She’s worth IT: challenges for female CIOs in ensuring IT security compliance

Gaurav Bansal, Zhuoli Axelton
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Abstract

PurposeIT security compliance is critical to the organization’s success, and such compliance depends largely on IT leadership. Considering the prevalence of unconscious gender biases and stereotyping at the workplace and growing female leadership in IT, the authors examine how the internalization of stereotype beliefs, in the form of the employee’s gender, impacts the relationships between leadership characteristics and IT security compliance intentions.Design/methodology/approachA controlled experiment using eight different vignettes manipulating Chief Information Officer (CIO) gender (male/female), Information Technology (IT) expertise (low/high) and leadership style (transactional/transformational) was designed in Qualtrics. Data were gathered from MTurk workers from all over the US.FindingsThe findings suggest that both CIOs' and employees' gender play an important role in how IT leadership characteristics – perceived expertise and leadership style – influence the employees' intentions and reactance to comply with CIO security recommendations.Research limitations/implicationsThis study's findings enrich the security literature by examining the role of leadership styles on reactance and compliance intentions. They also provide important theoretical implications based on gender stereotype theory alone: First, the glass ceiling effects can be witnessed in how men and women employees demonstrate prejudice against women CIO leaders through their reliance on perceived quadratic CIO IT expertise in forming compliance intentions. Secondly, this study's findings related to gender role internalization show men and women have a prejudice against gender-incongruent roles wherein women employees are least resistive to transactional male CIOs, and men employees are less inclined to comply with transactional female CIOs confirm the findings related to gender internationalization from Hentschel et al. (2019).Practical implicationsThis study highlights the significance of organizations and individuals actively promoting gender equality and fostering environments that recognize women's achievements. It also underscores the importance of educating men and women about the societal implications of stereotyping gender roles that go beyond the organizational setting. This research demonstrates that a continued effort is required to eradicate biases stemming from gender stereotypes and foster social inclusion. Such efforts can positively influence how upcoming IT leaders and employees internalize gender-related factors when shaping their identities.Social implicationsThis study shows that more work needs to be done to eliminate gender stereotype biases and promote social inclusion to positively impact how future IT leaders and employees shape their identities through internalization.Originality/valueThis study redefines the concept of “sticky floors” to explain how subordinates can hinder and undermine female leaders, thereby contributing to the glass ceiling effect. In addition, the study elucidates how gender roles shape employees' responses to different leadership styles through gender stereotyping and internalization.
她值得拥有 IT:女性首席信息官在确保 IT 安全合规方面面临的挑战
目的 IT 安全合规性对组织的成功至关重要,而这种合规性在很大程度上取决于 IT 领导力。考虑到工作场所普遍存在无意识的性别偏见和刻板印象,以及 IT 领域女性领导力的增长,作者研究了员工性别形式的刻板印象信念的内化如何影响领导力特征与 IT 安全合规意愿之间的关系。研究结果研究结果表明,首席信息官和员工的性别在信息技术领导特征--感知到的专业知识和领导风格--如何影响员工遵守首席信息官安全建议的意愿和反应方面起着重要作用。这些研究结果还提供了仅基于性别刻板印象理论的重要理论意义:首先,男性和女性员工在形成遵从意向时如何通过依赖感知到的四维首席信息官信息技术专业知识来表现出对女性首席信息官领导的偏见,这可以见证玻璃天花板效应。其次,本研究与性别角色内化相关的发现表明,男性和女性对性别不一致的角色存在偏见,其中女性员工对交易型男性首席信息官的抵触情绪最小,而男性员工则不太愿意服从交易型女性首席信息官,这也印证了 Hentschel 等人(2019)与性别国际化相关的发现。它还强调了教育男性和女性了解性别角色定型观念的社会影响的重要性,这种影响超出了组织环境的范围。这项研究表明,需要继续努力消除由性别定型观念产生的偏见,促进社会包容。社会影响本研究表明,需要做更多的工作来消除性别刻板印象偏见和促进社会包容,从而对未来的 IT 领导者和员工如何通过内化来塑造自己的身份产生积极影响。此外,本研究还阐明了性别角色如何通过性别刻板印象和内化作用塑造员工对不同领导风格的反应。
本文章由计算机程序翻译,如有差异,请以英文原文为准。
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