Ricerc@Sapienza

This paper draws on social role theory and role congruity theory to argue that Enterprise Social Networks (ESNs) are conductive environments to the emergence and the recognition of women’s (informal) leadership in organizations. The majority of the literature about the organizational effects of ESNs has stressed their importance for social capital formation, cooperation, collaboration, knowledge sharing, creativity and innovation among employees.

The present research addressed the question of whether need for closure (NFC; Kruglanski in The psychology of closed mindedness, Psychology Press, New York, 2004) biases individuals’ memory of female leaders. Merging research on role congruity theory of leadership (Koenig et al. in Psychol Bull 4:616–642, 2011. https ://doi.org/10.1037/a0023 557) and research on retrieval-induced forgetting (RIF, Anderson et al. in J Exp Psychol Learn Mem Cognit 20:1063–1087, 1994.