206 women in management positions were surveyed. The findings suggest that women in top management positions in Spain value the stakeholder orientation dimension more than they value other CSR dimensions. Furthermore, the results show that personal and professional backgrounds have a limited impact on women's perceptions of CSR. Finally, our results suggest that entrepreneurial women tend to have a better perception of CSR. Thus, several implications can be drawn for business management, and interesting directions for future research are provided.

Workplace Matters

Policies to render employment and family more compatible have been adopted in many postindustrial countries. But the organizational contexts that facilitate or hinder employees' policy usage have been underexamined. This article addresses this gap by analyzing the organizational conditions associated with greater use of parental leave policy in the workplace. The authors draw on organizational data from contemporary Japan, a setting that epitomizes norms of the ideal worker and intensive parenting that are increasingly highlighted in studies of work–family conflict in the United States. Analyzing panel data on more than 500 large Japanese companies from 2001 to 2009, the authors find greater utilization of parental leave policies in firms that have a higher representation of women in managerial positions and that include human resource executives on the corporate board. Usage does not increase, however, in firms that offer parental leave that is longer than legally mandated. These results highlight the importance of key features of the organizational context in enhancing employees' use of parental leave policy.

The Effect of Female Managers on Gender Wage Differences

The paper is devoted to gender wage differences; it especially focuses on the impact of the gender characteristics of the manager on gender wage disparity. Under the social identity theory, women in managerial positions, that can affect the wage of their subordinates, are likely to evaluate female employees better than male employees. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the effect of the gender characteristics of middle managers on the wages of directly subordinated rank-and-file employees using a variation within the firm. We have used two methods to consider the effect of the manager gender characteristics on subordinates: the estimation of the wage function and the average treatment effect on the treated, both supplemented by a matching procedure. We concluded that women in middle management in comparison to their male counterparts have a lower tendency to apply wage discrimination against women. The presence of a female head of department led to a decrease in the gender pay gap by almost 7 percentage points.

Female CEOs, Firm Performance, and Firm Development: Evidence from Thai Manufacturers

Even though there are a number of previous studies investigating the underperformance of female-led firms as compared to male-led ones, none have investigated the impact of women as heads of firms in terms of short-term performance (sales and profit) and long-term development (innovation and training). Using 1,043 manufacturing firms in Thailand as a case study of a developing country in which the proportion of women chief executive officers (CEOs) is the highest among the Southeast Asian countries, this article investigates the impact of female CEOs on both short-term performance and long-term firm development. Even though the number of women in the manufacturing sector is limited, women CEOs of Thai manufacturing companies are found to have a negative effect on both short-term financial performance indicators, including the annual sales and profits, as well as long-term development of firm indicators (product innovation, process innovation, and provision of employee training). However, this negative association of short-term financial performance is weaker in the case of women CEOs who have completed college. In addition, more experienced women CEOs are more likely to provide employee training. Promoting highly educated and experienced women in management positions as well as providing them with training should be a priority in order to enhance the short-term and long-term performances of their companies.

Barriers to Women’s Promotion in Primary School Management Positions

The teaching profession is dominated by female educators. However, the irony is that most top school management positions are currently occupied by male educators. Unfortunately, most researches dealing with the issues of under-representation of women in management position tend to focus on gender differences. Less or no attention has so far been paid to the fact that most school management positions, and thus most schools staff selection committees are dominated by men. The objective of the present research is to find out whether the perception on women under-representation, is in any way affected by the fact that respondents in this research are occupying school management positions or not. The research question guiding this study is: to what extent does holding a management position affect the educators' perception on the causes of under-representation of women in school management positions? The research methods employed to emerge with data relevant for this study were primarily literature review and interviewing technique with 20 primary educators systematically and purposefully selected from five public primary schools in the Lulekani Circuit, Mopani District, Limpopo Province in South Africa. The findings indicated that occupying school management positions influences the respondents' perceptions on some factors but gender seems to be the main cause of these observed differences in others. The complex and contradictory nature of these findings justify the need for further studies around the gender equity at secondary schools.

