This chapter explores the organisational mechanisms that business schools could leverage to conduct research on women in the workplace. It outlines the roles of research projects, centres, and chairs, emphasising that research chairs can serve as effective tools for concentrating resources and attracting funding. The chapter also explains why research chairs are crucial to addressing gender disparity in workplace participation. Different types of research chairs are discussed, each with unique funding sources and areas of focus, including endowed and industry-funded chairs. The chapter underscores the necessity to carefully consider the objectives and implications of these chairs, particularly their internal and external impacts on a business school. Ultimately, establishing research chairs dedicated to women’s workplace inclusion can signify a business school’s commitment to gender equality, as long as these initiatives are thoughtfully integrated into the institution’s overarching goals and ethos.

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Research Chairs and Business Schools

Business schools are at the interface of education and business, and are thus ideally placed to engage in teaching and research about women’s inclusion and empowerment at work, which speaks directly to United Nations Sustainable Development Goal 5 — Gender equality and Goal 8 — Decent work and economic growth. However, according to UNESCO and the IESALC (2021), “women are overrepresented in tertiary education enrolment in 74% of the countries with available data … except in Central and Southern Asia where there is parity, and in sub-Saharan Africa where men are overrepresented.” Overall, women’s post-school educational participation in industrialised countries has thus started exceeding parity aims, except in STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) fields. It is therefore understandable that studies are being conducted to determine whether women’s equality has “gone far enough” (see Ipsos, 2024, March, p. 6). Yet, there remains a gap in reaching parity in women participating in business school education (Moules, 2023, December 3). In 2023, only 28.2% of women held management positions in workplaces globally (UN Women, 2023). The lack of women’s participation in managerial and leadership positions is, amongst other factors, linked to business education. Moreover, parity in numbers does not automatically equate to true equality. In this regard, the UN Population Fund (2005) states that the overall objective of gender equality is a society where “women and men enjoy the same opportunities, rights and obligations in all spheres of life.” It therefore stands to reason that countries will show great variation in terms of opportunities, rights, and obligations for women and men, and that cultural differences in what is regarded as acceptable for women and men in regard to these three areas remain central to answering the question of whether women’s equality has, indeed, gone far enough. Thus, more context-specific business research is required to help us better understand how to reach and maintain women’s workplace equality. Such research can be achieved through the business school’s strategic ambitions, funding, and specific organising mechanisms.

This chapter examines various ways in which business schools could muster and deploy resources to enhance context-specific research on women in paid work. To this end, strategies include supporting focused research projects, establishing research centres, and creating research chairs. As the incumbent of one of the few research chairs in the world focused on women at work at business schools, and as the only individual, to my knowledge, to hold such a chair in Africa, I seek to position research chairs as a promising option for advancing much-needed contextually relevant research on women in the workplace.

Research through Projects Or Centres

Studies on women at work are globally underrepresented in academic journals, either indicating that journal editors, who remain male-dominated (Nowroozzadeh and Shiraz, 2024) are not accepting the research for publication, or that researchers assume that there are insignificant differences between women and men, instead opting for neutrality in research (Bosch and Booysen, 2021), or that very few researchers are exploring this important area. The lack of studies on women at work globally makes meaningful research on this topic at business schools unlikely. Unlike unaccredited elite global business schools that publish influential research more generally, the average global business school seldom has sufficient funding to make significant inroads into knowledge production. International consulting houses such as McKinsey and Deloitte have stepped in to occupy a space in research on women in the workplace, and their reports are widely consulted by large employers seeking up-to-date statistics on pertinent gender-sensitive business indicators. Their research is expertly packaged as applicable to all workplaces in every corner of the world. Most likely, this approach to globalising their research outcomes is not only commercially-driven, but also due to their data collection methods, which target respondents in large corporate entities that often have an international footprint. Most other pertinent research about women’s workplace participation is conducted in industrialised countries, particularly by elite universities in the UK and North America, also claiming universal application of their findings. A few centres or institutes of women’s leadership, such as that of the King’s Global Institute for Women’s Leadership at Kings College London, have taken a strong advocacy route, and their research aims to provide a broader global perspective, with reflections on regional realities. It is in the local therefore, that the unique opportunity lies for most business schools globally — to produce locally context-relevant research on women’s workplace equality towards socially sustainable workplaces.

