Repatriation of European female corporate executives: an empirical study

The increased internationalization of business in recent years has made the understanding of international human resource management problems more important for executives in multinational companies. In recent years, researchers have paid considerable attention to the issues of adjustment of managers to international assignments. Interestingly, comparatively little research has been undertaken on the topic of repatriation, i.e. re-entry and readjustment of international managers and their families to their home countries. Despite the growth of women in international management there are very few studies that document the repatriation experiences of female international managers. In particular, very few studies have been conducted outside North America on the topic of repatriation of female corporate executives. This paper reports on the experiences of re-entry to home organizations and home countries by an exclusively senior sample of female international managers in Western Europe. Based on extensive empirical research, the findings establish that the repatriation phase of the international career move may be even more stressful than expatriation. The findings also establish that female international managers experience more difficulties than their male counterparts because of their pioneering roles. Finally, the paper suggests that home-based mentors and access to networks while abroad are important factors in contributing to the successful repatriation of international managers. The research findings make a theoretical contribution, not only to the analysis of gender and international human resource management but, also, to wider debates within the contemporary women in management and career theory literatures.     

Women Managers’ Careers in China: Theorizing the Influence of Gender and Collectivism

This article is concerned with developing an understanding of the careers of women managers in China. Existing literature suggests that while women in China are comparatively well represented in management roles, they face distinctive pressures and barriers to their progress arising from entrenched patriarchal and collectivist aspects of the Chinese cultural tradition. However, little is known about how these aspects impact on women's orientations towards their careers and to what extent influential Western career theories are adequate in interpreting their experience. Drawing on interviews with 20 women managers in China, the article interprets women's orientations towards their careers in relation to their adherence to traditional gender roles and collectivist values. Using this framework, a fourfold taxonomy is developed which identifies “conformist,” “revolutionary,” “soloist,” and “dissident” orientations. The article suggests that Western career theories fail to capture the collective dimension, and thus do not account fully for the range of experience and orientations of Chinese women managers that are captured in the taxonomy. Implications, both practical and theoretical, are discussed. Recommendations are also made as to how management and career development policies might be developed in organizations in China in order to address the diverse needs and preferences of women managers. © 2014 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

Individualization and Marketization of Responsibility for Gender Equality: The Case of Female Managers in China

This article investigates the question of where the responsibility for promoting gender equality resides in the Chinese employment context. Utilizing Acker's (2006) inequality regimes framework, the study explores women's underrepresentation in management roles in China and explains the persistence of gender inequalities in managerial echelons of Chinese organizations. Based on 30 interviews with female managers, the findings demonstrate the marketization and individualization of gender equality in organizational activity. The existing gender inequality, and the lack of responsibility for tackling it, has been either legitimized by eluding to the commercial‐only focus of organizations or rendered invisible through a belief in individual choice as the determining factor of career progression for women. Gender inequality in management is also maintained through the compliance of female managers themselves with the presumed legitimacy of gender‐based differential access to managerial roles. References to culture and tradition, market forces, competitive pressures, and individual choices by female managers are often made in explaining the unequal career paths and outcomes for men and women in their organizations. Our findings contribute to the human resource management (HRM) literature by framing macrosocietal context as a dynamic and endogenous aspect of management of human resources in organizations and provide novel insights into the interplay between HRM and societal context. © 2016 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

Female Managers in Britain – A Comparative Perspective

The aim of this article is to present the current position of female managers in Britain and examine the similarities and differences between male and female managers. In terms of managerial efficiency and performance per se, the evidence strongly suggests that there are far more similarities than differences between the way men and women ‘manage’. However, there are some major sex differences in relation to demographic profiles, job status and employment factors, career development, occupational stress levels, and attitudes towards female managers compared to their male counterparts. One in nine managers in Britain are women and less than one per cent occupy senior management positions. Women managers tend to have to be more highly qualified than men managers, are more likely to be single or divorced, and encounter more prejudice and discrimination in the work environment. In addition, compared to male managers female managers have to cope with additional stresors stemming both from their work and home lives. It is suggested that many of these differences are hampering the career prospects of women in management and contributing towards the difficulties they have in reaching the higher levels of management compared to men. Finally, recommendations for changes in corporate and legislative policies are also proposed.     

