Ready for the Boardroom: Applying a Career Mobility Lens to Women's Board Seeking Behaviours

Abstract

There is a continued concern in Australia over the low representation of women on corporate boards. There have been a number of initiatives that have been identified to increase the number of ‘board-ready’ women. A previous evaluation of one Australian initiative – the award of scholarships to complete a well-regarded company director’s course - resulted in the development of a conceptual model of women’s board seeking behavior (Authors 2012). Building on this previous work, in this paper we consider the journey to the boardroom as a form of transition and re-examine the data and the conceptual model of board seeking behaviour through a career transition lens. We draw on Forrier et al’s conceptual model of career mobility (Forrier et al 2009) to gain a deeper understanding of the behavior and choices of women who have indicated an interest in gaining board appointments. We present our findings of this new interpretation and discuss the insights gained, limitation of our approach and directions for future research.