Future Global Leadership and Gender Issues: An Exploration

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY This paper contributes to literature on global leadership and women in the context of mid-size businesses where a paucity of literature exists. Undergraduate and graduate students were asked to rank order three candidates for a leadership position in either a domestic or global organization to determine whether a female applicant is more likely to be selected to lead a mid-size global company while a male applicant is more likely to be selected to lead a mid-size domestic company. Although some support was found for the study's hypotheses, results differed based on participant characteristics. Implications of the findings are discussed. Keywords: Globalization, Leadership, Global business, Gender discrimination, Leader selection, Women leaders INTRODUCTION The future of business will be increasingly more globalized and multinational. Regardless of the national emphasis of its business model (i.e., domestic or foreign), every enterprise will be affected by globalization either directly or indirectly. At the same time, increasing diversity among subordinates and followers is necessitating that all leaders consider perspectives of peoples with backgrounds unlike their own (Eagly & Chin, 2010). This evolution in the world of commerce calls for a deeper understanding and closer analysis of effective leadership. A few scholars have identified the greatest challenges facing today's leaders as cultural gaps, lack of trust in each other, failure to value each other's skills, and ineffective communication due to increased diversity in cultural, professional, and organizational background (e.g., see Goldsmith & Marshall, 2007). Tomorrow's global leaders will encounter an environment that is constantly changing, replete with uncertainty and ambiguity, and increasingly complex - with greater cultural diversity and technological advancements (Hoppe, 2007). While the dominance of white males in leadership positions is still unquestionable, the growing representation of women and racial and ethnic minorities at the upper levels of organizations cannot be disputed. Women now occupy 49.1 percent of employment in the United States (Rampell, 2009). Among those jobs, women hold approximately half of all managerial and professional positions (U.S. Department of Labor, Women's Bureau, 2006, para. 12); however, only a handful of women make it to the topmost level, such as CEO. This phenomenon has posed great challenges for researchers trying to understand the barriers that face many women who pursue upper-level leadership positions. Most of these studies have had to rely on in-depth and qualitative interviews with the handful of successful women at the top of large business organizations (Cheung & Halpern, 2010). Moreover, a paucity of research exists in the context of leadership and gender for mid-size businesses in today's global environment; most leadership research focuses on either Fortune 500 companies (e.g., see the influential work performed by researchers at Catalyst, such as Soares, Carter, & Combopiano, 2009) or small entrepreneurial companies (e.g., see Langowitz & Minniti, 2007). This paper describes a study that uses experimental vignettes in an attempt to fill this gap. Specifically, it explores perceptions of students (future leaders of tomorrow) in selecting an appropriate leader from a pool of gender-diverse candidates for CEO positions of two mid-size businesses - one primarily domestic, one global. RESEARCH CONTEXT AND LITERATURE REVIEW Traditional and Global Leadership The skills needed for successful leadership in the future are fundamentally different from those traditionally thought of as necessary. As globalization becomes embedded at all levels of the economy and society in general, a number of studies have attempted to identify the competencies needed for successful global leadership (Rosener, 1990; Tubbs & Schulz, 2006; Lajtha & Carminati-Rabasse, 2008), which will require that we no longer think of the leader as an individual, but rather we think of leadership as a team process (Hoppe, 2007). …