Examining the "Glass Cliff" phenomenon

Researchers have been examining barriers and challenges for women in leadership positions from a variety of perspectives since the 1980's when the "glass ceiling" concept was coined. More recently researchers have been examining whether women are being placed in precarious leadership positions. Ryan and Haslam (2005) dubbed the term the "glass cliff" in 2005 after using a corporate board level analysis to compare the effect of female board appointments to male counterparts in the U.K. The study in this paper is a replication of Ryan and Haslam's glass cliff study in a Canadian context using an event study methodology. In addition to the financial performance outcome of share price used by Ryan and Haslam, this study extends the analysis by also examining excess return data which are less sensitive than share price data. The findings using both financial performance outcomes in the analysis of female board appointees suggest that evidence of the glass cliff phenomenon is not necessarily apparent by examining board level appointments. A review of the relevant literature, a description of the study, the findings, and a discussion about future research directions are presented in this paper