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Considering the benefits that gender diversity could bring to audit firms, especially in a time when the audit profession faces criticism and the COVID-19 pandemic has widened the gender inequality gap, this study aims to explore the lived experiences of female former audit managers from a social role theory and role congruity theory perspective, to understand the factors that contributed towards their resignations.

An exploratory qualitative research approach and an interpretative phenomenological analysis design were used. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with senior female audit managers who had resigned from Johannesburg Stock Exchange-accredited audit firms.

The female former audit managers reported their unique experiences in terms of a lack of transparent career progression discussions, audit firms being run by “old boys’ clubs” and unfair treatment linked to bias, job overload and indistinct ambitions to become audit partners.

The homogeneous sample included a small number of female participants from a limited number of audit firms.

The findings could inform audit firms how to address the factors contributing to female audit managers’ resignations and to challenge stereotypes to retain more women for promotion to audit partner-level, thereby capitalising on the benefits of a diversified management structure that could lead to higher quality audits and address gender inequality.

This paper examines the career progression of women auditors working in auditing firms in Tanzania and the strategies employed by women auditors to cope with the masculine nature of audit firms.

Data were collected through semi-structured, in-depth interviews with current and former female and male auditors in two auditing firms. A thematic approach to the analysis is adopted.

The study reveals that career progression of women auditors studied is constrained by gender-related barriers such as motherhood, pregnancy, maternity leave and limited coaching and networking, as well as household and caring responsibilities. These barriers are facilitated by the patriarchal system, which regards women as wives and mothers rather than professional workers. As a result, women auditors balanced work and family responsibilities by employing various coping strategies including establishing informal network organization, hiring nannies, living with family members, enrolling children to boarding schools and lobbying in the allocation of audit assignments. Despite employing these strategies, very few women reach top positions in audit firms in Tanzania.

The findings reveal a need for wider engagement on the role of women and men in society, particularly to address the gender-related barriers faced by women in the accountancy profession.

Most previous studies of gender in the accountancy profession have focused on Western contexts. This is one of few to examine the phenomenon in an African context.

The inability of public accounting practices to retain female auditors is of concern to the profession. The purpose of this paper is to examine the factors associated with the actual turnover decisions made by female auditors in the public accounting profession.

Multinomial logistic regression is used to analyze survey data from 247 female auditors who were formerly employed by public accounting firms in Hong Kong. About 20 semi‐structured interviews are conducted to supplement the findings.

The results reveal that role conflict has the highest explanatory power among the independent variables. Social comparison with peers, stress and age are also influential factors in the turnover decisions made by female auditors in the public accounting field. These results support social comparison theory, which asserts that individuals are driven to evaluate their abilities and opinions through social comparison with others. A particularly interesting finding is that neither physical appearance nor gender discrimination is an influential factor, which contradicts the findings of research carried out in the USA and Japan.

According to human capital theory, the departure of female auditors from the public accounting profession represents a significant loss in human capital. Public accounting firms should thus take immediate measures to retain this valuable source of human capital and achieve the goal of a gender‐diverse workplace.

This study aims to explore intersectional gender inequalities that exist in accounting organizations.

A review of the literature, covering the period from 1990 to 2020, assesses the intersectionality of professional and social factors that shape inequalities in women’s professional accounting careers.

This study presents the complex facets of women’s inequality in gendered accounting organizations. The results reveal that inequity persists in accounting organizations despite organizational changes. The findings highlight the relevance of further research in gendered organizations to capture the intersectionality of gender with other forms of inequality.

This review informs professional organizations, accountants and company managers about the persistence of gender concerns in the accountancy profession in the last 30 years, despite stated accounting profession commitments to achieve gender equality, as promoted by United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. Moreover, some possible solutions are proposed.

This study focuses on a complex and challenging issue, contributing to the literature by extending classical narrative literature. This study presents a structured view of the various intersections of professional and social characteristics that created inequalities and the suggested solutions.

The purpose of this study is to extend Landry et al.’s (2016) work and examines the possible association between corporations having three or more female directors and these companies being features on corporate recognition lists.

This study examines a sample of 335 corporations ranked as Fortune 500 corporations in the period 2013–2019. The authors test for the association between the percent of corporations that had three or more female directors and the percent of these corporations on external recognition lists.

The data indicate that the percent of corporations with three or more female directors more than doubled between 2013 and 2019; this change was accompanied by an increase in the percent of presence of these companies in corporate recognition lists. The percent of corporations that had three or more female directors was significantly associated with the percent of these corporations on external recognition lists.

The first is the sample selection process; this study used only publicly traded corporations that were included in the Fortune 500 between 2013 through 2019. The second limitation is that this study did not include data on board members considered minorities.

The findings imply that there is a strong link between gender diversity on boards and being featured on corporate recognition lists, which means that firms who care about corporate social responsibility-related works, and more instrumentally, care about being on such lists should reconsider the gender balance on their boards.

This study extends this work for a time period in which the number of corporations with three or more female directors has significantly increased.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the impact of the Full Range Leadership Development Program (FR-LDP) of middle managers of a furniture company in Thailand and explore how they experience the leadership development phenomenon. It addresses the fundamental question of how effective leadership behaviors occur and are sustained.