Exploring Gaps Associated with Gender Empowerment in Selected African Countries

Incontrovertibly, gender empowerment process continues to suffer immense gaps that if not timeously addressed can impede most countries to make significant scores in the 2015 Millennium Development Goal number three. The aim of this article is, through literature review methodology, to explore gaps associated with gender empowerment. Findings indicate the following factors that underpin gender empowerment process: Inadequate political participation; high rate of women unemployment; gender skewed health policies; cultural factors; women’s inferiority complex; few women in managerial positions; countries meagre resources to invest in gender empowerment process; and increased cases of domestic violence. The article recommends: mainstreaming gender equality and equity policies; women to be united and stand for their rights; closing of the gender parity gap and working to make cultures both gender neutral and gender sensitive. DOI: 10.5901/mjss.2014.v5n27p870

Does having women managers lead to increased gender equality practices in corporate social responsibility?

There is increasing interest in determining what impact having women in management positions may have on corporate social responsibility (CSR) initiatives. Various authors suggest that gender equality practices should be factored into the broader framework of CSR. This paper examines how the presence of women on corporate boards, in top and middle management and as heads of CSR departments, influences gender equality practices in the field of CSR. Using information collected from companies that have signed up to Women's Empowerment Principles in Spain, we show that the presence of women in the aforesaid posts has a positive impact on CSR activities with gender equality objectives. We thus supplement the justice, business and moral arguments with further arguments in support of the incorporation of women into not only corporate boards but all management positions. Finally, we provide a view of how gender equality can be included in the broader framework of CSR.

Women in Hotel Management and Leadership: Diamond or Glass?

Although the hospitality industry shows growth, only few women are found in high managerial positions. The hotel sector is dominated by women with an average 55.5% of the workforce, but is managed by men, as women are mainly found in positions that are stereotypically ascribed to their gender, such as directors of sales, housekeeping, and marketing. Fifteen male and 15 female managers in 5-star hotels in Greece were interviewed to explore their management and leadership styles, as well as any challenges they face in the career ladder in hotel management. The findings of this study suggest that women are equally capable to their male counterparts and they acquire skills that are considered to be more effective in the context of the hospitality industry. They are nurturing, better at communicating with people, they are caring, and they adopt supporting behaviors. This paper proposes that hotels that have women in managerial positions are more successful in facing the increasing competitiveness and adapt to changes more efficiently.

Managing Diversity – Introduction

mrev management revue , Seite 163 - 165

Gender, inclusivity and UK mosque experiences

Access to, management and attendance of places of worship often takes gendered forms. Gender imbalances in UK mosques manifests in attendance and management patterns and is reflected in the facilities available. The sense that mosques are perceived widely as ‘prayer-clubs for men’ (Maqsood 2005: 4–5) is often reflected in the physical spaces and facilities made available to female worshippers, and it must be noted that some mosques do not provide any of the latter at all (Dispatches 2006). Shockingly, a recent survey found that ‘women form part of the congregation in [only] half (51%) of the organisations surveyed’ (Coleman 2009: 10). Relatedly, UK Mosque management committees privilege male involvement, decision-making and leadership roles, with figures of as few as 15% women in management positions (Asim 2011: 34) and more who ‘will simply not entertain the idea’ (Asim 2011: 39). Such imbalances reflect the specificities of the UK-religious context (Maqsood 2005) yet, globally, women’s mosque involvement appears to be changing far more rapidly than here. This paper explores how gender, religious identity and sexualities interface with women’s mosque access, involvement and experiences therein. It draws upon original research with a sample of women, and indicates that inclusivity is an important topic in UK mosques, far beyond gender.

Mujeres líderes en la academia, estereotipos y género

El presente trabajo indaga sobre las características de liderazgo propias de las mujeres directivas en instituciones de educación superior, partiendo de un enfoque literario particular y de investigaciones encontradas respecto a dicha temática. Se fundamenta en las construcciones subjetivas de dualidad social entre los géneros masculino y femenino y sus atributos en las relaciones sociales de poder. Asimismo, dentro del marco conceptual se estudia el liderazgo como construcción social y, por tanto, su dependencia a las diversas tipificaciones sociales. Para el cumplimiento del objetivo se establecieron cuatro temáticas que permitieron la categorización de la revisión literaria, a saber: liderazgo y su evolución; género y estereotipos; liderazgo y género; y para culminar, el liderazgo femenino en instituciones de educación. Por último, se presentan los resultados de la pesquisa literaria, donde se evidencian los estilos de liderazgo transaccional, transformacional, participativo y autoritario; de los cuales el transformacional, que caracteriza a las mujeres, es el más demandado en cargos de poder y dirección en las instituciones de educación superior.