View from the top – in women’s own words: Insights into leadership from autobiographies
Human Resource Management International Digest
ISSN: 0967-0734
Article publication date: 13 March 2017
Abstract
Purpose
This review is based on “Gender, authentic leadership and identity: analysis of women leaders’ autobiographies” by Kapasi et al. (2016). Given the under-representation of women in leadership positions, attempts to uncover reasons why remain of interest.
Design/methodology/approach
This briefing is prepared by an independent writer who adds their own impartial comments and places the articles in context. This paper uses the autobiographies of four high-profile women leaders to understand how they construct a gendered leadership identity, with particular reference to authentic leadership.
Findings
The paper reviewed found that analyses reveal that these women construct gender and leadership along familiar normative lines; for example, the emphasis on personal and familial values. However, their stories differ in that the normative extends to include close examination of the body and a sense of responsibility to other women. Overall, media representations of these “authentic” leaders conform to social constructions of gender. Thus, in the case of authentic leadership, a theory presented as gender neutral, the authenticity of leadership has to some extent been crafted by the media rather than the leader.
Originality/value
The briefing saves busy executives and researchers hours of reading time by selecting only the very best, most pertinent information and presenting it in a condensed and easy-to-digest format.
Keywords
Acknowledgements
Retraction notice
The Publisher wishes to retract the precis article “View from the top – in women’s own words: Insights into leadership from autobiographies”, published in Human Resource Management International Digest, Vol. 25 No. 2, 2017. It has come to the attention of Emerald Publishing that this precis article contains large sections of unattributed text taken from the original research article “Gender, authentic leadership and identity: analysis of women leaders’ autobiographies”.
Precis articles are intended to summarise original academic research articles for a different audience, and should not include verbatim passages from the original articles. This error occurred due to a miscommunication in the commissioning process.
To avoid any repeated incidents of this nature, Emerald has fully revised its guidelines and briefed its Commissioning Editors. Human Resource Management International Digest sincerely apologises to the original authors and its readers for this error. The original article can be viewed here: 10.1108/GM-06-2015-0058.
Citation
(2017), "View from the top – in women’s own words: Insights into leadership from autobiographies", Human Resource Management International Digest, Vol. 25 No. 2, pp. 25-27. https://doi.org/10.1108/HRMID-01-2017-0005
Publisher
:Emerald Publishing Limited
Copyright © 2017, Emerald Publishing Limited