The first hurdle in conducting context-specific research on workplace gender equality is the fact that such research is generally relegated to the time researchers have available once they have discharged their considerable burden of academic duties. In addition, following the research-project route may prejudice focused research, as researchers chase funding on a per-case basis, which may not coincide with the research foci of funders at a particular time. The reality is that research foci are adapted according to the requirements of funders.

Research projects can be a valuable tool for academics to enhance their research portfolios, but they may not be the most effective approach for a business school aiming to demonstrate its commitment to gender equality. Meaningful signalling of this commitment should be grounded in the establishment of formal structures and ways of organising, such as dedicated research centres or chairs.

Research centres serve as hubs where researchers, students, and business entities collaborate on joint research projects. In addition to research, these centres often engage in community outreach, public education, and, in the case of women’s workplace equality, advocacy for workplace practices conducive to gender equality. Their mandate extends beyond research, encompassing action-oriented projects and educational initiatives. As they expand their programme offerings, centres have the potential to grow in size and influence. This presents a challenge, as research centres require dedicated, full-time management to ensure that the contributions of collaborators are effectively coordinated and maximised. Without proper oversight, the potential for impactful collaboration may remain underexploited, hindering the centre’s ability to achieve its full potential.

Business Schools’ Research Chairs

In contrast, research chairs in business schools, particularly in North America and the UK, are prestigious appointments, typically held by distinguished scholars. These positions are traditionally designed to attract and retain top talent in specific fields. While research chairs often emphasise individual academic excellence, European Una Chairs take a slightly different approach, focusing on fostering collaboration amongst partner universities and serving as “bridge-builders between academia, civil society, local communities, researchers, and enterprises” (Una Europa, 2024). Whereas chairs primarily centre on the work of individual researchers, who then collaborate with other researchers, research centres focus on collective collaboration amongst multiple stakeholders within a formally recognised structure. Table 1 provides a summary of the main types of research chairs found at business schools.

Table 1: Types of research chairs

Type	Description
Endowed chair	Endowed chairs are wholly funded through a financial gift by donors, which is invested, and the interest or returns on the investment are used to support the chair’s activities. These chairs are often named after the donor or a prominent figure, and are seen as prestigious positions in academia.
Industry-sponsored chair	These chairs are funded by companies or industries to foster collaboration between academia and industry. The focus is typically on applied research that can benefit the sponsoring industry, and may have a commercial focus. The sponsorship agreement may include specific deliverables, intellectual property considerations, and expectations regarding the applicability of the research findings.
Distinguished or named chair	These chairs are named in honour of individuals or organisations, and are often funded through special grants or donations. They are usually awarded to scholars with exceptional qualifications, and are a mark of distinction in the academic community. It may be necessary to search for successive funding after the initial funding has been exhausted. Named research chairs can be more diverse and less commercially driven than industry-sponsored chairs. They are funded by a variety of sources, and may have a broader or more flexible research mandate, often with a focus on academic and scholarly contributions, rather than direct commercial outcomes.
Foundation or philanthropic chair	Funded by charitable foundations or philanthropic individuals, these chairs often focus on specific societal issues or scientific challenges. They are usually associated with a particular mission or goal, such as social justice.
Government-funded research chair	Local or national governments establish research chairs to support regional or national research priorities. Examples include Canada Research Chairs and the South African Research Chairs Initiative. These chairs are intended to attract and retain world-class researchers in areas of strategic importance.
Research professorship	Research professorships are positions primarily focused on conducting research, rather than teaching. These can be temporary or permanent, and are often funded by universities or through external grants. The emphasis is on producing research publication outputs.

