2Doctoral Researcher and Guest Lecturer, School of Human Resources and Organizational Behaviour, Faculty of Business and Law, Leeds Beckett University, Leeds, UK
Keywords:- Female Expatriates, Gender Stereotyping, Expatriate Assignments
The paper begins by explaining the research design and methodology adopted for the study. In the following section, the primary question for research is addressed: How can future research attain more clarity and focus on the issue of gender stereotyping of female expatriates? This question is answered by critically reviewing the existing literature on Gender stereotyping, the aspect of glass ceiling and female expatriates. Such a review leads us to the key themes, theorisations and factors reviewed in the management literature. Based on a review of existing literature in the area, the paper proposes a conceptual model which binds organisational factors from these two key findings to put forward new avenues for empirical and theoretical research on bridging the aspects of gender stereotyping and female expatriates.
Two key concepts from the review confirm the need for organisational researchers to explore more theoretical and empirical venues in this area of research. Firstly, evidence on the role of organisational factors such as Organisational justice and Organisational support in shaping up perceptions about female expatriates and secondly, evidence from Schein’s think managerthink male paradigm on the similarity of leader stereotypes to male and female stereotypes [4,12,14,31,41].
Organisational factors |
Extant literature |
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Schein, 1973;1975;1994 ;Lee,2005; Jokinen, |
Brewster and Suutari,2008 |
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Organisational commitment |
Schein, 1973;1975;1994 ;Chen and |
Chiu,2009; Chen,2010; Thorn,2009 |
|
Organisational justice |
Pate and Scullion,2009; Haslberger and |
Brewster,2009; |
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Forstenlechner,2010;Biemann and |
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Andresen,2010 |
|
Travel opportunities |
Doherty, Dickmann and Mills,2011 |
Organisational support |
Schein, 1973;1975;1994 Yijala, |
JasinskajaLahti, Likki and Stein,2012 |
|
Organisational capital |
Al Ariss and Crowley Henry,2013 |
Organisational mobility |
Doherty,2013; McNulty,2014 |
Organisational culture |
Schein, 1973;1975;1994 ; Chen and Chiu,2009 |
The relationship between sex role stereotypes and successful managerial characteristics was investigated in Japan and the People’s Republic of China [35]. A sample comprised of 123 female and 150 male undergraduate upper class students studying in a school of business in China and 105 females and 211 males enrolled in business courses at a university in Japan were chosen for the purpose of the study. Schein’s 92-item descriptive index questionnaires were administered on the participants and the data were analysed by computing intra class correlation coefficients (r’) from two randomised groups of variance to determine the degree of resemblance between the descriptions of men and managers and women and managers. The two analyses were performed separately. The findings revealed that men and women in both countries viewed the successful managerial characteristics to be more of men’s attributes than women’s. Comparing this result to the findings of the previous study conducted in the US, United Kingdom and Germany, it was noticed that there was a significant degree of sex stereotyping among male management students and the managerial sex stereotyping was also confirmed among the females management students in all the countries except US [33]. Thus, the authors suggested that the Think Manager, Think Male is a global phenomenon.
Figure1 represents a framework for future research implications [Figure 1]. The framework is based on previous research on the organisational factors which shapeup perceptions on female expatriates and Schein’s think manager-think male paradigm on the similarity of leader stereotypes to male and female stereotypes [11,19,22,31,41].
As Figure 1 represents, this paper confirms that from reviewing the existing studies, organisational factors and the impact of ‘culture’ in terms of Schein’s studies clearly play a crucial role in the formulation of perceptions of stereotyping of female expatriates in international assignments [31,32,34]. With this research paper, along with analysing the under researched area of gender stereotyping of female expatriates and the current perspectives in literature, we address the crucial shortcomings and propose a research framework for future avenues in the area. One can argue that host countries equipped with more traditional ideologies will be in fact more challenging for female expatriates. Although there are significant reasons to believe that our research model is applicable to pursue further research on bridging gender and expatriation due to the key mechanisms which are considered for analysis, more work to examine the potential differences in the impact of gender on female expatriate assignments is necessary. Finally, research has often addressed the performance of expatriate employees in general as being dependant on a large variety of factors [12,39]. From the perspective of gender stereotyping of female expatriates in the current literature, we have singled out the primary organisational drivers of stereotyping. Nevertheless, future research could pursue this matter and examine the impact of other relevant factors in the genre of Individual and Societal drivers. It is only rational to propose that the next step would be to test our research model. Hence the conceptual model addresses crucial shortcomings in this new area and contributes to the theory development of gender issues and the real impact of lives of employees and their experience within organisations. From a practical perspective, the study opens a window for HRD practitioners and global organisations with useful insights on providing equal opportunities to male and female candidates in overseas assignments.
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