The queen bee phenomenon in management and marketing

Résumé ou Introduction

The goal of this paper is to answer the question whether the "queen bee phenomenon" is a persistent myth or unvarnished truth in a business context. For this purpose, an in-depth literature review will be conducted including indications, consequences and recent empirical studies on the topic of queen bees. In the next step, findings of the mentioned aspects will be discussed in order to justify the research question. This paper then concludes with an outlook and implications for further research.

Anyone who watched movies such as "The Devil Wears Prada", "Melrose Place" or "Working Girl" has seen female bosses who worked their way up to top management while undermining other women in the workplace. This type of attitude even has its own name: "queen bee" (QB).

Interestingly, pursuant to typical gender stereotypes, women engage in processes of forming alliances, collaborate and join together with shared aims through behaviors which demonstrate loyalty and gender awareness. Although much of the research of female leadership is built on those assumptions of sisterhood and solidarity, the expectation may not be fulfilled in practice. Instead, women in management and organizations often neither are friends, nor do they cooperate or support each other. Sometimes this may even result in female bullying in the workplace. These observations could be explained with the QBP. However, it is essential to find empirical evidence for this phenomenon.