Realist Evaluation Of Leadership Development For Women: A Systemic Thinking Approach

The Role of Women in Corporate Sectors of Australia

Discuss about the Realist Evaluation of Leadership Development.

Systemic thinking may be defined as the analytical study of a particular disciple within a system that examines the different connections and the linkages among its different components that make up the system. This study provides a systematic approach in understanding, evaluation and discussing about the design and construction of the components of an organization. An organization is in turn a complex composition of a large number of interconnected systems comprising human and non human compositions that need to work in harmony with each other. This will ensure the whole organization to function successfully. Professor Forrester was the first person who came up with the concept of systemic thinking where he has described the systemic thinking as the procedure which has allowed people in understanding the different components of the social systems and how they are linked with each other (Hester and Adams 2014). This in turn helps such people in making alterations in the system to attain the better result and maintain sustainability. The systemic thinking is quite different from the traditional thinking approach. Traditional thinking approach mainly depends on the separation of the individual components of the social system and analyses each of the broken parts separately to alter any if needed. However system thinking is different in the sense as it focuses its analysis about how each of the components of a social system being intricately associated and interacts with other components in the system (Segatto et al. 2013). Therefore unlike traditional thinking which relies on breaking components and studying the isolated components, systemic thinking depends on the studying how interactions among the components work in order to handle a particular issue. Often this has found to yield conclusions which are much effective than those provided by traditional thinking especially in case of complex dynamic processes (Kwamie, VanDijk and Agyepong 2014).

The essay will mainly portray the logical explanation about how systemic thinking can be included in the modern day corporate management to develop ways which will help in solving different sustainability challenges. In order to do so, the main complex topic that will be chosen is the appointments of women in higher executive roles in corporate of Australia. It will show how systemic thinking when applied will help in dissecting the important roles of higher executives and how involvement of women in such positions will help to meet better results for the organization.

Empowerment of Women

With the increasing trend of gender equality, women have crossed many barriers of culture, traditions, mental backlogs, stigmas and many others and had been able to establish themselves in same position with the males in the society. It has been seen in several instances where a male and a female had engaged themselves in successful partnerships while maintain household chores and had been successful in harmonious living on personal front (Paxton and Hughes 2016). However, similar such scenario is not visible in the corporate sectors of Australian firms. Studies reveal that in numbers of women gradually decrease when an individual studies this number in ever ranks of an organization. Very few numbers of women are found to be present in the higher ranks and their number is comparatively very less than the males (Morley 2014). This situation raises a number of questions. A number of doubts here arise like about the belief of the society on the credibility of women in corporate sectors, different traditional constraints that work on women’ liberty, a women’s own priority and liking of personal and family matters over corporate sectors and many others.

Recently, governments of every nation are trying their best to introduce the concept of empowerment of women to attain stability in each and every prospect of the nation. The nations explain empowerment of women as the attempt to develop a multidimensional social process that had helped women to gain control over their own lives (Sweden 2014). By this process, they had mainly tried to foster power in people which can be used in their own lives and also in communities, societies, organizations, acting on important issues and others. They have mainly portrayed the importance of dealing with women’s continued disadvantage to that of men and that is clearly reflected in different economic, socio cultural an different political spheres. This empowerment helps them to reach a concept of gender equality. This gives her a chance of accessing opportunities and resources that will provide her large number of options she can pursue both at home and the organization where she may work for (Bacha 2014). This has resulted in UN suggesting that there are proven synergies between women empowerment and social, economic and environmental sustainability.

Inclusion of women in corporate sectors of Australia have already shown that the gross domestic product of Australia have increased than what was there before the concept of women empowerment came into being. However, it had been surprising to find that the higher positions in most of the renowned corporate sectors of Australia have very few females with a larger number of male executives enjoying the positions. As a result, on critically conducting the systemic thinking procedure and researching the interconnections that women share with each and every component of the organization and with different aspects of society, much important information came into the views (Ibarra, Ely and Kolb 2013). Although the government and also different organizations are promoting the concept of women empowerment, but efforts are found to be half-hearted. On thorough analysis, it was found that not all had a clear concept of the differences between men and women as the concepts are poorly understood. Many harbor the idea that women and men have different neurobiology and cultural training and therefore their behaviors are programmed, culturally influenced and hardwired in brains (Grover 2015). Therefore even when a woman exhibits a proper professional style, approach, communication, leadership values, decision making and positive energy, they are not properly valued and respected. This is mainly due to preconceived notion of the society. Often there is also clashes of women priorities and styles with dominant cultures that demean the moral values of women.