In total, 31 middle managers completed a six-month multi-methods development program of three alternating training sessions and on-the-job practice. A 360-degree feedback survey of the Multifactor Leadership Questionnaire 5X Short, comprising 284 questionnaires of “leaders” and “raters,” was used to measure the change in effective leadership behaviors and the overall leadership outcome. A sub-sample of 20 participants from these managers was selected for in-depth interviews at the end of the intervention. Semi-structured interviews and critical incident analysis was applied to understand the leadership experience of these managers.

The study revealed that leadership behavior and overall outcome performance had improved over the course of the FR-LDP. The program did contribute positively to individual learning. Sustained effectiveness was not due solely to the development or intervention process, but also on individual objectives and action, together with supervisor interest and support.

The study provides a valid, in-depth insight into leadership in Thailand, which has practical application. However, the size of the sample may not be sufficient for broad generalizations in other cultural contexts or environments.

The study extends the understanding of how middle managers develop transformational leadership in Thailand. The study contributes to how middle managers learn what they need to know, how they get to know it and factors that influence their practice of transformational leadership in their workplace. The findings provide to organizations options on resources, talent retention and sustaining organizational performance.

By conceptualising patriarchy in the workplace as a social situation, the purpose of this paper is to examine the prevalence of patriarchal attitudes and their impact on women’s workplace behaviour among Nigerian organisations.

The study uses a qualitative research approach, drawing on data from 32 semi-structured interviews with female employees and managers in two high-street banks in Nigeria.

The study finds that patriarchy shapes women’s behaviour in ways that undermine their performance and organisational citizenship behaviour (OCB). Furthermore, the study finds that patriarchal attitudes, often practised at home, are frequently transferred to organisational settings. This transference affects women’s workplace behaviour and maintains men’s (self-perceived) superior status quo, whereby women are dominated, discriminated against and permanently placed in inferior positions.

The extent to which the findings of this research can be generalised is constrained by the limited sample and scope of the research.

The challenges posed by the strong patriarchy on women’s workplace behaviour are real and complex, and organisations must address them in order to create a fairer workplace in which employees can thrive. It is therefore essential for organisations to examine periodically their culture to ensure that all employees, regardless of gender, are involved in the organisation’s affairs. Furthermore, organisations need to help women become more proactive in combating patriarchal behaviour, which often affects their performance and OCB. This requires organisations to affirm consistently their equal opportunities, equal rights and equal treatment policies. It is essential that organisations take this problem seriously by attaching due penalty to gender discrimination, as this will go a long way in ensuring positive outcomes for women and providing a fairer workplace.

This study provides empirical evidence that a more egalitarian work environment (in Nigerian banking) will result in improved performance from female employees and organisations. It calls for greater policy and organisational interventions to create a more inclusive work environment and an equal society.

The fund management sector plays an important role in society. The sector exists in close proximity to the accounting profession and the concerns of the paper reflect themes discussed by accounting scholars, particularly financialization, inequality and life within elite professional service organizations.

This is an interpretive study of the fund management field based in the UK. It is based on 32 semi-structured interviews with individuals with personal experience of the field, combined with reflections from the researcher's own experience as a practitioner within the field.

The paper describes the backgrounds and motivations of individuals entering the field, the recruitment processes through which they are admitted, and the different strategies used to gain admission to the field. It explores the habitus of successful professionals in the field and the effects of this habitus.

An important social implication of the paper is the problematization of the fund management industry's dislocation from broader society.

By identifying the different strategies employed by applicants from different backgrounds, it highlights the role of reflexive agency and the complicity between agent and field. Recognizing that professional fund management is organized as a game, it suggests that individuals are so committed to the game they know they are playing that they fail to realize that they are also drawn into a different game, namely the absorbing game of being a fund manager.

While prior studies have highlighted the brighter side of technology adoption in improving human resource (HR) functions, the dark side pertaining to the adoption of technology in people management within organizations has gone relatively unnoticed. The current study tries to demystify the dark side of electronic human resource management (e-HRM) by examining banking institutions in India which are believed to have undergone several transformations in recent years.

This study adopts an inductive qualitative approach to examine the research problem. In total, 53 semi-structured interviews were conducted with the employees of eight public sector banks in India. The interviews were transcribed. The analysis of the data was done using the thematic analysis technique.

The findings of the study suggest that there is a stratification of the workplace in banking institutions into digital natives and digital migrants. This social stratification is based on technology adoption and usage which has further created problems in the form of knowledge hiding and perceived workplace conflicts.

The findings of the current study have important theoretical and managerial implications. It not only extends the current scholarship on the transtheoretical model of change but it also has strong managerial implications as it highlights the need for the adoption of customized e-HRM training curriculums for the workforce based on their age, education, work experience and expertise.

Current research on the dark side of e-HRM is inadequate. Furthermore, the evolution of banking institutions from being a typical bureaucratic organization into a hybrid one has not been examined in the context of e-HRM.