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The recent years have been marked by the increasing participation of women in the labour force internationally. Especially in the industrialised countries of Western Europe and North America, this labour force participation is now well over 40%. Globally, however, the estimate is around 33%. A large number of these women are still found in the agriculture sector and the informal sector of industry. For those working in the formal industrial sector, a significant portion work in the shopfloor of assembly line operations for products ranging from electronics to textiles. Women in management comprise less than 1% of all economically active women. For the purposes of this paper, a “manager” is defined as a person who has latitude in decision making as to the allocation and use of organisational resources, including physical, financial, and human resources.

This case is designed to achieve the following learning objectives: recognize the impact of personality traits on leadership style; identify the key elements in a turnaround strategy; examine leadership best practices from a gender perspective; and assess the role of strategic decision-making on company growth.

The case study describes how Lisa Su (Su), the first woman CEO of Advanced Micro Devices, helped turn around the debt-laden semiconductor firm within a decade through her transformational leadership, vision and values. The case first touches upon Su’s early life and education and the influence of her parents in shaping her personality. It then focuses on the first half of Su’s career, during which she was working on semiconductor projects and was involved in research and product development, and how she made the gradual shift to a people management role in her stint of over a decade at IBM followed by a leadership opportunity at Freescale Semiconductor Inc. The case then describes Su’s move to AMD in 2012 as Senior Vice President and General Manager of the company’s global business divisions at a time when AMD was nearly US$2.5bn in debt and revenues had increased only once in the previous five years. There were also rumors of bankruptcy and spin-offs after the company lost more than US$1bn in the year 2012. The cas

This case is meant for MBA students as part of their Organizational Behavior, Leadership, and Strategic Management curriculum.

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CCS 11: Strategy.

Whereas most societal commentators continue to review the historical patterns of men’s leadership in search of models for 21st-century success, few have begun to recognize, let alone appreciate, the equivalent patterns of women’s leadership and the future contributions that women could potentially make as leaders. What could and are women bringing to society as global leaders? Why at this moment in history is there such a marked increase in the number of women leaders? Are we entering an era in which both male and female leaders will shape history, both symbolically and in reality? And if so, will we discover that women, on average, lead in different ways than men, or will we learn that role (global leader) explains more than gender? This chapter reveals the accelerating trends of women joining men in senior leadership positions, establishes the relationship of women leaders to our overall understanding of global leadership, and sets forth an agenda to accomplish much needed research and understanding.

This paper aims at exploring the dynamics of multiple identities of women entrepreneurs (WE). The paper analyse how WE do identity work in relation to specific identity regulations in the particular French cultural context. The objective is to understand how the entrepreneurial identity process of women is built through both confrontation and synergy with other social identities.

The paper opted for a qualitative and abductive methodological design. In total, 41 French WE from diverse business activities were interviewed. The empirical material was subject to thematic analysis.

The findings reveal the ability of these WE to deal with numerous and various identities. Their daily strategies to accommodate different roles depict how their entrepreneurial activity is intertwined with their personal and social life. The paper are far away from the picture of a monolithic entrepreneur without social dimensions. Given that, the findings broaden the too simplistic vision of WE as an homogeneous whole. Within this group of French WE, the analysis reveals that forms of identity work are along a continuum from accepting conventional norms and social expectations and integrating them in self-identity, or challenging them by accommodation or transformation, or, in turn, by redefining and proposing new norms. It also brings a nuanced understanding of complexity and multidimensionality of their daily life.

Finally by studying French WE, the paper identify new practices, new interactions between social roles which could be also relevant for men. In fact, the study challenges the traditional framework on entrepreneurship, which produces an incomplete view of entrepreneurs, by omitting historical and social variables. This disembodied vision of entrepreneur could not be applied to women and probably could not be applied to contemporaneous men either.

Women on average still have more responsibility for home, family life, and child care than men. Extensive research has focused on the needs of, and support required by, these working women, most often exploring related organizational programs and benefits. This paper attempts to remedy this deficiency by examining the roles women perceive their spouses or partners play in these families in sharing home and family responsibilities and supporting the careers of these women. It explores the differences in the roles that women in early, middle, and late life perceive their spouses or partners play. Differences exist in women's perceptions of how spouses or partners manage family finances, support the women's careers, contribute to household management, and provide interpersonal support. Specific roles and the resulting support are related to the life satisfaction, job satisfaction, and work‐life balance of some but not all cohorts of the women surveyed.

