scholarly journals Breaking the Glass Ceiling Philosophy and Reality: A Study of Gender Progress and Career Development in the Corporate World

2019 ◽  
Vol 3 (3) ◽  
pp. 6-18
Author(s):  
Sarin Sajan Itty ◽  
Jose Rafael Garcia ◽  
Calvin Futterman ◽  
Sofia Garcia Aust ◽  
Bahaudin G. Mujtaba

With the evolving nature of the business world, it has become a modern necessity to have a diverse workforce. As such, human resources professionals and managers must be prepared for the redesign of their organizations to be more inclusive throughout their formal hierarchies. Although the overall attitudes have become generally more feminist, the unfortunate reality is that women continue to face internal and external barriers which act as a ceiling to their career development and advancement. Rather than viewing the paucity of women in management positions as a problem because of public disdain towards gender disparities within the workplace, this paper emphasizes that organizations should view this as an opportunity to gain a competitive advantage, given that having more women in leadership positions is correlated to improved organizational performance. The main argument of this research is that gender diversity can lead to better outcomes for an organization; in addition to this, research demonstrates that the inclusion of more women within management positions may also encourage a transformational leadership style, which could potentially lead to sustainable growth for a company. Throughout this paper, using the methodology of reviewing recently published literature, this paper demonstrates the fact that the glass ceiling is detrimental to the economic development of both women and the companies as institutional barriers seem to persistently block them from equitable advancement opportunities. Using published data and expert analysis, we provide suggestions and recommendations for the creation of an inclusive work environment where all employees can have fair and transparent progress based on their goals and qualifications. The “glass ceiling” literature has empirically demonstrated that managers can reduce the negative gender-based stereotypes by empowering more qualified women to take on leadership responsibilities. At the meantime, professionals can serve as advocates in their local governments to create and change laws that are unfair and unjust. All local leaders, managers and employees must promote the benefits of diversity to build and encourage inclusion in the workplace. Furthermore, all organizations can improve their inclusion training so their employees can keep an open mind regarding diversity. With the application of the recommended skills and suggestions, coupled along with public awareness and advocacy for equity in hiring and promotion decisions, the “glass ceiling” can certainly be eliminated in all organizational settings. Keywords: glass ceiling, discrimination, wage gap, inclusion, gender equality, mentoring, and career development.

2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (11) ◽  
pp. 5766
Author(s):  
Guanglu Zeng ◽  
Chenggang Zhang ◽  
Sanxi Li ◽  
Hailin Sun

China was the first developing country to achieve the poverty eradication target of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) 10 years ahead of schedule. Its past approach has been, mainly, to allocate more fiscal spending to rural areas, while strengthening accountability for poverty alleviation. However, some literature suggests that poor rural areas still lack the endogenous dynamics for sustainable growth. Using a vector autoregression (VAR) model, based on data from 1990 to 2019, we find that fiscal spending plays a much more significant role in reducing the poverty ratio than agricultural development. When poverty alleviation is treated as an administrative task, each poor village must complete the spending of top-down poverty alleviation funds within a time frame that is usually shorter than that required for successful specialty agriculture. As a result, the greater the pressure of poverty eradication and the more funds allocated, the more poverty alleviation projects become an anchor for accountability, and the more local governments’ consideration of industry cycles and input–output analysis give way to formalism, homogeneity, and even complicity. We suggest using the leverage of fiscal funds to direct more resources to productive uses, thus guiding future rural revitalization in a more sustainable direction.


2018 ◽  
Vol 33 (6) ◽  
pp. 466-498 ◽  
Author(s):  
Caren Brenda Scheepers ◽  
Anastasia Douman ◽  
Preya Moodley

Purpose In South Africa, women in senior management positions experience social identity dilemmas, necessitating more research into this domain. While research has been conducted into coaching and mentoring of these women, limited scholarly attention has been paid to sponsorship. This paper aims to explore the social identity of women at senior management levels and sponsorship as a proposed mechanism to develop talented women. Design/methodology/approach This qualitative research included two studies using two sample groups, both of which included executive-level respondents in corporate organisations. One study focussed on sponsorship; here, the 29-strong sample included 14 male and 15 female executives, of whom 15 were White; 9 were African and 5 were Indian. The second study, consisting of only African, coloured and Indian (ACI) female executives (23 interviewees), focussed more broadly on their development path to the C-suite. Findings A common theme across the two studies was the inclination to give developmental support, in turn, once supported. There were prerequisites in this support-giving, however. For example, sponsors identified criteria that protégés had to meet. Despite evident gender inequality at senior management levels in South Africa, this paper reveals that in the Study 1 sample, gender and race were ostensibly irrelevant when choosing a sponsor or who to sponsor. A closer examination revealed a gender-based expectation, embedded in the South African context. Study 2 showed that ACI women above 50 years of age were more inclined to mentor others; even when they themselves were not mentored, some purposefully developed other ACI women. This paper thus suggests age as an important additional diversity dimension in relation to the career development of ACI women towards the C-suite. The findings have implications for the career development of individual ACI women and for organisations in reaching equality. Research limitations/implications Gender differences with regard to perceptions also revealed that male respondents perceived sponsorship more as task-based actions, whereas female respondents focussed on relational elements. The paper concludes with recommendations on how individual ACI women and organisations can proactively develop talented women. Originality/value The paper offers insight into the gendered expectations of sponsors and gendered perceptions around merit in identifying protégés worthy of sponsorship. ACI women’s social identity changed when they joined the C-suite to identify more with their roles as executives and became less associated with their original ACI women group.


