Empirical Evidence from Women Managers - Coursework Example

 Empirical Evidence from Women Managers Question 1 Although there has been increased number of women leaders in government positions or businesses, women are still not properly represented in managerial positions. However, women have taken major steps in ensuring that they are represented adequately in these areas. This article strongly highlights the success factors as well as barriers to women leadership. The success factors include individual, interpersonal, organizational and social systems. The individual level analysis is said to focus purely on the resources of the individual, such as career orientation and achievement orientation, interpersonal level focus on the relationship with the peers or subordinates, while the organizational factors focuses on the selection and promotion of workers. Finally, the social systems focus on society to the society as whole especially in terms of stereotypes (Chen et al., 2014). The barriers to women leadership success are highlighted, and they include the level of confidence of women, inaccessibility to powerful networks or lack of role models, and bias in recruitment, selection, and promotion. Question 2 Cross-cultural leadership, for example, gender sensitivity is essential because it gives everyone an opportunity to expresses their ability regardless of their gender, political affiliation, and regional discrimination. Every individual has different skills that they can use to benefit an organization. These abilities can be in the form of creativity and innovation that is aimed to enhance the performance of any organization. According to Chen and others (2014) women are known to be hard workers. They tend to deliver quality work. Cross-cultural leadership studies offer diversity in terms of idea and workmanship since everyone will be given the job only when they have passed their interviews (Carli and Eagly, 2001). In addition, this leadership helps in adapting to a fresh wave of globalization of cultural leadership practices. From this view, it can be said to be a distinctive phenomenon that checks at the capability of leaders of being able to lead and also adapt the cultural challenges (Chen et al., 2014). Moreover, nation’s detailed cultural features play a vital role in defining the best leadership style to be applied by the managers. Question 3 The democratic leadership style is not mentioned or applied in the article as a type of leadership style. It is of great significance in studying female leadership. It involves a leader sharing information about the decision-making capabilities while promoting the interest of the group through the practice of equity. This leadership style covers healthy debates and discussions, sharing of information and inspiring people to feel great about their participation. The restrictions of democratic input tend to be limited by the organization and needs of the group (Schein, 2007). The democratic style involves the view that every person is expected to take part in group decision since they are all human. According to Chan, and others, (2013), democratic leadership style remains to be one of the most efficient, effective and forms higher productivity. It also results in higher contributions from members and elevates group morale. Besides, democratic leadership style can lead to the formation of better concepts and creative solutions to various problems since group members are inspired to share their opinions and ideas. Democratic leadership style is useful in studying women because, it offers a suitable platform for every employee in an organization to give their opinion and also participate in decision making in the company (Chan, Huang, & Lam, (2013). When the diction is arrived at by the works, they will be bound to respect the decision since they are responsible for such decisions. This would in turn boost tie productivity and efficiency of the organization. Question 4 Like most women, Women in Asia are said to be struggling with combining work commitment and facility obligations (Chan, Huang, & Lam, (2013). However, this is not the case for the counterparts in the U.S. Women in Asia are affected by their culture, which burdens the female gender expectation. Their culture expects women to stay at home and take matters of their family seriously. This is because gender stereotypes have affected women in Asia, for example, no one expects them do a good job. Instead, they are better designed to stay at home and do house chores (Chan, Huang, & Lam, (2013). On the other hand, there is scarcity in cross-cultural comparison that exists between men and women in terms of stereotypes in US. In Asia, cross-cultural stereotypes are common between men and women. The few who have made it find it difficult to handle family issues and work commitments. Chan and others, (2013) argue that reproach on women and leadership has been dominated approaches from the US. These have motivated a lot of women in US to step-up into their duties and go for leadership positions. They get a lot of role models that motivates and inspires a lot of women to enter the job market and stand for the leadership position without any fear of stereotyping. It is this active label of women that act as role models that can save the level of women eldership position. Question 5 Individualism calls for the standard that proposes to end this inequality and create value that takes precedence above communal, cosmological, religious, metaphysical priorities. Although individualism appeals to specific metaphysical or epistemological perspectives like empiricism, it is treated majorly as a moral and political principle. Individualism is commonly viewed by both its supporters and opposers to be the thing of the modern Western world, an enhancement of enlightenment liberal values. The women leaders are said to have followed and pursued their individualistic version in becoming leaders (Chan, Huang, & Lam, (2013). Those women said they sought it by taking a lot of risks, practicing continuous learning, looking for those organizations that fit their objectives and purposes. Moreover, they argued that it was individualism that drove their passion to success. One essence of individualism is that women managers described their leadership as that which has been guided majorly by their principles and goals. According to Chen et al. (2014), an individualistic approach to issues propels someone to go for success no matter what they will face. He claims that it comes with certain vigor that an individual yearns for success. It is, therefore, due to this self-determination of women leaders in U.S has been attributed to high-level of individualism as a success factor. Similar individual factors are classified as collectivism in China as opposed to the individualism in U.S. Socialism emphasizes in distinguishing between the in groups and out groups being engaged in cooperative duty and concentrating on what people share in common as opposed to individualism, which is characterized by the engagement in competitive function, by community circumstances, and by stressing on what distinguishes the individual. Collectivistic societies embrace family cohesion, solidarity, conformity, and cooperation. Therefore, people in these communities seek to make many references to other people thereby emphasizing