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Makes an attempt to explain the factors that cause the phenomenon of the “glass ceiling” for women in management. Suggests that the main obstacle that prevents female managers from advancing to top positions is their inability to generate and use informal power in organizations which are usually dominated by a male culture. Discusses various strategies that can be used to increase opportunities for the advancement of women in management and makes proposals for specific actions by employers to rectify the current situation.

During the past twenty years there has been a dramatic increase in the number of women who are pursuing managerial and professional careers. Many of these women have prepared themselves for careers by undertaking university education in professional schools such as business, accountancy and law. Women are gaining the necessary experience and paying their dues. Despite these academic credentials, and increased experience, women are failing to move into the ranks of senior management (Burke & McKenn, 1992). This pattern has been observed in both public and private sector organisations in all developed countries (Adler & Israeli, 1988; Morrison & Von Glinow, 1990).

Combining two organizational change theories, life cycle and organizational development, this study examines how strategic change cycle has been adopted and implemented across three different organizations, a public organization, an NGO and an intergovernmental organization toward achieving their goals.

This study triangulates three different qualitative research methods: open-ended semi-structured interviews conducted with UN Women Egypt's director, text analysis of the three organizations' websites and the discourse analysis of the Tri-County Foundation's leaders.

Strategic change cycle has been differently formulated, adopted and implemented by the three organizations based on their goals, resources and contexts. While Office Board of Investment adopted a comprehensive reactive change, Tri-County Foundation followed a partial proactive transformation and UN Women Egypt developed a partial reactive strategy. Henceforth, public organizations and nonprofit organizations can develop different strategies of change in function of needs, resources, goals and context.

This study advances a theoretical framework on organizational change by integrating two theories, life cycle and organizational development, presenting four patterns of change: comprehensive reactive, comprehensive proactive, partial reactive and partial proactive.

This study aims to investigate the impact of women’s representation at one hierarchical level on women’s representation above or below that level. No past research investigated these effects in the hospitality and tourism industries. The mixed results of research in other industries and across industries demand tests of curvilinearity and moderators.

Using annual equality reports, a panel data set for 2010–2019 was created for the hospitality and tourism industries. The sample of 581 organizations had up to 5,810 observations over the 10 years.

The analyses show the following effects of women’s representation: an inverted U-shape from management to non-management, a U-shape from non-management to management and a U-shape from management to the executive team, with more pronounced effect in small organizations.

To increase the number of female employees, organizations should invest their resources in hiring and retaining female managers until a gender balance is reached while managing any backlash from men. The results suggest that organizations with more than 40% of women non-management employees and 50% of women managers start `experiencing positive bottom-up dynamics. Thus, efforts need to be made to attract and retain a women’s pipeline at the non-management and management levels.

This study delivers pioneering evidence of the top-down and bottom-up phenomena in hospitality and tourism. It refines evidence of such effects found in past research conducted in other industries and across industries.

The purpose of this paper is to discuss the adverse impact of a female executive’s fraudulent behaviour on other female employees working in the same organisation.

This developmental study uses a comprehensive literature review and a set of propositions to identify the consequences of a female’s fraudulent activity on other female employees working in the focal organisation. It develops a conceptual framework for the same. Propositions are further supported by five focus group interviews.

Leveraging stigma-by-association theory, the paper asserts that fraud committed by one female executive in an organisation enhances discriminatory practices against other female employees in the organisation. The level of adverse impact is contingent on the seniority of the female executive committing the fraud, severity of the fraud, gender of the other female employees’ managers and diversity in culture in the organisation.

This paper extends the stigma-by-association theory. In its original spirit, the theory describes how individuals who keep company with stigmatised individuals are also stigmatised. This study asserts that for this effect to take place, especially under fraudulent conditions, mere group affiliation, such as working in the same organisation, may cause an adverse effect on other women.

The paper is based on a rich conceptual and theoretical discussion that identifies the key consequences of a female executive’s fraudulent activity in an organisation. The study also conceptually establishes the moderating relationship between a female executive’s fraudulent activity and several key organisation-level variables.

This mixed‐method study aims to determine the extent to which the career paths of senior managers conform with the traditional versus protean elements described in the careers literature and whether these paths vary by gender.

A total of 15 senior managers (seven women and eight men) in a large public sector agency in Australia were interviewed about their career trajectories to date. Data were coded according to four major areas which characterise and distinguish between traditional and protean careers: development, orientation of the employee, definition of success, and organisational environment. A total of 81 managers (34 women and 47 men) from the same organisation were also surveyed. Variables of interest were those that could be triangulated with qualitative data such as the availability of career opportunities.