Gender Roles and Organizational HR Practices: The Case of Women's Careers in Accountancy and Consultancy Firms in China

The Chinese finance industry has experienced significant expansion both within the state sector and into the private sector. Professional consultancy firms have also emerged as a result of the rising interest in the outsourcing of accounting and management services. However, the study of women's careers in the accountancy profession in contemporary China remains largely an uncharted territory. Drawing on data from 69 interviews with auditors in five firms, this article investigates the nature of work of external auditors in China and how women auditors view their work‐life choices and constraints. We explore the likely differences between male and female auditors in their career aspirations and the extent to which these self‐perceived differences are informed by social conventions of gender role, organizational practices, and personal preferences. The study has strong implications for human resource management in professional service firms in China, with particular reference to job design, work organization, career support, and work‐life balance initiatives. The study contributes to the debate on gender, employment, and career development in the accountancy profession in different parts of the world. © 2013 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

Return-to-job during and after parental leave

Despite a rising career orientation among females and growing efforts of firms to alleviate work–family conflicts, female employees often find it difficult to combine career development with having children. Female careers appear more boundaryless than male careers, and gender differences in the sociological role model persist. Using exceptional longitudinal company data, this paper studies the return-to-job of female employees after first birth in the case of Germany with long Parental Leave coverage. Parental Leave durations often last for 3 years or longer. Our results show that more than 50% of those in Parental Leave do not return to their job afterwards. About 31% of female employees return to part-time work during Parental Leave, and among these, only 57% continue working in their job after the end of Parental Leave. And, having returned to their job after the end of Parental Leave, only 81% continue to work in their job one year after return. Furthermore, female employees have their first child, when their careers have been particularly successful. Overall, the evidence is consistent with the view that the birth of the first child and the experience of the subsequent work–life conflict can lead to a major reassessment of work preferences among female employees. Although a higher career orientation before birth is positively associated with a return-to-job, management must be aware that a sizeable share of female employees, even among the most career oriented and the most successful, may not return to their job after first birth.     

Female self-perception as barrier to international careers?

It is a matter of fact that women are underrepresented in international management. In most of the articles on female expatriates, the companies' reluctance to send women abroad is usually named as first justification why female managers are rare in the international arena. The reasons cited are manifold, ranging from stereotypical views of the personnel managers to the prejudices women are expected to face abroad. Some authors tried to find additional causes such as dual career couples, cultural factors or the general lack of women in top management. However, only little has been written about the women's own fault for not being selected. Literature on gender-based stereotypes, female self-perception or traditional role models is broad. Typical issues are a perceived lack of self-confidence, stereotypical behaviour or underestimation. But a relation to expatriation is rarely found. Therefore, the aim of this article is to answer if and how women themselves contribute to their under-representation in international management.     

Cultural values and definitions of career success

This paper examines how national culture relates to the ways that individuals define career success. Data are drawn from interviews with 269 professional services employees in 15 countries. Interviews are content coded and linked with country‐level Global Leadership and Organizational Behavior Effectiveness measures of cultural values. We test our hypotheses using a multilevel multinomial logit model. The results demonstrate that the ways in which employees define career success vary across countries, due in part to differences in cultural values after controlling for gender, occupation, job level, and national economic development. We find that employees from countries high in future orientation, uncertainty avoidance, and performance orientation are more likely to define career success in terms of interpersonal outcomes, and those from countries high in collectivism (institutional and in‐group), humane orientation, and gender egalitarianism are more likely to prefer intrapersonal outcomes. We find that employees from countries that are high in assertiveness, uncertainty avoidance, and performance orientation are more likely to define career success in terms of achievement‐oriented outcomes. Finally, we find that employees from countries high in power distance report career success definitions in terms of safety and security outcomes. We discuss the implications of these findings for theories of cultural differences in careers across countries.     

