Exploring Female Leadership Advancement in Chinese Corporations: Selection for Senior Positions through Headhunting

<p>Leadership diversity has evoked tremendous debate for decades. This includes the profitability and creativity of organizations and the realization of social capital. In this regard, governments have initiated numerous programs to increase gender equality in leadership positions. A wealth of academic research has also been conducted to investigate factors influencing the paucity of women in the elite leadership group. One noticeable element at the organizational level is the way in which female leaders are selected. Given the increasing proportion of leadership selection conducted through headhunters, this thesis aims at investigating how headhunting influences female leadership progression in the Chinese context. Because the research focuses on meanings and interpretations of female headhunting practices, it employed a qualitative methodology. Consequently, 13 in-depth interviews were carried out in China. In order to make the results more representative, the diverse sample was dispersed not only in Mainland China but in Taiwan. The semi-structured interviews enabled the researcher to gain a deep understanding of how females are selected as well as the underlying elements that can exert influence on the selection results. The findings revealed that the headhunting of female leaders is not a simple or straightforward process. It is influenced by contextual constraints, the recruitment and selections used by headhunters, and no doubt, headhunters’ competency. Also, these issues are influenced by cultural beliefs, economic, and political factors in the Chinese context. Among them, political factors are powerful and interact with cultural and economic factors. They produce gendered results.</p>

Exploring Female Leadership Advancement in Chinese Corporations: Selection for Senior Positions through Headhunting

<p>Leadership diversity has evoked tremendous debate for decades. This includes the profitability and creativity of organizations and the realization of social capital. In this regard, governments have initiated numerous programs to increase gender equality in leadership positions. A wealth of academic research has also been conducted to investigate factors influencing the paucity of women in the elite leadership group. One noticeable element at the organizational level is the way in which female leaders are selected. Given the increasing proportion of leadership selection conducted through headhunters, this thesis aims at investigating how headhunting influences female leadership progression in the Chinese context. Because the research focuses on meanings and interpretations of female headhunting practices, it employed a qualitative methodology. Consequently, 13 in-depth interviews were carried out in China. In order to make the results more representative, the diverse sample was dispersed not only in Mainland China but in Taiwan. The semi-structured interviews enabled the researcher to gain a deep understanding of how females are selected as well as the underlying elements that can exert influence on the selection results. The findings revealed that the headhunting of female leaders is not a simple or straightforward process. It is influenced by contextual constraints, the recruitment and selections used by headhunters, and no doubt, headhunters’ competency. Also, these issues are influenced by cultural beliefs, economic, and political factors in the Chinese context. Among them, political factors are powerful and interact with cultural and economic factors. They produce gendered results.</p>

Barriers to Women's Career Advancement in the New Zealand Hospitality Industry

<p>The glass ceiling effect is a widely researched phenomenon that highlights the multi-layered barriers to women’s exclusion in senior management positions internationally. Traditionally, research has focused on evidence for the deficit in women’s promotion in predominately corporate spheres with minimal inclusion of service sectors. The following research will address a key literature gap in the context of New Zealand, with an analysis of the glass ceiling barriers for career women in the hospitality industry. The qualitative study utilised a postmodern feminist lens and included 13 semi-structured interviews with current female duty managers in the localised Wellington, NZ region. The study found that the glass ceiling effect was maintained for female managers through the production of misogynistic cultures, gender-stereotyping, and old boys’ networks that functioned on intersectional levels. Obstacles were produced through customers, industry norms, and organisational practices that minimised participants ability to perform general operations, garner promotions, or access support in detrimental circumstances. The research concludes that women’s professional development is hindered due to the interplay of workplace structures, broader socio-cultural beliefs, and resistance to female leadership. Based on the findings, recommendations for further emphasis on equitable and ethical industry practices are outlined to address the glass ceiling effect, thereby increasing employee investment and retention.</p>

