| This dissertation explored change needed to co-create alignment amongst women, organizations, and society, addressing a systemic whole to support women's attainment of progressively more responsible and effective leadership roles. To inform this qualitative, phenomenological case study the researcher explored the lived experiences of 20 women who attained progressively more responsible and effective leadership roles to gain insight into how they believe women, organizations, and society can align to support women's attainment of progressively more responsible and effective leadership roles. Systems thinking theory (Gharajedaghi, 2006), which indicates alignment between women, organizations, and society is important in order to achieve success, and transformative change theory (Scharmer, 2007) of suspending past habits to see and direct attention to the future served as the theoretical framework for this study. This study is unique in that it adds the perspective of alignment within a system and the transformative change process to the body of literature on women and leadership. The outcome of this study provides new knowledge about tools that can be used to co-create alignment within a system of women, organizations, and society to support women's attainment of progressively more responsible and effective leadership roles within the system. Gharajedaghi, J. (2006). Systems thinking managing chaos and complexity: A platform for designing business architecture (2nd ed.). Burlington, MA: Butterworth-Heinemann. Scharmer, C. (2007). Theory U: Leading from the future as it emerges. San Francisco: Berrett-Koehler Publishers, Inc. |
