Among 11,030 samples of chief executive officers, managers from large U.S. companies, student leaders, and participants in experiments, East Asians were much less likely than South Asians and Whites to attain leadership positions, while South Asians were more likely than Whites to be top leaders. The finding is not surprising given that Indian-origin CEOs are leading industries across the world. Arvid Krishna of IBM, Sundar Pichai of Google, Satya Nadella of Microsoft, Revathi Advaithi of Flex, Leena Nair of Chanel, and Anjali Sud of Vimeo are just a few examples on the growing list.
To reveal why East Asians hit the bamboo ceiling but South Asians do not, further analysis from Lu and colleagues (2020) showed that East Asians are less assertive, which contradicts Western norms regarding leaders’ communication styles. Relatedly, a study of 19 class years of MBAs who accepted full-time job offers in the U.S. showed a striking gap between their subgroups among Asians: East and Southeast Asians received the lowest salaries of all ethnicities, but South Asians were at the very top. This gap was explained by East and Southeast Asians’ unwillingness to negotiate due to higher concerns for relationship harmony (Lu, 2022).
