Description
This book makes a significant and distinctive contribution to the literature on women in the boardroom by developing the concept of the ‘network trap’ to explain both female underrepresentation in board-level roles and also why current efforts to improve the situation are likely to be of limited value. It features extensive interviews with UK FTSE 250 board Chairs, boardroom aspirants and head-hunters, allowing for uniquely high levels of empirical rigour. The book begins by outlining the difficulties women experience in achieving board-level roles. It then investigates a range of theoretical explanations for these difficulties, and in doing so it identifies the particular potency of network-related explanations. The empirical analysis the book provides enhances our understanding and advances current debates and theorisation within the literature, as well as offering a range of practical and policy implications. Meryl Bushell PhD is Visiting Fellow, Warwick Business School, University of Warwick. She has many years of senior management experience in FTSE 100 organisations. She is an established and experienced non-executive Director and a strategic advisor to public and private sector bodies. Kim Hoque is Professor of Human Resource Management at Warwick Business School, University of Warwick, and is the Director of the Industrial Relations Research Unit. His research addresses a wide range of topics in the human resource management and equality and diversity fields. Most recently he has worked closely with the All Party Parliamentary Group for Disability on solutions to the disability employment gap. He is an Associate Editor of Human Relations. Deborah Dean is Associate Professor of Industrial Relations at the University of Warwick, Coventry, United Kingdom. Her research interests lie in equality issues in employment; contingent work in the entertainment industry; and the interrelation of legal, social, and cultural regulation of work. She has written reports for and given evidence on employment inequalities to policymakers in the European Commission and UK Parliament. Chapter 1: The ‘problem’ of women on corporate boards.- Chapter 2: Explaining the lack of women in the boardroom: social capital and networking.- Chapter 3: The role of social capital and networking in board selection processes.- Chapter 4: Human capital theory, preference theory, attribution theory and self-efficacy.- Chapter 5: Gender differences in social capital and networking.- Chapter 6: Are women less willing and able to leverage their social capital?.- Chapter 7: Discussion and conclusion.
