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Connections Between Women's Glass Ceiling Beliefs, Explanatory Style, Self-Efficacy, Career Levels and Subjective Success Paul Smith University of Wollongong

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Connections Between Women's Glass Ceiling Beliefs, Explanatory Style, Self-Efficacy, Career Levels and Subjective Success Paul Smith University of Wollongong University of Wollongong Research Online University of Wollongong Thesis Collection University of Wollongong Thesis Collections 2012 Connections between women's glass ceiling beliefs, explanatory style, self-efficacy, career levels and subjective success Paul Smith University of Wollongong Recommended Citation Smith, Paul, Connections between women's glass ceiling beliefs, explanatory style, self-efficacy, career levels and subjective success, Doctor of Philosophy thesis, School of Psychology, University of Wollongong, 2012. http://ro.uow.edu.au/theses/3813 Research Online is the open access institutional repository for the University of Wollongong. For further information contact the UOW Library: [email protected] CONNECTIONS BETWEEN WOMEN'S GLASS CEILING BELIEFS, EXPLANATORY STYLE, SELF-EFFICACY, CAREER LEVELS AND SUBJECTIVE SUCCESS A thesis submitted in fulfilment of the requirements for the award of the degree DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY from the UNIVERSITY OF WOLLONGONG By PAUL SMITH BSocSc(Hons); BSc(Ed) School of Psychology Faculty of Health and Behavioural Sciences 2012 CERTIFICATION I, Paul Smith, declare that this thesis, submitted in fulfilment of the requirements for the award of Doctor of Philosophy, in the School of Psychology, University of Wollongong, is wholly my own work unless otherwise referenced or acknowledged. The document has not been submitted for qualifications at any other academic institution. Paul Smith 31 October 2012 2 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS First, I would like to greatly thank my two supervisors, Associate Professor Peter Caputi and Dr Nadia Crittenden. Their knowledge, patient guidance and thoughtful critiques have been invaluable. This research project would not have started without the encouragement of Dr Crittenden. My fellow doctorial candidates, especially Stewart Vella, Kate Williams, April Ash, Sunila Supavadeeprasit and Adrian Gillespie have been regular sources of advice and good humour, as well as invigorating conversation, frequently over cups of coffee. The cheerful greetings from Dr Gerard Stoyles helped brighten many a day when I was facing statistical conundrums. I will be continually thankful to the hundreds of anonymous women and men who volunteered to take part in my research. Above all, I wish to thank my family. My daughter Sarah achieving her Masters and my son Gavin with his PhD surely led the way for me. To the most important person in my life, my wife Linda, I cannot thank you enough for your strong belief in my life goals, giving me inspiration that has lasted 38 years. 3 ABSTRACT The glass ceiling metaphor is frequently used in scholarly and popular literature to describe the obstacles and barriers in front of women seeking promotions to the top levels of organizations. This thesis aims to contribute to the literature on the causes and consequences of glass ceilings, as well as explore ways to dismantle glass ceilings. It consists of five papers: a theoretical paper plus four empirical papers describing cross-sectional studies. The papers are linked as they each take a cognitive approach: the first three papers investigate glass ceiling beliefs and the next two papers investigate explanations about workplace situations, positive and negative. The studies follow a growing trend to examine the roles of positive psychology constructs in organizational psychology. Positive psychology constructs investigated throughout this thesis include resilience, optimism, occupational self-efficacy, work engagement, career satisfaction, wellbeing and happiness. The research program captured in these papers makes two major contributions to the literature. First, there is the development and validation of two new instruments which are relevant to women and men working in any organization. The first instrument, the Career Pathways Survey (CPS) measures beliefs about glass ceilings. The other instrument, the Workplace Explanations Survey (WES), measures optimism in organizations by assessing workplace explanations. Consequently, the second contribution of this thesis is the identification of a range of significant relationships between glass ceiling beliefs and workplace explanations with subjective career success indicators, occupational self-efficacy (OSE), gender and career levels. The first paper (Chapter 2) presents a unique approach to reviewing literature on glass ceilings. The review examines many of the diverse metaphors and labels that are used to highlight insights into the career advancement of women. This paper includes a classification of metaphors based