Impact of gender and expatriation choice on career paths in supply chain management: Evidence from master of science graduates

Abstract

Zinn et al. (2018) and Esper et al. (2020) call for more research on gender diversity in Supply Chain Management, and our study responds to that call. We analyze the career path of 1081 international graduates from a higher degree program in Supply Chain Management from 2000 to 2017 to assess the impact of gender and expatriation choice on hierarchical progression. We explore two variables that may affect graduates' career paths, namely, their gender and their expatriation choices, and compare their relative importance. Our analysis shows that there were, on average, 33.5% women recruited in the MSc and that this has not significantly changed over the years. It also shows that gender significantly influences the number of years spent at each level in the career hierarchy and the level reached. Regarding expatriation choice, this variable has some significant impacts on career progression. Finally, statistics indicate that gender has a far greater influence on career progression than expatriation choice. Overall, this study proves the difficulties for women in enjoying the same career progression as men in the field of Supply Chain Management.