Explained: Twitter's new CEO Linda Yaccarino and the 'glass cliff' debate

Elon Musk on Friday announced that advertising executive Linda Yaccarino will be the new CEO of Twitter.Yaccarino, who starts her new job in six weeks, is facing myriad challenges including an exodus of advertisers, falling revenues, a shortage of staff, and issues with moderating extreme and graphic content.But Yaccarino’s appointment has also revived the debate surrounding the ‘glass cliff’ theory.But what is the ‘glass cliff’ theory? What’s the debate around it?Let’s take a closer look:According to Vox, the term ‘glass cliff’ was coined in 2005 by researchers Michelle Ryan and Alexander Haslam.“The glass cliff is a phenomenon whereby women (and other minority groups) are more likely to occupy positions of leadership that are risky and precarious,” Ryan told Vox.Ryan and Haslam began researching this theory after The Times newspaper in 2003 reported that companies with the most women on their boards performed the least well, as per University of Exeter.The piece added that women were ‘wreaking havoc’ in the boardroom and that ‘corporate Britain would be better off without women on board’.Ryan and Haslam found that companies that brought women on their boards were more likely to have had poor performance five months leading up to the appointment than those that brought on men.“This can happen when share price performance is poor, when facing a scandal, or when the role involves reputational risk,” Ryan added."These results expose an additional, largely invisible, hurdle that women need to overcome in the workplace," they noted.A piece in MIT Sloan Management Review noted that the phenomenon occurs across industries and geographies and for women and ethnic minorities alike.It found that Fortune 500 companies that were performing poorly were more likely to appoint a female CEO than its well-performing counterparts.A study in Harvard Business Review that asked students to appoint a CEO of a company found that 62 per cent chose men to run the company if it was doing well and 69 percent chose women if the company was teetering.Another study in Harvard Business Review found the ‘glass cliff’ “does not seem to apply to organizations with a history of female leaders.”“When an organization is in crisis, women are often seen as being able to come in and take care of a problem,” Anna Beninger, senior director of research and corporate engagement partner at nonprofit firm Catalyst told Vox.

“They’re effectively handed the mess to clean up.”

Ellen Pao at Reddit, Mary Barra at GM, Carly Fiorina at HP and Marissa Mayer at Yahoo are some examples of the ‘glass cliff’ theory at work, as per Fortune.The University of Exeter website says examples of a ‘glass cliff’ can occur not just in Fortune 500 companies, but also in politics – former UK prime minister Teresa May and Brexit for example – and also sport.However, some dispute the very existence of the phenomenon and call it a myth.Forbes cited a study of 233 large companies in Germany and the UK over a decade finding no evidence of such a phenomenon.According to the outlet, another study published in Psychological Bulletin in 2020 found zero evidence of the phenomenon in management and sports, but did find some evidence in politics, education and non-profits.“In these areas, women and minorities were more likely than white men to be hired by struggling organizations or governments,” the piece noted."We find support for the glass cliff, but the effect is small and not ubiquitous. Instead, it is restricted to some domains and may depend on a range of factors," the piece concluded.Can Yaccarino make it work?Jo-Ellen Pozner, an associate professor of management at the Leavey School of Business at Santa Clara University told the website Market Watch Yaccarino’s appointment seems like a ‘textbook case’ of the theory.“Her credentials are impeccable and she’s been extremely successful so far. But she’s also been in settings where her success was achievable,” Pozner added.

“I mean no disrespect to her or to diminish her in the least. I just think that this is an impossible situation for basically anybody.”

Whether or not she succeeds depends in part on how much Musk is willing to step back from Twitter’s day-to-day operations.[caption id="attachment_12602272" align="alignnone" width="640"]

Twitter, like most tech companies, does not have a strong history of female leaders. Its founders were all men, as were all five of its CEOs, including Elon Musk. AP[/caption]The Tesla and SpaceX CEO said he will continue to serve as Twitter’s executive chairman — Yaccarino’s boss — as well as its chief technology officer, reporting to her. He added that Yaccarino “will focus primarily on business operations.”Jennifer Chatman, professor of management at the Haas School of Business, told Axios Yaccarino should leave the company quickly if Musk refuses to step back.From the moment Yaccarino’s name was confirmed, advertising industry experts hailed the decision as a good one — perhaps the only one — to steer Twitter toward stability and profitability. Yaccarino oversaw NBCUniversal’s market strategy and advertising revenue for its broadcast, cable and digital assets, which totaled nearly $10 billion. In comparison, Twitter’s final quarterly revenue as a public company, reported in July, was just $1.17 billion.“She is exactly what Twitter needs to start rebuilding advertiser trust, bring back big advertisers and really start improving Twitter’s ad business,” said Jasmine Enberg, an analyst at Insider Intelligence who follows Twitter. “That said, there are still a lot of challenges and Yaccarino is going to have her hands full from day one.”Musk’s tenure at Twitter’s helm has been chaotic at best. He began his first day firing the company’s top executives, followed by roughly 80 per cent of its staff. This has meant that Twitter has far fewer engineers to ensure that the site is running smoothly and far fewer content moderators to help rid it of hate speech, animal cruelty and graphic violence.He’s upended the platform’s verification system and has scaled back safeguards against the spread of misinformation. It’s been some of these changes — along with Musk’s own penchant for spreading misinformation and engaging with prominent conspiracy theorists and far-right figures — that analysts say soured many advertisers on the platform.“Elon Musk has been telling us for months repeatedly that Twitter’s problems are the result of advertisers pulling away. But that’s not the source of his problems. Advertisers pulling away are a symptom of the problems at Twitter. He’s created chaos. He’s eliminated internal controls. He’s eliminated critical functions like content moderation. He’s made the user experience very unpredictable. He’s allowed dangerous voices to flourish,” Pozner said. “Nobody — man, woman, alien — is going to be able to right this ship given these circumstances.”Read all the Latest News, Trending News, Cricket News, Bollywood News, India News and Entertainment News here. Follow us on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.