What chances do women have to advance as a manager?


Introduction
I write this blog as a final project for my course called managers@work. Managers@work was not my first encounter with management. However, it was a very different encounter than the ones earlier in my bachelor education. Whenever a link to management was made the issues we learned were presented as facts. Indisputable truths. For example, in the course ‘management of organizations’ I learned that management is “The process of communicating, coordinating, and accomplishing action in the pursuit of organizational objectives while managing relationships with stakeholders, technologies, and other artefacts, both within as well as between organizations” [1]. In the current course it did not take long for me to find out that management is not easily defined, and that many questions remain to be answered by management research.

During the course we have discussed many aspects of management in the tutorial groups. This discussion has broadened my view, but has also raised a lot of questions. In this blog I would like to reflect on one of these questions: What chances do women have to advance as a manager? To answer this question I will first explore the job of a manager, to get a better view of the tasks of a manager and the demands of the job. Then I can examine whether women would fit this profile, and what could be reasons that hold them back from reaching the top of organizations. Though these items will be the core of this blog, I will link the ideas to the broader idea of management, to provide a more complete picture.

I will explore these issues with the help of insights from the academic literature, other people’s views on issues found on blogs or in news articles, and the interviews I conducted with two managers. A summary of the interview with the male manager and with the female manager including a short introduction to the managers can be found by following the links. There will be other occasions where I find it useful to provide some extra information on a certain item, which does not fit in the story here. Then you will find a link just like for the interviews.

Where does management come from?
Before trying to make sense of what management actually is, let’s take a look at where the idea of management comes from. According to Peter Drucker World War II caused great awareness of management.[2] However, the essence of management must have existed much earlier. How else have ancient cultures been able to build the large temples and pyramids we still admire these days? How would masters have been able to make their slaves perform the work needed if not by managing them? (Agreed, this would have been managing in an often rather violent way, but it could still be called managing). In the 18th century we see more concrete ideas linking to management. In 1787 Bentham introduced his idea of the Panopticon, a building designed to watch over people, without being seen by them. Other examples are the ideas of Frederick Winslow Taylor, Henri Fayol and Mary Parker Follett.

It is thus hard to say where the history of management has started. What is evident is that it receives much attention in today’s society. Let’s take a closer look at today’s ideas on what management entails.

Manager’s roles, tasks and responsibilities
The ideas of Henri Fayol are still visible in the current idea of what managers do, albeit that from his six functions only four have remained: planning, organizing, coordinating and controlling.[3]

These four functions can still be found in education (I have come across them in mine), while Henry Mintzberg has already challenged them in 1973. According to Mintzberg managers have formal authority, which leads to status. This leads respectively to interpersonal roles, informational roles, and decisional roles. In total there are 10 managerial roles. These roles form a construct and can therefore not be separated, even though not every manager will give equal attention to each of the roles. The main thing to take away from Mintzberg’s work is that the manager’s job is far from structured, and to make their (mostly ad hoc) decisions, managers rely on information they directly receive from the people in their organization.[4]

Mintzberg’s work is based on the observation of 5 CEOs. Therefore one should be careful in generalizing these results, especially when it concerns managers at other organizational levels. Kotter studies 15 successful general managers[5] between 1976 and 1981[6]. His main conclusion is that managers use a lot of their time networking. They then use the information they receive from this network to implement their ‘agenda’.[5]


Luthans uses a larger and more diverse sample. He observes the work of 44 managers from all levels of the organization. He summarizes his findings into four managerial activities, comprising a total of 12 behavioural categories. Another view on the managerial roles can be taken from the Global Executive Leadership Inventory (GELI), a 360-degree feedback instrument developed by interviewing over 300 senior executives. The instrument includes items like “envisioning” and “designing and aligning”, but also “energizing” and “team building”.[7] What we can take from this research is that management involves much more than planning, organizing, leading and controlling. In my opinion every manager’s job partly contains these four activities. However what these four items do not capture is the fact that the manager’s job involves dealing with people. Whether this is networking to get the information the manager needs to make a decision, or whether this involves training an employee, management includes interaction with others. So maybe Follet was not far of when stating that management is "the art of getting things done through people"[8]

Some quotes from management blogs express the same feeling:

