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Journal of Business Ethics (2008) 83:1928 Springer 2008 DOI 10.1007/s10551-007-9649-0
The Expatriate Glass Ceiling: The Second Layer of Glass
Gary S. Insch Nancy McIntyre Nancy K. Napier
ABSTRACT. The corporate glass ceiling continues to be a challenge for many organizations. However, women executives may be facing a second pane of obstruction an expatriate glass ceiling that prevents them from receiving the foreign management assignments and experience that is becoming increasing critical for promotion to upper management. The responsibility to break the expatriate glass ceiling lies with both female managers and the multinational corporations that utilize expatriates. In this paper, we propose pre-assignment, on-assignment, and post-assignment strategies for breaking the expatriate glass ceiling.
KEY WORDS: expatriate glass ceiling, women executives, multinational corporations
Introduction
As more rms continue to globalize their operations, the need for managers with international experience is rising. While one of the most signicant features of the global labor market in the last half of the twentieth century has been the increased participation of women (Black et al., 1999; Caligiuri and Tung, 1999), there continues to be a striking disparity between the number of female and male managers in home country operations and, more notably, female and male expatriates. As more women enter the workforce, their failure to reach the highest management positions has become the cause for considerable research and debate both in their home countries and in the international management literature (Linehan and Scullion, 2001). In many multinational corporations (MNCs), foreign assignments are a stepping stone to higher-level management positions. While women have made strides in breaking through the glass ceiling in the
U.S. and many other developed countries, by adding the international requirement to managerial advancement, and then limiting womens opportunity for expatriate experience, corporations are adding a layer of glass, in essence a double pane of glass, to the still-existing managerial glass ceiling.
In terms of rm performance, the expatriate glass ceiling presents problems for at least three reasons and thus deserves further research attention. First, companies are facing greater challenges in lling expatriate assignments as many men are now opting out of foreign assignments due to family and dual-career concerns (Harvey, 1996; Harvey and Wiese, 1998). This rising challenge of lling expatriate slots is coupled with many MNCs need...