Bolstering the female CEO pipeline: Equalizing the playing field and igniting women’s potential as top-level leaders

Signe M. Spencer, E. Susanne Blazek and J. Evelyn Orr

Business Horizons, 2019, vol. 62, issue 5, 567-577

Abstract: Females represent just 6% of Fortune 500 CEOs in the U.S. Which competencies, traits, motivations, and experiences drive female CEOs to the corner office? Our study includes interviews with 57 women, all current and former CEOs of Fortune 500 companies, in an effort to explore the common characteristics of female CEOs and record their experiences as well as actions organizations took that supported—and hindered—their leadership ascents. We found common themes of female CEOs’ courage, risk taking, resilience, and ability to manage ambiguity. Women need not shy away from tough and unpredictable job assignments that will build these characteristics. To this end, we suggest steps organizations should take to cultivate a robust pipeline of female talent in the workplace.

Keywords: Women in leadership; Career development; Career competencies; STEM (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (6)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0007681318301794
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:bushor:v:62:y:2019:i:5:p:567-577

DOI: 10.1016/j.bushor.2018.10.001

Access Statistics for this article

Business Horizons is currently edited by C. M. Dalton

More articles in Business Horizons from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().