Revealing the life above the ceiling - A study of the glass cliff in Sweden

Sammanfattning: We study the correlation between company performance and the selection of gender in 236 CEOs appointments in Sweden over the years 2005-2016. We seek to investigate whether the "glass cliff" is prevalent in Sweden, a phenomenon which states that female leaders are appointed to leadership positions associated with higher risk of failure to a larger extent than men. We find that companies appointing female CEOs have performed better on average prior to the appointment than those that appoint male CEOs when using cumulative abnormal returns as a measure of performance. However, when controlling for general financial downturn or using change in return on assets as a measure of performance, we find tendencies supporting the glass cliff in CEO positions. No significant evidence for the glass cliff is found for female CEOs in Swedish firms but we cannot exclude that the glass cliff exists for other leadership positions. Whether the preconditions of previous employments differ between sexes needs to be examined in forthcoming research.