A cross-cultural study into peer evaluations of women\u27s leadership effectiveness

Purpose: The present paper is based on a cross-cultural exploration of middle managers in two diverse cultures and aims to focus on how the leadership styles of managerial women are perceived and evaluated. In particular, female and male peer evaluations of leadership effectiveness in Malaysia and Australia are to be explored.Design/methodology/approach: Surveys from 324 middle managers from Malaysia and Australia were quantitatively analysed. The sample for the study was drawn from organisations in four industry types in both countries.Findings:&nbsp; Findings suggest that evaluations of female managers\u27 leadership styles in general, and within the respondent\u27s own organisations, were strongly culture specific, especially in Malaysia. The results reflected the strongly held values, attitudes and beliefs of each country. While this is not unexpected, it does highlight a need to be cautious when interpreting Western research results and attempting to transplant those into other cultures. In Malaysia, female managers were not seen as effective in the leadership styles they adopted in their roles when compared to the Australian female managers\u27 evaluations. Such an evaluation may have had little to do with an objective appraisal of the female managers\u27 capability, but rather with a strongly held cultural belief about the appropriate role of women in society, and in organisations in particular.Research limitations/implications:&nbsp; It is suggested that national culture manifests itself in the values, attitudes and behaviours of people. Cultural influences are therefore likely to impact on the way women and men behave in the workplace, particularly when roles of authority and power are evident, and the way in which that behaviour will be evaluated by others. Further research using different samples in different cultures are recommended. In addition, the influence of ethnicity, race or religion in plural countries such as Malaysia and Australia is also worthy of investigation.Practical implications:&nbsp; This research suggests that values and attitudes are strongly culture-specific and therefore have the ability to influence evaluations at an organisational level. Such an awareness of cultural influences should guide appropriate human resource practices, particularly within a globalized environment.Originality/value:&nbsp; The inclusion of a gender comparison in the data analysis in this paper is a significant attempt to add to the extant knowledge of the cross-cultural research. This is a unique contribution because of the omission of a gender perspective in the previous two seminal studies in culture literature (i.e. Hofstede and House et al.). In addition, the findings suggest that culture-specific influences are important determinants that impose expectations on the role of women differently from men in society and within organisations hence, making the gender comparison of the findings more significant. <br /

Clouds of strings in third-order Lovelock gravity

Lovelock theory is a natural extension of the Einstein theory of general relativity to higher dimensions in which the first and second orders correspond, respectively, to general relativity and Einstein-Gauss-Bonnet gravity. We present exact black hole solutions of $D\geq 4$-dimensional spacetime for first-, second-, and third-order Lovelock gravities in a string cloud background. Further, we compute the mass, temperature, and entropy of black hole solutions for the higher-dimensional general relativity and Einstein-Gauss-Bonnet theories and also perform thermodynamic stability of black holes. It turns out that the presence of the Gauss-Bonnet term and/or background string cloud completely changes the black hole thermodynamics. Interestingly, the entropy of a black hole is unaffected due to a background string cloud. We rediscover several known spherically symmetric black hole solutions in the appropriate limits.Comment: 13 pages, 7 figures, Accepted for publication in Physical Review

The scaling of the decoherence factor of a qubit coupled to a spin chain driven across quantum critical points

We study the scaling of the decoherence factor of a qubit (spin-1/2) using the central spin model in which the central spin (qubit) is globally coupled to a transverse XY spin chain. The aim here is to study the non-equilibrium generation of decoherence when the spin chain is driven across (along) quantum critical points (lines) and derive the scaling of the decoherence factor in terms of the driving rate and some of the exponents associated with the quantum critical points. Our studies show that the scaling of logarithm of decoherence factor is identical to that of the defect density in the final state of the spin chain following a quench across isolated quantum critical points for both linear and non-linear variations of a parameter even if the defect density may not satisfy the standard Kibble-Zurek scaling. However, one finds an interesting deviation when the spin chain is driven along a critical line. Our analytical predictions are in complete agreement with numerical results. Our study, though limited to integrable two-level systems, points to the existence of a universality in the scaling of the decoherence factor which is not necessarily identical to the scaling of the defect density.Comment: 5 pages, 2 figures, Final and accepted versio

