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This paper aims to explore how women’s compassionate leadership behaviors relate to physical isolation, trust building and turnover intention in virtual work environments in Nigeria.

The authors collected quantitative data through two-wave surveys from 428 respondents in virtual work environments across public and private organizations in Nigeria. The proposed hypotheses were tested using partial least squares structural equation modeling.

The outcomes from the test of hypotheses suggest that women’s compassionate managerial leadership behaviors negatively relate to physical isolation among virtual workers. Conversely, a positive link was found between women’s compassionate managerial leadership behaviors and trust building. Further, an inverse association was found between women’s compassionate managerial leadership behaviors and turnover intention among virtual workers.

Based on the findings, organizations may consider deploying more women managers to virtual work schedules to address trust, isolation and turnover intention challenges. Also, HR practitioners may consider training male managers in virtual work on how to restructure their relationships with subordinates to reflect compassionate attributes so that subordinates can feel safe sharing their worries with them for timely support. Policy-wise, relevant government agencies that are saddled with the responsibility of emancipating women from career-inhibiting patriarchal practices in Africa (i.e. confining women to the house) should encourage women to embrace the homeworking model, which holds great career potential for women.

As a response to the current calls for research on the suitable leadership style for virtual work environments, this study empirically demonstrates that women’s innate compassionate leadership behaviors significantly address physical isolation, trust and turnover intention challenges in virtual work settings. To the authors’ knowledge, this is the first study that explores the link between these variables. As such, this study substantially enriches the literature on gender in management.

This paper aims to investigate work–life balance and job satisfaction in the emerging virtual work environments among women in patriarchal Nigerian society.

Data were collected with structured and semi-structured questionnaire from 316 participants who signed up for online affiliate marketing programs in Nigeria. The data were analysed with descriptive statistics, while the hypotheses were tested with partial least squares structural equation modelling.

The outcomes indicate insignificant conflict in the interface between remotely working from home and the discharge of family care responsibilities among married Nigerian women. Also, the women derive significant job satisfaction from virtual work settings. Outcomes from the semi-structured interviews indicate that Nigerian women receive more support in indoor household chores than outdoor household chores while performing virtual work duties from home locations with housemaids being the highest source of such support.

This study extends work–life balance literature from the traditional work environments to the emerging virtual work settings in Africa by providing empirical evidence that the emerging virtual work settings do not result in work–family conflict but rather yield significant job satisfaction among Nigerian women.

The purpose of this research is to investigate how bridging and bonding social capital relate to career success among career women in a patriarchal African society. Further, the intervening role of self-esteem in the association between social capital and career success was examined.

Structured questionnaire was used to collect data from 488 Nigerian career women in management cadres in both private and public sectors. Partial least squares structural equation modeling was applied in testing the proposed hypotheses.

The outcomes show that bridging social capital has a significant positive relationship with subjective and objective career success. Conversely, bonding social capital has no significant positive relationship with subjective and objective career success. Further analyses show that self-esteem only partially mediates the association between bridging social capital and career success while an insignificant intervening effect of self-esteem on the association between bonding social capital and career success was found.

The findings suggest the need for organisations to stimulate a friendly work environment that has a zero-tolerance culture for workplace discrimination against women. This will enable the women to relate with people in the workplace irrespective of gender or cadre to generate more bridging social capital to achieve greater career success.

The study extends social capital and career success research to career women in a patriarchal African context as a response to the call for context-specific career research in non-western countries particularly Africa. Second, the study provides empirical evidence that African career woman with bridging social capital can achieve career success irrespective of their self-esteem level amid patriarchal discrimination.