Is There a "Glass Cliff or a Solid Ledge for Female Appointees to the Board of Directors?

INTRODUCTION Researchers have been examining barriers and challenges for women in leadership positions from a variety of perspectives since 1979 when phrase the was first used. More recently, some researchers have found evidence of another phenomenon coined glass (Ryan & Haslam, 2005). The cliff suggests that females are more likely than males to hold or be appointed to senior positions in organizations that are in crisis. These positions are considered to be precarious, and, therefore, are associated with a greater risk of failure. Although Ryan and Haslam (2005, 2007) make a persuasive case to support their view of a cliff, empirical support for such a conclusion is not yet rich or compelling; there is simply an insufficient body of evidence available. In fact, some researchers testing for phenomenon have produced counter results (Adams, Gupta, and Leeth, 2009). In addition, concept that women are breaking through cracks in ceiling only to be placed on glass cliffs with significant barriers to success has drawn attention from popular press. These practitioner-oriented stories have given concept significant exposure, but support for such a conclusion appears to be lacking. While it seems apparent that women are seriously under-represented in executive positions around globe (1) this, in itself, does not mean there is a cliff. While suggestion of a cliff has gained some following in popular press, empirical testing and support for concept lags. There are two purpose of this study. First, this research seeks evidence of cliff using data from Canada. Much of research completed to date uses US or UK data, so results from another country will help in determining if phenomenon exists. This will be accomplished by evaluating impact of appointment of women to Canadian boards using security return performance for 25-months around board appointment. For publicly-traded companies, security returns capture market's view of company performance. Second, this study aims to extend analysis by using excess as well as raw return data for 25 months around date of board appointment. Some studies only use raw security returns; excess returns are more informative because they remove basic market movement from analysis and provide a more sensitive test for market reaction to a company-specific event. The remainder of this paper is organized as follows. Section 2 provides a review of relevant literature, while Section 3 describes methodology. Section 4 provides results, and final section discusses limitations of study, considers future research directions, and concludes paper. LITERATURE REVIEW: FROM THE GLASS CEILING TO THE GLASS CLIFF There has been a great deal of discussion about and investigation into barriers facing women as they try to climb corporate ladder and break glass (Oakley, 2000; Alimo-Metcalfe, 1995; Ragins et al., 1998; Tannen, 1994; and, Kanter, 1977). The term glass was first coined in 1979 by Katherine Lawrence and Marianne Schreiber of Hewlett-Packard. They described a situation where female managers attained a management level that they were not able to rise above, even though there seemed to be a clear path for promotion. This reality may be associated with women's perceived status as tokens (Kanter, 1977) in senior management positions, and not part of club. Limiting advancement of a qualified person within an organization creates a ceiling that may be due to some form of discrimination. For an organization with a ceiling, a visible group (women) are advanced through ranks to a certain management level, after which there is an effective limit on their prospects (Albrecht et al., 2003). This concept has become a well accepted explanation for paucity of women in upper echelons of organizations. …

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