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Informed by the role congruity theory of prejudice towards female leaders, this paper aims to review the literature on gender and leadership to consolidate existing theory development, stimulate new thinking and provide a framework for future empirical studies. It offers a theoretical framework to understand what may prevent or facilitate the emergence of female leaders.

The paper reviews and synthesises recent research on the linkages between gender and leadership.

The review extends Eagly and Karau’s (2002) role congruity theory by identifying additional constructs that may alleviate negative prejudicial evaluations and offering new insights into the potential alignment between feminine traits and leadership success.

The theoretical framework that emerged in this paper may be used as a heuristic model to contextually examine the lack of female leaders.

The paper proposes a theoretical framework to understand issues related to the emergence of female leaders. It offers news insights into possible alignment in female-leader role stereotypes that may address prejudicial evaluations against female leaders.

This paper aims to introduce an identity fit perspective adding to the understanding of the Nordic gender equality paradox of top managing positions using a Danish sample as case.

In total, five hypotheses concerning identity perception of top managing positions and the relationship with own identity and type of industry were tested through a correlational research design utilizing a cross-sectional survey methodology. A total of 1,054 women aged 18–60 participated in the survey.

The analysis revealed a strong masculine perception of a top managing position whereas women's own identity perception was much more diverse. The more masculine a woman perceives herself to be, the more motivated she is to climb the career ladder. Type of industry moderates the relationship between identity fit and motivation for top positions, but only for the masculine traits. The relationship between identity fit and motivation is stronger for women in high masculine industries.

Apart from being the first study of identity fit in a Nordic setting, this study contributes to the identity fit theory by employing a semi-objective fit approach exploring identity fit on an industry level, including female-dominated industries, as well as examining identity fit in relation to motivation to pursue a top managing position.

The purpose of this paper is to identify hurdles in women’s rise up the organizational ladder through the epistemic concept of the glass ceiling phenomenon. The secondary aim is to determine how the glass ceiling effect results in women’s failure to secure equal representation in high-ranking executive positions in comparison to males. The study intends to come up with empirical evidences to advance plausible justifications and support for the organizations to manage their workforce with the sense of egalitarianism.

The questionnaire is administered to a sample of 210 respondents including CEOs, directors, managers, assistants, accountants, doctors and teachers from public and private sectors. The variables that influence the glass ceiling phenomenon are gender (female) represented on the board of directors (BODs), stereotypical behavior and training and development of females to measure the glass ceiling effect. Further, this influence is examined regarding the selection and promotion of the females as candidates, as well as female effectiveness at work. To verify the glass ceiling phenomenon, multiple linear regression analyses with the ordinary least square method are used.

Drawing on the perspective of the social role theory, the authors identify plausible causes of the glass ceiling phenomenon in the Asian context. The results show the presence of glass ceiling, particularly characterizing its effects on the selection and promotion of the female candidates and their effectiveness. The authors found that glass ceiling was negatively related to both female effectiveness and “selection and promotion.” It was also identified that research variables such as lesser women’s representation on the BODs, training and development and stereotypical attitude toward women promote glass ceiling.

The larger sample and data collection from different cultures would have assured more generalizability. The glass ceiling is affected by numerous variables; other factors can also be explored.

Organizations must consider competitive females in their selection and promotion decision making. Asian countries, especially developing countries such as Pakistan, need to develop policies to encourage active participation of the female workforce in upper echelon. The equal employment policies will reduce the dependency ratio of females, consequently driving the country’s economic growth.

Societies need to change their stereotype attitudes toward women and encourage them to use their potential to benefit societies by shattering glass ceilings that continue to place women at a disadvantage. Developing a social culture that advances women empowerment will contribute to social and infrastructure development in Asian countries.

This paper adds a thought-provoking attitude of organizations in South Asia, especially in Pakistani societies that play a role in creating a glass ceiling, more so to shatter it even in 2016. This study compels firms in Pakistan and other Asian regions to use unbiased practices by investigating the impact of glass ceiling on female effectiveness that has not previously been conducted in the Asian context. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, the study of glass ceiling in Pakistani context is first in the literature.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the role of transformational leadership (TL) in developing social identity and its subsequent impact on team climate, intention to leave, burnout and quality of patient care among nurses.

Data for this cross-sectional study were collected from a sample of 201 registered nurses in Australia through questionnaires. Structural equation modelling was used to test the hypotheses.

Results illustrate that social identification appears to be the psychological mechanism through which TL impacts important employee outcomes, including perceived quality of patient care.

This study provides valuable insights into understanding the critical role of human resource management (HRM) practice and policy in healthcare environments. Findings from this study indicate that human resource managers can assist nurse unit managers to deliver their HRM roles effectively when adequate support and relevant HRM infrastructures are put in place.

This research considers the role of first-line nurse managers in healthcare organisations. It provides evidence-based knowledge about the type of leadership style required to achieve desirable employee outcomes and the essential HRM opportunities to facilitate this.

The purpose of the paper is to analyse the influence of individual gender role specifications on objective career success (measured by gross yearly income) in the context of different gender job contexts whilst controlling for human capital and working time variables. Typical economic, sociological and psychological variables are combined to improve explanations of the gender wage gap.

