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This paper aims to appraise the effectiveness of gender quotas in breaking the glass ceiling for women on boards (WoBs) in companies that are legally obliged to comply with quotas (listed companies and state-owned companies, LP) and in those that are not (unlisted companies and nonstate-owned companies, NLNP). Furthermore, it investigates the glass cliff phenomenon, according to which women are more likely to be appointed to apical positions in underperforming companies.

A balanced panel data of the top 116 Italian companies by total assets, which are present in both 2010 and 2017, is used for estimating ANOVA tests across sectors and fixed-effects panel regression models.

WoBs significantly increased in both the LP and the NLNP companies, and this increase was greater in the financial sector. Furthermore, the relationship between the percentage of WoBs and firm performance is not linear but depends on the financial corporate health. Specifically, the situation in which a woman ascends to a leadership position in challenging circumstances where the risk of failure is high (glass cliff phenomenon) is only present in companies with the lowest performance in the sample, in other words, when negative values of Roe and negative or zero values of Roa occur together.

These findings have relevant policy implications that encourage the adoption of gender quotas even in specific top positions, such as CEO or president, as this could lead to a “double spillover effect” both vertically, that is, in other job positions, and horizontally, toward other companies not targeted by quotas. Practical interventions to support women in glass cliff positions, on the other hand, relate to the extent of supervisor mentoring and support to prevent women from leaving director roles and strengthen their chances for career advancement.

The authors explore the ability of gender quotas to break through the glass ceiling in companies that are not legally obliged to do so, and to the best of the authors’ knowledge, for the first time, the glass cliff phenomenon in the Italian context.

This study aims to holistically explore the academic literature on female leaders to identify the key topics and dynamics of the field.

The authors systematically review 532 papers to explore the research on female leaders; based on objective and replicable criteria, the authors identify relevant papers and thus ensure the quality of the analysis. The bibliometric analysis and visualization support us in recognizing trends in this topic.

This study outlines the state of the art over the past decade by synthesizing theoretical contexts and critically discussing the main streams of research on sustainability, firm outcomes and barriers preventing women from reaching the upper echelons. The authors also explore empirical issues and highlight areas that entail new paths for future scholars.

The research provides novel evidence of the attempt internationally to increase female participation at the top of the firm hierarchy by analyzing firm outcomes, sustainability and the constraints faced by women in achieving these careers.

The results show that the participation of women in leadership roles is not (only) a matter of compliance with current regulations. Through their ability to monitor key social and environmental issues from a long-term perspective and their attention to the internal control systems, companies more effectively pursue their financial and nonfinancial aims.

Using bibliographic and narrative analyses, this study reviews the literature on women at the top of the firm hierarchy with a focus on business research. The authors extend prior studies by investigating a larger pool of firm roles to provide a comprehensive understanding of this widely discussed topic.

The purpose of this study is to understand challenges and constraints in reaching top leadership positions for women in the Portuguese press. Specifically, it aims at characterizing their communication and leadership styles, and at identifying main gender biases in newsrooms routines from their point of view.

A qualitative method was employed by conducting in-depth interviews with four women who have held higher management positions in Portuguese leading newspapers. Participants were asked to characterize their communication and leadership style, but also newsrooms environment, trying to understand how gender asymmetries persist and manifest. Results were analyzed using thematic analysis.

While considering that Portuguese newsrooms are no longer environments marked by a sexist/macho environment, through increasing female participation, women still represent a minority in leadership. Leadership traits linked to male styles, including assertiveness and courage, were revealed, though mixed with a more participative/relational leadership. Also, female leaders regret when emotional ties with teams are not developed and recognized some degree of privilege towards other women through family support or not having children.

There is a limited number of interviews, although they represent the few top women leaders in Portuguese journalism.

Policymaking recommendations derived from conclusions include participative leadership, implementing quotas, and monitoring tools of gender biases and special training.

Media literacy policies and open debates on main media outlets concerning female leadership and communication styles may contributes toward the acknowledgement of lingering gender biases in the industry.

This study contributes to a fuller insight into the identification of leadership and personal traits among women who managed to disrupt stigmas and break barriers. Their voices are seldom heard in studies focusing leadership, so results enable ascertaining whether there is a female way of leading in journalism and comprehending the sense of privilege these women perceive.

This study aims to investigate the research question: how do women leaders in the professional business services (PBS) sector develop and approach workplace (in)authenticity?

Ten senior women leaders in the Midlands region of the UK were purposefully selected and interviewed. A semi-structured approach meant that the author adopted a social constructionist paradigm and feminist interpretation. Questions were designed to elicit rich descriptions from the participants. An inductive thematic analysis was conducted to address the study’s purpose.

Four themes were important to women when they developed and approached workplace (in)authenticity: (1) Power Structures, (2) Fit to Belong, (3) Influential Femininity and (4) Through Her Evolution. Women described masculine-majority organisations exerting power. They were pressured into altering their behaviours to “fit” into workplaces. When women had the latitude to be themselves, their leadership excelled. Women’s authenticity developed through increased self-knowledge, helping them to overcome workplace challenges. The study concluded that women face complexities when developing and approaching their constructions of authenticity, namely in the barriers and ramifications they face.

The study suggests several implications for practice and theory concerning enablers and barriers to women leaders' workplace authenticity. The link between authenticity and workplace gender equity needs to be investigated.

The study provides evidence that women are challenged when becoming authentic, therefore, altering their careers irrecoverably in some cases.

The purpose of this study is to investigate changing implicit leadership theories (ILTs) within a business student population over a ten-year period.

