Regulatory focus and female leadership development: How male leaders modify the self-regulating focus of mid-career female followers to motivate their pursuit of future career progress

• Main Author: RAO, Vinika Devasar
• Format: text
• Language: English
• Published: Institutional Knowledge at Singapore Management University 2019
• Subjects: Female leadership development; regulatory focus; gender parity in corporate leadership; situational priming of regulatory focus; leaky pipeline; gender impact on regulatory focus.; Human Resources Management; Leadership Studies
• Online Access: https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/etd_coll/218; https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1218&context=etd_coll
• Institution: Singapore Management University

Inadequate representation of women in the upper corporate echelons remains a worldwide problem, in spite of seemingly concerted efforts by organizations to counter it. While progress has been made in terms of entry level percentages of women, the numbers continue to fall with growth up the corporate ladder. Asia is no exception to this phenomenon. Analysis of literature and secondary data reveals that academic writing on the subject is generally declining but practitioner literature abounds with reports on the still low number of women in leadership positions. This research study uses a discovery-oriented grounded theory approach based on qualitative analysis to explore the enablers that can positively impact the motivation of Asian women managers to stay in the leadership pipeline and actively pursue opportunities for career success. Detailed literature review of academic and practitioner focused literature is first conducted. This is followed by forty-two qualitative interviews with four categories of responders: female corporate leaders, women currently on the corporate leadership track, male leaders and men currently on the corporate leadership track. The interviews demonstrate common supervisorial and organizational enablers for continuing motivation for career progress into leadership roles, as self-identified by the interviewees. The interviews are analysed to understand the regulatory focus of the responders at the pre-leadership career stage and the influence of said triggers. Supportive behaviour by male leaders is revealed as a potentially significant and underutilized factor for improving women’s leadership development through its moderating effect on female regulatory focus whereby it situationally primes the salience of promotion focus.