Female Middle Management Advantage for Firm Performance? A Focus on the Strategic HR Practices

Management research on gender in leadership has largely focused on issues at the strategic leadership level, showing that an increased female representation can benefit firm performance. However, gender issues at the middle management level have been largely neglected. The current study addresses how female middle managers help firms achieve effective performance. We focus on the mediating effect of female middle managers’ implementation of strategic human resource (HR) practices. By analyzing the multi-wave (2009, 2011, and 2013) Workplace Panel Survey (WPS) data collected from 1,248 firms in South Korea, we found that the proportion of female middle managers in a firm had a positive relationship with firm performance, largely due to the better implementation of skill-, motivation-, and opportunity-enhancing HR practices. However, consistent with role congruity research, this female middle management advantage was attenuated in the presence of a lower proportion of female subordinates. The current study ...