Lucky to reach the top? : Gendered perspectives on leadership acquisition across Qatar and Denmark
ISSN: 1754-2413
Article publication date: 14 March 2019
Issue publication date: 11 October 2019
Abstract
Purpose
As organizations aim to become increasingly diverse, it is important to understand how perspectives of potential future leaders vary across culture and gender. This study aims to advance the understanding of the persistent gender gap in management.
Design/methodology/approach
Samples from the gender-segregated Qatar and the co-ed Denmark present a unique opportunity to investigate the potential effects of gender. Here, 115 Middle Easterners and 121 Scandinavians rated perceived importance of job-related skills, networking upward and serendipity in leadership acquisition.
Findings
Effects of gender showed that compared to men, women across cultures expected that serendipity has less to do with leadership acquisition. Middle Eastern women also showed low expectations regarding networking with people in powerful positions. Nevertheless, both genders showed conviction of meritocracy by rating job-related skills as the most important factor in leadership acquisition. Cross-culturally, Scandinavians presumed job-related skills to be more important than Middle Easterners.
Research limitations/implications
Despite meritocracy beliefs, it appears that gender differences in perceived possibility of leadership acquisition contribute to the gender gap in management. Scandinavian women relied more on networking than Middle Eastern women, but still lacked faith in serendipitous opportunities compared to male peers. Perceived luck enhances achievement motivation. If men rely more on luck than women, then they are more confident in succeeding and more ambitious about pursuit of leadership. Women’s lack of faith in serendipity might affect their career ambitions negatively even in societies emphasizing equality.
Originality/value
This is the first study that directly focuses on gender differences in perception of opportunities for leadership acquisition through serendipity.
Keywords
Acknowledgements
This work was supported by the Danish National Research Foundation (DNRF89) and by the MindLab UNIK initiative at Aarhus University, which is funded by the Danish Ministry of Science and Technology and Innovation. The author wishes to thank Azza Elnayal and Sine Scanlon for their help with recruiting the participants and Fatima AlAfifi, Lana Alsabbagh, Lærke Bjerager and Lasse Brunø for helping with the translation and scoring of the data. A special thanks goes to Dr Helle Neergaard and Dr. Jonathan Koppel for their helpful suggestions and comments to previous versions of the manuscript.
Citation
Ottsen, C.L. (2019), "Lucky to reach the top? : Gendered perspectives on leadership acquisition across Qatar and Denmark", Gender in Management, Vol. 34 No. 7, pp. 541-553. https://doi.org/10.1108/GM-11-2017-0158
Publisher
:Emerald Publishing Limited
Copyright © 2019, Emerald Publishing Limited