on whether or not they imply characteristics of women help perpetuate 4 the gender imbalance in leadership positions. The second paper (Chapter 3) describes the development of the CPS which allows quantitative comparisons of women's beliefs about glass ceilings. Analysis of data from two samples of women (N = 243 and N = 307) yielded a four-factor model of attitudes to glass ceilings: Resilience, Denial, Acceptance and Resignation. The factors demonstrated good internal consistency. The CPS was developed in response to the scarcity of instruments in this area, as well as psychometric concerns about the available measures. The major purpose of the third paper (Chapter 4) was to test the concurrent validity of the CPS by exploring how women’s glass ceiling beliefs are related to five major indicators of subjective career success: career satisfaction, happiness, psychological wellbeing, physical health and work engagement (WE). Regression analyses based on data from 258 women working in Australian organizations showed Denial was positively associated with career satisfaction and WE; Resignation was negatively related to happiness, emotional wellbeing and physical health; Resilience had positive relationships with happiness and WE; Acceptance was negatively related to WE. Our findings provide support the concurrent validity of the CPS. The fourth paper (Chapter 5) contains an extensive literature review of explanatory style questionnaires and their ability to predict successful performance and resilience in organizations, two constructs likely to help women break glass ceilings. Concerns about low internal consistency and poor face validity of items are highlighted. This chapter then describes the development of the WES which is designed to measure optimism while working in organizations. Factor analysis of data collected from 348 participants showed that the WES contained three factors for explanations of negative situations: internality, stability and globality. There were also two factors for positive situations: internality/stability and globality. The factors have good reliability levels. 5 The study outlined in the fifth paper (Chapter 6) examines the relationships between management level, gender, workplace explanatory style, career satisfaction, happiness and OSE. The findings from 270 women and men working in Australian organizations provide evidence for the concurrent and convergent validity of the WES. Women were more likely to cite global reasons for problems as well as giving themselves credit for positive events at work. Managers were more likely than staff/supervisors to blame themselves for negative events. Regression analyses indicated stability, globality (negatives) and internality/stability were significant predictors of OSE. Internality and globality (negatives) predicted career satisfaction while both forms of globality predicted happiness. The thesis finishes with a summary of the findings, implications (practical and social), limitations and conclusions of this research program. It is recommended that future research carry out longitudinal and experimental studies to collect evidence on the causal directions for the relationships found in the current series of studies. Hopefully, this will play a part in helping to dismantle glass ceilings. 6 PUBLICATIONS FROM THE THESIS Published Manuscripts Chapter 2 Smith, P., Caputi, P., & Crittenden, N. (2012). A maze of metaphors around glass ceilings. Gender in Management: An International Journal, 27, 436-448. doi: 10.1108/17542411211273432 Chapter 3 Smith, P., Crittenden, N., & Caputi, P. (2012). Measuring women's beliefs about glass ceilings: Development of the Career Pathways Survey. Gender in Management: An International Journal, 27, 68-80. doi: 10.1108/17542411211214130 Smith, P., Crittenden, N., & Caputi, P. (2009). Measuring women's attitudes to building a career. Proceedings of the 44th Annual APS Conference, 167-172. Chapter 4 Smith, P., Caputi, P., & Crittenden, N. (2012). How are women's glass ceiling beliefs related to career success? Career Development International, 17, 458-474. doi: 10.1108/13620431211269702 Chapter 5 Smith, P., Caputi, P., & Crittenden, N. (2012). Measuring optimism in organizations: Development of a workplace explanatory style questionnaire. Journal of Happiness Studies. Advance online publication. doi: 10.1007/s10902-012-9336-4 Manuscript under Review Chapter 6 Smith, P., Caputi, P., & Crittenden, N. (Submitted). Connections between management level, gender, workplace explanatory style, occupational-self-efficacy and subjective success. Gender in Management: An International Journal. Kim Eggleton, the publisher of Gender in Management: An International Journal, asked for this paper to be submitted after she had received a recommendation from the Editor of the 7 Journal of Managerial Psychology. THE WORK PRESENTED IN THIS THESIS HAS UNDERGONE PEER REVIEW FROM THE FOLLOWING JOURNALS: • Applied Psychology: An International Review
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