The glass cliff effect and corporate sustainability

This bachelor’s thesis examines the provability of the glass cliff effect in the corporate management of multinational corporations in the EU. The effect describes the tendency to appoint women to leadership positions disproportionately in situations of organisational crisis. The thesis does not generate primary empirical data, but critically analyses four purposively selected studies, namely Ryan and Haslam (2005), Bechtoldt et al. (2019), Rink et al. (2013), and Morgenroth et al. (2020), through a framework inspired by the Bradford Hill criteria of causality. Based on the analysis, the effect was classified as conditionally provable: empirical support exists, but depends on the methodology applied and the institutional context. The findings are discussed in the context of corporate sustainability and the EU regulatory framework, in particular Directives 2022/2381 and CSRD (2022/2464) of the European Parliament and of the Council.