GLASS CEILING AND TURNOVER INTENTION

Abstract

Existence of glass ceiling effect is not an uncommon phenomenon in modern corporate world. Male leadership styles continue to dominate modern corporate environments. However, women are better educated and hold jobs worldwide than ever before, representing significant proportion of labour force. It is explored that women's earning power and educational accomplishments continue to grow. Breaking through glass ceiling by female professionals is not a reason to be surprised in modern era. In Sri Lankan context, the role of “good wives” who stay at home rearing the children is expected by most males due to patriarchal social and cultural impacts. Nevertheless, economic pressures and social changes causes for emergence of dual career families where women play as economic agents in income generation. Consequently, role overload and role incompatibility is significant in today woman’s life style which creates dynamic conflicts with their employed spouses. The context affects the turnover intentions of female professionals. Moreover, bottlenecks in career progression are another perspective which persuades women to leave organisations specially those who have thirst for succeed in career. The main objective of the study was to explore the impact of glass ceiling on turnover intentions of female professionals in Sri Lanka through the intervening effects of breaking through glass ceiling and conflicts in dual career families. The method for this study is qualitative since the topic is related to human interactions in their natural settings. Six professional female respondents in upper management were opted as the sample which leans on the principles of grounded and narrative analyses. Semi structured-in depth interviews and focused group discussions were held in order to generate fruitful data being closer to the context through natural language. It was evident that the glass ceiling effect influenced the turnover intention through the intervening effects of breaking through glass ceiling and conflicts in dual career, where the context was proved with the quotations of the respondents and the relevant empirical literature. Recommendations and implications for the future studies were produced in this empirical research.