2018 ◽  
Vol 10 (10) ◽  
pp. 3516 ◽  
Author(s):  
Angelina Roša (Rosha) ◽  
Natalja Lace

Organizations need innovation to be competitive and sustainable on their marketplace. Sustainable performance is an important precondition for growth and development. In spite of a body of literature, non-financial factors of sustainable performance remain an open issue. Coaching has gained considerable attention in the business world for its impact on sustainable performance. The current research investigates the use of coaching interaction to facilitate organizational sustainable growth and development in the context of Miller and Friesen’s five stage life-cycle model. The expert opinion survey is chosen as a central method of research. The questionnaire is developed on the literature review that is focused on the drivers for sustainable development throughout the life cycle, and the features of coaching that accelerate these driving forces. Fifteen experts took part in the survey conducted from November 2017 to January 2018. The results are estimated by considering the competence coefficient for each expert. The findings led to creation of an open innovation model, which displays relationships between the appropriate coaching forms and types and the organizational life cycle stages. The developed model enables choosing the optimal way of coaching delivery at any life cycle stage. This model is particularly valuable for the coaching support programs.


2021 ◽  
Vol 9 (3) ◽  
pp. 1-10
Author(s):  
Muhammad Shahzad Aslam ◽  
Lifeng Cui ◽  
Muhammad Ijaz ◽  
Saima Ubaid

The whole world is confronting under extreme danger from COVID-19 pandemic. Which spread rapidly including an agro-based developing state like Pakistan. Right now this year "Rabi" crop season has safely ended during this pandemic. Wheat-crop operations are depended on environmental conditions and different operational safety measures. Farmworkers are the key individuals, as they are exposed to various environmental, health, safety, biological, and respiratory hazards. Due to COVID-19, there are about more than three thousand (3000) mortalities and one hundred eight thousand (18, 0000) plus persons have been effected, however this number increases further rapidly. The key purpose of this review-study is to highlight the timely adopted safe strategies and their impacts on the yield of wheat along with farmworkers under some Standard Operational Procedures (SOPs) during wheat operations, enabling food security, self-sustainably and securing of farmers in the context of COVID-19. Various actions have been taken worldwide, but a developing state like Pakistan with minimum resources, has made well-organized planning and strategies to sustain the production of wheat with public awareness. We highlighting government efforts to-combat this fatal pandemic, where it has directly impacted the crop yield and also the economy of the state. Whereas, especially during this period, uplifting of economy through agriculture sector, needs to overcome the same management deficiencies from other sectors. Pakistani Government has adopted and implemented different key steps for fighting against COVID-19 include: i. Government command along with incentive approach, ii. Mutual coordination among stakeholders, local governments, and farmers, iii. Continuous inspection setup, and iv. Provide adequate personal protective equipment (PPE).


2021 ◽  
Vol 19 (4) ◽  
pp. 921-941
Author(s):  
Yanrong Wang ◽  
Qizhi Wu ◽  
Xiang Zhang ◽  
Xiangbing Qiao

Agricultural industrialization consortium is a key policy tool to promote agricultural development for local governments in China. However, a stylized fact is that various consortia showed promising organizational performance at start, but then the performance deteriorated at later stages. The driving force behind is the dual paradox inherent in development and institution. The consortium is overly development oriented; yet as an institution it cannot adapt to the strong development impulses. Case studies show that the dual paradox inevitably led to the decline in organizational performance.


