Search results

Chief executive officers (CEOs) are increasingly seen as change agents for gender equality, which means that CEOs have to lead others to achieve gender equality. Much of this leadership is going to happen through talk, which raises the question as to how CEOs talk about gender equality to act as change agents. The purpose of this paper is to understand the arguments of CEOs deploy.

Drawing on interviews with global CEOs, who have publicly supported gender equality work, the article draws on discourse analysis to understand the arguments of CEOs deploy.

The analysis shows that CEOs deploy three arguments. First, CEOs argue that women bring special skills to the workplace, which contributes to a female advantage. Second, CEOs argue that the best person for the job is hired. Third, CEOs talk about how biases and privilege permeate the workplace. The analysis shows that CEOs are often invested in essentialised views of gender while holding onto ideals of meritocracy.

The article suggests that how leaders talk about gender equality leads to continuity, rather than change in regard to gender equality.

This paper aims to suggest a shift in thinking about how to improve gender inclusion in organizations, as well as offering a number of practical action points.

This paper takes a perspective based on the authors’ own ongoing research, as well as synthesis of existing insights into gender inclusion in organizations.

To retain top talent and improve organizational climate, the authors need to re-think how the authors measure the success of organizational inclusion policies. Specifically, the paper suggests moving from numbers and targets to looking at the quality of gender inclusion in the workplace. The paper explains why this shift in thinking is important and how to approach it in practice.

The paper provides strategic insights into and practical thinking about ways in which progressive organizations can continue to improve gender equality.

The paper makes a provocative call for a change of perspective on gender inclusion in organizations based on cutting-edge research and puts forward action points in an accessible format.

This paper introduces intersectional situatedness to develop inclusive analyses of leadership. Intersectional situatedness recognises the contextual and situated nature of experiences and their interaction with socially constructed categories of difference.

The paper draws on memory work by three feminist academics who situate their understandings and experiences of leadership as part of socio-historical contexts.

Understandings and experiences of leadership are multifaceted and benefit from being examined in their intersectional situatedness. This way, the simultaneity of visible and invisible disadvantage and privilege, which accumulate, shift and get reconfigured across the life course and are based on particular intersectional identity invocations, can be integrated into narratives about leadership.

Interrogating gender-in-leadership adopting an intersectional situatedness helps to advance the field by embedding the recognition, problematisation and theorisation of situated difference as critical to understand leadership, its meaning and its practice in management and organisations.

In embedding intersectional situatedness in the analysis of leadership, more inclusive understandings of leadership are qualified that recognise differences positively and support changing the narratives around the meaning of “leader” and “good leadership”.

Intersectional situatedness helps to identify tangible ways to see how inequalities impact women’s career progression to leadership and enable more nuanced conversations about privilege and disadvantage to advance feminist social justice agendas.

The paper reveals the narrow and restricted understandings of leadership and how this influences who is regarded as a legitimate leader. In addition, it adopts a methodology that is not commonly used in gender-in-leadership research.

This paper aims to explore whether the rite of passage is still a useful model with which to conceptualise the MBA in the era of the boundaryless career.

The paper examines the formative experiences of full‐time MBA students at an elite business school, using in‐depth qualitative interviews. Through a discourse analysis, the paper shows how MBA students draw on concepts resembling the anthropological model of the rite of passage when making sense of their experience.

The resources MBA students have available to talk about their MBA experience mirror the three‐step rite of passage model. The first step involves separation from a previous career, either because of limited opportunities for advancement or in order to explore alternative career paths. In the transition or liminoid stage, identities are in flux and a strong sense of community is developed among the students and they play with different identities. In the third stage, the incorporation, students reflect on the value of the MBA for their future career.

The paper shows how the MBA is still seen as a rite of passage at a time when careers are becoming boundaryless. Within this more fluid context, the rite in itself is seen as enhancing the individual's brand value and confidence, enabling them to negotiate the challenges of managing a boundaryless career.