Can women strategic management be a source of competitive advantage? : an inductive explanatory study

• Autor(a) principal: Monge, Ricardo Manuel da Mota e Cunha Vitorino
• Data de Publicação: 2018
• Tipo de documento: Dissertação
• Idioma: eng
• Título da fonte: Repositório Científico de Acesso Aberto de Portugal (Repositórios Cientìficos)
• Texto Completo: http://hdl.handle.net/10400.14/25413
• topic: Female strategic management; Competitive advantage; Top management; Gestão estratégica feminina; Vantagem competitiva; Gestão de topo; Domínio/Área Científica::Ciências Sociais::Economia e Gestão

Throughout the history, there has always been a clear disadvantage of women in relation to men, regarding professional positions and their attainment. Recently, this trend has been progressively reversed, and there has been an increase in the status of women in society. Thus, whereas in the past the top positions in the professional world were dominated by a male presence, there is now clear progress in terms of career and growing prospects for women. Nowadays, many companies are already led by women and the results and consequences of a female’s strategic management may differ from those achieved through strategic male management. Therefore, this dissertation aims, through an exploratory study, to understand whether or not can female strategic management be a source of competitive advantage for companies in Portugal. The study will be focused on the companies from the private sector in Portugal, focused on technology and digital services. For this purpose, a qualitative approach was used, being interviewed a total of 12 employees from two companies with a strong gender predominance in top management (one with a strong female and the other only male). Through the interviews, it was possible to identify four elements that women on the TMT of firms would bring and which result in performance benefits: organization, caring, creativity and innovation. Also, positive impacts on the motivation and inspiration on the employees were some of the identified consequences of that female presence, which in conclusion, was pointed as a possible source of competitive advantage.