Reflections on the labyrinth: Investigating black and minority ethnic leaders’ career experiences
通过访谈20位黑人与少数族裔及20位白人高级管理者，运用迷宫隐喻和归因理论，比较他们职业晋升中的障碍与助力，揭示少数族裔领导者的独特经历。
Black and minority ethnic (BME) employees appear to experience more difficulty reaching senior leadership positions than do their white counterparts. Using Eagly and Carli’s metaphor of the labyrinth, our aim was to give voice to black and minority ethnic managers who have successfully achieved senior management roles, and compare their leadership journeys with those of matched white managers. This article used semi-structured interviews and attribution theory to examine how 20 black and minority ethnic and 20 white senior managers from a UK government department made sense of significant career incidents in their leadership journeys. Template analysis was used to identify facilitators and barriers of career progression from causal explanations of these incidents. Although BME and white managers identified four common themes (visibility, networks, development and line manager support), they differed in how they made sense of formal and informal organizational processes to achieve career progression. The findings are used to theorize about the individual and organizational factors that contribute to the leadership journeys of minority ethnic employees.