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Many employers lack disability confidence regarding how to include people with disabilities in the workforce, which can lead to stigma and discrimination. The purpose of this paper is to explore the concept of disability confidence from two perspectives, employers who hire people with a disability and employees with a disability.

A qualitative thematic analysis was conducted using 35 semi-structured interviews (18 employers who hire people with disabilities; 17 employees with a disability).

Themes included the following categories: disability discomfort (i.e. lack of experience, stigma and discrimination); reaching beyond comfort zone (i.e. disability awareness training, business case, shared lived experiences); broadened perspectives (i.e. challenging stigma and stereotypes, minimizing bias and focusing on abilities); and disability confidence (i.e. supportive and inclusive culture and leading and modeling social change). The results highlight that disability confidence among employers is critical for enhancing the social inclusion of people with disabilities.

The study addresses an important gap in the literature by developing a better understanding of the concept of disability from the perspectives of employers who hire people with disabilities and also employees with a disability.

Mentoring has been identified as a key strategy to career development and has been argued to be indispensable for women to advance to positions of power. For mentoring to succeed, it is imperative that mentors trust their protégés. However, recent research has suggested that male mentors trust their male protégés more so than their female protégés. Since women are frequently mentored by men, it is imperative that they gain the same level of trust as their male peers enjoy. According to an established model of trust, trust is shaped by the mentor's perceptions of protégé ability, benevolence and integrity, as well as perceptions of the risk inherent to mentoring. This exploratory research aims to examine what influences these perceptions to shed light on how protégés can gain the trust of their mentors.

Because little research has been conducted in this area, an exploratory qualitative design was chosen. Mayer, Davis and Schoorman's model of organizational trust is used as the theoretical framework.

This research sheds light on what predicts how trust is formed, fostered and lost in a mentoring context by examining factors that may influence perceptions of ability, benevolence, integrity and risk. Several protégé behaviors were identified that influenced perceptions of ability. Perceptions of benevolence were described as “feelings”. Perceptions of integrity were influenced by keeping confidences. Finally contextual factors, such as gender, were also identified as influencing the level of trust.

The sample size was based on only 24 mentors; as a consequence, the findings are exploratory in nature and not generalizable.

Trust has been identified as a critical component of an effective mentoring relationship. As a consequence, mentoring programs must include activities that assist in establishing and fostering trust between mentor and protégé.

Women are still under‐represented in positions of power. Mentoring has been widely adopted as a mechanism to help women climb the corporate ladder. The lack of female mentors frequently means that female protégés have to be mentored by men. If women are to break the “glass ceiling,” it is imperative that male mentors trust their female protégés to the same extent as their male protégés and provide them with the same career advancing opportunities.

Very little research has examined the role of trust in mentoring, although trust has been identified as a critical element in other organizational activities, such as leadership, performance appraisal, labor‐management relations, interpersonal cooperation, e‐commerce transactions and self‐managing work teams.

The purpose of this study is to examine how feminist attributes are expressed within entrepreneurial identity.

The study employed a purposive sampling technique to recruit 15 self‐identified “feminist entrepreneurs”. This included retailers, manufacturers, exploration operators, consultants, and professionals. Qualitative data were subject to content analysis.

Contrary to a feminine archetype portrayed as caring and nurturing, respondents do not describe themselves as typically portrayed in the feminist literature. Prevalent themes included participative leadership, action‐oriented, and creative thinker/or problem solver.

Researchers should use caution in assuming feminist discourse has direct application to characterizing or stereotyping “feminist” entrepreneurs. The applicability and reliability of “off the shelf” psychometrics to describe contemporary gender roles across the myriads of processes associated with venture creation must also be questioned. Limitations: the purposive and small‐sample limits the generalizability of findings to the diverse community of female entrepreneurs. Testing of the applicability, validity, and reliability of the nomenclature used to describe self‐identity is warranted across international samples of feminist entrepreneurs.

