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

207 NTU Management Review Vol. 29 No. 3 Dec. 2019 9. Disscussion 9.1 Theoretical Implications Our research contributes to the glass ceiling literature both theoretically and practically. The current research helps to understand the deep mechanism of women’s personality traits, glass ceiling beliefs, and subjective career success. Our research also contributes to the career success literature by including boundary conditions for a better explanation of the previously observed direct patterns of personality and career success (Judge et al., 1999; Smith, Caputi, et al., 2012). Our research also provides insights for introducing individual, organizational, and contextual variables as mediators in the future to better understand the theory of women’s career advancement and career success. Furthermore, using the current research model, women’s personality traits and glass ceiling beliefs can be analyzed in different job contexts. For instance, researchers can identify the importance of the Big Five traits and glass ceiling beliefs across different departments, such as marketing, finance, and human resource management (Cook and Glass, 2011; Forster, 1999). The focus of the current study is on women’s personality and glass ceiling beliefs and their subjective career success. However, in the future, personality traits and glass ceiling beliefs can be studied in the context of male employees. For instance, researchers can analyze the personality and attitudes of male employees toward glass ceiling beliefs (Stroh, Brett, and Reilly, 1996). 9.2 Practical Implications Our research has implications for practice in organizations. Organizations may make their best effort to eliminate the glass ceiling in an objective sense. However, women may still develop glass ceiling “beliefs”, being afraid of the possibility of the glass ceiling effect. Therefore, organizations should encourage female employees to develop optimistic glass ceiling beliefs by providing training and support (Bass and Avolio, 1994). On the other hand, our research illustrates that glass ceiling beliefs are bounded by personality traits, meaning that companies’ efforts to train and support female employees have limitations. Therefore, focusing on the personality traits in personnel selection might be a good idea in order to hire female employees who will develop optimistic glass ceiling beliefs (Rosse, Stecher, Miller, and Levin, 1998). In sum, selecting female employees based on their personality traits and encouraging and supporting female employees to develop optimistic glass ceiling beliefs will eventually help female employees to achieve their subjective career success.