Women’s Skills and Aptitudes as Drivers of Organizational Resilience: An Italian Case Study

Abstract

The economic system has experienced heavy consequences caused by the recent pandemic. This paper investigates the interaction between the crisis and organization reaction, focusing on the female managerial role and contribution to overcoming the crisis in male-owned and managed companies. To achieve the research objectives, we used a qualitative research method based on an explorative case study. The results show that female managerial skills have fostered organizational resilience in terms of: (i) the attitude to change; (ii) the ability to promote new initiatives; and (iii) the ability to have initiated, consolidated, and managed solid formal relationships with institutional stakeholders. Our results also highlight the decisive contribution of corporate governance (even if male-oriented) in favoring the growth and autonomy of women in positions of responsibility. This contribution is evidenced by (iv) increasing delegation of roles and responsibilities in managing relationships with institutional stakeholders to women managers; and (v) recognizing women managers’ talents in terms of career progression. The originality of this work is represented by the survey that aims to determine how the female management of businesses managed and owned by men can foster the resilience of companies. On the other hand, this paper investigates how female leadership drives organizational resilience during unexpected shocks, opening an interdisciplinary viewpoint.

Examining resilience: the role of creativity-oriented high-performance work practices and role clarity

“…Similarly, the findings are in line with Vasilić et al. (2020) and Cosentino and Paoloni (2021) who showed that female managers contribute significantly toward enhancing the resilience capacity of companies. Female employees may do so comfortably, by changing attitudes, promoting new initiatives, building and nurturing formal relationships or by introducing innovating strategies.…”

The role of management control and integrated information systems for the resilience of SMEs

“…Entrepreneurial resilience and an individual’s self-efficacy support one another to affect the behavior and decision-making of an entrepreneur, particularly in turbulent times (Castro and Zermeño 2020 ; Chen et al 1998 ; Sharma and Rautela 2022 ). Also worthy of consideration are the possible influences on resilience exercised by women holding top management positions (Casprini et al 2022 ; Cosentino and Paoloni 2021 ; Torchia et al 2018 ) and company size. However, there are conflicting positions among scholars about this (Salavou et al 2004 ).…”

Research on the impact of AI application on capital chain resilience

“…Organizations can develop and improve supply chain resilience by creating a risk management culture by increasing employee risk awareness and conducting regular risk assessment exercises [43]. Female executives can achieve change, facilitate new initiatives, solidify and manage formal relationships, and promote resilience [20]. Executive competencies promote resilience by dealing with uncertainty and building relationships, such as entrepreneurial ability, charismatic leadership, transformational leadership, and employee self-efficacy can help companies get out of trouble as soon as possible, adaptive culture is positively correlated with corporate resilience [12,49,54,80].…”