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This paper aims to review the latest management developments across the globe and pinpoint practical implications from cutting-edge research and case studies.

This briefing is prepared by an independent writer who adds their own impartial comments and places the articles in context.

This viewpoint paper concentrates on extracting lessons from the leadership styles adopted by various country leaders in response to the COVID-19 crisis. It was revealed that androgynous leaders like Germany's Angela Merkel – who blended a mixture of masculine and feminine traits into their leadership style – achieved the best results for their populations by minimizing deaths. Therefore COVID-19 has revealed androgynous leadership to be a multifaceted success for crisis management, in comparison with the traditional male approaches adopted by people like Donald Trump.

The briefing saves busy executives and researchers hours of reading time by selecting only the very best, most pertinent information and presenting it in a condensed and easy-to-digest format.

Gender-stereotyped organizational expectations compromise outcomes desired from numerically balanced gender representation. Sex-roles allow both men and women to exhibit masculine or feminine behaviors based on their self-construal of “psychological-gender.” Emotional intelligence (EI) is considered “feminine” and rational intelligence “masculine.” So, using Bem sex-role inventory and Emotional Intelligence Appraisal, the current study explored EI in 217 senior Indian managers from masculine/feminine sex-role perspective. There was no difference in EI of men/women. Moreover, EI did not differ in men/women categorized in “same” sex-role. However significant differences emerged across sex-roles with feminine sex-role participants actually scoring significantly lesser than androgynous or masculine sex-role participants although emotional intelligence is considered as a feminine intelligence. Implications of sex-role-driven differences in EI in organizational context are discussed.

The paper presents a structural model to explain the relationship between various gender-role orientations (GROs) and motivational antecedents leading to entrepreneurial intention (EI). It examines the influence of GRO in the formation of EI among educated youths of Northeast India.

Using a structural equation modelling approach, the hypothesized model is tested on a sample of 642 post-graduate students from four different universities in Northeast India, a developing region with unique socio-cultural diversity. The mediating role of EI antecedents on the relationship between GRO and EI was examined after establishing the reliability and validity of the measurement model.

Results from the analysis support the hypothesized structural relationship confirming the influence of GRO on EI. The study also finds that androgynous individuals have a higher EI than their masculine or feminine counterparts.

The study contributes to the understanding of EI determinants from a GRO perspective, especially in the industrially backward region of an emerging economy. It adds to the existing literature by empirically proving the role of gender orientation. The results have several policy implications for educational institutions and policymakers in emerging economies.

The paper re-examines the predictive value of the theory of planned behaviour (TPB) model from a GRO perspective and compares indirect effects of gender identity through motivational antecedents on EI. Whilst TPB predicted EI in Western and developed countries, using a more diverse sample provides strong empirical evidence in the context of a developing region.

This paper seeks to challenge the tendency to represent gender as a unitary theoretical construct; and would argue for a more differentiated view of how the psychological aspects of gender influence the consumption of advertising. We use a small‐scale exploratory study to examine the potential impact of gender identity within consumers’ self‐schemas on their consumption of advertising. Bem’s Sex Role Inventory (SRI) was administered to 25 young adults who then watched video clips of two television advertisements. The focus group discussions about the two advertisements were analysed within the context of the respondents’ gender schemas identified via the Bem SRI scores: masculine, feminine, androgynous or undifferentiated. The centrality of gender identity to self‐schemas affected how consumers processed and interpreted the advertising. This provides support for a more differentiated approach to representing men and women within gender research and advertising because gender groups are neither necessarily homogeneous nor isomorphic with sex.

The aims of this study are threefold: to examine the relationship between gender role stereotypes and requisite managerial characteristics, to test Lord and Maher's recognition‐based processes to determine whether familiarity with women in leadership positions decreases the “think manager‐think male” stereotype and to examine the nature of the attributes used to describe men, women and managers.

Schein's Descriptive Index was used in this study. A total of 1,236 surveys were included in the study. Intraclass correlation coefficients (ICC, r¹) were computed to determine the relationship between the different moderators and requisite managerial characteristics. Factorial analysis and agglomerative hierarchal cluster analysis were used to identify the traits attributed to men, women and managers.

Male respondents continue to gender type the managerial role in favour of men. Both males and managers continue to be viewed as agentic in nature while women are viewed in more androgynous terms by both male and female respondents.

This study expands our understanding of how males and females view women, men and managers. Based on the results of this study, the authors would argue that women are better equipped to adopt an androgynous leadership style and to practise transformational leadership.

This study looks beyond ICC scores and looks at how each of the traits is linked to men, women and managers. The findings are discussed in terms of how organisations need to look beyond the misfit between women and requisite managerial characteristics and focus on what females can contribute at board level and to management in general.

Difficulties in defining stepfamily roles remain an important issue for its members. A potentially important factor in defining roles in the family is the identification with a particular gender type and how it relates to one's expectations about one's place in the family system. The purpose of this paper is to explore how gender typing processes inform our understanding of the stepmother role construction process, and its link with stepfamily adjustment.

