Only if male leaders have maneuvered an organization into trouble is a switch to a female leader preferred. As long as a company headed by men performs well, there’s no perceived need to change its pattern of male leadership. One thing these results reveal, we believe, is a status quo bias. Patricia Russo, Lucent and Alcatel-Lucent, 2002–2008 Onto a LedgeĬarly Fiorina, Hewlett- Packard, 1999–2005 And when the company had been led by women, there was no difference: The glass cliff disappeared. But when the male-led company was in crisis, 69% chose the female candidate. When the company had been led by men and was doing well, 62% of the students who read that scenario chose the male candidate. We then asked the students to choose between two equally qualified candidates for CEO, one male and one female. We also created two versions of the second article, which dealt with the company’s financial status, so that some students read about a company that was growing, others about one that was closing stores and laying people off. We created two versions of the piece in one the company was currently and historically headed by men, and in the other it was headed by women. The first article discussed the upcoming retirement of the CEO. In the first we asked 119 college students to read two newspaper articles about an organic food company. To explore possible answers, we conducted two experiments. In the past few years, researchers have found that women have a better chance of breaking through that ceiling when an organization is facing a crisis-thus finding themselves on what Michelle Ryan and Alex Haslam, of the University of Exeter, have termed the “glass cliff.” But the question remains why.
By now everyone is familiar with the glass ceiling-the informal barrier that keeps women out of upper management.
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