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Organizational diversity training is designed to enhance employees' skills and competencies regarding diversity and its management. The question of its effectiveness, and the conditions under which it thrives, remains a matter of debate. Unlike previous studies that have predominantly focused on the perspective of training participants, this study shifts the lens to the viewpoints of diversity training providers in Germany – a country where the formal requirement for diversity management was implemented relatively recently. The primary objective is to ascertain the critical factors influencing training effectiveness from the providers' perspective.

This research draws upon case studies based on document analysis and qualitative interviews with diversity training providers across Germany.

The investigation reveals that the effectiveness of diversity training, as perceived by providers, hinges on several key factors: the organizational environment (including the widespread recognition of diversity issues and the presence of an organizational diversity framework), the attributes of diversity trainers (notably their personal familiarity with diversity) and the setting and design of the training (such as venue, duration and a blend of instructional approaches). A notable barrier to achieving effective training outcomes is the lack of supportive conditions within client companies, exemplified by limited training budgets, which impedes the accurate assessment of training effectiveness.

This study marks a novel contribution to the field by explicitly focusing on the perspective of diversity training providers in Germany. It provides new insights into the importance of the organizational context surrounding diversity education within the private sector.

The study examines prevailing understandings and meanings of management represented in Lithuanian higher management education as a selected East European post-socialist country. While concentrating on the notion of management as an institution, the study draws upon the concept of “travel of ideas” by Czarniawska (2008). The study aims at analysing what reasons led to the development of specific management meanings in Lithuanian higher education by considering local historical and socio-political processes of transformation.

The empirical analysis is based on a qualitative content analysis of 23 relevant textbooks on general management in Lithuania, written by local authors.

The results show that the reception and translation of management concepts in Lithuania is mainly focused on rationalistic Anglo-Saxon concepts. Dominating meanings are informed by Taylorism, with alternative or critical management approaches remaining absent. The study additionally reveals the effect of “imprinting”, referring to the fact that local management pioneers have a considerable and sustainable impact on how and which management models and theories are adopted in management education.

Since the analysis is limited to local textbooks in higher education of only one post-socialist country, there is a need for further research, especially for the inclusion of the remaining Central and Eastern European (CEE) countries. Additionally, other factors that may influence management meanings in higher education in post-socialist countries need to be considered by analysing translated books, management programmes or guest lecturers from other countries.

One of the central implications of the research into management in higher education is the call for a stronger inclusion of management ideas that go beyond Taylorist approaches. These could be team-based management or participative management, as these potentially better align with work-oriented expectations by prospective, especially young, employees.

The study shows the relevance of historic roots regarding managerial thought. The study identifies an “imprinting” by local pioneers in the field of management that establishes initial and enduring meanings of management in a considered country. The mechanism of “imprinting” serves as a selective filter and indicates a local general receptivity towards certain ideas and could, thus, enable or impede travelling of ideas. In the case of Lithuanian higher management education, the study shows that “imprinting” has led to a narrow meaning of management with a higher receptivity towards concepts and approaches that align with Taylor's scientific management theory.

This study aims to explore the main discursive images of women managers as reproduced by selected German newspapers at the time of the political debate surrounding gender quota on management boards between 2011 and 2013.

Drawing on critical discourse analysis according to Wodak (2001), an empirical analysis of media articles on women managers in two German newspapers, Welt and Bild, has been conducted.

The results of the study show that despite the diversity of images fabricated by the media in reference to women managers, the debate surrounding the issue of establishing a gender quota in management boards is dominated by dualistic categories and reductionist identity ascriptions, like women managers as being “over-feminine” or “over-masculine”, “exclusive” or “outsiders”.

As the empirical focus of the study lays on two right-wing newspapers in Germany, the results do not allow for generalizations regarding the German media landscape.

Public dispute surrounding gender quota in German companies tends to reproduce stereotypical discursive figures regarding women managers instead of challenging them. A fundamental change in the media reports on women managers is needed.

