The Role of Gender in Transformational Information Technology Leadership: Extending the Glass-Cliff Theory
Keywords:
Transformational IT Leadership, Leader gender, IT Leadership Success, Sexism, Organizational performance, Women in ITAbstract
The glass cliff phenomenon refers to a tendency to appoint women to leadership positions when organizational performance is declining, often resulting in lower levels of female leader success. This phenomenon is well documented in management literature, however, the social and psychological mechanisms that lead to these appointments are still poorly understood and have not been investigated in the Information Technology (IT) field. Therefore, this study fills a gap in the literature by developing a model of predicted IT leadership success and predicted transformational IT leadership. Results of a scenario-based experiment indicate that expectations tend to be higher for female candidates. Additionally, when members of a leader hiring team score higher in terms of sexism, they tend to rate transformational information technology (IT) leadership of female leaders higher. This may explain the glass cliff phenomenon since transformational IT leaders are believed to be better suited to turning around poor-performing teams. Implications of gender for IT researchers, hiring teams, and leader evaluation boards are discussed.
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