Source: Generated by Chat GPT 4.0, Open AI, Accessed 17 August 2024, information verified, modified, and enriched by the researcher

Research chairs specifically focused on women’s equality, leadership, or workplace inclusion in business schools are less common compared to in the humanities, where efforts are more broadly dedicated to women’s empowerment. In the humanities globally, many research chairs, programmes, and centres focus on gender and sexuality studies, often working to advance women’s and gender rights and emancipation through political advocacy, broader national and regional policy issues, and wide-ranging concerns about women’s rights, contributions and dilemmas in society more broadly. An example is the Makerere University School of Women and Gender Studies in Uganda. These centres often integrate diverse fields like sociology, political science, language studies, theology, and history, and aim to foster broader social change and support gender equity initiatives beyond the scope of business studies or paid work.

Business schools, it seems, are more likely to offer short courses aimed at enhancing women’s opportunities to attain C-suite or board positions. Schools have readily embraced — and are using in their marketing — the notion that women need to ‘develop themselves’ to become leaders. This approach tends to benefit business schools’ revenue models, at the cost of reflecting and addressing reality. It is, however, in the area of research centres focusing on women’s leadership, such as the Wo+Men’s Leadership Centre at the Judge Business School of the University of Cambridge, the Rutgers Business School’s Centre for Women in Business, the Rotterdam School of Management at Erasmus University’s Centre for Women and Organisations, and the Center for Women’s Entrepreneurial Leadership at Babson College, that research on women’s workplace equality and educational programmes intersect and are expertly positioned and organised within a formal structure at the business school.

Research chairs, on the other hand, attract funding, provide specialised focus on a topic area, and also enhance the branding of business schools, especially where the focus matches the strategic intent of the school. Chairs may also be less onerous on the school in terms of the number of people involved. There are significantly fewer research chairs at business schools that focus on women in business or in paid work. Examples of these are the Chair for Women at Work of Stellenbosch Business School at Stellenbosch University, in South Africa, and the Carmina Roca and Rafael Pich-Aguilera Women and Leadership Chair at the IESE Business School at the University of Navarra, in Spain. Globally, there are many more chairs researching the intersection of women, work, leadership, and business outside of business schools than there are within them. This glaring imbalance beggars belief when considering that business schools are the vanguards of sustainability and are at the forefront in shaping the thinking of the next generation of business leaders.

However, securing the mandate to establish a chair is only the beginning of a sequence of important decisions that shape the impact of the chair. In the section below, I share perspectives on funding arrangements and the limitations that these can place on the work of a chair, as well as the important matter of establishing a clear mandate with regard to the purpose of the chair.

Shaping a Research Chair

Source and sustainability of funding

Chairs can be funded through various sources, including endowments from private donors, donations by philanthropic organisations, alumni contributions, government funding, or the institution or business school apportioning funding towards the chair. Funding typically covers the chairholder’s salary (if the chairholder is freed from activities such as teaching and committee work), research expenses, and additional resources, such as administrative support, basic research equipment, or graduate-student support in the form of a research assistant or postdoctoral fellow.

An important consideration when establishing a chair is whether funding sources may dictate the focus of the research topic and the mode of research in which the incumbent is allowed to engage. The final consideration is the name of the chair.

With regard to the research topic, the domain of women at work offers an array of possible foci, including hierarchical-level differences, e.g., women leaders and women on boards versus routine-task or mid-level women workers (the latter two categories are under-researched areas). Topics can also include individual, team, or organisation-level outcomes.

Epistemologically, chairholders will also differ in their foundation of knowledge and understanding, with some approaching their work in the manner of consulting houses, through positivist indicator-type survey research, or uncovering relationships between constructs towards building new models and theories, with yet others leaning towards social constructionism or critical feminist studies, often utilising qualitative methods of inquiry to critique the existence and formation of power structures and their functioning. Ultimately, chairholders will, irrespective of the wishes of funders, utilise their epistemological convictions in generating knowledge to advance the cause of women’s equality at work.

