Search results

Existing research suggests motherhood hinders women’s advancement to top management roles, but its specific influence on women who have achieved senior leadership is unexplored.

This research uses a qualitative approach based on 34 in-depth, semi-structured interviews with Spanish female executives who hold board positions or have the potential to become board members in male-dominated industries.

This study identifies motherhood as a key driver in career growth, countering the view of it as a barrier. Narratives from female leaders revealed that motherhood did not impede their careers, challenging the “motherhood penalty” notion. We introduce the concept of “motherhood enrichment,” highlighting its positive impact on leadership skills and career progression in top executive roles.

These findings can challenge prejudices about the negative impact of motherhood on women’s careers and support policies promoting work–life balance and family-friendly cultures in organizations.

This study suggests the “motherhood-work enrichment” (MWE) concept in leadership, recognizing motherhood as a catalyst for leadership qualities and offering a preliminary theoretical model to explain MWE in the context of concurrent mother-top manager roles.

This research explores the impostor phenomenon (IP) within the context of gender and leadership, aiming to transform impostor feelings into catalysts for leadership empowerment and positive career outcomes.

Utilizing grounded theory, this study conducts in-depth interviews with 34 female Spanish senior executives to analyze their experiences with IP.

The research reveals that top executive women are not only affected by IP but can also harness it to foster personal and professional growth. It identifies key strategies – such as self-reflection, effective communication and cultivating positive habits – that enable women to transform IP into a lever for enhancing their careers. This approach leads to a proposed virtuous cycle model that empowers women to overcome the negative impacts of IP and advance their leadership capabilities.

This study contributes to the literature on gender and leadership by offering insights into the gendered nuances of IP. By framing IP as a potential catalyst for growth rather than a barrier, the study provides practical tools for human resource (HR) departments to promote gender diversity at senior levels. It also advocates for HR practices to dismantle internal barriers to women’s career progression and address conscious and unconscious gender biases.

This study introduces a methodology that combines geographic information technologies and consumer behaviour principles to define, delineate and quantify the trade area (TA) of a bank branch within the context of mergers and acquisitions (M&A). The goal is to design an optimal distribution network tailored to the needs of financial institutions involved in M&A activities.

The paper presents a procedure for TA delimitation, grounded in a theoretical model supported by marketing and consumer behaviour theories, focusing on proximity, purchase frequency and product type.

Addressing a gap in the literature, this study highlights TA delineation as a key element in marketing strategy, exploring its role in establishing optimal distribution networks, particularly for financial institutions engaged in M&A.

For simplicity, the study focuses on a single bank branch, rather than a broader dataset.

The proposed methodology enables more accurate delineation of TAs in M&A processes, mitigating the negative effects often overlooked by banks during mergers and acquisitions.

This approach helps reduce the risk of financial exclusion for vulnerable clients, promoting social and economic equity and fostering a fairer, more cohesive society.

This study is innovative in integrating geographic information science (GIS) metrics into location science, proposing fragmentation analysis to quantify the spatial structure and configuration of TAs. This approach departs from traditional practices, as these specific metrics have not been collectively applied in previous research.

The purpose of this paper is to synthesize work in the emerging field of how accounting and accountability can be reoriented to better promote pluralistic democracy which recognizes and addresses differentials in power, beliefs and desires of constituencies. An agenda for future research and engagement is outlined, drawing on this and insights from other papers in this special issue of the Accounting, Auditing and Accountability Journal (AAAJ) aimed at taking multiple perspectives seriously.

The paper reviews and synthesizes the central themes associated with accounting, accountants and accountability regimes in pluralistic societies, especially with respect to the research studies in this AAAJ special issue, and it identifies possibilities for future research and engagement.

Three central themes are identified: the challenges of achieving critical, pluralistic engagement in and through mainstream institutions; the possibilities of taking multiple perspectives seriously through decentred understandings of governance and democracy; and the value of an agonistic ethos of engagement in accounting. The articles in this issue contribute to these themes, albeit differently, and in combination with the extant social science literature reviewed here, open up pathways for future research and engagement.

This work seeks to encourage the development of pluralistic accounting and accountability systems drawing on conceptual and practice-based resources across disciplines and by considering the standpoints of diverse interested constituencies, including academics, policymakers, business leaders and social movements.

How accounting can reflect and enact pluralistic democracy, not least to involve civil society, and how problems related to power differentials and seemingly incompatible aims can be addressed has been largely neglected. This issue provides empirical, practical and theoretical material to advance further work in the area.

This paper aims to gain insight in how the involvement of facilities management (FM) and clinical employees are practiced in new Norwegian hospital projects and to study the benefits and lessons learned from the involvement.

This study is conducted by cross-sectional case studies of eight hospital projects by using a literature review, interviews and document studies of FM and clinical employees and project leaders (PLs) among Sykehusbygg.

The service design approach with a structured interaction between the PL’s of Sykehusbygg, and the different disciplines of clinical employees and FM specialist was rewarding and efficient. The facilitator role of Sykehusbygg is essential to manage such a broad and complex involvement process using a wide range of various techniques at the different stages of the projects (dialogue meetings, review meetings, workshops, post-it notes, 2-D drawings, mock-up and 3-D models, as well as virtual reality (VR) and Building Information Modeling technology). The clinical employees’ framework is stronger and much more structured than the involvement of FM competences through the different stages of the projects. The property management competences were involved at the early concept phase and design phase, whereas the Operation and Maintenance (O&M) competences were getting involved through the construction and commissioning phase. The value of FM involvement in all stages of the project is seen beneficial, particularly when the FM specialist become a part of the design team and located physically at the same place. The main reported benefits of early FM involvement are cost-effective technical solutions and installations, less design flaws and improved functionality, as well as a stronger ownership and mutual respect between the clinical and FM disciplines. However, not all hospital organizations see the benefits of the FM involvement of all stages, as they are driven by reducing capital cost. In one of the new projects, other ways of involving the FM competences were tested. Additionally, particularly for the O&M competences, a dialogue meeting with a clear focus of sharing experiences with different technical solution was found rewarding in terms of cost benefits.

This study does not consider the social impact of the choices made in the design phase. The findings also indicated a certain development of the FM involvement. This is not studied in two of the newest projects where they are still in the design phase and the FM role was not interviewed.

The PL role is important as a facilitator role of the involvement process.

A dialogue meeting with a group of O&M people was found rewarding and valuable for knowledge sharing. This methodology can be further developed and tested, as this group of stakeholders is not always available for giving input in the project.

The value of this study is the description of the interaction between the PLs and the hospital organization in the eight projects and lessons learned by the involvement of FM competences and clinical employees.