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Reasons that have an effect on the continuity and career progression of women in corporate India are complex. The purpose of this paper is to explore the factors that have an effect on the women leadership pipeline of Indian organizations.

The present study adopted a qualitative research methodology within a dyadic framework by including women managers and their respective supervisors in the study.

Thematic analyses of the qualitative study conducted on Indian women managers as well as their supervisor revealed rich insights into the antecedent social-psychological factors of a women leadership pipeline that can be summarized under three broad categories, namely, intra-personal, interpersonal and organizational.

The limitations are the small sample size and the qualitative nature of this study. An important implication is that the results of this study can be used for cross-cultural comparisons because most studies that have focused on the effect of gender on career advancement have used western conceptualizations and measures.

The findings of this research suggest designing organizational interventions that can help women professionals in navigating the complex social environment in order to create their own leadership identities supported through a high-quality leader-member exchange.

The study takes an important step toward developing a better understanding of the factors affecting the career advancement of women managers by contextualizing the way women professionals perceive their career identity and the meaning they imbue to career advancement. The findings of this study can aid policy makers toward arresting the leaking women leadership pipeline.

The study contributes by exploring several social-psychological dimensions of objective-subjective career success perceptions and their interplay among women managers drawn from three organizations in India.

1. To understand the importance of creating and implementing a vision for enhancing gender diversity and inclusion relevant to the manufacturing and engineering sector in an emerging market.

2. To develop insights into the vision and characteristics of an inclusive leader.

3. To evaluate the strategies and organizational levers that created and nurtured a climate of gender diversity and inclusion in Cummins India.

4. To identify organizational levers that will enable the sustenance and institutionalization of a climate of inclusion.

This case study traces a 16-year journey of diversity and inclusion at Cummins India, a subsidiary of the Fortune 500 manufacturing organization Cummins Inc. headquartered in the US. Initially spearheaded by Anant Talaulicar, and then continued by Ashwath Ram, gender D&I initiative at Cummins India has made significant strides. Talaulicar had an opportunity to immerse himself in the ethos of the parent company before joining the Indian subsidiary.

In India during the early 2000s the external environment was characterized by rapid technological and regulatory changes and increasing complexity. To make matters more difficult, the internal culture was steeped in a traditional manufacturing mindset marked by dismal female participation rate and an over-representation of locals with similar beliefs and value systems.

Given the mammoth task already taken up by Talaulicar by improving the diversity numbers from 3% to 33%, Ram had big shoes to fill. On one hand, he had to drive the business amidst uncertain market conditions; on the other hand, he had to carry on a legacy. Given that he himself had a lived experience of Cummins global values, he knew D&I was an integral part of the Cummins way of life. His familiarity with the socio-cultural challenges of the country coupled with his drive to continue and rejuvenate the D&I agenda, brought some interesting, yet challenging, questions for him. With the internal and external pressures looming large before him, could he institutionalize a climate of inclusion that could serve as a strategic lever to place the company on the path of growth, vibrancy and economic prosperity?

Through qualitative research conducted by the authors, this case study brought out learnings pertaining to linkage of leadership in creating a climate of inclusion and expansion of talent diversity through a set of people strategies and HR practices. The contribution of this case study is primarily to theory and practice in the field of Human Resource Management, D&I as well as in developing inclusive leadership.

MBA programs and leadership development programs

Teaching notes are available for educators only.

CSS 6: Human Resource Management.

Women leaders struggle with the persistent paradoxical expectations. Literature suggests that a paradox mindset helps to leverage these tensions. This study aims to understand the nexus between the microfoundations of individual women leaders’ experiences, their responses and the organisational context, which enables or hinders their paradox mindset.

This study adopted a qualitative approach by conducting semistructured interviews with 14 women, all senior leaders in corporate South Africa.

The results reveal the interaction in the nexus between, firstly, women leaders’ authenticity and awareness as key anchors that enable them to adopt a paradox mindset and, secondly, the organisation’s role in creating hindrances or opportunities to leverage tensions. Women leaders in our sample applied one of two strategies: they either adapted to the environment or curated a subenvironment. This study shows that, if done authentically, through her own agency, a woman can influence interactions that make it easier to manage tensions within her environment, especially those created by negative performance evaluation because of unconscious institutional gender bias.

The extent to which the findings of this research can be generalised is constrained by the selected research context.

This research contributes to the literature on paradox theory by revealing organisational contextual influencers, such as institutional bias in negative performance evaluation, which hinders a woman leader’s opportunity to be hired or promoted. These organisational influences also interact with women leaders’ ability to embrace paradox and internally leverage agentic and communal tensions.