Managerial career success in Canadian organizations: is gender a determinant?

The purpose of this research is to examine which of the following approaches - human capital, family context, socio-economic origin, work investment and reward expectations and structural factors - can eliminate the influence of gender on career success of 3,060 Canadian managers. Taken individually, these different approaches did not counter the effect of gender on career success of managers. However, the use of an overall regression model containing all the approaches countered the effect of gender on the number and speed of promotion, but not on salary and hierarchical level. Finally, the results suggest that the career success of male and female managers is predicted by different variables.     

Managing equal opportunities for women: sorting the friends from the foes

Employees working in Hong Kong were surveyed on their attitudes towards managing equal opportunities for women. Results indicate that gender is a better predictor of attitudes than work identity. Manager/employee work identity has an add‐on moderating effect on some women‐friendly policies but not on others. Out of seven women‐friendly dimensions, women as managers are less receptive of only two: 'training and development' and 'positive equal opportunities'; men as managers, in contrast, are less resistant to 'training and development' and 'flexitime'. The findings suggest that there are three levels of gatekeeping: one, male employees; two, male managers; and three, female managers. We suggest that to help women employees break the glass ceiling, different organisational and societal change programmes are needed to target the different groups of gatekeepers.     

Mexican women managers: An emerging profile

There is a striking absence of information on women managers in Latin America despite the fact that, in the past decade, studies of women managers in non-English speaking countries have proliferated. This study offers a preliminary analysis of Mexican women managers. Our exploratory study locates women managers within the context of gender relations and managerial ideology in Mexico and analyzes several factors that enable a select group of senior-level Mexican women to hold influential positions. The findings suggest that women have a nontraditional Mexican management style and successfully manage the work–family interface. Nevertheless, women still encounter obstacles to their advancement such as discrimination and stereotyping. © 1997 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.     

Ethnic minority women: a lost voice in HRM

Strategic themes within HRM imply an organisational commitment towards the full deployment of all employees in order to meet business goals and objectives. The rhetoric of equality within HRM has been challenged but these discussions have typically focused on gender issues, ignoring ethnicity, culture and religion. Individuals' social group cultures and other cultural and religious aspects have been largely absent in HR literature. By examining ethnic minority women's struggles to fit into white Western organisations, this article seeks to provide a discussion on an area where limited research has been conducted. Our emphasis is placed on organisational expectations in relation to ethnic minority women's demonstrated behaviours and appearance, the latter being expressed through dressing, hairstyles and mannerisms. The empirical data show that ethnic minority women are often required to fit into the existing culture if they want to penetrate influential networks or be given opportunities for career development and advancement. Extending the critique of others who argue that organisations must move away from the existing male‐dominant culture rather than expecting women to move towards it, we contend that management must also acknowledge and better understand religious and cultural differences instead of requiring ethnic minority women to fit into a narrow mono‐culture. The article concludes with a discussion of human resource implications for organisations engaged in diversity management.     

Progress hindered: the retention and advancement of women in science,engineering and technology careers

Over the last two decades rates of women's participation in science, engineering, and technology careers has greatly increased. However, to date little research exists on how women, especially those in management positions, are performing within these fields. Using data obtained from over 2,493 survey respondents and 28 focus groups, we seek to understand the barriers that hinder the retention and advancement of women in managerial positions in these career fields. Paying particular attention to for‐profit science, engineering and technology firms, we argue that there are significant barriers to female retention and advancement within these fields related to the norms of professionalisation, and that from a human resources perspective firms could do a much better job of leveraging the existing female talent pipeline in these occupations. In addition, we highlight the implications of our findings and provide our policy recommendations to address them.     