Starting from Eagly and Karau's role incongruity theory, the paper derives hypotheses on the influence of gender role specification, gender job context and biological sex on gross yearly income. These hypotheses are analysed by logistic regressions with a data set from Germany. The paper presents results of a quantitative empirical survey of employees on wages, gender role-related self-descriptions and human capital variables.

The paper results show that even in this highly qualified sample, male biological sex, masculine gender roles and non-female job context have a positive effect on individual income. The results hold true when the paper controls for human capital, working time, professional experience and jobs in the public sector.

Because of the limited size of the data set and some problems with selectivity, the research results lack generalizability. Researchers are thus encouraged to test the propositions with other data sets.

The paper includes implications for wage design and for reaching wage equality in firms. An important implication for policy and practice is that under a gender and equal opportunity perspective, ensuring non-discriminating behaviour with regard to women may be only one (albeit an important) element of equal opportunity activities. Equal wage policies should further consider the gender characteristics of the job context, which may influence job-related roles and thus role incongruities. Additionally, individual interpretations of gender roles might have effects on wages. Human resource (HR) managers could support such policies by shaping job descriptions carefully with regard to gender role aspects, by influencing the gender composition of job contexts and by paying attention to the individual development of gender role interpretations in HR development programmes.

The paper fulfils an identified research need to study simultaneously the influence of human capital variables and gender roles on wages. To the authors' knowledge, this is the first study, which studies the influence of gender roles as defined by Born (1992) on income in a German context of highly qualified individuals while controlling for human capital, working time and professional experience. The existing lack in the literature with regard to empirical analyses on the combined influence of economic, sociological and psychological variables is mitigated.

This study examines the impact of gender on Facebook campaign strategies and the reception of these strategies during the 2018 Israeli municipal elections.

The authors analyzed all the messages posted on 48 politicians' official Facebook pages during the week leading up to the elections. They analyzed messages posted by 152 candidates running for the position of head of a municipality, 68 of whom were women (48 had an active Facebook account), examining the amount of engagement they had created. The authors also analyzed the candidates' use of rhetoric and use of negative campaigning and the engagement it created.

Analysis of the overall engagement of Facebook users in respect to men versus women politicians showed that men politicians' posts were significantly more engaging in terms of the number of likes and shares they generated, although the multilevel analysis found no significant differences between engagement in the posts of men and women politicians. The Aristotelian rhetoric analysis revealed no significant differences between women and men contenders; however, in line with the role incongruity theory, the engagement analysis found that male candidates' logic-based posts attracted significantly more shares. The negative campaigning analysis found that, contrary to the study’s hypothesis, female candidates posted twice as many messages, attacking their opponents as their men counterparts. However, in line with the hypothesis based on the role incongruity theory, these posts gained significantly less engagement than those of their men counterparts.

The study highlights that female candidates do not conform to their perceived gender role as soft, emotional, and gentle in their social media campaigning. However, in line with role incongruity theory, they were not rewarded for this “unwomanly” behavior because they gained significantly less engagement with their logic-based posts and their attacks against other candidates than their men counterparts. Despite the fact that prior studies have indicated the potential of social networks service (SNS) to empower women leaders, the findings of the study highlight the continued gender discrimination and the validity of role incongruity theory during social media campaigning, particularly at the municipal elections level.

The purpose of this study is to place the antecedents and consequences of brand hate in the context of negative consumer–brand relationship in the telecommunication industry. It provides a response to the existing gap in the research on brand hate in consumer behavior in service brands.

A survey-based data was modeled after theory that aims to apply concepts to the telecommunications industry. With a solid model grounded and context-adapted, a mediation analysis of the role of brand hate in negative antecedents and consequences toward brands was performed.

Brand hate was found to mediate all the negative relationships proposed, while showing to be especially significant in mediating negative word of mouth. This model appropriately fits the services' marketing brand and revealed new insights into the function of brand hate in negative relationships that are specific to service marketing consumer brands.

Branding theory may benefit from deeper insights into the negative side of consumer–brand relationships. A broader illustration of its constituents in different industries and the recovery of the management approach to these circumstances bring innovation and a richer understanding, specially to the role of brand hate in the mediation context as seen in the literature (Hegner et al., 2017; Zarantonello et al., 2016)

Managerial implications include assessing brands in analyzing and relating to different emotions and concepts from customers, allowing to prioritize and mapping the customer relationship touchpoints.

The present study presents a first insight of brand hate in the context of the service industry of telecommunications in southern Europe while testing brand hate as a mediator involving negative predictors leading to negative outcomes in consumer–brand relationships.

The present study aims to investigate the impact of perceived quality, brand extension incongruity, involvement and perceived risk on consumer attitude towards brand extension across three product types, namely, FMCG, durable goods and service (FDS) sectors. More importantly, the study seeks to explore the importance of involvement profile comprising relevance, pleasure, sign‐value, risk importance and risk probability and perceived risk facets (financial, psychological and performance) in acceptance of brand extension across FDS.

