An Individual Differences Perspective on the Glass and Bamboo Ceilings in Australia

Abstract

Women and Confucian Asian people remain underrepresented in Australian leadership roles. Societal and social factors have been studied extensively, yet individual differences that could enhance diverse leader emergence have received less attention. Motivation to lead and leader self-efficacy are two constructs predictive of leader emergence, but their antecedents have largely been limited to stable traits and cultural values. This narrows our understanding of gender and ethnocultural disparities and restricts training programs aimed at broadening leadership diversity. Moreover, although decision-making is central to leadership, research has overlooked the role of decision-making styles in leader emergence. The antecedents commonly studied for decision-making styles also mirror those for motivation to lead and leader self-efficacy, limiting their additional explanatory value.

This thesis addressed these gaps by examining whether personal and family perfectionism, self-compassion, and problem-solving self-concept predict decision-making styles, motivation to lead, and leader self-efficacy.

One study (N = 336) investigated how these variables relate to decision-making styles, focusing on gender (Chapter 4) and ethnocultural (Chapter 5) differences. The next study (N = 930) tested how the same variables, along with decision-making styles, predict leader self-efficacy and motivation to lead, focusing on gender (Chapter 6) and ethnocultural differences (Chapter 7).

The results showed that the predictors accounted for incremental variance beyond that of personality and cognitive ability (Chapters 4-7), and beyond individualism, collectivism, leadership experience, and leadership aspiration (Chapters 6-7). Maladaptive decision-making style played a particularly prominent role as a predictor of the leader emergence factors. Gender and ethnocultural differences in the pattern of predictors were observed and discussed in the context of improving leader diversity.