Mixed methods : a research design for management doctoral dissertations

Purpose &ndash; This paper seeks to examine two management doctoral research projects to highlight the advantages in mixed methods as the primary research design.Design/methodology/approach &ndash; This paper summarises the methods of data collection and analysis which were used by two doctoral students in their management research. The researchers used mixed methods approaches (quantitative and qualitative) to explore different areas of management.Findings &ndash; The paper supports the view that triangulation of research methods strengthens the findings and inferences made for understanding social phenomena in more depth, compared to using a single method.Research limitations/implications &ndash; The paper relies excessively on two doctoral research projects which utilise sequential mixed methods. Therefore, arguments made in the paper are specific because other doctoral projects that have used different methods from those employed in the two projects were not considered.Practical implications &ndash; Early researchers, in particular students commencing doctorate studies, should apply mixed methods research because it develops skills in the two most dominant data collection methods used in management research. This paper is a practical guide on how this could be done effectively.Originality/value &ndash; The paper is drawn from two unique doctoral research projects. The paper&rsquo;s originality and value is in providing experiences and practical insights on how mixed methods research is undertaken.<br /

The role of leadership theory in raising the profile of women in management

Purpose: To consider how leadership theories have helped or hindered raising the profile of women in management and leadership roles.Design/methodology/approach: This paper traces the earlier leadership theories through to the contemporary research on transactional and transformational leadership styles and offers a viewpoint on how each theory has contributed, or otherwise, to an awareness and acceptance of women in management and leadership roles.Findings:&nbsp; In 1990, research began to report gender differences in leadership styles with female managers being seen in positive terms as participative, democratic leaders. More recent work reports that women are believed to exhibit more transformational leadership style than their male colleagues, and this is equated with effective leadership.Research limitations/implications:&nbsp; All of the earlier theories on leadership excluded women and this exacerbated the problem of women not being seen as an appropriate fit in a management or leadership role. Recent findings clearly describe that the transformational qualities of leadership that women exhibit are required by the flatter organisational structures of today. Therefore, a more positive outcome for women advancing to senior roles of management or leadership may be observed in the future.Originality/value:&nbsp; The paper reviews the major leadership theories, and links these to a timeframe to illustrate how women were not visible in a management context until relatively recently. Such an omission may have contributed to the continuing low numbers of women who advance to senior management and leadership roles.<br /

Discovery of Blue Luminescence in the Red Rectangle: Possible Fluorescence from Neutral Polycyclic Aromatic Hydrocarbon Molecules?

Here we report our discovery of a band of blue luminescence (BL) in the Red Rectangle (RR) nebula. This enigmatic proto-planetary nebula is also one of the brightest known sources of extended red emission as well as of unidentified infra-red (UIR) band emissions. The spectrum of this newly discovered BL is most likely fluorescence from small neutral polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon (PAH) molecules. PAH molecules are thought to be widely present in many interstellar and circumstellar environments in our galaxy as well as in other galaxies, and are considered likely carriers of the UIR-band emission. However, no specific PAH molecule has yet been identified in a source outside the solar system, as the set of mid-infra-red emission features attributed to these molecules between the wavelengths of 3.3 micron and 16.4 micron is largely insensitive to molecular sizes. In contrast, near-UV/blue fluorescence of PAHs is more specific as to size, structure, and charge state of a PAH molecule. If the carriers of this near-UV/blue fluorescence are PAHs, they are most likely neutral PAH molecules consisting of 3-4 aromatic rings such as anthracene (C14H10) and pyrene (C16H10). These small PAHs would then be the largest molecules specifically identified in the interstellar medium.Comment: 4 pages, 4 figures, Accepted for publication in ApJL (LaTeX, uses emulateapj.sty

Local Invariants and Pairwise Entanglement in Symmetric Multi-qubit System

Pairwise entanglement properties of a symmetric multi-qubit system are analyzed through a complete set of two-qubit local invariants. Collective features of entanglement, such as spin squeezing, are expressed in terms of invariants and a classifcation scheme for pairwise entanglement is proposed. The invariant criteria given here are shown to be related to the recently proposed (Phys. Rev. Lett. 95, 120502 (2005)) generalized spin squeezing inequalities for pairwise entanglement in symmetric multi-qubit states.Comment: 9 pages, 2 figures, REVTEX, Replaced with a published versio