Post-war Sri Lanka is heavily dependent on the promising future of the Information Technology (IT) industry to contribute considerably to the economic and social development of the country. Given the reported skill shortage and gender imbalance in the IT sector, female participation and retention is greatly advocated and promoted. In this milieu, we aim to understand what happens to female employees in male-dominant IT project teams, and the challenges and issues they face, as well as the related causes, using Kanter’s Theory of Group Proportions as the theoretical lens. Such understanding will provide a backdrop to develop ways and means of attracting and retaining females in the IT industry in Sri Lanka. Employing qualitative inquiry, we carried out in-depth interviews and focus-group discussions with 14 informants—10 female team members and four male team counterparts—from six IT companies. We identified four main challenges and issues females face in working alongside males where females strive to prove their technical and leadership capabilities, gain acceptance of the dominants in the team, overcome role entrapment and gain due recognition for their hard work. In facing these challenges females use various strategies and changes of behaviour which can ultimately lead to work pressure, strained relationships and anxiety for females. While these challenges are largely comparable to the main phenomena and experiences explained by Kanter, it appeared that gender-role stereotyping and sexist attitudes prevailing in the work setting, rather than the numerical minority status of females as mentioned by Kanter, gave rise to these situations.
Purpose Given the limited research on women in information technology (IT) sectors in emerging economies and the importance of understanding their experiences working in highly gendered IT firms, the purpose of this paper is to examine the specific gendered strategies used by women engineers to stay in gender-atypical IT firms in Sri Lanka using job embeddedness as a theoretical lens. Design/methodology/approach Data collection was done through in-depth interviews and focus group discussions on a sample of 14 women engineers employed in five leading IT firms in Sri Lanka. Findings Respondents perceived the work role expectations in the Sri Lankan IT industry as masculine. Respondents compromised their own gender identities to engage in four distinct strategies to link and fit with the prevailing work role expectations. “Using a hybrid style” and “being passive and neutral” were respondents’ link strategies, while “adopting masculine traits” and “demonstrating self-confidence” related to their fit strategies. Research limitations/implications Men and women who aspire to enter the IT sector need to be pre-prepared and educated about the characteristics of IT cultures and prevailing gender norms along with the subject knowledge. Managers of IT firms need to create positive work environments for their women employees that aid them to fit and link with their workplaces. Originality/value The study provides a deeper understanding of how women manage gender-related issues within gender-atypical IT firms in Sri Lanka and stay in their employment.
The sudden spread of Covid-19 around the world is causing significant damages to the corporate sector. Family businesses are not an exception to the crisis. During a pandemic, one of the most distinctive traits of a family business may be to react effectively to keep the business afloat. Family firms have been exposed to be better equipped to survive periods of political uncertainty and natural disasters with the courses of a mix of long-term horizon, and social and political capital. Conceptually, little is still acknowledged about how they survive and sustain during the COVID-19 pandemic, and the implications of family control on the ability of firms to overcome a pandemic are unclear. The authors explore how family businesses in the floriculture sector in Sri Lanka react and cope with this unexpected crisis, COVID-19. This study reveals how institutional theory links with macro, micro, and meso levels of interactions, and the model offers a richer understanding of the survival, resilience, and renewal process of floriculture family businesses in Sri Lanka.
As the social and environmental demands evolve, business organizations specializing in engineering are required to reconsider their gender policies and practices to retain competitive advantage. This conceptual article highlights that the movement towards sustainability could encourage organisations to achieve critical constructs of workplace gender inclusion. This article uses the Sustainable Human Resource Management (HRM) framework and Ethics of Care approach as the theoretical foundation to create a conceptual model on inclusion. The model specifically helps to understand how the assumptions and beliefs of internal organizational stakeholders contribute toward adopting care-based values to promote gender inclusivity in engineering workplaces. In conclusion, the article highlights the need for more empirical research on the Sustainable HRM approach and how it can help to foster an inclusive workplace.
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