PhD, DBA, and MSc by research theses (SoM)
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Browsing PhD, DBA, and MSc by research theses (SoM) by Supervisor "Anderson, Deirdre A."
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Item Open Access Assessing the impact of religion and family in shaping UAE national women’s choice of, and engagement with their careers(Cranfield University, 2015-06) Hussain, Nazia; Vinnicombe, Susan; Anderson, Deirdre A.National women in the Gulf Cooperative Council (GCC) countries are highly educated yet their work participation remains low when compared to the rest of the world. This thesis aims to assess the impact of religion and family in the shaping of national women’s careers in the GCC workforce, in particular the United Arab Emirates (UAE). This aim is fulfilled by conducting three interlinked research projects; a systematic literature review, a qualitative study and finally, a quantitative study. The first research project comprises a systematic review of the literature that identifies the barriers and enablers to the participation and advancement of female national managers in the GCC workforce. The synthesis of articles reveals findings at the societal, organizational, family and individual levels. At the societal level, barriers and enablers are identified as those influenced by socio-cultural and religious norms and practices. These norms and practices influence how organizations (public and private) engage with their employees, and families engage with their individual members. In the second research project, I choose to narrow the scope of my research from six GCC countries to one country, the UAE. I explore the influence of family on the experiences of ten senior female UAE national managers at key work decision stages; I employ semi-structured interviews and, based on their experiences, the findings reveal that the family has influence at both the role entry and role participation stages. No data were available for the role exit stage. Furthermore, the experiences are different for women from extended versus nuclear families. In the third research project I choose to focus on the factors that support and impact on the experiences of UAE national women during their career life cycle. The findings indicate that overall there are no differences between the experiences of women from nuclear families versus extended; however, there are differences between the model and the UAE sample, both at the overall level and individual age stages. My second research project; a qualitative study provides three contributions to knowledge. Firstly, I extend the understanding of work related decisions, taking into account family influences. However, in the UAE, based on my research, the outcome will primarily be in favour of family due to the influence of socio-cultural and religious norms and practices. I propose that the conceptual framework be extended by adding the component of religion to it when considering the context of the UAE. Secondly, I propose a modification to the framework enabling it to be used in the UAE context. Thirdly, no previous empirical research has been conducted using this framework, with the result that the data from my research contribute empirically. With respect to contribution to practice, this qualitative study identifies the need for enhanced recruitment strategies for women and more gender friendly policies and practices to ensure the effectiveness of Emiratization within both the public and private sectors. The evidence from my third research project; a quantitative study contributes theoretically as my research demonstrates that the O’Neil and Bilimoria (2005) three phase women’s career development model does not fit in the UAE context. The research also contributes from a practical perspective as it identifies the need to improve the development of networking, communication and leadership skills for women and the implementation of comprehensive flexible working practices for women.Item Open Access The career agency of indian managerial women: a culture-centred approach.(2018-06) Prashar, Manjari; Anderson, Deirdre A.; Vinnicombe, SusanThe purpose of this study is to develop a culturally sensitive model of women’s career agency. Adopting a qualitative research method, analyzing semi structured interviews with 36 managerial women in India this study provides a culture' centred model of career agency and a culture' centred framework for the analysis of career agency. The model highlights how managerial women’s career agency interacts with the enabling and constraining aspects of the context in which their careers unfold. This study broadens our understanding of women’s career agency by revealing the dynamic relationship between the context and the individual as emergent ‘agentic bonds’ shifting over time and in relation to each other. Career agency is conceptualized as a process of emergent agentic bonds within a temporal relational context. This study identifies five agentic bonds fusion, communion, divergence, assertion and integration through which individual assert agency in their careers. The study makes three contributions. First, a theoretical contribution introducing a career centred model of career agency. This model identifies the construct of ‘agentic bonds’, to distinguish the ways in which individual’s bond with the collective to develop career intentions and actions. This new construct facilitates a culturally sensitive view of career agency as a contextually dependent process, extending Stage theories of careers beyond Individual agency. In addition, a sub contribution of a culture centred framework for the analysis of agency in women’s careers, operationalizing and is aggregating career agency permits a liminal/hybrid/fluid view of agency and extends the theory of culture centred approach to careers. Second, an empirical contribution reconciling and resolving the struggle to identify the career agency of Indian managerial women. Third, a practical contribution with a culturally sensitive approach to career coaching embedded in a temporal relational view of career agency, facilitated by the concept of ‘agentic bonds’. The study responds to the call for cultural sensitivity in careers research and practice.Item Open Access Examining Political Will, Political Skill and their Maturation among Male and Female Managers(Cranfield University, 2011-08) Doldor, Elena; Vinnicombe, Susan; Anderson, Deirdre A.This thesis explores engagement in organizational politics among managers. There is increasing recognition that organizational politics are ubiquitous in organizational life and critically important in managerial roles. Drawing on micro perspectives in extant literature on organizational politics, this research attempts to better understand managerial engagement in politics by focusing not only on managers’ ability to engage in politics, but also on their willingness to do so. As such, the research examines what managerial political will and political skill entail, as well as how political will and skill develop. In doing so, special consideration is paid to gender, an aspect largely ignored in extant research on organizational politics. Adopting a qualitative exploratory approach, the empirical study consisted of semi-structured interviews with 38 managers (20 women and 18 men) in two global companies. The thesis makes four key theoretical contributions. First, it conceptualizes and identifies three dimensions political will, a previously neglected factor pertaining to managerial political engagement. Second, the study reconciles and refines the dimensionality of political skill, as related to existing models in field. Third, the thesis introduces a novel developmental perspective on political will and skill, proposing an initial model of political maturation. This model outlines three stages of political maturation by mapping out developmental patterns in managers’ political will and skill. The model also identifies triggers of political maturation. Finally, the thesis unpacks the role of gender in managers’ political will, skill and their maturation, demonstrating the importance of making gender visible and voiced when investigating managers’ engagement in organizational politics. In articulating these contributions, the study thoroughly accounts for the impact of organizational context on the political will, skill and maturation journey of male and female managers.Item Open Access Flexible work arrangements and sustainable careers: a study of Swedish women managers in a male-dominated environment.