By now everyone is familiar with the glass ceiling—the informal barrier that keeps women out of upper management. In the past few years, researchers have found that women have a better chance of breaking through that ceiling when an organization is facing a crisis—thus finding themselves on what Michelle Ryan and Alex Haslam, of the University of Exeter, have termed the “glass cliff.” But the question remains why.
A version of this article appeared in the January–February 2011 issue of Harvard Business Review.
