PhD Defence: Claudia Erlemann
In her dissertation ‘Gender and Leadership Aspiration: The impact of the organizational environment’, ERIM’s Claudia Erlemann focuses on assessing the potential impact of the organizational environment, including formal and informal elements, as well as relevant actors and their respective impact on leadership aspiration.
Claudia Erlemann defended her dissertation in the Senate Hall at Erasmus University Rotterdam on Thursday, 25 February 2016 at 13:30. Her supervisor was Prof.dr. D.L. van Knippenberg. Other members of the Doctoral Committee were Prof.dr. D. van Dierendonck (RSM), Prof.dr. IJ.H. van Emmerik (Maastricht University), Dr. G. Jacobs (RSM), Dr. D.A. Stam (RSM) and Dr. C.J. Vinkenburg (VU Amsterdam).
About Claudia Erlemann
Claudia Erlemann was born on August 13th, 1987 in Muenster, Germany. She obtained her Bachelor of Science in International Business Administration with cum laude at Rotterdam School of Management, Erasmus University. During her Bachelor she took part in an exchange term at HEC Montréal, Canada and was selected to be a participant of the Erasmus Research Institute of Management (ERIM) Honors Program 2009. She then completed her Master in International Business at HEC Paris. Thereafter, she transferred back to Germany and started her professional career working as a strategy consultant for one of the global top 3 strategy consultancies. Within her PhD dissertation, being supervised by Prof.dr. D.L. van Knippenberg, she focused on gender differences in leadership aspiration. She is particularly interested in understanding how the organizational environment can positively impact leadership aspiration among women. Her research is currently under review in top management journals.
Thesis Abstract
Although some important work regarding gender-specific aspiration has been done already, conditions fostering leadership aspiration – particularly among women – are not completely understood. Therefore, this dissertation focuses on assessing the potential impact of the organizational environment, including formal and informal elements, as well as relevant actors and their respective impact on leadership aspiration. I show that supervisor gender is important as women reporting to a female supervisor report higher levels of support and control and as a result display higher leadership aspiration. In addition to looking at the supervisor, I also focused on work life initiatives, showing that their availability also increases women’s leadership aspiration. Apart from looking at the supervisor and formal initiatives, I examined informal elements, namely cooperative climate and its impact on leadership aspiration. I predicted and showed that men and women are more responsive to different elements within a cooperative climate, mapping to their gender-specific disposal to different self-construals. As women are more disposed to a relational self-construal I predicted and showed that their leadership aspiration is more responsive to a cooperative interpersonal climate. Eventually, I assessed whether the interplay between the organization and the individual plays an important role in influencing aspiration. Therefore I zoomed in on identification and showed that high organizational identification is linked to female leadership aspiration. In sum, my findings highlight important precursors of women’s leadership aspiration within the organizational environment and point to interesting avenues for future research and relevant implications for practitioners alike striving towards increasing female leadership aspiration.
· View and download Claudia's dissertation
Photos: Chris Gorzeman / Capital Images
