Through a Glass Cliff Darkly
Evidence That the Media Visibility of Companies Moderates Their Willingness to Appoint Women to Leadership Positions in Times of Crisis
Abstract
Abstract: After breaking through the glass ceiling, women often obtain precarious or risky leadership positions in crisis-ridden organizations (the glass cliff; Ryan & Haslam, 2005). Due to women’s minority status, their appointment in a crisis can signal important changes to organizational stakeholders indicating the use of new strategies for overcoming the crisis (signaling theory; Spence, 1973). Our study examines whether the media visibility of organizations moderates these signaling effects in ways that either strengthen or weaken glass cliffs. We augmented the archival dataset used by Haslam et al. (2010) in which the glass cliff phenomenon was discovered by including data on the media coverage that the Financial Times Stock Exchange index 100 companies received between 2001 and 2005. Our analysis shows that glass cliffs were more pronounced in companies with low media visibility. This suggests that the media visibility of organizations can contribute to increased accountability regarding their personnel decisions in ways that expose women leaders to less discrimination.
Zusammenfassung: Nachdem sie die gläserne Decke durchbrechen, erreichen Frauen oft unsichere und riskante Führungspositionen in krisengeschüttelten Organisationen (gläserne Klippe oder Glass Cliffs; Ryan & Haslam, 2005). Nach der Signaltheorie (Signaling Theory; Spence, 1973) kann die Ernennung von Frauen in Krisenzeiten aufgrund ihrer Seltenheit Stakeholdern grundlegende Veränderungen bezüglich kritischer Probleme ankündigen. Wir untersuchen die Möglickeit, dass die mediale Sichtbarkeit von Organisationen Glass Cliffs moderiert – also verstärkt oder abschwächt. Können medial sichtbare Unternehmen wirksamere Signale senden oder stehen sie stärker unter Beobachtung? Hierfür wurde der Archivdatensatz von Haslam et al. (2010) um die Medienberichterstattung erweitert, die FTSE100-Unternehmen zwischen den Jahren 2001 und 2005 erhielten. Unsere Analyse zeigt, dass Glass Cliffs bei Unternehmen mit geringer medialer Sichtbarkeit stärker ausgeprägt waren. Dieser Befund zeigt, dass die medialer Sichtbarkeit von Organisationen zu einer höheren Verantwortlichkeit bei Personalentscheidungen beitragen kann, so dass weibliche Führungskräfte weniger diskriminiert werden.
Despite the joint efforts of politics and business, relatively little progress has been made in increasing the percentage of women in decision-making positions in organizations (Vinnicombe et al., 2020). Although the percentage of female directors of UK companies in the Financial Times Stock Exchange index 100 (FTSE 100) has risen from 7.2 % in 2002 to 34.5 % in 2020, it is still the case that only 9.7 % of executive directors and 5 % of chief executive officers (CEOs) are female (Singh & Vinnicombe, 2003; Vinnicombe et al., 2020). Progress has been observed not only in regard to female representation on boards but also in the way women in general (Hentschel et al., 2019) and women in leadership more specifically (Hartl et al., 2013) are perceived.
To accelerate this change, the EU council has publicly declared its support for efforts to increase the number of women in organizational and political leadership positions (European Commission, 2015). Yet by focusing on numbers of appointments only, the differences in the conditions under which men and women attain these positions are often ignored. This is potentially a further source of gender inequality at work since research has shown that women are more likely than men to be appointed to leadership positions in times of organizational crisis, a phenomenon Ryan and Haslam (2005) refer to as the glass cliff. As a consequence, women are not only more likely to fail in these leadership positions, but failure is more likely to be attributed to them as leaders (see also Kulich et al., 2007; Meindl, 1995).
Over the course of the past decade, the glass cliff phenomenon has been investigated in a large number of archival and experimental studies in a range of different contexts (for a review, see Ryan et al., 2016). This research generated supportive as well as contradictory results, and as a consequence has raised questions about the contextual factors that might have a bearing on the emergence of glass cliffs (Morgenroth et al., 2020). In the present paper, we examine one specific factor that may determine the emergence of glass cliffs, namely, the media visibility of organizations. Several processes have been suggested that could lead organizational media visibility to have a moderating effect on glass cliff appointments. However, as we discuss in more detail here, the media visibility of organizations has the potential both to increase and to reduce the likelihood of glass cliff appointments.
