Hitting the Wall: How Women Executives Develop Resilience from Resources (or Resourcing and Resilience among Women Executives)

Observations Women who ascend to the top of their organizations have had one or more defining crises in which they seriously considered leaving the company and/or paid work if they can afford to do so. Many referred to these crises as “hitting the wall.” The nature and source of their crises vary widely, but often represent a combination of personal and organizational challenges resulting in a feeling that they can no longer “tough it out” without some significant adjustment to the conditions of their personal and/or professional lives. The crises appear to vary by race, tenure level, and culture, though I have not yet collected systematic data to identify patterns. The women who persist and succeed have been resourceful. They create and build on a wide variety of resources (organizational, personal, social, professional, familial, economic), some of which they didn’t know they could access until their crises.

Context Global construction and engineering company Consultant and access Winner of Catalyst Award in 2009 Fortune 100 Best Places to Work

Research Questions Are there identifiable patterns in personal and organizational conditions that combine to create these defining moments for women? Do patterns of experience vary across culture? Across race? Do these experiences differ for women who work in technical fields as compared to those who occupy managerial roles? What is the universe of resources women draw on to cope with their experiences? –How do these vary across culture? –How does the combination of resources available to women (e.g., local extended family, partner who shares dependent care, meaningful work, identification with organization or occupation, promise of mobility, sufficient salary to pay for help at home, role models, corporate leave policy; networks) factor into their capacity and decision to persist through their crises as compared to those in comparable jobs who leave? –Which resources are constructed by organization; which are personal or cultural? –What predicts when “conditions” are translated into resources?

Questions for Group Is this sufficiently different than existing gender work? Neighboring theories/topics? Cross culture within organization or across companies? Methods – survey, focus groups, interviews Bother?

The Nature of Identity Contradictions: Not all Tempered Radicals are Equal Observations Lots of research in institutional theory on tensions and contradiction as source or place of change – multiple logics converge in institutional space and this space is generative Tempered radicals embody some of these tensions – ambivalence and dual identity as defining qualities My work has looked at deviance as basis of marginality – ambivalence between dominant institutional identity and one’s own social identity –So conformity as basis of power and legitimacy; authenticity as basis of potential marginality (and change) But it could be reversed: Organizational identity could be basis of legitimacy within organization but not basis of wider social legitimacy –MBAs in education – deviance as basis of power, resources, legitimacy –Not comparable to environmentalists in corporations

Questions Assymetries in identity tensions: What is and isn’t common experience? Tactics? Conformity pressures? Other questions? How to situate this?