ISSN: 2222-6990
Open access
In the last decades, academics, researchers and private and public organizations have demonstrated an increasing interest towards women in leadership roles. Without claiming to exhaust this interesting and current topic, this paper discusses the concept of leadership involved in multinational corporations from the perspective of gender equality in light of the current development of female leadership programs that have become the norm in all socially responsible businesses. The research is based on a case study of the effects of such a leadership development program implemented in an international accounting and consulting corporation with a subsidiary in Romania. Through a quantitative analysis based on a web survey, the paper analyses if the women in the corporation report having faced any particular barriers in their pursuit of management positions and if there are differences in the way in which female and male leadership styles are perceived. The main contributions of the paper are an assessment of the effectiveness of the selected leadership development program and a list of recommendations that can be followed by companies with similar leadership development programs in order to support women empowerment and advancement in the company.
Antecol, H. (2001). Why is there interethnic variation in the gender wage gap?: The role of cultural factors. The Journal of Human Resources, 36(1), 119-143.
Blau, F.D., & Kahn, L.M. (2016). The gender wage gap: Extent, trends, and explanations. IZA Discussion Papers, No. 9656.
Brue, K.L., & Brue, S.A. (2016). Experiences and outcomes of a women’s leadership development program: A phenomenological investigation. Journal of Leadership Education, 15(3), 75-97.
Daft, R., Kendrick, M., & Vershinina, N. (2010). Management. Andover: Cengage Learning EMEA.
Dean, H., & Ford, J. (2017). Discourses of entrepreneurial leadership: exposing myths and exploring new approaches. International Small Business Journal, 35(2), 178-196.
Deloitte (2012). Deloitte Romania and Moldova. Retrieved from: www2.deloitte.com/ro/ro/pages/about-deloitte/articles/cxo-program.html.
Derks, B., Van Laar, C., & Ellemers, N. (2016). The queen bee phenomenon: Why women leaders distance themselves from young junior women. The Leadership Quarterly, 27(3), 456-469.
Devillard, S., de Zelicourt, A., Sancier-Sultan, S., & Kossoff, C. (2016). Women Matter 2016: Reinventing the workplace to unlock the potential of gender diversity. Retrieved from: www.mckinsey.com/~/media/mckinsey/global%20 themes/women%20matter/reinventing%20the%20workplace%20for%20greater%20gender%20diversity/women-matter-2016-reinventing-the-workplace-to-unlock-the-potential-of-gender-diversity.ashx.
Eagly, A.H., & Carli, L.L. (2003). The female leadership advantage: An evaluation of the evidence. The Leadership Quarterly, 14(6), 807-834.
Eddleston, K.A., Ladge, J.J., Mitteness, C., & Balachandra, L. (2016). Do you see what I see? Signaling effects of gender and firm characteristics on financing entrepreneurial ventures. Entrepreneurship theory and Practice, 40(3), 489-514.
Fernandez, R.M., & Campero, S. (2017). Gender sorting and the glass ceiling in high-tech firms. ILR Review, 70(1), 73-104.
Gârboni, E.S. (2014). Women in politics during the Romanian transition. Procedia- Social and Behavioral Sciences, 163, 247-256.
Hannagan, T. (2008). Management. Concepts & Practices. 5th ed. New York: Pearson Education.
Harrison, R., Leitch, C., & McAdam, M. (2015). Breaking glass: Toward a gendered analysis of entrepreneurial leadership. Journal of Small Business Management, 53(3), 693-713.
Johnson, S.K., Murphy, S.E., Zewdie, S., & Reichard, R.J. (2008). The strong, sensitive type: effects of gender stereotypes and leadership prototypes on the evaluation of male and female leaders. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 106(1), 39-60.
Joshi, A., Neely, B., Emrich, C., Griffiths, D., & George, G. (2015). Gender research in AMJ: An overview of five decades of empirical research and calls to action. Academy of Management Journal, 58(5), 1459–1475.
Kim, S., & Shin, M. (2017). The effectiveness of transformational leadership on empowerment: The roles of gender and gender dyads. Cross Cultural & Strategic Management, 24(2), 271-287.
Kouzes, J.M., & Posner, B.Z. (1995). The leadership challenge: how to keep getting extraordinary things done in organizations. California: Jossey Bass.
Lammers, J., & Gast, A. (2017). Stressing the advantage of female leadership can place women at a disadvantage. Social Psychology, 48, 28-39.
Mandell, B., & Pherwani, S. (2003). Relationship between emotional intelligence and transformational leadership style: A gender comparison. Journal of Business and Psychology, 17(3), 387-404.
Milligan, P.A., Levine, B., Chen, L., & Edkins, K. (2014). When women thrive businesses thrive. Retrieved from: www.mercer.com/content/dam/mmc-web/Files/Gender-Diversity-When-women-thrive-businesses-thrive-Mercer.pdf.
Newman, B.J. (2016). Breaking the glass ceiling: Local gender-based earning inequality and women’s belief in the American dream. American Journal of Political Science, 60(4), 1006-1025.
Radu, C., & N?stase, M. (2011). Leadership and gender differentiati
In-Text Citation: (Voicil?, Ghinea, & Filculescu, 2018)
To Cite this Article: Voicil?, A., Ghinea, V. M., & Filculescu, A. (2018). Women In Leadership Positions: Perspectives From An International Consulting Company. International Journal Of Academic Research In Business And Social Sciences, 8(8), 170–192.
Copyright: © 2018 The Author(s)
Published by Human Resource Management Academic Research Society (www.hrmars.com)
This article is published under the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY 4.0) license. Anyone may reproduce, distribute, translate and create derivative works of this article (for both commercial and non-commercial purposes), subject to full attribution to the original publication and authors. The full terms of this license may be seen at: http://creativecommons.org/licences/by/4.0/legalcode