Values,gender and attitudes towards environmental policy: A study of future managers

This study explores if the value priorities and their impact on future managers' attitudes towards environmental responsibilities vary with gender. While relevant prior studies mostly focus on gender‐based variations of individuals' personal values in developed economies, we concentrate on both personal values and pro‐environmental attitudes in an emerging economy. This study is built on MBA students (a proxy for future managers) in India since India is characterized as a male‐dominated society and a producer of larger number of MBA graduates. Overall, our results show that personal values and attitude towards environmental responsibilities do not vary significantly with gender. Only two values (among the 21 values) and one value type (out of 10 values) get significantly higher ranking from females compared with males. Further, although ‘universalism’ and ‘benevolence’ are found to have a statistically significant impact on respondents' attitude towards environmental responsibility, the latter is invariant to the respondents' gender. Our findings may indicate India's transformation from a male‐dominated society towards a more gender‐balanced society. These findings can be used to operationalize a pro‐environmental recruitment policy and to formulate strategies to improve female participation in MBA cohorts of business schools.     

Women abroad: getting the best results from women managers

Abstract This study explores the work environment of expatriate women managers in American corporations and investigates the determinants of their job satisfaction. The strategic importance of global assignments has increased over the years. The real cost of unsuccessful expatriates extends beyond the monetary expenses. As the number of women managers working overseas increases, so does the importance of this topic. Additionally, because women in expatriate positions are relatively new, their needs for job satisfaction and career aspirations are not known to most organizations. This research intends to fill this gap. The study concentrates on four major areas that are considered important for obtaining job satisfaction: (1) the way in which organizations design their overseas jobs, (2) women's skills and characteristics, (3) international human resource policies of companies and (4) the cultural environment of host countries. The applied research covers two phases: a study of expatriate managers during their assignments overseas and the evaluation of overseas experience upon their return. The results indicate that women in overseas assignments are satisfied overall with their jobs. However, organizational variables are more strongly related to job satisfaction. The nature of job design in overseas postings has the greatest impact on women's job satisfaction. When the jobs are enriched, women gain intrinsic rewards and have high job satisfaction. Organizational support also contributes to the satisfaction of women expatriates. Training, mentoring and repatriation preparations have high impact on women's success and satisfaction. Women expatriates are more concerned with their repatriation and future advancement than their present assignments. The findings are important for theoretical and practical reasons. Theoretically, the achievement and satisfaction of women managers overseas cannot be simplified without taking into account organizational, personal and cultural factors. Practically, companies need to respond to the individual needs of expatriate women managers and then decide on their assignments and their repatriation accordingly.     

Men and women as managers: A significant case of no significant difference

What does it all mean? We've reviewed five studies involving almost 2,000 people compared on a total of 43 scales. We've studied matched pairs and controlled for level of managerial achievement. And after all is said and done, we have detected a total of two overall differences between male and female managers. One of these, involving managerial work motivation, favors females: Their work motivation profiles are more “achieving” than those of their male counter-parts. The other difference, pertaining to interpersonal competence, favors the male managers: They are more open and candid with their colleagues than are females. Add to these the more titillating than significant anomalies of differing back-up style preferences and we are left with one conclusion: Women, in general, do not differ from men, in general, in the ways in which they administer the management process.Managers themselves and their subordinates concur. It seems that the disproportionately low numbers of women in management can no longer be explained away by the contention that women practice a different brand of management from that practiced by men. Whereas this may amount to good news in some quarters, we ought not be prematurely elated by discovering that women manage just the way men do. Carolyn Sherif has pointedly called attention to the fact that all is not necessarily well in today's male-oriented management activities.We of course view management in its more global aspects: The important issue to us is how an individual manages in relation to achievement criteria. Individual achievement and organizational health ultimately depend on the way management is practiced. And we now see that the way management is practiced is not related to the sex of the manager — the issue is generic rather than gender-bound.     

