This study examines the influence of women in business using a sample of firms on Fortune's “100 Best Companies to Work For” list and is an extension of Bernardi et al.'s work. We use the data from Bernardi et al. to determine whether a higher representation of women on a board signals an increased commitment of a firm to a quality environment and employment characteristics necessary to establish the firm on Fortune's “100 Best Companies to Work For” list. Our findings (...) include a significant increase in the number of female directors on Fortune 500 companies between 1977 and 2001. The initial analysis of the 27 firms appearing on both Fortune's “100 Best Companies to Work For” list and the Fortune 500 in 2001 indicates a positive correlation between the number of female directors and a company's appearance on the “100 Best Companies to Work For” list. (shrink)

This paper problematises the ways women’s leadership has been understood in relation to male leadership rather than on its own terms. Focusing specifically on ethical leadership, we challenge and politicise the symbolic status of women in leadership by considering the practice of New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern. In so doing, we demonstrate how leadership ethics based on feminised ideals such as care and empathy are problematic in their typecasting of women as being simply the other to men. We apply (...) different strategies of mimesis for developing feminist leadership ethics that does not derive from the masculine. This offers a radical vision for leadership that liberates the feminine and women’s subjectivities from the masculine order. It also offers a practical project for changing women’s working lives through relationality, intercorporeality, collective agency and ethical openness with the desire for fundamental political transformation in the ways in which women can lead. (shrink)

This study aims to investigate discourses of the charisma of Barack Obama in articles in a leading Finnish newspaper during the first 6 months of his presidency. The results show that the media created a very enthusiastic atmosphere around Obama. His charisma was built up mostly around his person, with the emphasis on an exceptional personality, life story and behaviour. In addition, the various crises that arose were used to reinforce the picture of Obama as charismatic. The findings undermine the (...) idea of a single form of charismatic leadership and provide empirical support for the framework put forward by Steyrer (Organizational Studies 19(5), 807–828, 1998), that various types of charismatic leadership exist: In this study paternalistic, heroic, missionary and majestic are identified. The study contributes to Steyrer’s framework by showing that certain types of charisma occur in different social contexts. The results also suggest that ethics is constructed as a crucial part of charismatic leadership, but the construction of Obama’s charisma in contrast to others raises ethical concerns. (shrink)

This article focuses on exerting influence in leadership, namely manipulation in storytelling. Manipulation is usually considered an unethical approach to leadership. We will argue that manipulation is a more complex phenomenon than just an unethical way of acting in leadership. We will demonstrate through an empirical qualitative study that there are various types of manipulation through storytelling. This article makes a contribution to the literature on manipulation through leadership storytelling, offering a more systematic empirical analysis and a more nuanced view (...) of the topic than previously existed by outlining how managers engage in manipulative storytelling and what kind of ethics they link to their manipulation in leadership. Four types of manipulation in storytelling are identified in the study: humorous, pseudo-participative, seductive and pseudo-empathetic. From an ethical perspective, we will show that manipulation is not always self-evidently reprehensible. We will conclude that the dominant ethical justification for manipulation stems from its consequences. (shrink)

This article describes a survey among Finnish business students to find answers to the following questions: How do business students define a well-run company? What are their attitudes on the responsibilities of business in society? Do the attitudes of women students differ from those of men? What is the influence of business education on these attitudes? Our sample comprised 217 students pursuing a master's degree in business studies at two Finnish universities. The results show that, as a whole, students valued (...) the stakeholder model of the company more than the shareholder model. However, attitudes differed according to gender: women students were more in favor of the stakeholder model and placed more weight on corporate ethical, environmental, and societal responsibilities than their men counterparts - both at the beginning and at the end of their studies. Thus, no gender socialization effect of business school education could be observed in this sense. Business school education was found to shape women and men students' attitudes in two ways. Firstly, valuation of the shareholder model increased and, secondly, the importance of equal-opportunity employment decreased in the course of education. This raises the question whether the educational context is creating an undesirable tendency among future business professionals. The results further suggest that the sociocultural context can make a difference in how corporate social responsibility is perceived. The article also discusses possible ways to influence the attitudes of business students. (shrink)

Previous work suggests that gender attitudes are associated with different individual and organizational factors. At the same time, ethics research suggests that many of these same variables can influence ethical reasoning in companies. In this study, we sought to combine these streams of research to investigate whether individual skepticism of women's employment is related to ethical reasoning in a gender-based ethical situation. The results of the hierarchical regression analysis indicated that skepticism of women's employment was negatively related to the recognition (...) that the gender-based dilemma involved an ethical problem, and that skepticism was also negatively related to judgments that the situation was unethical. These findings imply that companies should advance policies that increase tolerance for women's employment, such as diversity training codes of conduct, and ethics training. (shrink)

This article analyses how the new type of worker is constructed in respect to gender in current management literature. It contributes to the increasing body of work in organisational theory and business ethics which interrogates management texts by analysing textual representations of gender. A discourse analysis of six texts reveals three inter-connected yet distinct ways in which gender is talked about. First, the awareness discourse attempts to be inclusive of gender yet reiterates stereotypes in its portrayal of women. Second, within (...) the individualisation discourse, formerly discriminatory elements of gender lose their importance but a gender dimension reappears within the idea of ‹Brand You’. Third, in the new ideal discourse, women are constructed as ideal workers of the future. The article argues that there is little space within this web of discourses for an awareness of the continued inequalities experienced by women in relation to men to be voiced and that this rhetorical aporia contributes to a ‹post-feminist’ climate. (shrink)

In March 2003, President Bush declared the start of Operation Iraqi Freedom, the anticipated commencement of intensive American-led military operations in Iraq. With this declaration, the media began intense coverage of military operations from the field. For the first time, viewers were able to see images of actual events. This was due to three developments: the advancement of technology allowing immediate transmission of text and images, the actual presence of journalists identified as "embedded journalists" at military sites, and the fierce (...) competition among networks for viewers. One result of this constant coverage was significant pressure on decision makers within the television and cable news networks to decide within a matter of seconds which images to air. In particular, producers and broadcasters of competing networks experienced this pressure. Though the radio and broadcasting industry has a published code of standards, it is "general and advisory rather than specific and restrictive." Therefore, it did not address the unique time sensitive decision-making required within this new environment. Issues such as the security of soldiers, confidentiality of troop maneuvers, and the safety of the embedded journalists were critically important. Equally serious were the concerns about the impact of the immediate airing of information and violent images to the public. This research used Patrick Primeaux's ' mind-heart-sou¾ model of decision-making as its theoretical framework. The study investigated the gender and industry experience of selected professionals in a cable news network, MSNBC, to explore how ethical codes of behavior are integrated when people make decisions. Decision-making in both their professional and personal lives was examined. It is from this perspective that their professional decisions to air/not to air material from Operation Iraqi Freedom were studied. The findings on decisions about airing/not airing material from Operation Iraqi Freedom yielded both expected and unexpected results. There was no clear gender difference regarding ethical decision-making, but there was a difference when analyzed by industry experience. When the study focused on questions regarding the respondents' personal lives, the original hypothesis that there was a gender difference was validated. (shrink)