Critical events at critical times? A gendered identity approach on the path to (sustainable) leadership

Jamie L. Gloor, Stephanie K. Rehbock, Ronit Kark

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

2 Scopus citations

Abstract

The early career phase is a key period of identity maintenance and change. But, it is also ripe with important, attention-grabbing occurrences (i.e., critical events) that may modify these processes, particularly influencing women’s leadership pursuit. Because previous research has overlooked if or how such events might alter identifying or if these processes differ for people who identify as men and women, we integrate the identity and critical events literatures to elaborate on how positive and negative critical events may shape men and women’s identifying in the work- and non-work domains over time. We propose that critical events’ effects on identity salience will occur both within and across domains, but that these effects will be stronger within (vs. across) domains. While both positive and negative events can exert negative effects on subsequent identity salience, we propose that the effects of critical events on identity salience may be stronger for women (vs. men). Finally, we connect work identity salience with subsequent leadership status, including contextual moderators that enhance or undermine these effects (i.e., inclusive organizational climate and mega-threats, respectively). We conclude with theoretical and practical implications of this research, including for workforce efficiency and social sustainability. We also highlight calls for future research stemming from our review [e.g., sustainability critical events and gendered analyses for (more) accurate science] as well as fruitful research areas and innovative practices at the work-non-work interface for professionals on the path to leadership.

Original languageEnglish
Article number932998
JournalFrontiers in Psychology
Volume13
DOIs
StatePublished - 2022

Bibliographical note

Publisher Copyright:
Copyright © 2023 Gloor, Rehbock and Kark.

Funding

This research was supported by a Swiss National Science Foundation grant (PR00P1_193128) awarded to JG. However, the funder had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or the preparation of the manuscript. We thank Jamie Ladge, Alyson Meister, and Kim Peters for their feedback on earlier versions of this research; we also thank Eugenia Bajet Mestre for her help with formatting and editing. This work began as a project led by SR when she was a doctoral student. Previous versions of this work were presented at the Mid-Year Careers Division Conference in Vienna, Austria (2020) and the Academy of Management Annual Meeting (AOM 2020), the latter of which also won a “Best Symposium Award” (Management Education and Development Division) at AOM 2020.

FundersFunder number
Academy of Management
Alyson Meister
Jamie Ladge
Schweizerischer Nationalfonds zur Förderung der Wissenschaftlichen ForschungPR00P1_193128

    Keywords

    • gender
    • identifying
    • shocks
    • sustainability
    • work-family
    • work-life

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