Theoretical Background
Notwithstanding the fact that the mean effect size associated with glass cliffs tends to be quite small, it has proved to be a robust phenomenon across both archival and experimental studies (Morgenroth et al., 2020; Ryan et al., 2016). At the same time, however, several studies have reported contradictory results and have raised questions about contextual factors that might increase or else attenuate the likelihood of glass cliffs materializing. For instance, in the wake of a study by Adams et al. (2009) that did not find the glass cliff in a UK sample, Haslam et al. (2010) suggested that the way performance is measured might be a moderator of the glass cliff. Supporting this hypothesis, Haslam et al. (2010) reported the findings of a 5-year archival study, which showed that the glass cliff was apparent for subjective measures of performance (e. g., Tobin’s Q) but not objective ones. A decade of glass cliff research has suggested that rather than being universal, the phenomenon is highly context-dependent (Ryan et al., 2016). Accordingly, Ryan et al. (2016) have argued that investigating the contextual factors that bear upon the likelihood of women being appointed to leadership roles in times of organizational crisis should be a primary research objective.
Addressing this goal, in the present paper we investigate organizational media visibility as one factor that might contribute to the emergence of glass cliffs. Organizational media visibility can be defined as the attention an organization receives from media outlets, often measured as the volume of stories dedicated to a specific organization (Kiousis, 2004). In the case of a general audience, media coverage is able to not only increase the attention paid to an organization but also shape attitudes toward it (Rindova et al., 2007) and an audience’s behavior in relation to the organization’s services (Wang, 2007). Importantly too, organizational media visibility can increase the amount of interest paid to the organization by stakeholders and thereby the level of external pressure placed upon it (Dawkins & Fraas, 2011). For instance, highly visible organizations have been found to be more likely to yield to external pressure to comply with affirmative-action requirements and to adopt shareholder-oriented value policies (Edelman, 1992).
The Moderating Role of Organizational Media Visibility
We argue that organizational media visibility is likely to influence board appointment decisions, especially against the backdrop of increasing media and political interest in gender diversity (Weber Shandwick, 2015). However, the precise nature of the influence of organizational media visibility on the emergence of glass cliffs remains somewhat unclear. In the following sections, we use signaling theory (Connelly et al., 2011; Spence, 1973) to derive three alternative hypotheses about the influence of organizational media visibility on glass cliffs appointments.
Signaling theory postulates that in order to reduce information asymmetry, organizations rely on signals to convey this information to important stakeholders (Connelly et al., 2011; Spence, 1973). On the one hand, research on the glass cliff suggests that women can be appointed in times of organizational crises to signal the organization’s willingness to undergo fundamental changes in strategy and management that will revive its fortunes (signaling change; Kulich et al., 2015; Ryan & Haslam, 2007). On the other hand, the appointment of women in times of organizational crisis is increasingly framed as a form of discrimination. Albeit unintentionally, when organizations appoint women to leadership roles they may therefore risk being perceived as failing to support gender diversity (accountability perspective). The research model is presented in Figure 1.
From a signaling change perspective, media visibility might thus make glass cliff appointments more likely (Hypothesis 1). Similarly, there is evidence for the notion that women may be appointed in times of crisis because they flag a change of strategic direction (Lee & James, 2007). On the receiving end of this symbolic communication are the organization’s stakeholders, such as business partners, costumers, investors, and shareholders. According to screening theory, these stakeholders observe and strongly react to board appointments (Lee & James, 2007; Weiss, 1995). Organizations may therefore strategically use this means of communication in times of uncertainty in the following way. Due to women’s non-prototypicality as leaders (Bruckmüller & Branscombe, 2010; Kulich et al., 2015) and their association with change (Brown et al., 2011), their appointment to leadership positions in times of organizational crisis is a way of signaling a profound strategic change to investors and stakeholders. At the same time, organizational media visibility increases the likelihood that this signal is widely transmitted and hence easily detected by shareholders (Capriotti, 2009). By this logic, being visible in the media and hence to the public would make the appointment of women an even more effective means of signaling change to stakeholders. In short, this leads to the prediction that organizational media visibility will increase the likelihood of glass cliff appointments.