on group goals and keenly following the prospects and principles of the group. In this article, women leaders in China are said to have embraced collectivism (Chen et al., 2014). This is because there was a necessity for each and every one of them to comply with the societal or organizational values that played a vital role in the growth of China. Individual level factors such as learning orientation and achievement were considered as necessary to establish a positive relationship with other people. This implies that a positive relation between other people is highly regarded as superior. There is a dominance of paternalistic style in China that is described in relation to benevolence. In addition, the dominance of task-oriented style of leadership and also the process of interview of these women emphasized the embraced value of their career, which is explained in terms soft general transition in China to the economy which is industrialized. Question 6 A glass ceiling is an administrative and political word that is used in describing the unseen, though un-breathable barrier which tends to keep minorities group and women from growing to the higher ranks of the commercial ladder, irrespective of their qualifications, or achievements they have strived to make to be there (Chen et la., 2014). The term was used by feminists in allusion to barriers that are in the professions of higher achieving women. In the U.S., the term is at times stretched to refer to the barrier to obstacles deterring the progression of the minority group that includes both men and women. Budhwar and Varma, (2010), define a glass ceiling as gender or rather racial variation that is not described by other occupation-relevant features of the employees. Governments, individuals, and organizations globally have tried to promote a rise in the figure of women who reach higher levels of power. Many nations have tried to make progress in mitigation of this issue. Stereotyping has been widely used in the article as a glass ceiling that hinders women achievement of leadership positions. For instance in India, managers express gender stereotypes, which emphasize on women roles as being a mother and wife (Toor & Ofori, 2009). As a wife, in this case, it shows that women are under their men, that they should only sit at home and serve their family. Women as mothers are expected to take care of their children and do house chores at home. This has made women of high potential to achieve success in leadership by putting career second to their family obligations (Chan et al., 2013). At the same time, such women depict their families as the as a source of support but not as a burden that a person can turn to when there are issues in the workplace. In Singapore, women leaders have been described as those that stress the value of the male managers. Such women compile their occupational duty with the family obligation. However, stereotyping in Singapore is not like that in China that marred with nationalism as emphasized by collectivism. Gender stereotyping are features that women and men share in the society. They have descriptive elements that seek to explain how men and women should be or not be. Stereotyping has worked very well in disfavor of women (Budhwar, & Varma, 2010). A number of individuals, organizations, and countries have their gender stereotyping against women. The majority of such stereotypes emphasize that women are mother and wives. Question 7 The four levels factors that include interpersonal, individual, social systems, organizational are interdependent. This is because interpersonal factors concentrate on the relationship between leaders and other subordinates, supervisors, and peer (Cappelli, & Useem, 2010). When an individual is considered to have good leadership qualities and his other colleagues or supervisors have a high opinion about them, they easily attain leadership positions since they can influence a good number of followers. Large numbers of members is considered to be one of the qualities leaders should have. Since, the personal relationship tends to serve a critical role in modeling; the role model is regarded as interpersonal level. The organization level concentrates on the practices related to promotion, and selection (Bullough, et al., 2012). The promotion and selection is given to those who merit, which is attributed to interpersonal characteristics of an individual in social system at whole concentrates of the societal norms and stereotypes as factors that contributes to rise in leadership of women and men. Personal factors consternate on the particular resource like career inspirational and individual orientation (Bryman, 2008). All the above four levels factor analysis has positively or negatively contributed to glass selling of women. The stereotyping has worked against women in many countries including China and India. It is cited as one of the challenges that hinder women from achieving their potential in leadership ranks. The result that is depicted in the articles shows that a large percentage of women do not acknowledge leadership, and this is greatly influenced by the four levels. However, the majority of women especially those from US have succeeded because of the individual, organizational level, and non-gender stereotyping factors. Such women claimed they merited their positions. The low number of women in higher positions in India and China has been attributed to gender stereotyping. Question 8 The “On becoming a leader in Asia and America: Empirical evidence from women managers” is relevant and suits the article. It has captured the plight of women in Asia, America and extended to other countries like China and Singapore. The title has also included most necessary factors that hinder women from going up the material ladder. Such factors include individual, interpersonal, organizational and society principles. In addition, some of the barriers to women leadership have been highlighted. For instance in Asia, women are considered as mother and wife meaning that they should stay home to take care of the family and home. This was not the case with the women in the US who attribute their rise to power to individualistic passion and determination. In addition, the title captures a real scope of the study that could give a price, valid and reliable information about the plight of women in Asia and America. However, the title would have covered other continents with dissimilar characteristics, for instance Africa so that the study would also cover why women are regarded as the weaker sex in terms of rising the ranks of leadership in Africa, Asia, and America. References BRYMAN, A. 2008. Social research methods (2nd ed.). Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press. BUDHWAR, P., & VARMA, A. 2010. Guest editors' introduction: Emerging patterns of HRM in the new Indian economic environment.Human Resource Management, Vol 49, pp. 345–351. BULLOUGH, A., KROECK, K. G., NEWBURRY,W., KUNDU, S. K., & LOWE, K. 2012.Women's political leadership participation around theworld:An institutional analysis. The Leadership Quarterly, Vol.23, pp.398–411. CAPPELLI, P, SINGH, H, SINGH, J., & USEEM, M. 2010. The India way: Lessons for the U.S. The Academy of Management Perspectives, pp. 24, 6–24. CARLI, L. AND EAGLY, A. (2001). 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