Three questionnaire‐based surveys were conducted to collect the data for FMCG, durable and service brand extensions. Regression analyses and Chow test were computed to investigate differences in consumer evaluation across FDS.

Results revealed significant different effects of variables across the three product types. The impact of perceived quality was greater in the case of services than FMCG and durables. On the other hand, perceived risk and involvement had stronger influence on evaluation of durables and service than FMCG brand extensions.

The present study gives a comprehensive view of how consumers evaluate the service and non‐service brand extensions.

The major contributions of this study are: generalization of the findings related to brand extension incongruity in the service area; examination of the multidimensional role of involvement in terms of relevance, pleasure, sign value, risk importance and risk probability in brand extension context across FMCG, durables and service product types; and exploration of the role of risk facets, namely, financial, performance and psychological in determining consumers' attitude towards brand extension.

Surprise has been recognized as a key process in humor. Past studies have seldom tested elements that could increase the surprise in humor advertising, subsequently increasing perceived humor and positive ad outcomes. The purpose of this paper was to test the effects of priming a lower arousal baseline before humor ad exposure. It proposed that this would generate greater humor ad surprise because of contrast effects, leading to greater perceived humor and positive ad effects.

Three experiments tested the effects of arousal and valence of primes on humor ads. Attention, perceived humor and ad effectiveness of the humor ads were measured.

Evidence of lower (vs higher) arousal primes leading to greater humor ad evaluations was found across three experiments. Felt arousal of the ad mediated the relationship between the prime conditions and perceived humor.

No study has focused on context effects of the unique process of humor ads. This study advanced the arousal theory of incongruity-resolution humor and further emphasized the role of surprise. The findings implicate that the surroundings of the humor ad could increase its effectiveness.

Women are starting businesses at unprecedented rates, yet little is known about the leadership of small business owners. Establishing new ventures may allow women to use their full abilities and benefit from a more level playing field. Business owners have the unique opportunity to lead and define their businesses based on their authentic selves, values and goals; therefore, they are more likely to be authentic leaders. Women in nontraditional industries may be challenged because the owner’s characteristics do not match those of the industry. When the enactment of one identity interferes with another identity, identity interference (II) occurs. Relational authenticity and role incongruity suggests that women founders must uniquely resolve II and find synergy among their gender and leader identities if they are to extend the boundaries of what it means to be a woman and an industry’s business leader. This research aims to determine whether gender and leader II was an antecedent or link to authentic leadership (AL).

Study participants were from 63 businesses in the USA states of California, Ohio and Maryland. Three leader models were established to determine whether owner gender functioned as a moderator: all genders (n = 155), women only (n = 75) and men only (n = 65). The individual owners and their employees were the units of analysis and structural equation modeling was used.

The findings revealed that II was an antecedent to AL, owners were AL and owner gender moderated AL and II.

This study supports (Kernis, 2003; Gardner et al., 2005) the proposition that identity congruence is necessary for AL; the less interference found between gender and leader identities, the more authentic the leader. II functioned as an antecedent to AL. Moreover when the AL self’s subscales were examined relative to II, the components that were active varied dramatically based on leader gender. This suggests that addressing II and resolving the incongruence between what it mean to be a woman (or a man) and a leader contributes to the development of AL. Additionally, the AL boundary condition of relational authenticity was supported by this study; leader gender was related to the different amounts of AL (Eagly, 2005; Kernis, 2003). Support was found that AL was a dynamic process between leaders and employees. When authentic leadership questionnaire (ALQ) self (leader) and rater (employee) were compared, there was a significant amount of consistency between these ratings. For the all genders leader model, when ALQ self’s subscale was analyzed relative to the employees’ ratings, the leaders’ relational transparency was found to be active. The women only leader model revealed that AL was activated through internalized moral perspective suggesting they were able to tap into the hearts and minds of their employees. For the men only leaders, no relationship was revealed between ALQ self’s subcomponents and employee AL ratings. Relational authenticity suggests that this may be due to employees rating men owners more based on the experience and perceptions of men leaders in general and not these business owners in particular.

Leadership development professionals should address how II may help women examine who they are, how they work with others, and their values; decrease leader II by providing insight on how to manage potentially conflicting roles through examples of synergistic behaviors and benefits; and, build upon women owners’ ability to connect with their followers by sharing their goals and aspirations. Men owners may benefit by ensuring their employees know their business’ unique value proposition.

This research sought to link the identities of leader and gender to AL in the context of small businesses. It builds upon the AL theory of Avolio et al., (2004) and Jensen and Luthans (2006) who advocated using AL to study small businesses. This study determined whether business owners experienced interference between their gender and leader identities; II hindered the formation of AL and was an antecedent to AL; and the owner’s gender led to more or less AL and thus determined if leader gender moderated AL. The support for studying leader gender comes from role incongruity (Eagly and Diekman, 2005) and relational authenticity (Eagly, 2005; Kernis, 2003) which suggests that differences in how employees perceive AL may be a function of the owner’s gender. Added support comes from Jensen and Luthans (2006); they asked future studies to examine AL to determine the mechanisms behind gender differences in small businesses. Such research provides insight on the development of AL in theory and practice.