Glass Cliff

Glass cliff is a term that describes a type of discrimination within the workplace. It refers to the likelihood of women being appointed to a leadership role that has a great risk of failure, thus ruining reputation and future career advancements. The glass cliff is just one of the many other obstacles that women have to face after breaking through the glass ceiling.

Glass cliffs primarily affect women trying to climb the corporate ladder.

Introduction and Origin

In 2005, psychology professors Michelle Ryan and Alexander Haslam conducted a study which compared “share price performance of FTSE 100 companies on the London Stock Exchange both immediately before and after the appointment of a male or female board member” They noticed that once females are able to overcome the struggles of the ‘Glass Ceiling’, they will encounter the ‘Glass Cliff,’ as they are ‘rewarded’ with positions that have a high risk of failure.

Ryan and Haslam’s analysis showed a significant correlation between performance (measured with share prices) and the amount of women in leadership positions. It was concluded that the higher percentage of women in the workforce, the worse the company does.

Not Just Women

Even though this term usually relates to the inequalities of women versus men in leadership positions, it has also been used to describe the discrimination that a minority may face in leadership positions. People of colour are sometimes strategically put in leadership roles that have higher stakes, then are promptly fired as the project or business worsens.Generally, fortune 500 companies like to replace these ‘incompetent’ women or minorities in leadership, with white males to save the establishment.

Identifying the problem

Stereotypes

It is not clear whether people tend to pick women for leadership roles that have high risks of failing because they feel like it is time for a change, or if women put themselves out in risky positions to prove themselves capable of handling crisis situations.

One theory by Kristin Anderson, a psychology professor at the University of Houston, suggests that women are better fit to be scapegoats. Anderson explains, “organizational leadership might believe that putting women in high risk positions is a win-win strategy: If a woman succeeds after being placed in a difficult position, then the organization is better off; and if she fails, the woman can be blamed and the prior practice of appointing men can be justified and resurrected. At the same time, the organization can present itself as egalitarian and progressive.”

Ali Cook and Christy Glass of Utah State University theorize that the reasoning behind minorities taking glass cliff positions are due to the likelihood of them ever being offered another job advancement opportunity. Cook and Glass also found that the terms served in the position are generally shorter for females or minorities compared to that of a male, caucasian counterpart.

There is clearly still a lot more research and investigation to be done to identify the causes of the glass cliff.

Think Manager- Think Male

Think Manager Think Male is a phrase coined by Virginia Schein in 1973, after she conducted a study working with the association of descriptive words. There was a list of words such as ‘creative’ or ‘emotionally stable’ and the study asked participants to identify whether the words made them think of males, females, or successful middle managers. Out of the 92 descriptors in their developed Descriptive Index, 60 of them were perceived as successful middle male managerial and manly words, whereas only eight of them were shared between women and managers. There was a follow-up study that reversed the questions, asking about successful female middle managers. The same associations seemed to occur.

Think Crisis - Think Female

Another phenomenon that was observed was that people prefered choosing females for leadership positions of companies in crisis. Part three of Haslam and Ryan’s three-part study tried to identify why women were seen as fitting for crisis situations. Results displayed that people thought that more ‘feminine’ traits were needed to manage workers during a crisis situation.

Things to consider

A study run by Susanne Bruckmuller, a research associate at University of Erlangen-Nuremberg, and Nyla Branscome, a psychology professor at University of Kansas, showed that the history of the company makes an impact on whether or not there will be a glass cliff. When participants of their study saw a strong male lead in the history of a company, if the company was seen to be in a crisis, they would select a female as a future leader of the hypothetical company. However, when the roles were reversed, the glass cliff seemed to disappear. Female-led companies with a strong line of other former female leaders that were now facing a crisis had no preference to a future male or female leader.