Guest editorial

Citation

Höpfl, H. and Case, P. (2007), "Guest editorial", Journal of Organizational Change Management, Vol. 20 No. 2. https://doi.org/10.1108/jocm.2007.02320baa.001

Guest editorial

About the Guest EditorsHeather Höpfl is a Professor of Management at Essex Management Centre, University of Essex, UK. She is editor, with Robert Westwood, of the journal Culture and Organization and has recently become Co-Editor of Tamara with David Boje. She has visiting appointments at the University of South Australia, the Humanistic University in Utrecht and at the University of Trento. She is a former Chair of SCOS, a Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Management and of the British Academy of Management. Her research is primarily concerned with the humanisation of organisation, with aesthetics and with language. Her recent publications are on such diverse subjects as organisations as hell, the military body and the violence of framing. She has published inter alia in the Journal of Management Studies, Body and Society, Human Relations. E-mail: hopfl@essex.ac.uk

Peter Case is a Professor of Organization Studies, Bristol Business School, University of the West of England, UK. He serves as Chairperson of the Standing Conference on Organizational Symbolism and is a member of the editorial boards of Leadership, Culture and Organization, and the Leadership and Organizational Development Journal. Peter's research encompasses the ethics of leadership, organisation theory and multicultural aspects of management development. He has held visiting scholarships at Helsinki School of Economics and the Royal Institute of Technology of Stockholm. Peter is interested in the social and organisational impact of information and communication technologies and has published in such journals as Organization, Human Relations, Journal of Management Studies, Management Learning, and Culture and Organization. E-mail: Peter.Case@uwe.ac.uk; www.uwe.ac.uk/bbs/

Women and leadership

For over a decade now, consultants, practitioners and academics have attempted to reframe leadership for a new century. Since, the early 1990s, books, courses and training programmes have called for new styles of leadership variously identified as “post-heroic” (Huey, 1994; Sandmann and Vandenberg, 1995), “21st Century Leadership” (McFarland, Senn, and Childress, 1998), and community centred and non authoritarian leadership (Hesselbein, Goldsmith, Beckhard and Schubert, 1998; Hirschhorn, 1997). Companies seem to have embraced the rhetoric of new styles of leadership and consultants have responded to this with a wide range of organisational development initiatives, which seeks to promote the qualities of the so-called twenty-first century leader. A quick glance of many such programmes and at the ubiquitous “airport” management text suggests that a shift is taking place in the way in which leadership is defined. Many of the qualities which seem to be required by the new leaders are traditionally ones which might be described as feminine qualities. Yet, women's leadership is still regarded as problematic. Sandmann and Vandenberg (1995) cite Peter Senge as saying, “Especially in the West, leaders are heroes – great men (and occasionally women) who rise to the fore' in times of crises ... [italics added] (Senge, 1990, p. 340; in Sandmann and Vandenberg, 1995)”. Frequently, when women do achieve leadership positions it is by suspending precisely the qualities which, according to the theories, appear to characterise twenty-first century leadership.

This special issue has sought to give attention to why women's leadership continues to be a problem. Interestingly, however, the great majority of papers that were submitted for this issue were not concerned with leadership per se. Many of the papers were specifically concerned with the problems of women managers with scant attention to issues of leadership. This is also true of the literature. Very little attention has been given to the analysis of gender differences in leadership. Certainly, there are a considerable numbers of papers, which deal with relative views on the effectiveness of men and women in leadership roles and there are numerous studies of leadership style. There is also any number of empirical papers on gender differences in leadership in education and some other specific occupation categories. However, unlike gender studies in general, there has been little attempt to provide a serious and systematic analysis of women's leadership. Consequently, despite some excellent material on women and work in general, there is little evidence of a critical analysis of women and leadership. We hope that this special issue will make some tentative moves towards exploring the dynamics of women and leadership roles.

In this respect, it is entirely appropriate that the first contribution should come from Professor Judi Marshall. Judi Marshall is one of the foremost contributors to the development of work on women and management and her work over 20 years or more has shaped thinking in the field. The paper she has written for this special issue looks at the potential gendering of leadership in the emerging field of corporate social responsibility. It examines whose voice is being heard in such developments and considers the different positions, which men and women take. It deliberates on the dynamics, which produce gendered leadership. In particular, it gives attention to the way that ecological sustainability and global social justice are addressed from a gender perspective.

