臺大管理論叢 NTU Management Review VOL.29 NO.3

The Mediating Effect of Glass Ceiling Beliefs in the Relationship between Women’s Personality Traits and Their Subjective Career Success 194 1. Introduction The role of women cannot be ignored in the workplace considering their valuable participation in the productivity of organizations (Morrison and von Glinow, 1990). The number of female employees working in organizations has been accelerating periodically around the world (Arfken, Bellar, and Helms, 2004). In spite of that fact, male dominance in the workplace is still stronger in both developed and developing countries (Arulampalam, Booth, and Bryan, 2007). Over the last three decades, male employees working in the corporate sector have continued to view female employees as less qualified for various management positions. This belief is observed in many developed countries such as the USA, the UK, China, Germany, and Japan (Schein, 2007). The artificial barrier that prevents women from reaching top-level management positions is called the glass ceiling (Cooper Jackson, 2001). The glass ceiling became a popular notion when it was introduced in the Wall Street Journal in 1986 (Hymowitz and Schellhardt, 1986). Glass ceiling can also apply to minorities, but most of the time it is referred to said obstacles faced by female employees (Arulampalam et al., 2007; Lee, 2002; Schein, 2007). Across the globe, the glass ceiling remains an organizational problem in both developed and developing countries (Reynolds, 1999; Schein, 2007). For instance, harmonized data from European countries show that the gender wage gap is higher in top- level management (Arulampalam et al., 2007). Stereotypical perceptions of female managers were also found in the USA, China, and Chile (Javalgi, Scherer, Sánchez, Pradenas Rojas, Parada Daza, Hwang, and Yan, 2011). A comparative analysis of different countries shows that the glass ceiling phenomenon exists worldwide and demands reasonable solutions (Livanos, Yalkin, and Nuñez, 2009). Past research has focused on the subjective assessment of the glass ceiling effect (Wrigley, 2002). Smith, Crittenden, and Caputi (2012) have developed career pathway survey research and classified four types of women’s glass ceiling beliefs (i.e., denial, resilience, acceptance, and resignation) in organizations. Based on the theory of optimism and pessimism, they categorize resilience and denial as optimistic beliefs and acceptance and resignation as pessimistic beliefs. Smith, Caputi, and Crittenden (2012) also find a significant relationship between glass ceiling beliefs and the subjective career success of women. In this paper, we modify and extend the work of Smith, Caputi, et al. (2012) by introducing the Big Five personality traits model to better understand the mechanism of glass ceiling beliefs and the subjective career success of women.