Date of Award
Summer 2023
Document Type
Dissertation
Degree Name
Doctor of Business Administration (DBA)
Committee Chair
Felice Policastro
Abstract
As of 2021, women comprised almost half of the United States workforce, nearly 47%. Despite this, women represent only 24% of top earning officers and only 6% of chief executive officer positions. Glass ceilings are a phenomenon that represent an invisible barrier that prevents professional advancement for minority populations, including women, in business. Glass ceilings can impact several minority groups, but mostly appear to be a distinctive gender phenomenon. The challenges for women are well documented, but less understood are the attributional causes of glass ceilings as perceived by information technology (IT) professionals. The framework for this dissertation is the attribution theory, which explains how glass-ceiling viewpoints are formed by gender using mental and cognitive observations. The Career Pathways Survey (CPS), designed to examine employees’ views on the causes of glass ceilings, was the measurement tool used. The first purpose of this dissertation was to analyze the differences of gender perceptions about which CPS subscale was most strongly associated with glass-ceiling beliefs for professionals in the IT sector. A secondary purpose was to understand the associations between the CPS subscales and the demographic variables in the study. Discriminant analysis findings support external attributional views for both men and women in the IT industry. The findings also show a positive relationship between CPS subscales and the demographic variables examined. The findings from this dissertation should encourage U.S. corporations to increase their investment in the development and advancement of female IT professionals, strengthening corporate cultures and promoting inclusion and diversity in leadership roles.
Recommended Citation
Phillips, Shanda, "The Impact of Attribution Theory on Information Technology Professionals’ Perceptions of Glass Ceilings" (2023). Doctor of Business Administration Dissertations. 5.
https://digitalcommons.gardner-webb.edu/business-dissertations/5
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