Results suggest that, contrary to much existing literature which proposes that all careers have been fundamentally altered, the traditional career which relies on length of service, geographic mobility and a steady climb up the corporate ladder, is still the dominant model in some organisations. However, the trend towards protean careers is evident and is more pronounced for women than for men.

The specific nature of the organisation (large, male‐dominated, public sector) may limit the generalisability of results.

The framework used to explore career paths according to traditional/ protean elements in this study may assist human resource practitioners to develop appropriate strategies which maximise the professional development of employees.

The results of this research challenge the universality of change in the nature of careers, particularly in public sector environments.

The glass ceiling is a metaphor used to characterize the gender inequality of women at the top in most large western organizations. This situation has prompted many business organizations, NGOs and governments to encourage large organizations to promote more women into the executive suite and onto boards of directors. While there is little controversy about this initiative, this paper argues that there should be because it directly challenges the principle that merit should outweigh diversity. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

This paper reviews research that purports to show that women are unfairly under-represented in the most senior positions in large western organizations. It also reviews the arguments that more senior women would improve the performance of these organizations. This research is then used to develop a model of why there are markedly fewer women than men at the top of large organizations.

This study finds that most of the research studies purporting to show that there is a bias against promoting women to the top of large western organizations are unsound because they are poorly designed and/or fail to accommodate alternative explanations for this effect. Thus, the current number of women who run these organizations may be a good reflection of their contribution to the management of these organizations. These findings suggest that many of the policies that are promoted to help women break through the glass ceiling are misguided.

Large organizations should think carefully about following the advice of special interest groups who vigorously promote this social cause.

Social policy advocates need better research from which to advance their cause that there are currently too few women in senior management positions of large organizations.

This is one of only a handful of papers that challenges the current orthodoxy that artificial glass ceilings are restricting the potential contribution of women to the better management of large organizations.

Women now represent approximately half of the working population in the USA. In 1996, the US Department of Labor reported that women comprised 44 percent of the total persons employed in executive, administrative and managerial occupations. However, this category is extremely broad, and women are grossly underrepresented at the top executive positions of Fortune 500 corporations. In 1995 the Federal Glass Ceiling Commission produced two reports: the first finding the existence of a glass ceiling; and the second presenting strategic recommendations on what corporations could do to remove or reduce these findings. Explores how women in middle management perceive their career advancement opportunities and what they consider their organizations to be doing to support their advancement. Overall, results suggest that the glass ceiling is still an issue for women within organizations. Finally, the business implications of this are considered.

The aim of this paper is to investigate whether or not political skill helps women working in a male-dominated environment to obtain positions with authority.

Surveys were emailed to female lawyers working full-time in a variety of law firms across the USA. Participants were 140 lawyers with an average of ten years of practicing law.

In support of their hypotheses, the authors found that when working in male-dominated organizations, women with high levels of political skill fared better than women with low levels of political skill in terms of obtaining positions with authority.

Because the research design was cross-sectional, direction of causality cannot be established. Second, common method bias may have affected the observed relationships.

Given that women with political skill may be able to recognize and break down the barriers that are especially present in male-dominated organizations, women and managers alike should consider training to help women understand and enhance their political skill.

This research highlights the particular challenge of workplace politics for women and presents political skill as a potential solution.

This research is the first to demonstrate the benefit of having political skill for women working in male-dominated organizations.

The study focuses on the inclusion practices and processes of five large organizations across diverse sectors where women are underrepresented. The purpose of this paper is to examine how organizations facilitate changes in behavior and mindset through formal and informal practices.

In-depth interviews of CEOs, HR team members, and diversity and inclusion leaders in the five organizations were used as data in this study. Coding was done over several rounds via content analysis for the development of themes around how organizations work toward women’s inclusion.

The findings indicate that in their inclusion practices, all five organizations took into consideration societal biases that often render women at a disadvantage. Some of the cultural biases regarding family role expectations and safety-related norms were recognized and incorporated in their practices, while other gender-based stereotypes impeding inclusivity were addressed with zero tolerance of prejudicial behaviors. Organizations achieved this balance through various communicative practices including lateral and informal communication, generalized and particularized conversations, and creation of alternate spaces for dialogue.

By examining women’s inclusivity initiatives of five large organizations working in India, this study helps create an understanding of how organizations can bring about such change, keeping in mind the societal and cultural context, for a more nuanced and achievable inclusion. This study also demonstrates how informal narratives enable deep-rooted organizational change such as inclusion. Such narratives facilitate in enhancing employee’s readiness to change, thereby laying foundations for a sustained impact.

Very few studies that focus on women’s inclusion practices also take into consideration both the demands of the organization as well as the societal expectations placed upon women. This study highlights how organizations try to manage this tension and refrain from “homogenizing” or fitting women into existing practices and routines.