Wei Lin
Title
Dr.
Last Name
Lin
First name
Wei
Email
wei.lin@unisg.ch
Phone
+41 71 224 7027
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Item type:Publication, Opportunity in disguise? Examining career paths of female directors following glass cliff assignments(2024); ; The glass cliff phenomenon, which denotes the greater tendency of women than men to be placed on precarious leadership positions, has attracted considerable scholarly interest since the notion’s inception two decades ago. By framing women-held upper echelon roles in crisis-stricken firms as “cliff”, the glass cliff research hitherto has concentrated on uncovering the downsides – i.e., biases and detrimental career implications embodied in such positions. This paper breaks away from the tradition to explore the potential upsides of glass cliff assignments. Based on a large-scale matched sample of Chinese listed firms over the 2012-2022 period, our analyses reveal that neither is a crisis-stricken firm more likely to engage in preferential selection of women in leadership positions, nor does such a position cause significant damages to a woman leader’s future advancement in the director labor market, manifested as courtesy stigma and/or declined employability. On the contrary, we proffer evidence that a precarious upper echelon position tends to accelerate one’s ascension to the acme of the corporate power pyramid, namely a CEO or board chair role, a tendency which applies to both men and women and robust in different crisis configurations. In addition, our analyses disentangle the crisis effect from the gender effect in glass cliff assignments. That is, the ex-post career implications of a glass cliff appointment are rather derived from the character and competences signaled by one’s leadership experience in crisis rather than the gender of the leader. With these findings, this study contributes to bringing more comprehensive and nuanced understandings of the glass cliff phenomenon and adds to the research on the career progression of female leaders.Type:conference paper - Some of the metrics are blocked by yourconsent settings
Item type:Publication, Opportunity in Disguise? Examining Career Paths of Female Directors Following Glass Cliff AssignmentsThe glass cliff phenomenon, which denotes the greater tendency of women than men to be placed on precarious leadership positions, has attracted huge scholarly interest since the notion’s inception. By framing women-held upper echelons roles as “cliff”, the glass cliff scholarship thus far has concentrated on uncovering how systematic biases towards women extend into higher-end labor markets, manifested as the “think crisis, think female” association in director appointment process and a greater exposure to courtesy stigma in consequence to their affiliation with crisis-stricken firms. This paper adopts a different angle to explore the potential upsides of glass cliff assignments. Based on a large-scale matched sample of Chinese listed firms, our analyses reveal that 1) preferential selection of women to top corporate ranks is not universal but rather contingent on the configurations of crisis situations and that 2) directorships in distressed firms can increase female directors’ future employability in the director labor market. Our findings contribute to the glass cliff literature in two ways. First, we provide more nuanced understandings to the glass cliff phenomenon by clarifying the boundary conditions. Second, by introducing insights from research on ex post settling up in director labor market and on double standards of competence, we locate long-term opportunities embodied in precarious leadership assignments.Type:conference paperJournal:Academy of Management ProceedingsVolume:2024Issue:1