Political Influence Behavior and Career Success.

Over the years women have increased their representation at all levels of management in banking (Wirth, 2001;Metz and Tharenou, 1999). Yet, women find banking and finance to be a particularly difficult environment for career advancement in countries such as the UK (e.g. Liff and Ward, 2001;Parker et al., 1998) and Australia (e.g. Still, 1997). For instance, in Australia, empirical evidence shows that women have a lower representation in finance in management and at executive level (Affirmative Action Agency, 1996;Hede and O'Brien, 1996) than in most other industries. Banking is part of the finance industry and women dominate the full-time Australian banking workforce (Metz and Tharenou, 1999). In addition, women are expected to continue to make up an increasing proportion of the labour force in most countries (Wirth, 2001), including in Australia (Australian Bureau of Statistics, 1999). Therefore, to best manage female talent in the current competitive environment, it is important for banks to have a contemporary understanding of the factors that are linked to women's advancement.Scholars have called for a comprehensive examination of individual and non-individual factors that may be linked to women's managerial advancement (e.g. Riger and Galligan, 1980;Rowe and Snizek, 1995). However, the author found few empirical studies that specifically examined the relative importance of individual, interpersonal, and organisational factors to women's managerial advancement in banking. For instance, in Australia, only one study appears to have examined women's managerial advancement in banks using a multivariate approach, and it focused on one small bank (McIsaac and Bordia, 1997). Other past studies in banking or in finance either have used small samples from one organisation (e.g. Lyness and Thompson, 1997;

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 83%

Individual, interpersonal, and organisational links to women’s advancement in management in banks

Metz

2003

“…There has been some research which has looked at levels of satisfaction among professional women, but relatively little is known about how satisfied professional women are with their careers (Auster, 2001), or how satisfied they are more generally (Hofstede et al , 2004). Dyke and Murphy (2006) compared definitions of success between successful men and women, who had notable achievements, and related these to satisfaction, noting that some authors (Judge and Bretz, 1994; Judge et al , 1995; Nabi, 2001) have used satisfaction with job and career progress as measures of subjective success. They found that balance was more important to women, and material success more important to men.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Career success and satisfaction: a comparative study in nine countries

Punnett¹,

Duffy

Fox

et al. 2007

PurposeThis project aims to examine levels of career and life satisfaction among successful women in nine countries in the Americas.Design/methodology/approachA structured survey and in‐depth interviews were used, and a variety of occupations, demographics, and personality characteristics assessed – 1,146 successful women from nine countries in the USA responded the survey: 105 from Argentina, 210 from Brazil, 199 from Canada, 84 from Chile, 232 from Mexico, 126 from the USA, and 190 from three countries in the West Indies (Barbados, Jamaica, SVG).FindingsResults show no differences in satisfaction based on occupation or country and most demographic variables investigated did not have a significant relationship with satisfaction. Age had a small, significant, relationship, with satisfaction increasing with age; married women were significantly more satisfied than single women. Higher scores on self efficacy and need for achievement, and a greater internal locus of control were all related to higher levels of satisfaction. The relationship between career satisfaction and general life satisfaction was stronger in Argentina and Chile that in the other countries.Originality/valueExtends understanding of professional success and satisfaction, in terms of demographic variables and personality, as well as geographically.

“…This means tenure is often used as a surrogate for managerial skills[44] with longer tenure being associated with greater managerial skills. Some studies have found a positive relationship between tenure in a firm and career attainment for managers[33, 38, 45, 46, 47].…”

Section: Hypothesesmentioning

confidence: 99%

A study of the tournament model with female managers

Hurley

Sonnenfeld

1997

Reports the findings of the first study to test the tournament model of careers with female managers. Follows the careers of 3,800 women in a large internal labour market firm. Investigates the signals of early promotions, career velocity, education, tenure and entering position. Examines the relationships between these signals and career attainment. The results do not show the strong support of the tournament model that research with men has found. Using the variables previously found in the literature to be related to career attainment for men does not explain a major proportion of the variance for women. Suggests that the tournament model may not apply to women in organizations or women may be placed in different tournaments from men. Purports that women may have certain career paths on entering an organization regardless of the tournament rounds they win or that other signals affect women’s career attainment.