Coursework on 8 International Leadership and Management Questions

M10BSS (2014-2015) International Leadership and Management

Course Work 2

This course work consist of 8 questions. All questions relate to the accompanying text (‘the article”) “On becoming a leader in Asia and America: Empirical evidencefrom women managers”  by Claudia Peus, Susanne Braun, and Kristin Knipfer (The Leadership Quarterly 26 (2015) 55–67).

Please answer the questions within the word limit set for each question. (All answers beyond the word limit will not be evaluated). Use appropriate in-text citations in your answer (within the word limit), and add a list of references at the end. Each question also indicates the maximum amount of points that can be obtained for that question.

Q1(max. 150 words; 5 points)
Describe in your own words one major conclusion of the article.

Q2(max. 150 words; 5 points)
Explain (in your own words) why studying gender issues in cross-cultural leadership may lead to different results, compared tocross-cultural leadership studies disregarding gender issues . (Please give at least two reasons).

Q3(max. 200 words; 10 points)
Explain which leadership style, not mentioned in the article, could also have been appropriate to study female leadership. (Please give at most one other leadership style).

Q4(max. 200 words; 10 points)
Why are according to the article women’s leadership style differences between Asian countries more salient than women’s leadership style differences between Asia and the US? (Please give at least two reasons).

Q5(max. 400 words; 20 points)
Clarify why individual success factors in the US are explained in terms of ‘individualism’, whereas the same individual success factors in China are explained in terms of ‘collectivism’. (Motivate the clarification).

Q6(max. 400 words; 20 points)
Explain which “glass ceilings” are implicitly mentioned in the article, as a barrier for achieving leadership positions in each different countries.

Q7(max. 300 words; 15 points)
The article distinguishes between success factors at four levels of analysis: individual; interpersonal; organizational; social systems. Explain why these four levels of analysis may be interdependent, and what consequence that may have for the final conclusion of the article.

Q8(max. 200 words; 15 points)
Why is the title of the article inappropriate, and what would have been a better title?

