Empathy

Scholars in management and organizational psychology now urge researchers to go beyond transformational leadership and begin considering emotional traits and abilities, and biologically based arguments. The spirit of this article addresses this call. Before rash conclusions are made to elect a leader on the sole basis of sex, however, we invite researchers to test our propositions. This could be done using best practices in experimental vignette methodology  by varying the sex and empathy level of prospective leader candidates, as well as the crisis type and intensity. Researchers could then replicate laboratory findings with historical records from real companies or use members from board of directors as research participants to increase ecological validity. While we have explained how women's perceived empathy could be the driving force for glass cliff appointments, we did not tackle the mechanism by which this is thought to occur. For example, the cascade of events surrounding glass cliffs could conceivably unfold as follows. First, an organizational crisis is experienced in type and intensity that sets off various aversive emotions among the firm's stakeholders. Recognizing a need to change strategic direction, the firm's board of directors establishes criteria for CEO selection and begins to search for the right fit, experience, and leadership traits and behaviors from a pool of potential candidates. Finally, the board selects those deemed to have the right mix of qualifications and proceeds with interviews and reference checks that culminate in the choice of a new CEO hire. Currently, such a decision-making process involved in selecting a leader following a crisis remains to be studied.

To interpret glass cliffs, researchers may also apply principles of gene-culture coevolution or what Boyd and Richerson refer to synonymously as "dual-inheritance theory". Seen as a hybrid between cultural evolution and evolutionary psychology, gene-culture coevolution investigates the transmission of genes and cultural traits from one generation to the next by treating the two interdependently. It is the only evolutionary approach that explores the interaction of genes and culture. Like cultural evolutionists, gene-culture coevolutionists treat culture as a pool of socially learned and transmitted ideas and beliefs that are in constant flux. Like evolutionary psychologists, they agree that learning relies on biologically evolved knowledge-gaining structures. However, unlike behavioral ecologists, gene-culture coevolutionists believe that gene-culture interactions can lead to non-adaptive or even maladaptive outcomes. Finally, unlike evolutionary psychologists, they are more accepting of the idea that genetic evolution can be fast while cultural evolution can be slow. Any treatment of glass cliffs from this latest approach would require scholars to track changes in allele frequencies resulting from changes in cultural practices. In other words, as men continue into the future to toil at work that was once reserved for women (e.g., childcare) and, as women continue to labor in traditional male occupations (e.g., organizational leadership), both sexes may 1 day be seen as equally empathic and therefore equally suited to handle crises of an interpersonal nature. While such an endeavor is challenging, we encourage future scholars to inspect glass cliff appointments through the lens of gene-culture coevolution since some predict that this evolutionary paradigm promises to become the most rewarding.

Lastly, recent work has reported that glass cliffs may be generalizable to other minorities. Management researchers noted long ago that women and minorities face similar impediments in rising to the executive suite, and one of their explanations is that minorities, like women, see themselves as "tokens" whose performance is hindered by the pressure of visibility. One theory that could explain whether empathy lies at the heart of these appointments among minorities is the approach-inhibition theory of power. This theory holds that power influences behavior by causing changes to occur between approach and inhibition systems. Approach systems are associated with reward seeking (e.g., achievement), whereas inhibition systems are associated with threat avoidance (e.g., heightened vigilance, anxiety). High-power individuals are more likely to activate approach systems because power enables them to seek reward with little concern that others might interfere. The lack of power emanating from a diminished social position - one that often characterizes minorities and women - may affect one's empathy. Being more empathic may provide these marginalized individuals with certain advantages in the workplace compared to those who are less empathic, such as interpreting more accurately others' feelings and intentions. Recent work has shown that individuals high in social power express less empathy than those low in power. As such, minorities might be perceived as being more empathic relative to non-minorities due to their power disadvantage and might become prone to being selected to lead when situations turn bleak. Knowledge of glass cliffs among minorities, or more specifically the perceptions that people harbor about minorities' level of empathy relative to that of the majority, is limited and in need of development given the changing demographic landscape at work.