People management saturation (PMS): rethinking the emotional architecture of leadership

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to evaluate how women’s underrepresentation in leadership is often attributed to structural barriers or ambition gaps and how capable women deliberately distance themselves from managerial roles. This paper introduces the concept of people management saturation (PMS), a state of emotional and cognitive overload experienced by individuals who feel they are already managing, coordinating and emotionally supporting others in their personal lives, most often through caregiving or motherhood. Ironically echoing a biological acronym long used to marginalize women’s discomfort, PMS here reframes leadership opt-out as a rational act of emotional self-preservation. Design/methodology/approach By reviewing and integrating diverse literatures on gendered emotional labor, leadership identity regulation and resource depletion, the paper develops a conceptual framework explaining how PMS emerges, how it shapes leadership self-selection and under what contextual conditions it is intensified or mitigated. Findings The reason is that this is a conceptual paper. The outcome of this paper is to introduce the PMS construct. Originality/value This paper invites scholars to reconsider how leadership is defined, emotionally distributed and rewarded, and to recognize that, for some individuals, declining to manage others can represent an act of identity preservation. In doing so, it extends the mental-load literature beyond the domestic sphere and contributes to theories of gender, emotion, and leadership in management studies.