Given that chairs focusing on women’s empowerment inherently take a stance, funders may require that researchers produce outcomes that can be practically applied in the workplace. Only some funders are more open to fundamental research not aimed at solving any immediate problem but conducted purely to expand knowledge and concepts.

Naming a chair often follows the establishment of its focus, and benefactors may add status to a chair by adding their name to the title. Therefore, funding may be the most important perspective in shaping a research chair, and business schools should consider how to carefully navigate and balance their strategic foci with the wishes of funders.

Inward vs outward focus

The second perspective in shaping a chair concerns the desire to have either an inward or outward impact with regard to the business school and its environment. Whether a chair has a predominantly external or internal focus is likely to be shaped, at least to some extent, by the length of establishment of the chair, the resources available to the chairholder, and the commitment of the school to women’s empowerment as one of its core values.

Upon initiation of a chair, the first two measures of effectiveness that are likely to be used are the number of publication outputs and the number of postgraduate students successfully guided to completion of their studies. These two measures are outwardly aimed, i.e., towards showcasing to the government and the academic community the school’s work and the advancement of student skills in delivering Masters and PhD students. The last entry in Table 1, research professorships, may be an alternative and more appropriate type for these outwardly-focused activities, where a sole researcher can produce publication outputs and deliver PhD students, if the business school prioritises the time that this scholar can dedicate to publications.

A further expansion of the outward focus of research chairs is one directed towards businesses and organisations external to the school’s environment. Chairs focusing on women’s empowerment have a strong leaning towards advocacy, such as the creation of outlets for work such as websites (see an example at https://www.womensreport.africa) and blogs, speaking on public platforms and addressing the media (press). Here, the extent of advocacy that the chairholder wishes to convey determines the range of activities with an outward focus. However, unless the chairholder is bound by contractual obligations, which is likely in the case of industry-sponsored chairs, outward engagement of a chair remains limited to sharing new knowledge through traditional publication outlets and informing best practice through written work, mostly devoid of guidelines on the implementation of such practices.

The internal focus of business schools — the extent to which a school prioritises its emancipation and fosters inclusive environments — is less likely to be the focus of a chair. With an inward focus, the chairholder needs strong support from the school’s leadership, and research efforts are likely to overlap with higher education studies, including teaching, students’ learning, and academic leadership. In the pursuit of an inward focus on women’s advancement, a chairholder could be tasked with the training and development of other women faculty. While an honourable goal, in environments where there are very few women faculty, it may constrain the chairholder to become solely responsible for training women researchers, which reinforces the notion that women need to do the work of transformation on their own.

Another important matter is that many women researchers are not interested in researching issues concerning women at work, instead preferring to expand knowledge in other, less contentious academic disciplines. The intensity of the requirement of a school to adapt is more pronounced if the research of a chairholder produces guidelines for the adjustment of curriculum, for instance, the inclusion of topics such as women’s leadership, or adjustments to the contents of case-based teaching, or, more fundamentally, recommends that the mode of delivery of programmes at the school be more flexible and that scheduling show greater sensitivity to the needs of families.

The application of gender-mainstreaming processes may also be regarded as a responsibility of the chairholder in instances where job vacancies at the business school are advertised. While a chair focusing on women in business should be able to provide meaningful input towards increasing the number of women in leadership at a business school, optimising the effects requires widening accountability for this important indicator. This would require a more profound change on the part of the school.
Unless a school is deeply committed to transforming itself whilst teaching students how to go about women-sensitive transformation in workplaces, the insights brought by a research chair are not likely to yield the desired results. Therefore, business schools should carefully distinguish between research that can fundamentally change the levels of inclusion of women students and improve the school’s inclusive workplace culture — which has been proven to also enhance the experiences of men — and administrative committee work and tasks that burden a chairholder with responsibilities better placed with a transformation officer or committee.

