Gender Gymnastics in CEO succession: Masculinities, Femininities and Legitimacy
研究CEO在管理继任中如何“操演性别”，通过分析七对家族企业CEO继任案例，揭示男女继任者展现多种男性气质和女性气质以获取合法性的不同方式。
This article theorizes how CEOs ‘do gender’ in management succession and how this impacts their legitimacy as successor CEOs. Drawing on the analysis of seven incumbent-successor dyads in a family business setting, we document the multiple masculine (entrepreneurial, authoritarian and paternalistic) and feminine (relational, individualized and maternal) gender identities that both men and women CEO successors enact. We contribute to the CEO succession literature by revealing the different ways that CEOs can ‘do masculinity’ in their pursuit of legitimacy and also expose how CEO successors ‘do femininity’. In particular, we show how men and women CEOs enact relational femininity to garner stakeholders’ support as well as build alliances to temper change initiatives. We contribute to the gender and organization literature by providing an understanding of how certain ways of doing gender in organizations facilitate or hinder the legitimacy of CEO successors.