Chapter 14: Gender and Leadership

Question 1

Diversity in organizations

Answer 1

is about bringing together ‘a mixture of people with different group identities within the same social system’

Question 2

For Hays-Thomas and Bendick, diversity is defined as

Answer 2

‘the mixture of attributes within a workforce that in significant ways affect how people think, feel, and behave at work, and their acceptance, work performance, satisfaction, or progress in the organization’

Question 3

Equal opportunity (EO)

Answer 3

is externally initiated and externally driven, in other words by government legislation, managing diversity (MD) is internally initiated and business-needs driven

Question 4

Danowitz defines diversity management as

Answer 4

‘a concept and process that acknowledges the value of difference and strategically strives through structures and processes to increase inclusion and promote equity among its stakeholders, especially its internal ones, to create added value’

Question 5

companies who lacked both gender and ethnic/cultural diversity were 29 per cent less likely to achieve above-average profitability than were all other companies in the data set

Answer 5

Facts

Question 6

Inclusion paradox

Answer 6

‘Diversity is the mix; inclusion is making the mix work’

Question 7

Chandler (2011) notes that women leaders practice transformational leadership more frequently.

Answer 7

Many of the other characteristics associated with women’s leadership – the development of followers, strong interpersonal relationships, participative decision making – have also been associated with more effective leadership

Question 8

There is therefore a strong suggestion that transformational leaders face the additional challenge of ‘inclusion’ to inspire and bring about change,

Answer 8

as leaders reconcile tensions between ‘I’ and ‘we’

Question 9

The glass ceiling

Answer 9

represents the invisible barrier that exists in many workplaces, preventing women from achieving senior positions.

Question 10

leadership labyrinth

Answer 10

suggesting that women are on a journey riddled with challenges which must be successfully navigated. Within the leadership labyrinth, women encounter multifaceted barriers that not only result in lack of numerical parity between women and men in leadership, but also critical gender differences in the nature of leadership positions.

Question 11

‘Tall poppy syndrome’ (TPS)

Answer 11

TPS is a mechanism that targets those who stand out in some way, whether through success in achievement or wealth, thereby engendering envy.

Question 12

glass cliff

Answer 12

This is the phenomenon of women making it to the boardroom but finding themselves disproportionately represented in what could be described as unstable and potentially unsustainable leadership positions

Question 13

saviour effect

Answer 13

which assumes that a woman will do a good enough job for a while, getting the business into a better position for when the next man, often dubbed as the ideal manager

Question 14

According to Lipman-Blumen, connective leadership is focused on three main areas:

Answer 14

relational, direct and instrumental.

Question 15

Together, these areas play a supportive role in contributing to others’ tasks (relational), mastering one’s own task (direct) and maximizing interactions (instrumental).

Answer 15

Facts