Managing Maternity Leave: A Qualitative Analysis of Temporary Executive Succession

Abstract

The ethnographic study reported here examines executive maternity leave as a succession event that manifests itself in a novel transition pattern that I term “temporary executive succession.” In a study of one entrepreneurial firm, I investigated what happens when a founder takes a maternity leave, specifically, how the initiating force of maternity influences the event and how members respond to a breach in “feminine” leadership. The ethnographic analysis revealed an emergent leadership change in the absence of a formal successor. While firm members professed their “feminine” approach to work, they invoked the founder's maternity to increase the firm's autonomy and revise the founder's role. The study brings critical, participatory qualitative methods to succession inquiry and casts doubt on the validity of dominant assumptions about executive succession, its initiating forces, stages of the process, and control. It also informs research on “feminine” styles of leading and the place of maternity in modern organizations.