The research contributes to the analysis of media representations of women managers, by providing context-sensitive results from the current political debate in Germany. The findings reveal the stability of discursive structures over time, particularly gendered bias in the case of media representations of women managers, notwithstanding political aspirations to change established practices.

The general aim of this chapter is to scrutinize implicit assumptions regarding leadership in the public sector entailed in the normative concept of “good governance.” We draw on the concepts of leadership substitution (Kerr & Jermier, 1977), managerial leadership activities (e.g., Bass & Avolio, 1994), and demands for leadership (Blom & Alvesson, 2014). In our empirical study, we explore fine-grained processes of leadership in several local government organizations, including everyday decision-making and social interactions.

A qualitative study was conducted on the basis of 21 interviews with middle- and lower level managers and their subordinates in five municipal departments in Germany and three in Lithuania.

The results suggest that everyday leadership processes can be considered as the coexistence of leadership substitutes and leadership interventions, initiated by the leaders and their subordinates. Such leadership substitutes like routines, laws, and instructions turned out as particular important constituents of leadership processes.

Results of our study open several new avenues for further research on governance and leadership in local governance organizations. First, future research can proceed with a re-conceptualization of leadership in the context of local governance by drawing on the follower-oriented approaches of leadership and governance. Particular focus on tensions, conflicts, and struggles as well as on the interrelationships between different hierarchical levels of public administration could represent a fruitful extension of our study. Second, the institutional and country-based contexts of local government systems should be taken into account more explicitly while studying leadership practices.

In terms of implications for practice, the results of the study call for an explicit consideration of the everyday activities while implementing “good governance.” Considerations of leadership as process of daily interactions between leading persons, subordinates and codes, structures, process rules, and management instruments should become a necessary element of such concepts, otherwise, important aspects of a “good governance” would be ignored and couldn’t be realized.

Our study contributes to the behavioral perspective of governance structures in the public sector by providing empirical insights from local government contexts and by re-conceptualizing governance and leadership processes. Instead of a merely reductionist concentration on managerial positions and persons, we propose a social-constructionist view on governance that allows for a more fine-grained, context-sensible perspective on governance in the public sector. Concretely, we call for a conceptualization of micro-level governance structures and processes mainly as a result of ongoing order-maintaining and order-negotiating processes between supervisors and subordinates, accompanied by institutions of leadership substitution and interventions from leaders and subordinates.

The purpose of this special issue is to extend the Economic and Social Sciences Research Council (ESRC)-funded UK seminar series–Challenging Gendered Media (Mis)Representations of Women Professionals and Leaders; and to highlight research into the gendered media constructions of women managers and leaders and outline effective methods and methodologies into diverse media.

Gendered analysis of television, autobiographies (of Sheryl Sandberg, Karren Brady, Hillary Clinton and Julia Gillard), broadcast news media and media press through critical discourse analysis, thematic analysis, metaphor and computer-aided text analysis software following the format of the Gender Media Monitoring Project (2015) and [critical] ecological framework for advancing social change.

The papers surface the gendered nature of media constructions of women managers and leaders and offer methods and methodologies for others to follow to interrogate gendered media. Further, the papers discuss – how women’s leadership is glamourized, fetishized and sexualized; the embodiment of leadership for women; how popular culture can subvert the dominant gaze; how women use agency and how powerful gendered norms shape perceptions, discourses and norms and how these are resisted, repudiated and represented.

The papers focus upon how the media constructs women managers and leaders and offer implications of how media influences and is influenced by practice. There are recommendations provided as to how the media could itself be organized differently to reflect diverse audiences, and what can be done to challenge gendered media.

Challenging gendered media representations of women managers and leaders is critical to social justice and equality for women in management and leadership.

This is an invited Special Issue comprising inaugural collection of research through which we get to “see” women and leaders and the gendered media gaze and to learn from research into popular culture through analysis of television, autobiographies and media press.