Sticking to the script: women managers just do it all

Abstract

The study explores the situated time work practices of Forbes 50 Romanian most influential women corporate leaders, expressed in testimonials and biographical interviews. Investigated time experiences of lived leadership do not point to a transformative environment that invites pluralism. These narratives do not disembed ideological beliefs or decolonize gender roles. Instead they mark a discourse of flawless continuity and accommodation to greedy time scripts that label downtime as wasted time. The inductive thematic analysis extracted two rhetoric tropes (i.e. wholesomeness and warrior-superhero) and five themes: multitasking, resilience to time pressure, pragmatics of perfect timing, time use maximization and constant connectivity. Potential explanations and implications for the East European management con‐ text are discussed.