Examining strategic antecedents of the appointment of women to top management teams

• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1108/EDI-09-2021-0245
• Published date: 04 October 2022
• Date: 04 October 2022
• Pages: 266-284
• Subject Matter: HR & organizational behaviour,Employment law,Diversity,equality,inclusion
• Author: Robert L. Bonner,Steven J. Hyde,Kristen Faile

Examining strategic antecedents

of the appointment of women to top

management teams

Robert L. Bonner

San Francisco State University, San Francisco, California, USA

Steven J. Hyde

College of Business and Economics, Boise State University, Boise, Idaho, USA, and

Kristen Faile

Belmont University, Nashville, Tennessee, USA

Abstract

Purpose –The purpose of this study is to examine the organizational and environmental antecedents to the

appointment of a woman to a non-CEO top management team (TMT) position.

Design/methodology/approach –This study uses a conditional fixed effects logistic regression model to

analyze non-CEO TMT appointment data collected from the S&P 500 between 2008 and 2016.

Findings –Women were more likely to be appointed to non-CEO TMT positions when a firm was undergoing

strategic change, had slack resources, and was in a less munificent environment.

Originality/value –This article contributes to the literature concerning the antecedents of the selection of

women to executive leadership (e.g. the glass cliff) roles by examining organizational and environmental

contexts at the non-CEO TMT unit of analysis.

Keywords Women in leadership, Glass cliff, Top management teams, Leadership, Gender in leadership

Paper type Research paper

The glass cliff is a phenomenon in which women are more likely than men to be promoted to

leadership roles in firms experiencing organizational decline or crisis (Ryan and Haslam,

2005). The glass cliff phenomenon suggests that sources of unequal representation in the

upper echelons of organizations may be accredited to gender stereotypes, organizational

decisions to signal change, or even blatant prejudice (Morgenroth et al., 2020). These

inequalities are widespread across major US organizations, wherein women represent only

21.2% of board members, 11% of top earners, and 5.8% of the CEOs at S&P 500 companies,

even though women make up 44.7% of these companies’employees (Catalyst, 2020).

This disparity contributes to a problematic, self-reinforcing cycle whereby people

associate successful strategic leadership with men, leading to the “think manager-think

male association”(Bruckm€

uller and Branscombe, 2010;Ryan et al., 2011;Schein and

Davidson, 1993).

The glass cliff phenomenon argues that in times of crisis, an organization’s typical “think

manager-think male association”is replaced with a “think crisis-think female association”

(Morgenroth et al., 2020). More specifically, women are perceived as more valuable for

leadership roles in times of organizational decline. A recent meta-analysis by Morgenroth

et al. (2020) found mixed evidence for the existence of the glass cliff phenomenon; some

scholars find empirical evidence of this perspective (Ashby et al., 2006;Haslam and Ryan,

2008), some scholars find no evidence of differential decision-making during times of crisis

(Adams et al., 2009;Bechtoldt et al., 2019;Hennessey et al., 2014), and others find that the glass

cliff exists but only under certain moderating conditions (Bruckm€

uller and Branscombe,

2010;Kulich et al., 2015).

EDI

42,2

266

The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available on Emerald Insight at:

https://www.emerald.com/insight/2040-7149.htm

Received 24 September 2021

Revised 5 March 2022

14 August 2022

Accepted 8 September 2022

Equality, Diversity and Inclusion:

An International Journal

Vol. 42 No. 2, 2023

pp. 266-284

© Emerald Publishing Limited

2040-7149

DOI 10.1108/EDI-09-2021-0245

Extant literature also offers several theories that complicate our understanding of the

glass cliff. For example, “bold moves”(Cook and Glass, 2014c), “theory of board discretion”

(Knippen et al., 2018), and “window dressing”(Hoobler et al., 2018) perspectives posit that

organizations have less to lose, or can even gain social/reputational capital, by selecting a

woman when they have the extra resources to do so. Abundant organizational resources may

also lead to a woman being appointed to a Board of Directors (BOD) as a form of “tokenism”

(O’Reilly and Main, 2012). In this way, resources and other strategic factors may contribute to

the appointment of women to leadership roles in non-precarious positions. It is worth

investigating, then, the strategic conditions under which the glass cliff may exist beyond

organizations experiencing declining performance.

Another explanation for mixed findings in the glass cliff literature could be the

leadership category examined. While the glass cliff phenomenon is frequently studied

at the CEO level (Adams et al.,2009;Cook and Glass, 2014a,b;Elsaid and Usrel, 2018;

Glass and Cook, 2016) as well as at the board of directors level (Hennessey et al., 2014;

Mulcahy and Linehan, 2014;Ryan and Haslam, 2005),wearguethatitisalsoworth

considering the glass cliff in the context of top management teams beyond CEO positions

[1]. If the glass cliff phenomenon exists in TMT positions, there would be more robust

evidence of the phenomenon (Fitzsimmons et al., 2014) to potentially reconcile mixed

results found in prior literature. TMT members have received less attention in the context

of the glass cliff phenomenon despite their importance in organizations (see Georgakakis

et al., 2022).

The TMT level of analysis is a distinct unit that works closely with the CEO to influence

firm processes and outcomes (Georgakakis et a l., 2022). Strategic choices made by a

“dominant coalition”in an organization enable organizations to position themselves in the

external environment while leveraging their internal resources (Cyert and March, 1963).

The selection criteria, expectations, and evaluative criteria f or TMTs differ from those for

CEOs (Canella and Holcom b, 2005). Researchers continue to call for greater nuance when

examining roles within strategic leadership (Georgakakis et al., 2022). For example, the CEO

role has an executive decision-making and figurehead quality not shared by other TMT

members, and the board has a governance role not shared by the CEO or other TMT

members (Finkelstein et al., 2009). Relevant to the current study, the CEO also has

considerable influence over the selection of their TMT (Corwin et al.,2022). Thus, focusing

on the idiosyncratic strategic and psycho-social dynamics of the appointmentofnon-CEO

TMT members provide an interesting new avenue to analyze the contexts in which

potential inequalities exist surrounding the appointment of women to leadership roles

(Georgakakis et al., 2022).

We focus on the conceptualization of glass cliff positions as positions that are inherently

riskier and more challenging. We are particularly interested in examining the appointment of

women to new positions in strategic contexts associated with change, risk, and opportunity.

As pointed out by Morgenroth et al. (2020) recent meta-analysis, evidence of the glass cliff

“may only emerge in certain professional domains or other contexts that require further

investigation”(p. 825). We argue that the appointment of a woman to the TMT is inextricably

linked to her opportunity to enact meaningful change at the organization. When the prior

conditions of the organization are more structurally unfavorable, there are fewer available

opportunities to enact meaningful change (Finkelstein and Hambrick, 1990), while also

increasing the likelihood that a woman will be appointed to the TMT. Our study contributes

to the call for more nuanced analyses of the glass cliff by examining how strategic factors

beyond firm performance directly contribute to the appointment of women to TMT positions.

We examine how organizational slack, strategic change, and organizational task

environments –specifically, dynamism and munificence –influence the likelihood of an

organization appointing a woman to a TMT position.

Appointment

of women to

TMT

267