Michelle Ryan, Alexander Haslam and Tom Postes examine gender differences in explanations of the precariousness of women's leadership positions. The paper provides a valuable insight into how the gender imbalance in organisations comes about, why barriers to entry for women still persist and why previous research has tended to focus on performance issues. This research contributes to an understanding of the sort of positions women do achieve once they break through the “glass ceiling”. It calls for more sophisticated research into perceptual differences of gender and leadership issues between men and women.

Ann Rippin's work is always original and imaginative. Her contribution to this special issue is no exception. Her paper specifically addresses issues of what constitutes leadership. The paper offers an example of task achievement to explore theories of distributed leadership in work groups and proposes alternative ways in which leadership can be construed. The focus of her study is a quilting group. This study immediately calls to mind Czarniawska's (1997) call for more feminine metaphors in her keynote address in Leuven in 1997. The paper contributes a powerful alternative to conventional theories of leadership: a feminised leadership.

There is always a dilemma when setting up a special issue of a journal which is to do with whether or not one should include one's own work. Usually, the very reason for wanting to do a special issue is the fact that the guest editor has something to say on the matter. In this case, there are two reasons for including a paper from one of the guest editors. The first is simply that the paper, which is presented in this special issue seeks to attend to some of the complex dynamics of gender and leadership. The second reason is to do with giving space to a doctoral student, Sumohon Matilal who has presented papers on women in organisation at the last two SCOS. This paper is the outcome of some of our many discussions.

Our paper is concerned with some speculations and observations on the position of women in relationship to leadership roles in organizations. It attempts to analyse some of the reasons why women find it difficult to attain leadership roles and reflects on the costs to them when they do. It considers why women are considered a threat to organizations, why organizations seek to subject women to the therapeutic imperative of rationality as the price of membership and of “success” and why women have to demonstrate male characteristics in order to “succeed” as leaders. Leadership, we conclude, is defined by the phallus and women's leadership by its absence.

Iiris Aaltio and Jiehua Huang, in their research, focus on Chinese women managers and, in particular, look at the role Chinese women managers play in information technology management. Although their paper does not look at leadership specifically, by focusing on career opportunities and succession, they give attention to the emotional costs of success. This contributes to an understanding of how women can achieve leadership roles in new and emerging industries.

In their paper, Marion Crowley Henry and David Weir, examine what they term the “international protean career”. Their paper offers an insight into the complexity of career issues for women working in a foreign country. Their paper contributes to an understanding of the way in which women have the power to reform themselves, to change and regenerate. They conclude that women are highly adaptable and consider the implications of this for women's career and leadership roles.

The issue also includes a book review which was ruthlessly inflicted on an old friend and former colleague, Nigel van Zwanenberg. The reason for including this particular reviewer was in part to get a commentary on the profusion of books on leadership and publisher's literature on the subject which arrives on one's desk everyday. It was simply decided to send him the next book on the subject, which requested a review. So that is how this book came to be reviewed in this special issue. Clearly it could have been one of many. It is, however, interesting to consider how many of Nigel's comments might apply to so many of such books.

Leadership is a seductive topic. Yet in most texts, women are merely subsumed. This special issue has attempted to draw together some issues, which are pertinent to women and leadership in the future. A number of questions are to be asked. We hope you will find some thoughts to engage with in this issue.

The editors of this special issue would like to thank the following people for their contribution to the reviewing process, advice and guidance:

Immaculada Adarves-YornoPat AtkinsonRichard BoldenJo BrewisMarta CamargoAlexis DownsSanjiv DugalSilvia GerardhiMartin HarrisMargaret HopkinsMonika KosteraDonna LadkinJudi MarshallJohn McauleyGloria MillerAlbert MillsManuela NockerAlison PullenAnn RippinGrace Ann RosileMichelle RyanVal SinghMatilal SumohonAndrena TelfordPaul ThomasChristina VolkmannDavid WeirDana Wilson-Kovacs

Heather Höpfl and Peter Case