Authors - Suresh Panampilly, Murale Venugopalan Abstract - Despite the prestige associated with leadership roles, many employees are reluctant to become managers. This poses challenges for organizations aiming to strengthen their managerial pipeline to meet long-term strategic goals. In this study, managerial reluctance is studied by analyzing candid posts on Reddit. LDA topic modelling using 15 posts revealed 6 themes. The themes uncover psychological, organizational and ethical factors. Some results align with established theories (e.g. Expectancy, equity and role theories). Others highlight unexplored areas such as ethical dilemmas and identity conflicts. This study confirms that topic modelling on social media data can give valuable insights into managerial reluctance. By using data from online discourses to draw theoretical insights, this study offers conceptual contributions and practical in-sights which can be used to develop inclusive managerial talent in organizations.