 Strategic Choices: Pure Or Blended

Research chairs and research centres, in their purest form, are clearly delineated by the number of collaborators and the scope of activities, such as research, educational initiatives, advocacy, and public engagement. Chairs require one incumbent who will collaborate with several other researchers to produce meaningful research on a specialised topic and are usually supported by research assistants or postdoctoral fellows. Centres gather a number of people, not all researchers, with expertise or a vested interest in the theme of the centre, and centres have a few projects that may involve research but also some that go beyond pure knowledge production. Centres may also be expected to generate income through educational activities, which require focused management.

The choice between a centre or a chair revolves around strategic focus and the school’s capacity to fully support the mechanism chosen to organise activities. Chairs are easier to manage and involve fewer people. Therefore, they may be the ideal way to initiate a strategic initiative towards women’s workplace equality at a business school. It is important to understand that engaged research through a chair is challenging when the incumbent is burdened with onerous teaching loads and other academic responsibilities. This distinction is often overlooked because leaders conflate a research professorship with a research chair, while the latter has a stronger and more focused strategic role. Therefore, when business schools and funders present extensive requests to a research chair incumbent, such as performing broad duties that are better suited to a research centre or a traditional professorship, careful consideration of what is feasible should take precedence over unrealistic wish lists.

Nevertheless, the focus of a chair does not need to remain traditional i.e., research-focused, as the school or funder may need strategic outputs that are not purely research-related and may include greater focus on knowledge dissemination, or in the case of an industry-sponsored chair be linked to solving practice-based dilemmas. Here the approach to the rationale for the establishment of European Una Chairs, as described previously, provides further guidance. The nature and skills of the chair incumbent should also be considered as some people may be better equipped to serve in public-facing activities than others. Business school environments are conducive to such blending, and broader thinking about all chairs — not just research chairs — should be encouraged, to enhance collaboration between funders and schools. Also, to ultimately deliver on the school’s strategic intent.

Conclusion

Without careful organisation and integration with the strategic intent of the business school, context-targeted and specialised research on women at work, which is a unique opportunity for most business schools globally, will remain an unmet imperative. Business schools should combine and orchestrate the strengths of chairs and centres in considered and concerted research efforts aimed at making planned impacts. In embarking on such efforts, business schools have to be aware that both centres and chairs require substantial funding. In the case of centres, which require greater coordination, this includes the expense of permanent managers, but they may be expected to raise funds. Chairs, on the other hand, are easier to manage and are the ideal vehicle for producing focused research outcomes for schools that embark on strategically showcasing women’s workplace equality.

It is imperative that business schools understand the difference between a chair and a traditional professorship. Even business schools that make women’s equality one of their strategic goals are bound to fall into the trap of thinking that they can add the nomenclature ‘chair’ to a post and continue to expect the same outputs as a traditional professor is expected to deliver. This undermines the purpose of having a chair, as it redirects most of the chairholder’s time and resources towards teaching, management, and committee work, thereby diluting research efforts.

Research chairs, and chairs more broadly, offer business schools numerous invaluable opportunities to progress women’s advancement at work in multiple meaningful ways, both internal and external to the school.
The school should decide how much attention the chair should focus on internal versus external audiences as most of the research that flows from a chair is likely to be distributed through traditional non-public channels. The fruits of such research will then, at best, only trickle into curricula through updates to classroom contents by learning facilitators. For any impact internally, a research chair should be tasked with research aimed at improving the school’s curriculum and other relevant internal outcomes, to enable the school to not only signal its support of research on women and their workplace advancement, but to align its operations in all spheres with achievement of this important economic and social justice imperative.

The most exciting prospect for business schools that wish to commit to women’s workplace equality, however, lies in articulating the strategic impact that a school wishes to achieve and blending the organising mechanisms towards this end. Research chairs remain an outstanding organising mechanism to attain this worthy goal.

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