Author(s):  
Johan Oscar Ong ◽  
Masyhudzulhak Mahazan

The industrial growth and technology development need competent human resource in every business organization. The presence of millennial and Generation Z has increasingly dominated workforce presenting a new challenge for organizations to provide work climate that supports their development. It has been surveyed that millennial generation is tech savvy but less patient to stay in an organization. The ability to retain and develop millennial and generation Z is the organization's key success factor to continuously improve its business performance and sustainable growth. The new approach HR management strategies are needed to make sure achieving the business outcome (growth revenue, growth profit, lower cost). The Framework of Organizational Sustainability Model in era 4.0 is designed to map out the HR strategies in order to achieve a sustainable competitive advantage. The organizational key drivers would be the input for this model to support employee core competencies so as to give their outstanding performance and increase productivity. Having skills and experience are not enough for employees, they have to make a commitment and well motivated that is shaped by a strong organizational culture and climate. The current research has provided AMO (Ability, Motivation, Opportunity) model approach to support for the key theoretical propositions. The study is imperative for practitioners and organizations since it offers Human Resource Management strategies as a suggestions and guidelines to develop human capital for improving organizational performance and for gaining sustainable competitive advantage.


Author(s):  
Raquel Mendes

Despite the evidence of female progress with regard to women’s role in the labor market, gender inequality remains. Women are still less likely to be employed than men, occupational gender segregation continues, and females continue to earn less than males. The gender wage gap remains wide in several occupational sectors, among which is the information technology (IT) sector. This paper focuses the determinants of gender wage inequality. More precisely, it investigates for statistical evidence of a glass ceiling effect on women’s wages. Based on the quantile regression framework, the empirical analysis extends the decomposition of the average gender wage gap to other parts of the earnings distribution. The main objective is to empirically test whether gender-based wage discrimination is greater among high paid employees, in line with glass ceiling hypothesis. Larger unexplained gaps at the top of the wage distribution indicate the existence of a glass ceiling effect in Portugal.


2019 ◽  
Vol 11 (23) ◽  
pp. 6758 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kim ◽  
Eom

Open government data (open data) initiatives have been at the forefront of the strategy to make more transparent, responsive, and accountable government, and thereby lead to open innovation across the public and private sector. Governments around the world often understand that open data is disclosing their data to the public as much as possible and that open data success is the result of a data and technology-related endeavor rather than the result of organizational, institutional, and environmental attributes. According to the resource-based theory, however, managerial capability to mobilize tangible and intangible resources and deploy them in adequate places or processes under the leadership of capable leaders during the information technology (IT) project is a core factor leading to organizational performance such as open data success. In this vein, this study aims to analyze managerial factors as drivers and challenges of open data success from the resource-based theory. Findings illustrate that managerial factors are the driving forces that often boost or hinder open data success when institutional, socio-economic, and demographic factors are controlled. Discussion illustrates theoretical and practical implications for the managerial factors as drivers and challenges of open data success in terms of the comparison between technological determinism and the socio-technical perspective.


2019 ◽  
Vol 11 (20) ◽  
pp. 5774 ◽  
Author(s):  
Karim ◽  
Karim ◽  
Islam ◽  
Muhammad-Sukki ◽  
Bani ◽  
...  

Bangladesh’s constant growth with an annual 6% plus Gross Domestic Product (GDP) for more than the last two decades and achievements in other socio-economic metrics in recent times is impressive and recognized by various global authoritative bodies. The extent of overwhelming economic ventures in the private sector coupled with the commitments of the government clearly demonstrates the transformation of the country from a primarily agro-based economy to one influenced by the manufacturing and service sectors. Bangladesh is fortunate to have fossil fuel reserves on a limited scale, though these are not enough to run the ongoing massive scale development activities, both in private and public sectors. Thus, the constant and uninterrupted supply of energy at an affordable price remains a serious concern for the successive governments. Therefore, this issue of supply of constant energy has turned to be an important part in the national development agenda. Besides, the country is one of the worst victim nations of the devastating effects of global warming and climate change. As Bangladesh is geographically located in a favorable place in the world map with the availability of plenty of renewable energy sources (RES), the policymakers started to take initiatives leading to exploiting these sources to meet the energy demand of the country. There are both prospects and administrative, legal, technological, socio-cultural and environmental challenges. To address these challenges, it requires comprehensive policy initiatives. A good number of technical and scientific research containing findings and recommendations are available. This paper, which is based on adopting a qualitative research methodology where the contents of secondary sources were analyzed, is an initial attempt to highlight the renewable energy developments in Bangladesh, and subsequently, to evaluate the relevant legal and policy initiatives in the light of international best practices. We advance several recommendations that the stakeholders can consider exploiting RES effectively to attain inclusive, equitable and sustainable development in Bangladesh. These include, inter alia: (1) Enhancing government participation to lead the development of renewable energy (RE); (2) ensuring localization of RE technology; (3) reducing the expenses of energy generation through RES and providing assistance in initial investments; (4) introducing comprehensive legal and regulatory policy for the development of RE industry in Bangladesh; and (5) conducting effective public awareness.


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