Do White Leaders "Work Well Under Pressure" While Black Leaders Do Not? Cultural Identity and Empowerment

• In Event: 64.070 - Scholars Disrupting Higher Education Research Status Quo in Indonesia, Myanmar, Rwanda, and the United Kingdom

Abstract

This paper contributes to the literature on leadership and identity by examining how race, gender and class may confer disadvantage or bestow privilege in accessing leadership positions and enacting the role of leader.

The dominant paradigm of leadership theory privileging Western, white male identity and behaviour is reflected in practice. Acker (2006) observes that organisational hierarchies are usually racialised, classed and gendered, particularly at the top:

Top hierarchical class positions are almost always occupied by white men in the United States and European countries. This is particularly true in large and influential organisations... (p.445).

Drawing on the authentic leadership approach we ask what the implications of authenticity are for non-typical leaders including Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic (BAME) leaders. What are the implications for shared leadership in the context of power dynamics that are inherent in cross-identity group relationships?

The research design applied Grounded Theory to develop the methodological and conceptual framework for the study. The author’s autobiographical account of her leadership experiences became the basis and reasoning for the research. The research design interchanges with the blurring of definition for autobiography and auto-ethnography. I interviewed 130 diverse women leaders in public and private sector organisations in the UK to gather their reflections on how they defined leadership, how their identities as leaders had developed and their experiences of enacting leadership.

Findings showed that the BME women experienced notably more challenges and difficulties in their role as leaders, and that they saw their ethnicity as having a clear bearing on their identities, their perception of leadership, and their experience as leaders, Among the white women, barriers were faced in respect of social class and gender, and struggle was evident in understanding the issues BME leaders face in organizations.

While white women academics have written extensively on women’s position in the labour market and within the gender division of labour, this has been primarily from the position of disadvantage in relation to patriarchal power. Ethnic minority women are rarely included within these analyses and when they are, the analysis tends to focus on the ‘double disadvantage’ of sexism and racism, such as the ‘concrete ceiling’ facing black female managers.

There is a lack of research that advances our understanding of BME women’s experiences in leadership positions. Reviews at the intersection of leadership and diversity, such as Powell (2012), do not directly challenge assumptions of ethno-racial homogeneity in women, and implications for leadership. Many of the common stereotypes of Blacks are transferred into leadership perceptions held of this group.

Author

• Victoria Showunmi, UCL Institute of Education, London