Alternatively, from an accountability perspective, media visibility might make glass cliff appointments less likely (Hypothesis 2). Highly visible organizations are more likely to be held accountable for their actions (Edelman, 1992; Islam & Deegan, 2010) in ways that increase their sensitivity to the importance of media signals and their potentially negative consequences (Dawkins & Fraas, 2011). For instance, it has been suggested that organizations are reluctant to dismiss female CEOs for fear of attracting negative attention (Hill et al., 2015), and indeed this has been found to be especially true for organizations that are highly visible (Elsaid & Ursel, 2018). The dismissal of female CEOs and the appointment of female board members in times of crisis could therefore be perceived as signaling a lack of care on the part of the organization for its minority leaders – a signal that highly visible organizations might prefer to avoid in order to maintain positive shareholder relations and avoid reputational damage. Evidence that aligns with this notion stems from a study of US federal regulatory agencies. In this study, a higher percentage of women in leadership positions was found in organizations that faced a crisis, but only when organizations had low-to-moderate visibility (Smith & Monaghan, 2013). Complementing this argument, when organizations receive less scrutiny from public attention (Baker et al., 1999) their decision-makers may feel they are shielded from criticism for discriminatory appointments and hence be more likely to appoint women to boards of crisis-ridden organizations and thereby shield men from such risks (glass cushion; Ryan et al., 2016).
Finally, there is a third, logical alternative hypothesis: Visibility might have no impact on the likelihood of glass cliffs — either because neither of the two aforementioned processes have a bearing on the appointment of women to leadership positions in crisis or because they cancel each other out (Hypothesis 3). The goal of the present research is therefore to investigate which of these alternative hypotheses finds most support, going back to the data that were first used to bring the glass cliff to light.
Method
Sample
Hypotheses were tested using Ryan and Haslam’s (2005) original dataset, as augmented by Haslam et al. (2010) through the addition of various performance metrics (e. g., return on investment, Tobin’s Q, which we will describe in greater detail later). The sample consisted of the 100 biggest British companies listed in the FTSE 100 during the period 2001 – 2005. The dataset included information about organizational performance as well as the percentage of women on the company board and was originally composed using the Female FTSE Index (e. g., Singh & Vinnicombe, 2003b) and the Thompson ONE Banker database (for more information, see Haslam et al., 2010). On average, complete information on performance and appointments was available for 92 companies per year (ranging from 88 companies in 2004 to 96 companies in 2003). As the composition of the FTSE 100 may change every year in accordance with levels of turnover, 126 companies were listed in the FTSE 100 in at least 1 year. This dataset was then augmented by adding information on organizational media visibility.
Measures
Organizational Performance (Tobin’s Q)
Tobin’s Q is a measure of stock-based performance and compares the market value of a stock-listed company with the replacement value of a company’s assets, thereby giving information on an organization’s efficiency in using its assets. Haslam et al. (2010, p. 489) calculated Tobin’s Q “as the ratio of the sum of market capitalization and book value of debt to the book value of total.” Organizations are considered successful if the valuation is greater than the book value of assets (Haslam et al., 2010). In contrast to the return on investment, Tobin’s Q captures investors’ perceptions of organizations and more future-directed expectations.
Percentage of Women on Boards
The dataset reported by Haslam et al. (2010) contained information about the percentage of female board members, calculated from the number of female full board members and the total number of full board members.
Organizational Media Visibility
We operationalized organizational media visibility as the number of times an organization was mentioned in newspaper articles in each year (Dawkins & Fraas, 2011) and specifically in the headlines of newspaper articles. This information was derived from the LexisNexis database (www.lexisnexis.com) by entering the name of the company as the search string and counting the number of results.
Results
Analytical Procedure
Using a median split, organizations were grouped into low media visibility and high media visibility for each year. Following the procedure used by Haslam et al. (2010), cross-lagged correlations were conducted separately for both groups, relating organizational performance in 1 year to the percentage of female board members in the following year. Summary statistics relating to organizational performance, female representation on boards, and visibility for each year of the sample are presented in Table 1.
In Tables 2 – 5, values above the diagonal relate to the potential impact of Tobin’s Q on the subsequent percentage of women on boards and are therefore most relevant to Hypotheses 1 – 3. Negative correlations indicate that poor performance in 1 year was associated with a high percentage of women on company boards in a following year – in a manner indicative of glass cliff appointments being made. By contrast, positive correlations indicate that successful performance in 1 year was associated with a high percentage of women on company boards in the following year. One-sample t tests examined whether, as a group, these correlations were significantly below zero (indicating glass cliff appointments) or above zero. To gain insight into the moderating effect of media visibility, this analysis was conducted separately for organizations with low and high visibility, as well as for the two different media visibility measures (newspaper articles and headlines). Tables 2 – 5 present the correlation of the percentage of women on boards and Tobin’s Q for organizations with low (Tables 2 and 4) versus high media visibility (Tables 3 and 5), thereby differentiating between media visibility as captured by references in newspaper articles (Tables 2 and 3) and in headlines (Tables 4 and 5).
