Exploring Women’s Representation at the Top of Leading Social Enterprises

Abstract

Social enterprises (SEs) have great potential for the promotion of gender-balanced corporate governance and decision-making. The limited research on the subject has shown that women are still under-represented in SE leadership positions. However, no generalizable studies exploring women's representation in corporate governance and managerial roles within the SE environment are available. In an attempt to gain more knowledge about the potential for SEs to achieve genderbalanced corporate leadership, this study explores women's representation at the top of a sample of 60 world leading SEs operating in different continents in a variety of macro-sectors of activity. A quantitative analysis of the data from the SEs sampled was performed by combining descriptive and inferential statistics. The findings offer an overall picture of women's representation at the top of SEs. They show how representation is spread differently in the various sectors of activity and in different geographical areas. Despite SEs not having yet reached a gender-balanced corporate leadership on a global scale, the great potential for SEs to encourage women's involvement in decision-making was confirmed. Research implications are identified, and greater efforts are recommended so that this potential can be substantiated in achieving gender-balanced management and governance systems.

Worker Involvement and Performance in Italian Social Enterprises: The Role of Motivations, Gender and Workload

“…The majority of the employees in the sample of SEs are women. This is a general phenomenon in the social service sector [69,70]. Explanations are diverse: women's (private) "caring experience" and their attempt to have it professionally recognized [70]; motivation to give "a response to a specific request from someone they know well" [70] (p. 63), a kind of transfer of empathy, as in the case of women who became employees of an organization following volunteer work (for that or another organization) associated with their local community, their children, elderly parents or disabled relatives [71]; the convenience of SEs working hours or location in terms of family commitments, this effect being in general particularly strong for women with younger children [71] (p. 338).…”

The Influence of Internal Corporate Social Responsibility Factors on the Innovation Climate of Employees in the Healthcare Industry

“…Organizations use strategic resources, including time, money, technology, human capital, raw materials, and equipment, to spur innovation during times of crisis by utilizing the resource-based view hypothesis, which was created by Barney in 1991 (Shaw, 2021). Leaders must protect and allocate resources in the expression of economic, social, demographic, and environmental difficulties; employees are one of the most significant assets for a company's accomplishment (Del Gesso & Romagnoli, 2020). According to Sun and Guo's (2021) research conducted in China, several strategies may be used to encourage creativity among informed personnel, such as selfrecognition, innovation capability, and establishing an environment that is error-tolerant (Golob & Podnar, 2021).…”