Barriers to Women's Career Advancement in the New Zealand Hospitality Industry

<p>The glass ceiling effect is a widely researched phenomenon that highlights the multi-layered barriers to women’s exclusion in senior management positions internationally. Traditionally, research has focused on evidence for the deficit in women’s promotion in predominately corporate spheres with minimal inclusion of service sectors. The following research will address a key literature gap in the context of New Zealand, with an analysis of the glass ceiling barriers for career women in the hospitality industry. The qualitative study utilised a postmodern feminist lens and included 13 semi-structured interviews with current female duty managers in the localised Wellington, NZ region. The study found that the glass ceiling effect was maintained for female managers through the production of misogynistic cultures, gender-stereotyping, and old boys’ networks that functioned on intersectional levels. Obstacles were produced through customers, industry norms, and organisational practices that minimised participants ability to perform general operations, garner promotions, or access support in detrimental circumstances. The research concludes that women’s professional development is hindered due to the interplay of workplace structures, broader socio-cultural beliefs, and resistance to female leadership. Based on the findings, recommendations for further emphasis on equitable and ethical industry practices are outlined to address the glass ceiling effect, thereby increasing employee investment and retention.</p>

Evangelical transformations of empowerment and female Romani pastors

This article analyses the empowerment of Romani women in Pentecostal societies in Bulgaria, discussing their diverse experiences in church lives, their opportunities, and the limitations they have as spiritual leaders. Using case material from my ethnographic research, I examine how Pentecostalism intersects with gender dynamics. In presenting the voices of pastors’ wives and female leaders, I reveal their areas of action and participation in formal, or less formal, religious practices. The text suggests that performing miracles is one of the key elements of the transmission of respect from male to female pastors and represents an attempt to achieve a cultural change through the adoption of evangelical Christianity. Moreover, the woman’s involvement in harmonizing social relations between church members, and between evangelists and non-evangelists has become important for non-religious aspects of everyday life. The main goal of the article is to foster an open discussion on the transformations of empowerment and female leadership, which are less studied topics within the much-explored research area of Romani Pentecostalism.

Unpacking Leadership Style Values on Motivating New Generation Employees’ Prosocial Organizational Behaviors

Based on current data derived from the International Labour Organization, in 2018, there was a significant rise of Chinese female entrepreneurs in workplaces. One industry that has been viewed the most significantly rise in female leadership is Internet industry, as Chinese women now account for 55% of entrepreneurs within new economy companies. Existing researches distinguished leadership styles into two types based on gender differences. More specifically, men are generally viewed to lead with Task-oriented styles while women have been shown to lead with Interpersonal-oriented styles. However, no studies have directly examined which leadership style can be the most effective when directing GenZ employees in China in terms of prosocial organizational behaviors. In this paper, the author profoundly extends the leadership style values and latent women leadership superiority on motivating prosocial organizational behaviors of Genz employees. Extracting from shared points of leadership styles based on gender types, the author generated 3 hypotheses: Compared with Task-orientated leadership style, interpersonal leadership style is more accepted by Genz employees compared to Millennial (Hypothesis1) and Women prosocial leadership are more acceptable by female GenZ employees (Hypothesis2). Notably, GenZ employees’ prosocial organizational behaviors are motivated when collaborated with most felicitous leaders (Hypothesis3). A sample of 500 applicants in a top internet company were expected to accomplish this research. Consequences provided sufficient evidences for hypothesis 2 through both quantitative and qualitative statistics as well as hypothesis 3. Nevertheless, Hypothesis 1 have not been proved in an accurate manner that generational differences in employees have paltry ramifications of leadership styles preferences. As a matter of fact, both leadership styles are popular among Millennial and Genz employees.

Women’s Skills and Aptitudes as Drivers of Organizational Resilience: An Italian Case Study

The economic system has experienced heavy consequences caused by the recent pandemic. This paper investigates the interaction between the crisis and organization reaction, focusing on the female managerial role and contribution to overcoming the crisis in male-owned and managed companies. To achieve the research objectives, we used a qualitative research method based on an explorative case study. The results show that female managerial skills have fostered organizational resilience in terms of: (i) the attitude to change; (ii) the ability to promote new initiatives; and (iii) the ability to have initiated, consolidated, and managed solid formal relationships with institutional stakeholders. Our results also highlight the decisive contribution of corporate governance (even if male-oriented) in favoring the growth and autonomy of women in positions of responsibility. This contribution is evidenced by (iv) increasing delegation of roles and responsibilities in managing relationships with institutional stakeholders to women managers; and (v) recognizing women managers’ talents in terms of career progression. The originality of this work is represented by the survey that aims to determine how the female management of businesses managed and owned by men can foster the resilience of companies. On the other hand, this paper investigates how female leadership drives organizational resilience during unexpected shocks, opening an interdisciplinary viewpoint.