Analyzing national statistical 2007 data from the U.S. Department of Education, this chapter examines the current status and trends concerning Asian American Pacific Islander (AAPI) women in higher education by looking at their presence at key levels of the higher education pipeline. It considers their representation as doctoral degree holders, assistant professors, tenured professors, and college/university presidents. The findings demonstrate that AAPI women are underrepresented as faculty in contrast to the large and growing numbers of AAPI women students who make up the talent pool to the professoriate. Moreover, despite the in-roads AAPI women have made as faculty members, race and gender disparities still persist and grow as the rank increases. AAPI female faculty representation stalls very early on in the pipeline, namely, in being hired and at tenure, and continues to shrink as the pipeline advances. AAPI male and white female faculty may also face barriers to the top, but Asian American women faculty may experience them sooner. Consequently, the numbers of AAPI women full professors are small and as campus presidents they are miniscule. However, for white men, their representation increases as the pipeline advances.

All gender identity is socialized, but anything gendered feminine is marginalized. In the United States, we live in a patriarchal culture that is bounded by binary gender identity. Up to this point, work on gender and education leadership has remained within the bounds of patriarchy, and thus been confined to binary, hierarchical gender definitions. This study pushes past prior work to advance a more complex and messy understanding of how identity impacts aspiring leaders in their careers. Using Carol Gilligan and Snider (2018) Listening Guide Method, this study of 18 aspiring school leaders of different gender identities, sexual identities, and races focuses on how gender identity and gender performance impact school leaders' career trajectories. A key finding of this study is that women, regardless of race or sexual identity, have difficulty finding mentors while men, regardless of race or sexual identity, are tapped by schools leaders and offered mentoring opportunities. This chapter posits a new framework for mentoring that will lead to more liberatory pipeline structures.

Taking a career capital approach, this paper addresses the issue of “pipeline block” frequently experienced by women seeking career advancement. Focusing on the Arab Middle East (AME) region, the authors take a contextually relevant multi-level approach to examine these issues.

The study uses a qualitative, interview-based approach, drawing on data obtained from women leaders from the AME region. Drawing on Bourdieu's capital-field-habitus framework, we explore how women in the AME developed career capital in particular organisational fields.

The findings show the importance of human and social capital, as well as the influence of habitus for women's career advancement in specific fields. The study also highlights the unique contribution of cultural capital in helping women to navigate organisational fields where it is necessary to both challenge, and conform to, traditional norms.

Limitations of the study include assumptions of homogeneity across countries of the AME, whereas differences are known to exist. Future research should consider these contextual differences, and also include a study of women who were not successful in gaining career advancement.

The study’s multi-level approach highlights practical implications for women, organisations and society. For organisations, the authors propose some context-relevant coaching strategies that can help women to attain leadership positions.

The study’s multi-level approach highlights practical implications for women, organisations,and society. Focusing on organisations, the authors propose some context-relevant coaching strategies that can help women to attain advancement in their careers.

The study demonstrates originality in the findings by showing how women overcome the pipeline block in relation to their career advancement. The use of the Bourdieusian framework, an in-depth qualitative approach, and the AME context also add to the study's originality.

Research shows that companies with a diverse leadership perform better financially. Having a diverse board encourages constructive and challenging dialogue which is key to the effective functioning of any board. However, in the UK, women and black and minority ethnic (BAME) employees still lag behind when it comes to representation at senior management and board level. The purpose of this paper is to highlight the importance of having a diverse talent pipeline of women and BAMEs and offer practical solutions on how this can be achieved.

A mixture of data, analysis, experience and practice forms the basis of the paper, drawing from research on diversity, leadership development, executive boards and developing the talent pipeline. It looks at current initiatives being used in organisations to develop aspiring leaders.

Executive boards are ill representative of the diversity of the working population. Having diversity in the boardroom allows for rich dialogue and better business decisions. In order to address the issue, organisations need to develop a talent pipeline that includes women and BAMEs. There are practical solutions that can be applied to achieve this. Not only does this make good business sense from an economical perspective, it also helps to maintain empowered, motivated and engaged employees.

This paper outlines initiatives that organisations can apply to develop the talent pipeline for women and BAME employees and in doing so, retain high performing, aspiring leaders, whilst supporting action to increase diversity and inclusion in the boardroom.

The purpose of this conceptual paper was to investigate the contribution of the “Pipeline”, as a metaphor for building theory about Women-on-Boards (WoB) in the Arab world.

Narratives about women's progress in Arab countries were collected from a range of sources and content was analysed to identify emergent themes about pipeline.

Themes were identified of the pipeline metaphor that explained phenomena and generated solutions to employ, retain and advance women to board directorships; from higher education (“bulging”/“bursting” pipeline) through employment (“leaking” pipeline) to boardroom (“blocked” pipeline).

Generalisation of these study results is limited by geographical context of this research. An implication is for further international studies on metaphor identification for women's progress.

Relevant metaphor-in-use required to generate company policy and praxis towards WoB in the Arab world.

The first academic study to investigate the value of metaphor for effect on women's progress in Arab countries. Novel metaphor identification is proposed to think and see women's experiences in cultural context.