The current study provides an inventory of feminist entrepreneurs' self‐described leadership attributes. The nomenclature can be used by women‐focused trainers to help clients to recognize their entrepreneurial attributes.

The study may assist women in recognizing identity synergies and conflicts (e.g. within themselves and among family, employees, clients, etc.).

This is the first study that documents feminist entrepreneurs' leadership attributes. As such, the work is a step in seeking to reconcile feminist theory and entrepreneurial practice.

Models of career success outcomes have specified that gender is one covariate, among many. Theoretical reasons why gender is better specified as a moderating variable are advanced. The purpose of this paper is to examine empirically how gender moderates that influence of personal and structural factors on objective (total compensation, and ascendency), and subjective (perceived success) career outcomes.

The research draws on a sample of 521 chief executive officers (CEOs), executives and managers. Multivariable (step‐wise) linear regression was employed to examine simultaneously the influence of the predictor variables on career success outcomes.

Even after controlling for explanatory influences on career success, gender influences remained. Gender moderated the predictive influence of international experience on compensation, ascendancy, and perceived success. The findings also illustrate that career development models should be situated by (private versus public) sector and specify systemic gender differences in career success outcomes.

The survey response rate was problematic. A response rate of 9 percent was lower than ideal. In this context, scholars note low‐response rates in mail surveys targeted at senior executives and CEOs. The attending limitation of self‐report responses and retrospective perceptions are also acknowledged.

The findings alert women about the importance of career preparation (role investment), such as graduate education and international experience, key credentials to executive‐level advancement. Women executives are also encouraged to seek clarification about compensation relative to their male counterparts.

Most studies about career success are mute with respect to how gender moderates the strength of personal and structural predictors on career outcomes. Given evidence about gender differences in how managers perceive success, examination about the influence of gender on subjective career outcomes is also warranted. Finally, the preponderance of studies about women's career experiences are based on American samples and/or sectors such as high‐tech. Public and service‐based industries, sectors historically populated with women, are often excluded from research. This work addresses the need for generalization by drawing on a across sector of Canadian managers, executives, and CEOs.

The purpose of this paper is to introduce the special issue which presents cutting-edge research in the field of gender, management, and leadership.

The special issue arose following the success of a stream on gender, management and leadership held at the Equality, Diversity and Inclusion Conference, and generated 22 full-paper submissions for consideration from conference participants and from responses to the call. The papers covered many themes and incorporated a range of different methodologies. Ultimately, six were selected to be included in this special issue.

All studies of this special isue reveal gender performativity, as the “taken for granted” practice of gender. They show, exactly as suggested by Butler, that gender categories are brought into being performatively, so that “naming” of a subject creates the preconditions for certain categories which then become invested with meaning.

All of the studies included in this special issue show that studying gender, management and leadership in organisations is significant: we do not really leave gender at the door when entering our organisational work lives; rather, we “do” gender in specific ways, some reflexive but most perhaps not.

The paper shows that the special issue highlights the fact that management jobs have traditionally been understood as being constructed according to male norms and thus creating difficulties for women. These include the material part of their work as well as the stereotypical expectations and perceptions and reactions from others. The taken-for-granted point of departure is that women and men are essentially different, as shown by the ascribed congruency between men and management jobs. The studies reported in this special issue, however, try to challenge such conceptions and call for more sophisticated ways to interpret women ' s and men ' s experiences in management positions to enhance the understanding of the complexity of everyday organisational processes.

In general, customers expect banks to provide the basic banking services. They also expect different levels of services to maximize the value they can derive from the banks. Hence, customers evaluate competing offers in terms of the totality of the product and service as well as the relationship that exists between themselves and the bank. To gain marketing advantage, banks have to exceed customers’ expectations rather than merely meet the bare minimum. To succeed, a bank must distinguish itself from its competitors not just in the quality of the core product but also in how it manages the “service surround”. Every interaction with a customer provides an opportunity to be “unique” and to “go beyond the call of duty”. Presents the design and management of the core correspondent banking products and the “services surround” in terms of market quality.