Inclusion of Women in Corporate Sectors: A Systemic Thinking Approach

Moreover many corporate also do not value the leadership style of women which contains of empathy, emotional cue taking and others as they believe them to be weakening attributes to achieve the mission of the corporate sector. Many corporate also do not prefer the concept of whole self authenticity that a woman usually provides in her workplace. Most researches show that women are very much comfortable portraying authenticity and transparency in their workplace but many corporate usually led by male employers do not prefer such attributes in higher officials and believe such transparency is always not effective in leaderships (Cook and Glass 2014).

Moreover it is also believed by a large number of corporate heads that women have large pressures on them as they are the prime care givers of their children and family. They believe as they laws remain in pressure in managing more than one domain in their life; their dedication towards work gets divided. Therefore corporate believes that women can never priorities work more than male and therefore they believe in order to have more productivity, males are more helpful (Mulcahy and Linhem 2014). This is one explanation which can provide a background of the depth of women in the higher executive ranks.

Moreover there is another theory which states that women mainly visualizes their work is as one part of a pie and that is they are not ready to dedicate themselves fully to work. This study also says that men are mostly dedicated to work wholly and can even work above their scheduled hours. This extra dedication often makes women to be a second choice when an employer appoints a particular employee to a higher rank. The belief of a woman having more priorities in her lives other than work and therefore not paying full attention to work has been often found among corporate employers. They believe that extreme work requires extreme dedication and so women are not capable of handling them.

Marginalizing of women is still a stigma in the 21^st century even when people shout of feminism. There had been often debates about the extent of help that the women have received. When analyzing the connections of women with society in a systemic thinking procedure, it can be seen that women are still sidelined, diminished, suppressed and discriminated (Ferreira and Gyorko 2014). They are though less because they are women only. Their leadership skills are often critically challenged.

Barriers Faced by Women in the Workplace

All these are barriers that are preventing women to take one of the highest positions in the corporate sectors. In many cases women are deprived of their rank and are prevented to move upwards in their position. These are often found to demotivate women. After applying same dedication to work like a male colleague and seeing him to be upgraded in his career leaving her behind for just being a woman will definitely affect herself respect and ego. This may lead her to depression where she may not provide her best which she was previously been able to. These will not only harm her career but will also affect her family economically. Similar such cases will result in challenges in economic sustainability of the nation as the gross domestic product will decrease. Moreover the corporate sector will highly suffer due to the lack of presence of women in their workplaces as women tend to bring with them different innovative ideas and suggestions that can never be produced by men (Akpinor 2013). Loss of valuable ideas will affect the strategic management of corporate sectors also affecting the economic prospects of the company. Moreover investors will strictly try to avoid such negative workforces which do not allow the involvement of both genders in the decision making scenarios as they will always prefer a diverse workforce.

While analyzing the women and their linkage with management skills at corporate sectors, it is found that there are many important aspects possessed by women but are not shown in men. Different studies have shown that women possess an exceptional skill of taking initiatives at work and have wonderful communication skill. These skills are much more polished than the men and are even expressed in ways which never affect the ego and self respect of the opposite persons. They also show the attributes of openness that tends to bring better result in the workplace than the male counterparts. They also have a very impressive skill of innovating strategies that are out of the box and are often helpful in achieving goals which could not be achieved by other male members. Women also practice better sociability due to better skill of communication. They can utilize their inquisitiveness in positive ways and building strong social bonds with different stakeholders. These often bring benefits to the corporate sectors by earning more clients and that results in more business. They are more supportive to their colleagues and they have a helping behavior for which any person who is confused or need help can easily approach her for help. Moreover, it is also seen that women are more methodological in their management skill than men who helps the workers under her to develop clarity in their respective roles. This helps them to work properly and achieve their targets easily (McGowan et al. 2015). They goal setting is done after thorough research d analysis and therefore is often achievable by the team. All the above mentioned prospects make women capable for handing any leadership position in the corporate sectors. Women executives manufacture confidence, attract strong peer communities, bring emotional literacy to the working teams, necessarily efficient, have motivation to succeed against odds, see work with more parity and are great to set as an example. Hence modern women should be made executives so that they get chances of exhibiting their skills and bring more revenue to the company.

Challenges in Women’s Work Prioritization

From the entire essay, it can be stated that systemic thinking had helped one to look into the different connections that women can establish with the organization she works for and also with the society where she thrives in. While studying the linkages and connections that women establish with the components in the corporate lives, one can understand the various reasons that prevent women from getting an executive position in the corporate sectors. The essay has portrayed the important barriers that women face and also denotes the various conceptions that our patriarchal society has about women and their capabilities. In order to overcome the different sustainability challenges that the organizations and the societies are facing due to such stigmas and misconceptions, a proper education for both of them is vey necessary. Therefore all the positive aspects of women as a career centric person and the various skills that they possess have been demarcated. These would help the society and also the corporate sectors to look beyond their preconceived notions and take steps to attain economic stability.

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