Women as Global Leaders

Women as Global Leaders is the second volume in the new Women and Leadership: Research, Theory, and Practice book series published for the International Leadership Association by IAP. Global leadership is an emerging area of research, with only a small but growing published literature base. More specifically, the topic of women’s advances and adventures in leading within the global context is barely covered in the existing leadership literature. Although few women are serving in global leadership roles in corporate and non-profit arenas, and as heads of nations, that number is growing (e.g., Indira Nooyi at PepsiCo, Sheryl Sandberg at Facebook, Marissa Mayer at Yahoo, Ellen Johnson Sirleaf as president of Liberia, Angela Merkel as chancellor of Germany).

The purpose of this volume is to provide the reader with current conceptualizations and theory related to women as global leaders, recent empirical investigations of the phenomenon, analysis of effective global leadership development programs, and portraits of women who lead, or have led, in a global role. The volume is divided into four sections. The first section covers the state of women as global leaders, containing chapters by Joyce Osland and Nancy Adler, pioneers in the field of global and/or women’s leadership. The second section describes approaches to women’s global leadership. The third section offers an analysis of programs that are useful in developing women as global leaders, with the final section profiling women as global leaders, including Margaret Thatcher, Nobel Laureate Malala Yousfazai, and Golda Meir. As Barbara Kellerman noted in the Foreword, "this book... should be understood as a collection whose time has come, precisely because women now have opportunities to lead that are far more expansive than they were even in the recent past. Though their numbers remain low, they are able in some cases to exercise leadership not only as outsiders, but also as insiders, from the very positions of power and authority to which men forever have had access."

About the Editors

Faith Wambura Ngunjiri, EdD, is the Director of the Lorentzsen Center for Faith and Work, and associate professor of ethics and leadership at the Offutt School of Business at Concordia College. She has research interests in women and leadership, particularly at the intersections of identities and locations; spirituality in the workplace; and culturally appropriate qualitative methods. Her work has been published in books and various journals, including Journal of Research Practice, International and Intercultural Communication Annual, Journal of Business Communication, Journal of Pan African Studies, and Journal of Educational Administration, among others. She authored Women's Spiritual Leadership in Africa (SUNY, 2010) and co-authored Collaborative Autoethnography with H. Chang and K. Hernandez (Left Coast Press, 2013). Faith serves as co-editor for this Woman and Leadership book series (ILA/IAP) and Palgrave Studies in African Leadership (Palgrave McMillan) and serves on the editorial boards of several journals. She earned a doctorate in leadership studies from Bowling Green State University.

Susan R. Madsen, EdD, is the Orin R. Woodbury Professor of Leadership and Ethics in the Woodbury School of Business at Utah Valley University. She has been heavily involved for the last decade in researching the lifetime development of prominent women leaders. She has personally interviewed a host of women university presidents, U.S. governors, and international leaders, and has two books published on her results. Susan has conducted related research in the United States, the six Arab Gulf countries, China, and recently in Eastern Europe. She has published over 60 articles in scholarly journals and presents often in local, national, and international settings. She has been an invited speaker at the New York Times and in NGO sessions at the United Nations. Susan is the founder of numerous networks, including the International Leadership Association's (ILA) Women and Leadership Affinity Group. She has received numerous awards for her teaching, research, and service. She is co-editing the new ILA/IAP book series titled Women and Leadership. She received her doctorate from the University of Minnesota in human resource development.