Dancing on the Razor’s Edge: How Top-Level Women Leaders Manage the Paradoxical Tensions between Agency and Communion

Zheng, Wei; Sürgevil, Olca; Kark, Ronit

doi:10.1007/s11199-018-0908-6

Cited by 38 publications

(52 citation statements)

References 85 publications

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“…One study found that nearly a third of women pastors view their role primarily as one of empowering laity to implement decisions that laity have made, whereas only 10% of clergy men chose this style (Carroll 2006). Research has confirmed that women leaders are seen as more effective when they exercise both inspirational motivation (seen as agentic) and individual consideration (that is seen as communal) (Zheng et al 2018). This study therefore expects women pastors may be more likely than men to be disappointed when denominational colleagues and superiors fail to respect their dignity by not accepting their identity, including them as much as their male colleagues in professional work, being fair, understanding them, recognizing them, or, in other words, when judicatories fail to exercise inclusive, transformational leadership.…”

Section: Literature Reviewmentioning

confidence: 97%

Gender, Judicatory Respect and Pastors’ Well-Being in Closing Churches

Cafferata

2020

Review of Religious Research

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This study of over 130 clergy in five old-line Protestant denominations (Episcopal, Lutheran, United Methodist, Presbyterian and UCC) who dissolved their congregations examines the relationships of gender, judicatory respect and pastors' wellbeing in their experience of closing a church and vocational transition afterwards; respondents completed a written survey and most also participated in in-depth interviews. Survey results show significant gender differences in the experience of respect from and satisfaction with relationships with the middle administrative part of the wider church called here the judicatory (e.g., synod, conference, diocese or presbytery), and with the experience of stress after their churches closed. Women clergy experienced greater loneliness and isolation, financial strain and thinking that closure affected their job search; their job search was also significantly longer than that of men. Respectful judicatory relationships are negatively related to many but not all vocational stresses. Comparisons with the experience of secular professionals suggest the stigma of closing a church adversely affects women clergy's vocational journey more than men's. The paper closes with implications for judicatory support of clergy leading churches to closure.

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Section: Literature Reviewmentioning

confidence: 97%

Gender, Judicatory Respect and Pastors’ Well-Being in Closing Churches

Cafferata

2020

Review of Religious Research

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“…As a result, men are more likely to associate leadership with formal positions, which is central to the performing frame. Women, on the other hand, whose gender role is largely seen as incongruent with the leader role (Johnson et al, 2008; Koenig et al, 2011), have less access to leadership positions, and often have to prove themselves via their actions to overcome perceptions of incongruence (Eagly and Karau, 2002; Zheng et al, 2018). Therefore, this may lead them to focus on actions in both their origin stories and enactment stories to justify their leader role, which is central to the engaging frame.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The stories that make us: Leaders’ origin stories and temporal identity work

2020

Self Cite

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The stories we tell about our origins can shape how we think and act – helping us make sense of and communicate who we have “become” over time. To better understand the role that origin stories play in individuals’ work lives, we explore how 92 men and women leaders make sense of “becoming” a leader (origin stories) and “doing” leadership (enactment stories). We find that, despite the uniqueness of their experiences, their narratives converge around four frames, being, engaging, performing, and accepting, through which they understand, articulate, and enact their leader identities. We theorize that these narrative frames serve as sensemaking and identity work devices which allow them to create temporal coherence, validate their leader identity claims, and offer them behavioral scripts. Our findings also unearth key gender differences in the use of these frames, in that men used the performing frame more often and women tended toward the engaging frame. These findings provide novel insights into the ways in which the gendered context of leadership becomes embedded in leaders’ understandings of who they are and what they intend to do in their roles. We discuss the theoretical implications of our findings on scholarly conversations around identity, leadership, and gender.

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“…The dominant values in business are agentic, dominant, achievement-oriented, ambitious, aggressive, and rational (Ibarra et al, 2013;Zheng et al, 2018). In line with the dominant values in business, previous studies investigating goal orientations found that faculty members from business tend to prioritize character development and intellectual self-actualization (e.g., shaping students to be creative-thinker, to articulate their independent thoughts) as key teaching goals (Smart and Elton, 1982).…”

Section: Cultures Of Tertiary Education Disciplines: Business and Social Sciencementioning

confidence: 96%

The Influence of Tertiary Education Disciplines on Self-Construals and Conflict Management Tendencies

2021

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While cultural difference on self-construal are well-documented, how acculturation to a new cultural environment could change an individual’s self-construal remains under-explored. In this research, how tertiary education disciplines could be associated with the endorsement of self-construals which, in turn, affect students’ conflict management tendencies were explored. Study 1 revealed that across the United States and Singapore, college students from business and social science disciplines exhibited the trend of endorsing more independent and interdependent self-construal respectively, regardless of the different dominant self-construals in the two countries. Study 2 explored how tertiary education disciplines is associated with individuals’ conflict management tendencies via the endorsement of different self-construals among Singaporeans. Findings showed that individuals from business discipline possess a more independent self-construal and in turn endorsed more of a competing conflict management style than those from social sciences. Different disciplinary cultures could link to conflict management tendencies via the endorsement of self-construals, yielding significant theoretical and practical implications.

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Dancing on the Razor’s Edge: How Top-Level Women Leaders Manage the Paradoxical Tensions between Agency and Communion

Cited by 38 publications

References 85 publications

Gender, Judicatory Respect and Pastors’ Well-Being in Closing Churches

Gender, Judicatory Respect and Pastors’ Well-Being in Closing Churches

The stories that make us: Leaders’ origin stories and temporal identity work

The Influence of Tertiary Education Disciplines on Self-Construals and Conflict Management Tendencies

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