Glass Cliffs Are Not So Easily Scaled: On the Precariousness of Female CEOs' Positions
| Author | S. Alexander Haslam,Michelle K. Ryan |
| Published date | 01 March 2009 |
| Date | 01 March 2009 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-8551.2008.00598.x |
Glass Cliffs Are Not So Easily Scaled: On
the Precariousness of Female CEOs’
Positions
Michelle K. Ryan and S. Alexander Haslam
School of Psychology, University of Exeter, Exeter EX4 4QG, UK
Corresponding author email: M.Ryan@exeter.ac.uk
Adams, Gupta and Leeth (British Journal of Management, 2008) question the
universality of the glass cliff after finding no differences in US companies’ financial
performance either before or after the appointment of male and female CEOs. We
agree that glass cliffs are neither universal nor ineluctable, but urge caution in
interpreting this null result. This is because the nature and significance of women’s
precarious leadership positions becomes more apparent when one goes beyond archival
financial data and compares the broad circumstances of male and female leaders. Here
multiple strands of research suggest that above the glass ceiling the playing field for men
and women is far from level.
Adams, Gupta and Leeth (2008; hereafter AGL)
present a commendably thorough analysis of
companies’ financial performance leading up to
and following the appointment of CEOs in the
USA over a 12-year period. They interrogate
these data in order to test for the existence of the
glass cliff – the tendency for women’s leadership
positions to be more precarious than those
occupied by men and to be associated with
greater risk of failure and criticism (Ryan and
Haslam, 2005, 2007). AGL’s analysis focuses on
a number of stock market indicators and reveals
no reliable evidence of difference in companies’
performance in periods either preceding or
following the appointment of women and men.
On this basis, the authors question the univers-
ality of the glass cliff and conclude that CEO
hiring practices ‘are not gender biased’. Our
response seeks to contextualize AGL’s findings
within the broad body of research on women,
leadership and the glass cliff.
The need to contextualize previous
archival research into the glass cliff
Our initial empirical work on the glass cliff
took the form of a careful re-analysis of data
first discussed by Judge (2003). This noted a
correlation between the number of women
on UK company boards and lower company
share price performance. Judge (2003, p. 21)
argued that this reflected the fact that women had
‘wreaked havoc on companies’ performance’. We
questioned this conclusion and suggested that the
causality here might be reversed – such that it
was the drop in share price (and company
fortunes more generally) that had led to women
being appointed to leadership positions. Our
archival analysis of a matched sample of compa-
nies that had appointed men and women to
their boards indicated that share price perfor-
mance (a) tended to be lower prior to a woman’s
appointment than a man’s, but (b) was no
different after the appointment of a woman or a
man. Both patterns suggest that we were right to
challenge Judge’s interpretation, as does replica-
tion of the latter pattern by AGL.
Work on this paper was supported by a grant from the
Economic and Social Research Council (RES-062-23-
0135).
British Journal of Management, Vol. 20, 13–16 (2009)
DOI: 10.1111/j.1467-8551.2008.00598.x
r2008 British Academy of Management. Published by Blackwell Publishing Ltd, 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford
OX4 2DQ, UK and 350 Main Street, Malden, MA, 02148, USA.
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