Semi‐structured interview data from six androgynous and six feminine stepmothers were selected based on gender type identification.

Results from this analysis were analyzed using a phenomenological approach, and are presented with the intent to explore how gender typing processes inform our understanding of the stepmother role construction process, and its link with stepfamily adjustment.

Gender typing has not been studied in the context of stepmother families, even though research on stepmothers’ adjustment has highlighted the ambiguous nature of their role in the stepfamily. Additionally, while qualitative inquiry continues to represent the favoured paradigm in the emerging area of stepmother research, studies of this type remain limited in scope.

The purpose of this paper is to explore how Muslim men in Kuwait negotiate their luxury fashion consumption (considered a feminized practice in Kuwait) without compromising their masculine identity.

The data were collected through 108 qualitative questionnaires and two unstructured in-depth interviews. Non-participant observations and informal conversations took place as part of an ongoing ethnographic study on luxury fashion consumption in Kuwait.

Within the feminized space of fashion, accessories (such as shoes, wallets, watches, sunglasses, etc.) seem to allow Muslim men an androgynous space (consumer constructions of gendered spaces to be equally masculine and feminine) to be fashionable yet maintain a masculine identity.

Further research may explore the negotiation of androgyny among men who consume luxury fashion clothing or conspicuously feminized fashion (such as jewellery and handbags) in highly gendered societies. Limitations include reliance on questionnaire data (lacks depth insights) and narrow consumer (Muslim men in Kuwait).

Marketers of luxury fashion brands in Kuwait should focus on fashion accessories when targeting males. Advertising needs to shift gender perceptions of traditionally feminine fashion (such as handbags or jewellery) towards androgyny to attract male consumers. Religiosity of consumers is an important segmentation basis, and Muslim men who are less religious may be more open towards fashion consumption.

This research proposes the notion of androgynous spaces, contributing to gender within marketing theory and practice.

The purpose of this paper is to analyse the effects of gender and gender role type on objective career success over time from a career practices perspective.

Based on a relational perspective on gender shifting attention to a field, habitus, and capital-based view on careers, the paper analyses the interrelation of gender, gender role type (GRT) and income with a longitudinal two-cohort design of business school graduates (1990, 2000), using mixed linear models.

In line with the authors ' argumentation, female or undifferentiated GRT earn less than masculine or androgynous GRT in both cohorts over time, and relative income of androgynous compared to masculine men is higher in the 2000 cohort than in the 1990 cohort. Contrary to the authors ' hypotheses, the income gap between women and men has widened rather than narrowed, and masculine women of the 2000 cohort do not attain a higher proportion of the androgynous women ' s mean income compared to the 1990 cohort.

Career success is based on self-report data (income) and partially based on retrospective evaluations thereof. As the idea of connecting masculinity and femininity to gender and career outcomes arose after data collection, the authors had to rely on the psychometric items and scales already contained in the questionnaire.

Instead of (re- or de-)constructing gender as bipolar object, but as realisation of historical acting including the context within which practical actions take place, the concept of GRT is applied to objective career success from a longitudinal perspective, owing to the relational nature of gender and the temporal nature of careers, as well as its embeddedness in the context within which trajectories unfold. In doing so, it shifts attention to career practices, emerging from the interplay of career field, career habitus, and career capital.

As the workforce evolves in the twenty‐first century, more women are entering higher‐level management positions. The traditional hierarchical structure associated with male‐dominated management ranks is inadequate to accommodate properly this trend. Looks at alternative management structure theories which support the view of a genderless management structure. Recommends that managers should begin to adopt an androgynous style which will not only foster a blend of so‐called masculine and feminine behaviours, but also lead to better managers.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the role of psychological androgyny, a construct that represents a combination of masculinity and femininity, in explaining changes in descriptions of a good manager over time.

Samples of the same two populations were surveyed at four different points in time spanning four decades (N = 1,818).

Good-manager descriptions became increasingly similar in masculinity and femininity over time, or increasingly androgynous according to the balance conceptualization of androgyny. However, both good-manager masculinity and good-manager femininity declined over time, with masculinity declining to a greater extent, which accounted for the greater similarity in these scores. As a result, according to the high masculinity/high femininity conceptualization of androgyny, good-manager descriptions actually became decreasingly androgynous and more “undifferentiated”. Overall, the trend in leader prototypes over time was toward less emphasis on traits associated with members of either sex.

Limitations of two alternative methods of analyses and the survey instrument are acknowledged. What constituted a good manager may have depended on the context. Further scholarly attention to the concept of an undifferentiated leadership style is recommended.

People may be moving beyond leader prototypes based on the simple application of gender stereotypes. Changes in leader prototypes over the past four decades may contribute to enhancements in women’s societal status.

Leader prototypes may disadvantage women less than in the past.

Results suggest that the role of androgyny in leader prototypes is declining according to the high masculinity/high femininity conceptualization.