Gaining the ultimate power edge: Women in the dual role of CEO and Chair

The more you value, the less you practice: a study on culture and managerial discretion

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to examine cross-cultural differences in managerial discretion and the extent to which variations and interaction of cultural practices and values affect the degree of freedom in decision making that is accorded to executives. This paper offers a holistic approach to investigating culture in addition to acknowledging its paradoxical nature.

Design/methodology/approach

Using a panel of prominent management consultants to rate discretion across 18 countries, the authors further develop the national-level construct of managerial discretion by empirically investigating the influence of cultural practices and values on CEOs’ discretion.

Findings

The study reveals that cultural values moderate the relationship between cultural practices and managerial discretion for three cultural dimensions: individualism, uncertainty tolerance and power distance (PD). By adopting the logic of marginal utility, the authors also show that the more a society values individualism, uncertainty tolerance and PD, the weaker the effect of their practices on managerial discretion.

Originality/value

Few research has attempted to assess both cultural values and practices in relation to managerial discretion. By showing the mechanism in which culture affects the level of managerial discretion, the authors offer new theoretical insights and practical implications, overall contributing to the field of cross-cultural and strategic management. Finally, this will offer CEO’s a new perspective of leveraging culture as a tool, enhancing their decision-making capabilities in the aim of improving organizational performance.

Female Executives in the Service Sector: The Case of Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises in Spain

Small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) and women are important agents for economic and social development. This study attempts to understand how the economic crisis has affected the behavior of SMEs with high female participation in the decision-making process. To that end, the quantitative research focused on a sample of 425 small and medium-sized enterprises in Spain relying on a questionnaire-based survey. The results of the empirical study offer new evidence on the effects of the recession on decision-making female-dominated bodies in organizations and illustrate the importance of corporate governance issues. In addition, the research provides greater knowledge of female entrepreneurs in a country severely affected by the global economic crisis. Several recommendations are proposed to provide a theoretical basis for governments to reduce glass ceiling and promote women’s empowerment policies.

The Unbearable Lightness of Being Retired

ABSTRACTIn this qualitative study, I followed an approach to examine perceptions about retirement, using an interview guide informed by the life course perspective, among 26 men and women who had retired from positions as chief executive officers. Three key themes emerged: (1) the importance of productivity and networking as participants rose up the corporate ladder; (2) the sense of having a "best before" date and experiencing societal pressures to retire; and (3) struggles with feeling insignificant in retirement while desiring personal fulfillment through continued engagement in paid work. These findings shed light on the value of using a life course perspective to examine retirement as both a personal experience and as a social phenomenon. Findings also contribute to theoretical understandings of productive aging by illustrating how preconceptions about productivity contrast with ideations of a leisure-filled retirement in ways that can foreshorten the employment contributions of some individuals.

The gender difference in leadership effectiveness and its Sino-US comparison

Purpose

There are mainly two viewpoints on women’s leadership effectiveness compared with that of men – the questioning view and the admiring view, two points of view that are not in agreement. Based on that, this study aims to find the gender difference in leadership effectiveness.

Design/methodology/approach

This study uses carefully matched male and female presidents (223 pairs) of Chinese listed companies and male and female chief executive officers (141 pairs) of American listed companies as samples. Analysis of variance was conducted to analyze the indicator data of the leadership effectiveness.

Findings

The findings show that women’s leadership effectiveness is not significantly inferior to that of men, and that women’s leadership effectiveness compared to that of men in the Chinese cultural context is not inferior to that in the American cultural context. The findings do not support the questioning view of women’s leadership effectiveness.

Originality/value

This study first uses the carefully matched (female/male leaders) data of Chinese listed companies and American listed companies as samples to find which viewpoint (the questioning view and the admiring view) is supported or is not supported.

Women and Leadership in the United States: Are We Closing the Gender Gap?

Women in the United States are making historic progress in business leadership, with research linking women's leadership representation to positive outcomes. However, men still dominate US leadership, raising several key questions. Is the United States closing the leadership gender gap? What organizational barriers perpetuate the gap? What facilitates women's leadership? We synthesized and extended US literature to develop a multilevel organizational model of Barriers And Facilitators of Female Leader Empowerment, called the “BAFFLE” Female Leadership Model to highlight the baffling complexities and limited success in solving the US leadership gender gap. The review found that literature narrowly focuses on barriers and offers limited insights about how to facilitate female leader empowerment while simultaneously addressing systemic, entrenched organizational barriers. We also used the World Economic Forum (WEF) Global Gender Gap Index to provide global perspective on the US leadership gender gap. Finally, we summarize findings and implications for practice and scholarship.

Strategizing in a focused context: managerial discretion in the Arab world

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to broaden the national-level construct of managerial discretion and to investigate the effect of cultural practices on executive discretion.

Design/methodology/approach

Based on a sample of six Arabian countries and using a panel of prominent cross-cultural scholars who provided 262 discretion scores for the sample countries, the authors replicate and extend the national framework of Crossland and Hambrick (2011) in a new cultural context. The cultural dimensions were measured using survey responses of middle managers based on House et al.’s (2004) cultural practices scale.

Findings

The authors extend the national-level framework of managerial discretion and find that an encompassing array of cultural practices plays a crucial role in shaping the degree of discretion provided to CEOs. The authors empirically demonstrate that power distance, future and performance orientation, along with gender egalitarianism and assertiveness have positive relationships with managerial discretion. However, institutional collectivism, uncertainty avoidance and humane orientation negatively affect the degree of discretion provided to CEOs.

Originality/value

The study fills a gap in the literature regarding the national-level framework of managerial discretion. The results indicate that executives can take idiosyncratic and bold actions to the extent to which the cultural environment allows them to do so. Also, the authors discover new national-level antecedents of managerial discretion that have not been considered in earlier studies and confirm the context dependency of this concept.