(Cranfield University, 2019-07) Michaelides, Andrie Georgiou; Anderson, Deirdre A.; Vinnicombe, SusanWomen’s career advancement rate to senior management positions continues to lag behind men’s. One frequently cited obstacle within the work-family and career literature is women’s compromised career decisions in trying to balance career, self and others as they still, unfairly, bear the brunt of caregiving and home responsibilities. Organizational flexible work arrangements (FWAs) have been advocated as one potential avenue to facilitate women’s career advancement. These are intended, for both women and men, to alleviate conflicting demands arising from their career and home roles. In practice, however, FWAs are a predominantly female phenomenon due to the gendered division of labour. Despite the explosion of research on FWAs, the results have been far from unequivocal. Various types of FWAs, organizational culture and supervisor attitudes have been found to impact on utilization and work-family interface and career consequences differentially. This study draws on the lived career experiences of 43 women managers with FWAs, across all levels of a Swedish organization. Examining how the women engaged with FWAs retrospectively and over time revealed that, by using tailored FWAs and having schedule control, the women were better able to cope with the demands from their work-family interface as those changed with career and family stage. However, the key determinant of women’s career sustainability was Sweden’s policy of long and shared parental leave between the women and their husbands, which shaped gender egalitarian home roles, and family-supportive supervisor attitudes. Furthermore, utilization of FWAs disadvantaged the women by triggering work intensification. In exchange for having flexibility and autonomy to manage their career and home demands, the women worked additional hours at night and on weekends, which was particularly pronounced in the experience of those at senior levels. Supervisor sponsorship and partnership with husbands were additional factors contributing to the career advancement of the women who reached senior levels and the fact that they never worked part-time. This study makes three key contributions. It is the first study to provide empirical evidence on the role of FWAs in women managers’ career experiences across all levels of an organization, facilitating comparisons of different points of career and family stage. Secondly, the study extends Tomlinson et al.’s (2018) flexible and sustainable career determinants’ model by demonstrating the salience of the parental context as an additional determinant. Sharing parental leave sets up routines for life whereby each parent can flex their career to help one another. Thirdly, this study furthers understanding of how work intensification is perceived and experienced. While the women described having “balance” in their lives, they also talked about working additional hours at home to reciprocate for using FWAs. The paradox of work intensification and “balance” poses a threat to well-being and career sustainability and contests the positive portrayal of “balance” in the sustainable careers’ literature. This study has a number of implications for policy and practice. Improving women’s career sustainability and advancement requires a synergy between society, organization and family. Public policies directed towards working mothers and fathers have the potential to accelerate change towards gender equality at work and home. Organizations, by offering FWAs and safeguarding against work intensification, may contribute to employee career sustainability and well-being.Item Open Access Maternal and professional identity change during the transition to motherhood(Cranfield University, 2013-08) Kutzer, Roxanne; Anderson, Deirdre A.Becoming a mother derails many women’s chances for career progression. One reason for this is that women leave organisations when they become mothers, or reduce their working hours. Another reason is that people within the organisation start to view them as less career-orientated as a result of being mothers. At the core of this issue is that who a woman is – her identity – is being redefined in the transition to motherhood, by herself and by those around her. But, little is known about how her professional identity develops during the transition to motherhood, or whether its development is related to her growing maternal identity. This paper, therefore, presents a systematic review of the literature concerning changes in maternal and professional identities, as well as the relationship between them. Based on the evidence, this review concludes that although the development of maternal identity has been well documented in the literature, little is known about how a woman’s professional identity develops, as she becomes a mother. Suggestions for further research and practice are discussed.Item Open Access Sustaining identities in the face of competing norms: returners' identity work.(Cranfield University, 2018-07) Kutzer, Roxanne; Vinnicombe, Susan; Anderson, Deirdre A.Management and organization studies indicate that motherhood can change women’s working lives and that the transition to motherhood contributes to the leaky pipeline for female talent. The extant literature suggests that women manage tensions between cultural norms for ‘good mothers’ and ‘ideal workers’ by developing a consistent approach, such as prioritising their maternal identities over their worker identities or trying to segment the two identities to limit conflict. However, the suggestion that women can manage tensions between their maternal and worker identities utilising one strategy implies stability in these identities that is not evident in the everyday practices of working mothers. Drawing on a qualitative study of German women’s experiences of returning to professional and managerial roles within a manufacturing company following parental leave, I describe the identity work returners engage in to sustain their maternal and worker identities in the face of competing norms for mothers and workers. The findings indicate that returners engage in dialectic identity work, which is the purposeful and situationally-emergent effort returners expend to construct coexisting maternal and worker identities. This study extends previous research by highlighting the instability and incoherence in maternal and worker identities following the return to work -- differentiating between the strategies returners describe using in response to identity challenges upon workplace re- entry and the dialectic identity work tactics that facilitate situationally-appropriate identity responses. Applying Kreiner et al.’s (2015) identity elasticity construct to individual identities, this study demonstrates how returners maintain maternal and worker identities that are shifting and incoherent. This study also extends our understanding of women’s experiences in returning to work by revealing the influence of the length of parental leave taken and prior return to work experience on returners’ identity work.