The Management Implications of Women's Employment Disadvantage in a Female-Dominated Profession: A Study of NHS Nursing

Current explanations of gender inequality in paid employment fall into two broad groups. Firstly, there are theorists who argue that the actions and strategies of managers maintain and perpetuate unequal outcomes for women in the labour market. Secondly, there are theorists who argue that women's lower commitment to work determines their job choices and outcomes. A survey of 643 qualified female NHS nurses examines both approaches. We argue that recognizing not only the existence of gender-based disadvantage but also its sources are important in devising effective managerial policies and initiatives. Also, conventionally less attention has been given to patterns of individual disadvantage for employees within workforces dominated by members of the same gender. Employment disadvantage is shown to exist in the single gender workforce, as in the more general case, but its operation is subtler and more difficult for managers to detect. This suggests a number of important management implications: a clear need for diagnosing potential patterns of disadvantage which may be relatively covert; the need to recognize the imperative for monitoring employment equity beyond regulatory compliance; the need for the implementation of effective strategy; and managers' need to evaluate the adequacy of not simply equal opportunities policies, but the broader issue of long-term career planning.     

Equal opportunity? Women's managerial careers in governmental organizations in China

There is very limited knowledge about women's management careers in China. This paper examines the opportunities for and barriers to women's careers in China, using governmental organizations as an example in which the State is not only the advocate of equal opportunity policies but also, in practice, the gatekeeper. One of the greatest disparities between male and female occupational patterns in China is in the sphere of government employment where only one in five employees is female. The aim of this paper is to understand the Chinese characteristics of gender inequality in management careers. In looking at the factors that influence women's upward mobility, the intention is to identify the barriers to the appointment of women to top jobs. Some barriers will be unique to governmental organizations and so will require special attention if they are to be eradicated. However, women also face more general barriers to success which transcend differences of occupational sector or society. It is hoped that this paper will lead to a greater understanding of how career barriers for women in China may resemble and differ from those faced by their counterparts in the West.     

Chinese professional immigrants in Australia: a gendered pattern in (re)building their careers

Few studies have investigated contemporary professional migrant women from mainland China to developed economies like Australia to understand their motives of migration and the strategy they may adopt to advance their careers. This paper fills part of this important research gap by investigating the career rebuilding experience of Chinese professional immigrants in Australia. It examines the motives of their migration, their career aspirations, the strategies they adopt to rebuild their career and the types of career they are rebuilding. It explores how the compounded effect of gender, race, immigration and family commitment may be articulated in the family and social relations, and how these factors affect women's career aspirations and outcomes. This paper concludes that whilst social capital is important for Chinese migrant women professionals who already possess a high level of human capital, to restart their post-migration career, cultural capital is crucial for their managerial career advancement.     

Exploring the moderating effect of gender in the relationship between individuals' aspirations and career success among engineers in Peru

Purpose: The aim of this paper is to analyse the relationship between career success and individual career aspirations for engineers, and to test whether this differs according to gender. The primary hypothesis in this research is that gender does make a significant difference.

Design/methodological/approach: The sample consists of 1011 engineers who graduated from a prestigious Peruvian college between 1998 and 2005. Female graduates constituted only 4% of the sample, which is similar to the national statistics for engineers in Peru during this period. The relationships were primarily tested using multiple regression and structural equation modelling analyses.

Findings: Findings show a positive relationship between individual career aspirations and career success for men, but not necessarily for women; this supports the hypothesis that gender moderates this relationship. Females seek more secure career orientation than their male counterparts. In addition, females have shown that their career success is more related to feminine themes such as achieving ‘work–family balance’. The findings are in line with previously published results in other countries in which female engineers have career orientations with a preference for a balance between work and family as well as work stability.

Research limitations/implications: The sample is limited to graduates from a single Peruvian college of engineering. Although the sample has similar demographic characteristic to a national population, a more heterogeneous sample is called for in a future research. Moreover, additional moderators should be incorporated, such as family background, residency (large urban cities vs. small villages) and perhaps other variables.

Practical implications: Results can help Human Resource Managers to design better career plans, which consider gender in defining policies for the attraction and retention of competent female engineers.