Purpose

IT security compliance is critical to the organization’s success, and such compliance depends largely on IT leadership. Considering the prevalence of unconscious gender biases and stereotyping at the workplace and growing female leadership in IT, the authors examine how the internalization of stereotype beliefs, in the form of the employee’s gender, impacts the relationships between leadership characteristics and IT security compliance intentions.

Design/methodology/approach

A controlled experiment using eight different vignettes manipulating Chief Information Officer (CIO) gender (male/female), Information Technology (IT) expertise (low/high) and leadership style (transactional/transformational) was designed in Qualtrics. Data were gathered from MTurk workers from all over the US.

Findings

The findings suggest that both CIOs' and employees' gender play an important role in how IT leadership characteristics – perceived expertise and leadership style – influence the employees' intentions and reactance to comply with CIO security recommendations.

Research limitations/implications

This study's findings enrich the security literature by examining the role of leadership styles on reactance and compliance intentions. They also provide important theoretical implications based on gender stereotype theory alone: First, the glass ceiling effects can be witnessed in how men and women employees demonstrate prejudice against women CIO leaders through their reliance on perceived quadratic CIO IT expertise in forming compliance intentions. Secondly, this study's findings related to gender role internalization show men and women have a prejudice against gender-incongruent roles wherein women employees are least resistive to transactional male CIOs, and men employees are less inclined to comply with transactional female CIOs confirm the findings related to gender internationalization from Hentschel et al. (2019).

Practical implications

This study highlights the significance of organizations and individuals actively promoting gender equality and fostering environments that recognize women's achievements. It also underscores the importance of educating men and women about the societal implications of stereotyping gender roles that go beyond the organizational setting. This research demonstrates that a continued effort is required to eradicate biases stemming from gender stereotypes and foster social inclusion. Such efforts can positively influence how upcoming IT leaders and employees internalize gender-related factors when shaping their identities.

Social implications

This study shows that more work needs to be done to eliminate gender stereotype biases and promote social inclusion to positively impact how future IT leaders and employees shape their identities through internalization.

Originality/value

This study redefines the concept of “sticky floors” to explain how subordinates can hinder and undermine female leaders, thereby contributing to the glass ceiling effect. In addition, the study elucidates how gender roles shape employees' responses to different leadership styles through gender stereotyping and internalization.

中文翻译：

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她值得 IT：女性 CIO 在确保 IT 安全合规性方面面临的挑战

目的

IT 安全合规性对于组织的成功至关重要，而这种合规性在很大程度上取决于 IT 领导力。考虑到工作场所中无意识的性别偏见和刻板印象的普遍存在以及 IT 领域女性领导力的不断增强，作者研究了以员工性别为形式的刻板印象信念的内化如何影响领导特征与 IT 安全合规意图之间的关系。

设计/方法论/途径

在 Qualtrics 中设计了一项对照实验，使用八个不同的小插图来操纵首席信息官 (CIO) 性别（男/女）、信息技术 (IT) 专业知识（低/高）和领导风格（事务型/变革型）。数据是从美国各地的 MTurk 员工那里收集的。

发现

研究结果表明，CIO 和员工的性别在 IT 领导特征（感知的专业知识和领导风格）如何影响员工遵守 CIO 安全建议的意图和抵制方面发挥着重要作用。

研究局限性/影响

这项研究的结果通过研究领导风格对抵制和合规意图的作用丰富了安全文献。它们还仅基于性别刻板印象理论提供了重要的理论意义：首先，玻璃天花板效应可以从男性和女性员工如何通过依赖感知的二次 CIO IT 专业知识来形成合规意图而表现出对女性 CIO 领导者的偏见中看出。其次，本研究与性别角色内化相关的研究结果表明，男性和女性对性别不一致的角色存在偏见，其中女性员工对交易型男性 CIO 的抵抗力最小，而男性员工则不太愿意遵守交易型女性 CIO，这证实了与以下相关的发现： Hentschel等人的性别国际化 （2019）。

实际影响

这项研究强调了组织和个人积极促进性别平等和营造认可妇女成就的环境的重要性。它还强调了对男性和女性进行教育的重要性，让他们了解超越组织环境的陈规定型性别角色的社会影响。这项研究表明，需要继续努力消除性别陈规定型观念产生的偏见并促进社会包容。这些努力可以对未来的 IT 领导者和员工在塑造其身份时如何内化性别相关因素产生积极影响。

社会影响

这项研究表明，需要做更多的工作来消除性别刻板印象偏见并促进社会包容性，从而对未来 IT 领导者和员工如何通过内化塑造自己的身份产生积极影响。

原创性/价值

这项研究重新定义了“粘性地板”的概念，以解释下属如何阻碍和削弱女性领导者，从而导致玻璃天花板效应。此外，该研究还阐明了性别角色如何通过性别刻板印象和内化来塑造员工对不同领导风格的反应。