On becoming a leader in Asia and America: Empirical evidence
from women managers
?
Claudia Peus
a,
?
, Susanne Braun
a,b
, Kristin Knipfer
a
a
Technische Universität München, TUM School of Management, Germany
b
Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München, LMU Center for Leadership and People Management, Germany
article  info                     abstract
Article history:
Received 31 May 2013
Received in revised form 1 August 2014
Accepted 19 August 2014
Available online 10 September 2014
Editor: Charles Dhanaraj
In concordance with recent calls for cross-cultural leadership research as well as research on
women leaders, this study investigated how women in Asia and the U.S. become leaders and
how they enact their leadership. In-depth interviews with 76 mid- to upper-level female
managers in Asia (China, India, Singapore) and the U.S. were conducted. Analyses revealed that
a simple dichotomy of
“
Asian
”
versus
“
Western
”
leadership did not appropriately describe the
data. Rather, factors such as achievement orientation, learning orientation, and role models
emerged as crucial success factors for advancement to leadership positions across continents.
However, the particular meaning differed between countries. Furthermore, with regard to
women’s leadership style differences between Asian countries were more salient than between
Asia and the U.S. Implications for leadership theory and practice are discussed.
© 2014 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Keywords:
Asia
United States
Leadership
Women managers
Introduction
Asian economies have become increasingly important global players (
Cappelli, Singh, Singh, & Useem, 2010
), and Singapore’s
economy is one of the most innovative (
The Global Innovation Index, 2012
) and competitive (
Global Competitiveness Report,
2012
–
2013
) economy worldwide. As a result, there is a necessity to learn more about the way business works in Asia, particularly
with regard to leadership, one of the major determinants of organizational success (
Hogan & Kaiser, 2005
).
Although cross-cultural leadership research has
fl
ourished in recent years (e.g.,
House, Dorfman, Javidan, Hanges, & de Luque,
2014; House, Hanges, Javidan, Dorfman, & Gupta, 2004; Javidan, Dorfman, Howell, & Hanges, 2010
), the clear demand for cross-
cultural analyses of leadership persists (e.g.,
Bryman, 2004; Gardner, Lowe, Moss, Mahoney, & Cogliser, 2010; Lau, 2002
). In particular,
more research on the speci
fi
c facets of leadership in India (e.g.,
Palrecha, Spangler, & Yammarino, 2012
), China (e.g.,
Chan, Huang,
Snape, & Lam, 2013
), and Singapore (e.g.,
Toor & Ofori, 2009
) has been called for. Furthermore, even though leader emergence has
received attention in recent years (
Javidan & Carl, 2005
), the emergence of women leaders has been understudied in general
(
Gardner et al., 2010
), and in cross-cultural leadership research in particular (
Bullough, Kroeck, Newburry, Kundu, & Lowe, 2012
).
The Leadership Quarterly 26 (2015) 55
–
67
?
The
fi
rst author would like to thank The Boston Club and its Research Committee (in particular its Chair at the time, Katherine Tallman) for the support of
this project through the identi
fi
cation of potential survey participants, provision of transcription services, and distribution of the survey results. The Boston Club is the
largest organization of senior executive and professional women in New England, with a proven commitment to research on issues affecting women in bus
iness. In
addition, the
fi
rst author wishes to thank the MIT Workplace Center staff and in particular Lotte Bailyn for their support and helpful feedback. The research team also
would like to thank Victoria Wang, Xuan Feng, and Shalaka Shah for their support with data collection and interpretation in Singapore, China, and Indi
a, respectively.
Finally, a note of thanks goes to Laura Hammitzsch for her support with data analysis and preparation of the manuscript.
?
Corresponding author at: Technische Universität München, TUMSchool of Management, Chair of Research and Science Management, Arcisstraße21, 8033
3Munich,
Germany. Tel.: +49 89 289 24091; fax: +49 89 289 24093.
E-mail address:
[email protected]
(C. Peus).
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.leaqua.2014.08.004
1048-9843/© 2014 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Contents lists available at
ScienceDirect
The Leadership Quarterly
journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/leaqua
Thus, the purpose of this research is to investigate how women emerge as leaders in China, India, and Singapore, and how the
success factors and barriers compare to those reported by women leaders in the U.S. Second, this research aims at analyzing how
women in these countries lead and whether their leadership styles are more similar among Asian countries than between Asia and
the U.S.
Women leaders in Asia and America
Although the number of women leaders in business organizations has more than doubled over the last 30 years, women are still
underrepresented in managerial positions worldwide (
Catalyst, 2012
). Compared to the U.S. and Europe, the proportion of women on
corporate boards and in executive committees in Asian countries is even lower. On average, women account for only 6% of seats on
corporate boards in the ten largest economies in Asia and 8% of members of executive committees, compared to 15% and 14% in
the U.S., respectively (
McKinsey & Company, 2012
). There are, however, signi
fi
cant differences between Asian countries. While
women hold 8% of corporate board seats in China, and 7% in Singapore, the number drops to 5% in India. Similarly, women make
up 9% of the members of executive committees in China and 15% in Singapore, but only 3% in India (
McKinsey & Company, 2012
).
As women evidently constitute a minority in leadership positions, the factors that impact their emergence as leaders
—
success factors
as well as barriers
—
are important to understand.
Success factors for advancement
In an early approach to explaining how women advance to leadership positions,
Ragins and Sundstrom (1989)
distinguished
between factors at four levels of analysis: (1) individual, (2) interpersonal, (3) organizational, and (4) social systems. The
individual
level
focuses upon the resources of an individual, such as achievement orientation or career aspirations. The
interpersonal level
focuses
on relationships with subordinates, peers, and in particular supervisors. Since personal relationships may serve the function of role
modeling, we also consider rolemodels on the interpersonal level (cf.
Gibson, 2004
). The
organizational level
capturespractices related
to selection and promotion. The
social systems level
focuses on society at large and comprises factors such as gender stereotypes.
Investigations of the success factors for advancement to leadership positions based on this model point to the particular impor-
tance of career encouragement (
Tharenou, Latimer, & Conroy, 1994
) as well as managerial aspirations and masculinity for women
(
Tharenou, 2001
). However, it is unclear to what extend these
fi
ndings from Australia apply in Asian cultures, especially since the
female gender role in Asia has been described as being dominated by traditionally feminine role expectations (e.g., taking care of
children;
Lyness & Judiesch, 2008
).
Barriers to advancement
The barriers to women’s advancement can also be grouped into individual, interpersonal, organizational, and societal level factors:
Women’s lower levels of self-con
fi
dence or propensity to assert self-interests (individual level) and a lack of access to powerful
networks or the absence of role models (interpersonal level) as well as biased recruiting and selection practices in organizations
(organizational level) have been discussed as major barriers (see
Peus & Traut-Mattausch, 2007
, for a summary). Among the factors
that have been regarded as most obstructive for women’s advancement to leadership positions are gender stereotypes (see
Heilman,
2012
, for an overview). This is due to the fact that stereotypes operate at the social systems level and thereby in
fl
uence the lower
levels.
Gender stereotypes
Gender stereotypes are generalizations about the attributes of men and women that are shared in a society. They have both
descriptive components (i.e., how women and men
are
) and prescriptive components (i.e., how women and men
should or should
not be
;
Eagly & Karau, 2002
). The lack of concordance between the attributes women are thought to possess and the ones that are
regarded as necessary for leadership positions (
Heilman, 2012
) result in
negative performance expectations
for women, diminishing
their chances of being hired into such jobs and negatively affecting their performance evaluations (
Heilman & Haynes, 2008
)or
important career decisions (e.g., consideration for international assignments;
Stroh, Varma, & Valy-Durbin, 2000
). Due to prescriptive
gender stereotypes women in leadership positions face a
double bind
: In order to be regarded as competent business leaders, they are
required to show agentic behaviors (e.g., assertiveness, ambition); however, in order not to violate the prescriptive stereotypes asso-
ciated with their gender role, they must also show communal behaviors such as being warm, sensitive, and caring (
Johnson, Murphy,
Zewdie, & Reichard, 2008
). These same prescriptive stereotypes imply that women should take care of their families; however,
caregiving roles
are seen as incongruent with leadership roles due to the long work hours and high levels of commitment required
(
Byron, 2005
).
Cross-cultural comparisons of stereotypes pertaining to women, men, and managers are scarce. However, some evidence points to
thefact that thethink-manager-think-malephenomenon is evidentin the U.S. aswell as Asia (
Schein,2001
), but that it mightbemore
pronounced in Asia. Initial research points to the fact that women in Asia particularly struggle to combine family and work commit-
ments (e.g.,
Lyness & Judiesch, 2008
).
56
C. Peus et al. / The Leadership Quarterly 26 (2015) 55
–
67