From the analysis of mean correlations, it was apparent that the relationship between organizational performance and the percentage of women on boards differed for organizations with low and high media visibility. Mean correlations for organizations that were less visible both in newspaper articles, M = −0.197, SD = 0.088, t(9) = 7.08, p < .001, d = 0.09, and in headlines, M = −0.201, SD = 0.077, t(9) = 8.28, p < .001, d = 0.08, were significantly below zero. In line with Hypothesis 2, this indicates that organizations that were less visible in the media had a higher female percentage on boards after they had performed poorly. However, this was not the case for organizations that were highly visible in newspaper articles, M = −0.028, SD = 0.102, t(9) = 0.87, p = .406. Here, the mean correlation did not significantly differ from zero. Indeed, the mean correlations for organizations that were highly visible in headlines were significantly above zero, M = 0.092, SD = 0.106, t(9) = 2.75, p = .022, d = 0.11. This suggests that organizations that were highly visible in the media had a lower percentage of women on their boards after they had performed poorly
In a next step, we tested whether these mean correlations differed when combining correlational values for both media visibility measures. This difference was indeed significant, t(3.483) = 7.228, p < .001, d = 0.10. In line with Hypothesis 2, this suggests that in the face of poor performance organizations had a higher percentage of women on their boards when they had low (vs. high) media visibility.
Discussion
The present analysis showed that the emergence of glass cliffs in organizations in the United Kingdom between 2001 and 2005 was moderated not only by the type of performance measure (as previously noted by Haslam et al., 2010) but also by organizational media visibility. More specifically, whereas there was clear evidence of a negative association between organizational performance and the subsequent percentage of women appointed to the boards of organizations when those organizations had low(er) media visibility, there was no such evidence for organizations that had higher media visibility. Consistent with the logic of our elaboration of Hypothesis 2 in the Introduction, this suggests that media visibility moderates glass cliff appointments such that these are less likely to be made when an organization is accountable for its actions (and discriminatory behavior) by virtue of its visibility.
At the same time, the findings provide little or no support for the suggestion that female appointments in times of organizational crisis serve primarily as a signal of upcoming change to important stakeholders (as suggested by Hypothesis 1). This finding contradicts previous glass cliff research that argued for a signaling value of women’s appointments (Bruckmüller & Branscombe, 2010; Kulich et al., 2015). Thus, it appears that other processes are at work beyond the intention to signal change. Similar conclusions were drawn by Kulich and colleagues (2018), who argue that the signaling functions of women’s appointments to leadership positions are often ambiguous.
Nevertheless, as the accountability perspective (Hypothesis 2) suggests, one possibility is that organizations that are highly visible in the media avoid appointing women to leadership positions in times of poor organizational performance because they are sensitive to the potential for these to be interpreted as signaling a lack of care for minority leaders. In the same vein, because organizations that are less visible in the media are under less scrutiny, decision-makers in these organizations might feel more free to follow their prejudices by appointing women to precarious leadership positions in times of crisis (Morgenroth et al., 2020).
The present study makes two contributions to our understanding of the glass cliff phenomenon. First, we introduce the moderator of organizational media visibility and suggest two ways in which this might impact on glass cliff appointments: by signaling change or by increasing accountability. As previously noted, because female appointments have the potential to signal change due to women’s non-prototypicality as leaders (Ryan et al., 2016; Rosette, Koval, Ma, & Livingston, 2016), signaling theory would suggest that media visibility of organizations should increase the likelihood of glass cliff appointments. There was, however, little support for this hypothesis in the archival data that we examined.
Second, we explored a mechanism that has been relatively underexplored in the glass cliff literature – accountability. This suggests that with increasing public debate and media coverage on gender inequality in boardrooms (Terjesen et al., 2009), companies that are highly visible in the media risk negative attention and reputational damage if they appoint women to their boards when the company is in crisis. Consistent with this hypothesis, our results indicated that heightened media visibility reduced the likelihood of organizations making glass cliff appointments.