The dynamics of professional women's mid‐career satisfaction are important to understand, given the vast knowledge, experience and skills typically accrued by mid‐career that are often difficult to replace.

This study empirically examines Auster's multilevel framework of factors affecting the mid‐career satisfaction of professional women using a sample of 125 professional women engineers.

Results of logistic regressions reveal that individual, career, job, stress and organizational factors all impact the mid‐career satisfaction of professional women, but that stress and job factors are the most powerful determinants for this sample of women.

While this study offers many insights and possible directions for future research on women at mid‐career, there are a number of limitations. Future research could broaden the macro and micro factors explored, as well as compare these results with those of women in other fields and industries, women at other career stages, and women across other geographic regions.

Organizations should strive to be more transparent about advancement options and opportunities, provide interesting and challenging work and more flexibility in work schedules (emphasize output, not face time), and offer support for key drivers of stress.

This is the first fairly large‐scale empirical study of macro and micro factors affecting women's mid‐career satisfaction. This article should be of interest to managers concerned with retention of high‐performing employees, HR practitioners, and academics specializing in careers, women's issues, and human resource management.

In this paper, I show how a consideration of legitimacy processes is of theoretical use in addressing two current issues in status research. First, I investigate under what conditions the contrast between the sex composition of a work group and the sex composition of an organization’s authority structure may trigger the salience of gender status in task groups. I argue that this contrast will make gender status salient when an evaluation from an authority figure outside the group creates inconsistency and uncertainty in the current status structure within the group. Delegitimation of a superior is one such process that produces this inconsistency and uncertainty. Second, I examine under what conditions status position compared to identity will more likely stimulate behavior among work group members. I argue that the legitimation of the superior and the group’s status order reduce the likelihood that group members will pursue status inconsistent, identity behaviors. Delegitimation, however, increases opportunities for acting in identity consistent ways and reduces the costs for doing so, thus enhancing the likelihood of identity-based behaviors.

This paper aims to examine the interplay among forms of entrepreneurship and the gendered entrepreneurial divide. Using data from the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (GEM) and the World Values Survey (WVS), the authors investigate the likelihood that females will venture in the commercial entrepreneurial ventures versus social entrepreneurial ventures. The authors draw on the theoretical concept of hegemonic masculinity and emphasized femininity to explain gender variance in the organizational forms of commercial and social entrepreneurship. Specifically, the authors investigate whether pursuing an opportunity in a society that highly values ideologies of hegemonic masculinity and emphasized femininity impacts the probability of venturing in either of these kinds of organizations.

To test the hypotheses, the authors use GEM data from 2009 (n = 14,399) for nascent entrepreneurs and baby businesses owners in 55 counties. They also use the WVS to measure the ideologies of hegemonic masculinity and emphasized femininity at the country level. The authors estimate a logistic multilevel model to identify the drivers of social venturing over commercial venturing. Data are nested by countries, and the authors allow random intercepts by countries with a variance components covariance structure.

The findings demonstrate that there is a divide in entrepreneurial activity, as women entrepreneurs are more likely to start social ventures than commercial ventures. They also find that hegemonic masculinity decreases the incidence of social entrepreneurship, whereas emphasized femininity increases the incidence of social entrepreneurship. Moreover, the authors find evidence that women in societies with a strong view on hegemonic masculinity are less likely to pursue social organizational forms than male entrepreneurs are. Furthermore, in societies with strong views of emphasized femininity, the probability increases that female founders will pursue social organizational forms. The findings highlight the considerable impact of the gender ideologies on entrepreneurship.

Although the authors use the terms “gender” and “sex” in this paper interchangeably, they recognize that these two terms are not equivalent. For the purposes of this manuscript, the authors use a gender analysis approach activity based on biological sex to investigate empirical differences in entrepreneurial. The findings suggest that women ultimately, and unintentionally, are consenting to the practices and norms that reiterate the masculinity of entrepreneurship. In this way, the patriarchal ideologies of hegemonic masculinity and masculinization of entrepreneurship ultimately leave women unable to fully take up the identity of “woman” alongside that of “entrepreneur”. Future research can build upon our findings by applying a more nuanced view of gender via constructivist approaches.

The findings empirically demonstrate the gendered nature of entrepreneurial activity, leading to specific stereotypical female social organizational forms and male commercial organizational forms. Furthermore, the authors are able to provide theoretical explanations based on hegemonic masculinity and emphasized femininity to understand why social entrepreneurship appeals to women.