Leaning In: A Phenomenological Study of African American Women Leaders in the Pharmaceutical Industry

Abstract

The pharmaceutical industry includes low levels of African American women in leadership positions. In 2010, according to the Equal Employment Opportunity office, African American women comprised only 1.5% of senior executives and 3.4% of first/mid-level managers. This qualitative study describes the leadership behaviors of 8 African American women leaders within the pharmaceutical industry. The approaches used by these women leaders to navigate their environments illustrate that although these women may be limited in number, they are in fact leaning into and embracing their leadership roles; and consequently impacting their organizations and communities. Seven themes are found to categorize the leadership experiences of these women as leaders. They are: 1) making a difference, 2) leveraging information and knowledge, 3) serving as mentors, 4) establishing and maintaining credibility, 5) asking for support, 6) illustrating integrity at the highest levels and 7) facing up to challenges. While the study is limited in its transferability by its qualitative design and number of participants, the findings provide insightful themes regarding the common experiences of these particular African American women leaders in the pharmaceutical industry. Keywords: leadership, women, African American, phenomenology, qualitative, diversity, pharmaceutical

The Hill We Climb: The Future of Women of Color Leadership Development

“…Many of the current studies involving women of color qualitatively examine how these women make meaning of their leadership while theorizing their experiences along discourses of career development, social justice, leadership, and gender (M. Byrd, 2009;Davis & Maldonado, 2015). Although it is imperative to include women leaders of color's experiences and subjectivities, to more fully construct women's leadership theory, more mixed methods and quantitative research is needed to investigate intersectionality in organizations using culturally sensitive research approaches and to triangulate the qualitative findings (Bonaparte, 2016;Lomotey, 2017). All HRD studies should have a sufficient cross section of subjects and report findings based on subjects' intersectional identities (Howard, 2017).…”