Female leadership engagement in the Italian audio- visual Companies. The role of soft power

Defining the pillars of sustainable development, the 2030 Agenda recalls inequality and valuing diversity as an asset. Diversity management can be defined as a managerial approach pursuing an active and conscious development of a forward-looking, value- oriented strategic and communicative managerial process of accepting differences and using some differences and similarities as a potential of the organization, a process that creates added value to the enterprise. However, a lack of literature emerges regarding the studies on “behind the line” themes, which represent the key factors for the companies operating into the audiovisual industry. Especially, one of these regards soft power meaning the use and persuasion to change minds and influence behavior. In this stream fits in the present research aiming to analyse how women’s leadership can support audiovisual companies in reaching sustainable development. Qualitative face to face surveys methodology supports the paper, analysing 16 in-depth interviews. The interviews were conducted mainly with key figures of several audiovisual companies such as TV producers, production managers, directors of public and private TV networks, and heads of audiovisive archives. The positive role of female leadership in the audiovisual industry is confirmed. From executive appointments to new recognition paradigms, inclusion is on the 2022 agenda of the audiovisual world. A growing presence of roles and productions of female filmmakers is confirmed, although the gap between men and women is still very wide. Several insights emerge from the study of soft power topics, linking them directly to themes like training, innovation, responsibility, and change that emerge from the interviews. The present study has several theoretical and practical implications. From theoretical perspective, it enriches the literature on gender study fields. Also, several aspects of the company’s sustainable development and diversity management have been treated. From practical perspective, the present research points out the main features in terms of soft skills that female leadership must fulfil in order to achieve sustainable development for the company. The main limitation of the research could be recognised to the number of interviews conducted. The future lines of research aim to expand the survey, also considering international entities. This perspective will help the authors in identifying the main characteristics of women managers that could allow the audiovisual companies in reaching the best outcome format for the market. Moreover, extending the analysis could promote the generalisation of the main findings of the research.