Students from the same business student population rated men, women and managers in general, using Schein’s Descriptive Index, first during the academic year 2008–2009 and again in 2018–2019.

In Sample 1, the authors found multiple ILTs, male students gender typed the managerial role in favour of men, while female students held a more gender egalitarian view of the managerial role. In Sample 2, the authors found evidence that ILTs are starting to converge, as neither the male nor female sample gender typed the managerial role.

These results aid the understanding of the ILTs that these graduating professionals bring into their new full-time organisations.

The analysis of data from the same population using the same measurement at ten-year intervals, along with the findings that male students no longer gender type the managerial role in the most recent round of data collection, are original contributions to the literature.

Despite more than 50 years of research into gender and work, the impact of women occupying managerial positions persists to be under-represented in mainstream human resource management (HRM) literature. The purpose of this article is to identify and explore the perceptions of women who decided to choose their career path either in IT or HR positions to explore their motivation, career strategies and success factors.

Twenty semi-structured interviews were conducted with women occupying either IT or HR managerial positions. The study included two datasets: (1) women representing managerial positions in IT and (2) women representing managerial positions in HR.

Women holding HR managerial positions took action to achieve the intended position in their dream industry since their studies. On the contrary, the choice of the IT industry was one undertaken by candidates with no previous IT experience. Because the IT sector is dominated by men, women in these positions still had to prove their competences.

The research showed that women cannot be ignored in the science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) industry, and they prove a valuable resource for managerial positions in IT or HR departments in many sectors.

The research underpinned a new boundaryless career model for both HR and IT positions.

The purpose of this paper is to add to the small but growing body of research examining the influence of founder gender on new venture access to venture development programs.

Hypotheses were tested utilizing a sample of 482 nascent technology ventures which applied for admittance into a venture development organization headquartered in the southern region of the United States from March 2004 through February 2016.

Findings suggest that female-founded applicant ventures experience a higher likelihood of acceptance into venture development programs than male-founded applicant ventures. Results further suggest that social attention to gender equality reduces this effect for female-founded applicant ventures. Findings extend the understanding of the gendered nature of high-technology venturing and venture development organizations.

The findings of this study may not generalize to new ventures operating in other contexts (e.g., non-U.S., low-tech, and other venture development programs). Additionally, this study's design and data limitations do not allow for the establishment of causality or address founder motivations to apply for acceptance into venture development programs.

This study adds to empirical findings regarding the influence of founder gender on new venture acceptance into venture development programs by developing and testing competing hypotheses. This study also extends extant research by examining the moderating effect of social attention to gender equality on the hypothesized relationships between founder gender and acceptance into venture development programs.

This conceptual, multi-voiced paper aims to collectively explore and theorize family entrepreneuring, which is a research stream dedicated to investigating the emergence and becoming of entrepreneurial phenomena in business families and family firms.

Because of the novelty of this research stream, the authors asked 20 scholars in entrepreneurship and family business to reflect on topics, methods and issues that should be addressed to move this field forward.

Authors highlight key challenges and point to new research directions for understanding family entrepreneuring in relation to issues such as agency, processualism and context.

This study offers a compilation of multiple perspectives and leverage recent developments in the fields of entrepreneurship and family business to advance research on family entrepreneuring.

This research aims to theorize how a critical factor, resource access, can paradoxically impact the comprehensiveness of venture location decision processes and the relationship between decision comprehensiveness and new venture performance. To do so, the authors focus on nascent entrepreneurs’ venture location decision processes and introduce resource access as a double-edged sword.

In this conceptual article, the authors draw from the strategic decision-making and resource mobilization literature to theorize about the new venture location decision-making process and its performance implications.

By uncovering the paradox of resource access, the authors propose that high levels of resource access create a paradoxical situation in which nascent entrepreneurs are less likely to use comprehensive decision processes when their benefits are at their greatest.

This work contributes to entrepreneurship research on new venture location and resource mobilization in three important ways. First, the authors advance the literature on nascent entrepreneurs’ location decision-making processes by introducing “location decision comprehensiveness” as a decision process construct and juxtaposing it with resource access to uncover the entrepreneurial decision-making process. Second, the authors develop a more nuanced theorization of the location choices made by nascent entrepreneurs instead of relying on generalized conclusions drawn from well-established corporations’ location decisions. Last, the authors extend the literature on resource mobilization in entrepreneurship by shedding light on the paradoxical aspect of resource access. While previous research has emphasized the favorable effects of resource access on new venture processes and outcomes, the authors contend that it can also negatively impact entrepreneurs’ ability to make effective decisions.

This paper explores the role that the control system – understood as a set of financial and non-financial mechanisms – introduced by the Ministerial Decree of 15th February 1860 played in promoting the ethical tolerance of prostitution in the Kingdom of Italy.

A qualitative research method was adopted. Specifically, this study draws on literature on accounting and deviant behaviors and on Suchman's theories of legitimation (1995) to interpret empirical evidence collected from archival primary sources as well as secondary sources.

The paper highlights how the accounting mechanisms introduced by the law were molded to limit the serious consequences of prostitution from a public health standpoint and to demonstrate that the State neither profited from prostitution nor used public money to fund it. This should have stimulated ethical tolerance of the law itself and, consequently, of the prostitution that was regulated.

This paper opens a new research avenue in the field of accounting history by exploring the connection between accounting and prostitution. Moreover, unlike the extant literature on accounting and deviant behaviors, this study delves into the role played by accounting mechanisms to promote ethical tolerance rather than to activate normalization processes.