Women in management: papers from the British Academy of Management

Citation

Broadbridge, A. (2006), "Women in management: papers from the British Academy of Management", Women in Management Review, Vol. 21 No. 6. https://doi.org/10.1108/wimr.2006.05321faa.001

Women in management: papers from the British Academy of Management

About the Guest Editor Adelina Broadbridge is Senior Lecturer, Department of Marketing, University of Stirling, Scotland. Her research has concentrated on HRM issues in retailing, and she has a particular interest in the gender issues therein. This work has examined the career development of retail managers, stress in retailing and the professionalisation of charity retailing and its resultant affects on managers. Recently, she has also undertaken work tracing the incidence of term-time employment and how this affects students' adjustment to university. She is an Associate Member of the Centre for Diversity and Work Psychology at MBS, on the Editorial Board of Women in Management Review, and “Retail Insights” Editor of the International Journal of Retail & Distribution Management. Adelina is the Founder and President of the Gender in Management Special Interest Group (www.gimsig.ac.uk), set up to act as a dedicated network for academics to keep up to date with current issues in the area of gender and management. E-mail: a.m.broadbridge@stir.ac.uk

Women in management: papers from the British Academy of Management

The growth of women in the UK workforce since the latter part of the twentieth century is well documented and women now constitute half (49.7 per cent) of the UK workforce (Office for National Statistics, 2006). However, a disproportionate number of women are represented at management levels, and in particular, senior positions. Women currently occupy 34.5 per cent of all managerial positions (Equal Opportunities Commission, 2006a; Eurostat, 2006), a three fold increase since 1988 (Davidson, 1991), and compared to just two per cent in 1974 (Equal Opportunities Commission, 2006b). While this is encouraging, women remain vastly under-represented at senior management levels throughout the majority of sectors of the economy. At executive director level, for example, women comprise just 3.4 per cent of executive directors in the UK's top 100 companies (Singh and Vinnicombe, 2005), and 10.5 per cent of directors (executive and non-executive) in FTSE 100 companies (Equal Opportunities Commission, 2006a). The balance of power between men and women in organisations therefore remains unequal, despite the growth of women generally in the workforce.

The importance of gender to the field of management research is acknowledged by the growing number of researchers in the field, and further witnessed by the increasing number of dedicated tracks at both specialised and general conferences. This special issue arises from the track on “gender and management” at the British Academy of Management Conference (BAM), held with the general conference theme of “Challenges of Organizations in Global Markets” at Said Business School, University of Oxford, 13-15 September 2005 (www.bam.ac.uk/conference2005/index.html).

New and young scholars with “work in progress” papers were welcomed to participate in the track as well as established researchers in the field. The track aimed to examine a variety of issues:

• •

  the contribution of gender perspectives to the conference theme of challenges of organizations in global markets;

• •

  career development – barriers and advancements;

• •

  leadership – style and implications;

• •

  entrepreneurship – factors of success and failure;

• •

  work/life balance – policy and practice;

• •

  diversity – impact and implications;

• •

  organizational behaviour – discrimination and industry specific features; and

• •

  managerial identity – definitions and discourse.

The call for papers attracted many submissions and each paper was subject to a double blind review process. This resulted in 18 papers being presented at the conference. A word of thanks is given to all the anonymous reviewers who gave up their time generously and responded in a timely manner so as to create a successful track at the conference.

The track attracted speakers from an international audience including Australia, Germany, Pakistan, the USA, and the UK. Papers covered a wide variety of topics including career progression, work-life balance, entrepreneurship, and management development. In addition, the papers were not just focused on women; a number of papers additionally concentrated on the relative position of women and men in the workforce. Methods included epistemological and ontological investigations; quantitative surveys and qualitative approaches of a cross cultural, transnational and interdisciplinary nature.

The sessions were very well attended throughout the duration of the conference. A particular word of thanks is extended to those who agreed to act as session chairs (Sandra Fielden, Jenny Headlam Wells, Gary Powell, Val Singh). Their chairing skills were excellent, welcoming their speakers and putting them at ease (as well as keeping them to time); encouraging lively debate and constructive criticism from the floor; and providing supportive feedback for presenters.

Women in Management Review (WIMR) kindly sponsored a prize for the best paper for the “gender and management” track. Selection was based on the anonymous reviewers' comments and the prize was awarded to Birgit Weyer (Weyer und Hansen, GbR Training and Consulting) for her paper “Do multi-source feedback instruments support the existence of a glass ceiling for women leaders?”. This paper is included in this special issue.

During the conference, the track hosted a Gender in Management Special Interest Group (www.gimsig.ac.uk) meeting, where the award of best paper was presented by Paula Fernandez, the existing Managing Editor of the Journal. This was followed by a presentation by Dr Sandra Fielden on how to get published in peer reviewed journals. She was able to give us her experience and wisdom as the journal editor of WIMR on the tips and pitfalls of writing and submitting papers. In particular she advised potential contributors to consider five key pointers when writing their articles: readability, originality, credibility, applicability and internationality.

This session was followed by a dinner organised at a local restaurant which was attended by around 25 members of the special interest group. Here, participants from the gender and management track were able to reflect on current and future research issues and collaboration in the field, as well as generally enjoy the company of each other in a convivial social atmosphere (Plate 1).

Plate 1.Some of the participants from the “gender and management” track

For this special issue, papers closest to the central concerns of WIMR were selected in consultation with the journal editor, and then subjected to further review and revision.

Analysing a dataset of 60,000 questionnaires, Birgit Weyer's paper examines multi-source feedback instruments to investigate whether they support the existence of a glass ceiling for women leaders. She found that, contrary to prior literature, constructs of leadership across multiple rating pairs reflect the same cognitive constructs of leadership. She, therefore, concludes that the multi-source feedback instruments do not contribute to the existence of a glass ceiling for women and that as an instrument it is free from bias.

Val Singh, Susan Vinnicombe and Savita Kumra's paper uses organisational citizenship theory to examine the perceived benefits of women's corporate networks and by doing so they extend the literature in this field. They adopted a pluralistic approach to the methodology and undertook in-depth interviews with the organisers and chairs of 12 women's networks, in addition to an email survey of network members. As well as describing how these networks were established and managed, the authors found strong benefits for women being involved in corporate networks.

Jenny Headlam-Wells, Jane Craig and Julian Gosland's paper outlines a European Social Funded project they have been working on since 2003. The “Empathy Edge” project examined the barriers women face in progressing their careers or returning to work after a career break. This innovative project ran and evaluated an e-mentoring programme and involved a sample of matched pairs of mentors and mentees. They evaluated the e-mentoring process and participants' development at three critical stages in the methodological process. They found both mentors and mentees reported benefits of the e-mentoring process; mentors reported greater self development skills while mentees reported improved employability skills.

Finally, Jacqueline Granleese and Gemma Sayer's paper, in addition to taking a gender and ageism perspective, turns to the largely neglected area of the role of

appearance within the employment setting. They adopted a qualitative approach and interviewed a total of 48 women and men in academic and academic related posts within higher education. Their paper contains some rich quotes from the participants themselves and they were able to conclude that women experience a triple jeopardy of being discriminated on the grounds of gender, age and appearance/attractiveness.

Finally, I would like to thank Dr Sandra Fielden, the General Editor of WIMR, for all her help, support and guidance she provided throughout the preparation for and publication of this special issue. We hope this special issue will bring some new perspectives and assist in understanding some of the contemporary research themes on the position of women in management today.

Adelina BroadbridgeGuest Editor,University of Stirling, Scotland