Abstract:

In uncertain times, organisations can face a range of crises, including financial jeopardy, declining performance, and poor public relations, which can lead to reputational damage. Women’s appointment to leadership roles during organisational crisis is commonly interpreted through the Glass Cliff thesis, which posits that women are disproportionately selected for precarious positions due to structural marginalisation. While this perspective highlights gendered inequality, it under-theorises how board-level decision-makers themselves interpret and justify crisis appointments. Furthermore, appointing women in crisis-ridden contexts can lead to dire consequences for the women concerned; therefore, existing literature identifies such crisis leadership as ‘crisis scapegoating’.

Drawing on 37 semi-structured interviews with directors of large UK-listed firms, this study re-examines the motivations underpinning women’s leadership selection during periods of organisational turbulence. The findings reveal that crisis appointments are shaped by overlapping logics rather than a singular discriminatory mechanism. Boards frame such decisions as pragmatic responses to breakdown, draw upon women’s prior turnaround reputations, and mobilise gendered assumptions about relational and trust-restoring leadership competencies. We conceptualise this pattern as crisis-contingent gender legitimacy: a context-dependent expansion of women’s leadership legitimacy under instability, when relational repair and symbolic renewal are prioritised over prototypical agentic leadership traits.

By integrating Glass Cliff scholarship with role congruity theory and institutional signalling perspectives, this study advances a more nuanced account of gendered leadership selection. It demonstrates how structural inequality, recognition of contextual competence, and stereotype-based expectations operate simultaneously within board-level sensemaking. Crisis may create opportunities for women’s advancement, yet those opportunities remain conditional, revealing the dynamic interplay between agency and gendered institutional logics.

The study also makes a key contribution to practice and policymaking. Moving away from conceptualising women leaders as groups in need of empowerment, women can be seen as agents of change, leading to an empowered, empirically sound perspective on the pattern observed. This alternative conceptualisation of women’s role as change agents can make a significant contribution to industry practices in board composition and to policymaking.

Please choose your submission type: Developmental Paper

Primary Track: Gender in Management

Keywords: Gender diversity and inclusion policies and practices

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Maureen Meadows