Limitations and Future Research
A primary goal for future research should be to examine whether this pattern of results can be replicated in other contexts and with more recent samples, especially given the recent rise in the representation of women in decision-making positions. An additional limitation of this study is its focus on measuring organizational visibility only through mentions in newspapers. Over the past 20 years, the Internet has become a source of information as widely available as traditional printed media. While only 39 % of UK households had Internet connections in 2001, this number rose to 96 % in 2020 (Office for National Statistics, 2021). Thus, visibility in social media can be considered an important addition when discussing an organization’s public image. It should be noted, however, that social media visibility and traditional organizational media visibility are positively related (Yang & Kent, 2014). Nonetheless, an additional investigation of the role of social media visibility, especially for glass cliffs, is advisable. In contrast to print media, social networks offer the possibility to analyze users’ reactions to the announcement of female appointments in times of crisis and success as well as more active statements of the appointees.
It is also important to note that the present study addresses the glass cliff only regarding the dimension of gender and thereby does not allude to the role of ethnicity and its intersection with gender. Whereas the glass cliff has also been investigated for other minorities (for a meta-analysis, see Morgenroth et al., 2020), possible amplifying effects of intersectionality on the signaling mechanism need further scientific attention. Additional studies could therefore explore the content of press releases and media reports. While gender, ethnicity, and ability can be derived from names and pictures (up to a certain degree), companies might discuss board members’ sexual orientation, religion, social background, or level of qualification in their communications to emphasize certain dimensions of diversity. This would then inform perceptions of person–position fit as postulated in the think crisis – think female rationale (Ryan et al., 2011).
While the time-lagged approach allows for cautious causal interpretation (Granger, 1969, 1988), the data here are still correlational and therefore we are not in a position to draw causal inferences. It is therefore advisable to replicate the results in a more extensive sample that enables longitudinal analyses. Moreover, the analytical procedure included data from the same companies across all years. While this is common practice, effects can be exaggerated due to observations being not independent. To address both these issues, it will therefore be important to conduct experimental research to show that accountability has a causal role to play in glass cliff appointments (e. g., following the methods used by Haslam & Ryan, 2008). Importantly too, this would provide an opportunity to clarify the specific processes that are at play here. In particular, one possibility (discussed by Ryan & Haslam, 2007) is that ingroup favoritism leads organizations to set aside optimal leadership positions for male candidates (i. e., members of their gender ingroup) while exposing female candidates (i. e., members of their gender outgroup) to precarious and risky positions, but that this is tempered when media visibility makes organizations accountable for their actions. Were this to be confirmed, not only would it give us greater confidence in the reliability and validity of the present findings but it would also serve to clarify their practical implications.
Taking an alternative perspective, we may find circumstances in less visible organizations that discriminate against gender, ethnic, or sexual minorities, thereby making glass cliff appointments more likely. An alternative explanation for the appointment of women in crisis is the association of women with characteristics that are deemed desirable in times of declining performance such as being empathetic and communicative (think crisis – think female; for reviews, see Morgenroth et al., 2020; Ryan et al., 2016). However, whether these stereotypes are more pronounced in less visible than in highly visible organizations has not been investigated so far.
Practical Implications and Conclusion
If the sense of organizational accountability could be raised by media visibility, as present findings suggest, governments and societal initiatives could play a crucial role in requiring transparent information on female representation on company boards (i. e., diversity policies in the form of disclosure rules; Kirsch, 2018; Sojo et al., 2016) or providing such information (e. g., 50/50 Women on Boards, 2021). The resulting normative pressure is likely accompanied by increased media coverage (Teigen & Wängnerud, 2009; Terjesen et al., 2009) that might shed light on the performance-related context of female board appointments. At an organizational level, Heilman (2012) proposes several interventions to increase individual accountability of decision-makers. If managers are asked to justify personnel decisions, they are more motivated to make accurate decisions based on complex judgment strategies. In addition, diversity training may raise the individual sense of awareness and accountability of those appointing women to boards – for instance, by making use of social dilemmas (Krings et al., 2009). However, given the enduring appeal of ingroup favoritism, it seems likely that organizations will need to do more than merely present male decision-makers with examples of successful female leaders if they want them to update their implicit gender stereotypes (van Quaquebeke & Schmerling, 2010). These interventions, however, are only effective in a climate of inclusion and with well-established organizational norms that work against (gender) bias and promote equal opportunities (Nishii, 2013).
For all these reasons, further investigation of the processes that underlie glass cliff appointments is important, because the present findings speak to a nuanced phenomenon that is highly sensitive to the meanings that the appointment of women to leadership positions assume in different contexts. Understanding those meanings and the ways in which decision-makers – both inside and outside organizations – respond to them is therefore necessary not only to eliminate glass cliffs but to understand when and why people might be motivated to create them.
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