“The older I get and the more I see reinforces that leadership techniques and fads change with the times, but caring about individuals holds constant.”[9]

“Part of the problem is that management is viewed as a decision-making role rather than a facilitative one. If management is like investment, sound decisions need to be made to allocate resources wisely, but the best return can only be achieved by facilitating, coaching, acting as a catalyst and developing people.”[10]

The male manager I interviewed, which I will call Adam, also clearly is a people manager. In everything he said he refered to the importance of being there for your people, and finding the right balance between managing and dealing with the content of the job. I think this distinction between managing and content is important. This distinction is also made in the blog of Mitch McCrimmon which I just quoted. He states that when a cook does the dishes or orders his ingredients, we do not call this cooking. The legitimate question he consequently poses is “What is so different about the role of manager that we would want to call everything a manager does managing? Why not say that managers engage in a mixture of doing and managing?” [9] Indeed, sometimes a manager has to deal with the content, instead of just organize, plan, coordinate and control. That part of the job is clearly mentioned by the female manager (let’s call her Eve in the future). Apart from the need to be able to direct your team, she sees an important task in the contact with the client. A manager should be able to build a relationship with this client and create opportunities for new assignments.

For now, let’s focus on the actual managing. When discussing the roles of a manager we cannot ignore the distinction between managers and leaders. It seems to be widely acknowledged that there is a distinction between the two. According to Adam, the manager minds the shop, while the leader leads the troops. This means that the manager is more concerned with the short-term, while the leader is the one with the long-term visison. This idea seems to be confirmed by the literature. James Kotterman compares the difference in processes used by managers and leaders. Also from his overview it seems that management is more short-term focused and deals with more specific issues, while leadership is about the long-term and has a broader view. Furthermore, when we look at the descriptions of the tasks it seems that leaders have a more personal approach (e.g. “motivates and inspires”, “energizes employees”) than managers (“displays low emotion”).[11]

José Luis Romero nicely summarizes the different tasks. A manager (1)“plans and budgets”, (2)“organizes and staffs”, and (3)“controls and solves problems”. The leader (1)“establishes direction”, (2)“aligns people”, and (3)“motivates and inspires”.[12] This distinction is in line with the ideas of Eve. She sees a leader as someone who can inspire a team to get the best out of it. A person who is charismatic and has a clear vision, which other people trust and follow. The manager deals with the more contrete issues. Romero further suggests that the higher up in the organization you are, the more you should lead instead of manage, while lower-level managers should manage more compared to leading.[12] This is indeed a logical conclusion when you agree that managers are the ones that make the plans and organize and control the staff, while leaders are concerned with developing a vision and looking into the future. On the other hand, from the division described above it seems that managers act more as controllers and are very concerned with outcomes, while leaders have a greater concern for their employees, trying to motivate them. If you want to produce results motivating your people is just as important at the bottom of your organization as at the top. Maybe even more important, because production workers are generating income for your company. Therefore, for a manager it is also important to lead. The other way around, higher up in the organization it will sometimes be needed to set a clear structure and clearly control your employees. Ideally these functions should thus be combined and varied according to the situation. This idea is also put forward by Adam. For example, when he just started as a manager on his team he had to act more as a leader to get the team together and ensure they would work towards the same goals. Now that the team members are more aware of how each of them contributes to the team he takes on the role of a manager.

When we consider the above discussion, we can conclude that the manager’s job is not an easy one and that it involves many different aspects. One important aspect I would also like to address here is ethics. An issue that has received much attention since scandals like Enron and Worldcom and that cannot be ignored by a company. When a company does it can have great consequences, from fines when the company is lucky, to the fall of the company when it is less fortunate.[13] For Eve it is not something that receives specific attention. Maybe because being integer is such an important issue for an auditor, and company policies really emphasize this, it has become second nature to her. In her case she also can and has to rely more on the company to communicate the message to the employees, because she works with different teams on each client. Adam manages one team and notes that people have different views on when something is acceptable and when it just crosses the line. Therefore, he puts much emphasis on ethics and integrity. How important integrity is when you work in an organization like a municipality is shown by the fact that Adam’s team already lost one official, who was involved in the commotion around Gerd Leers.

This also shows that although every management job is complex, many things also depend on the specific situation. In general however, when we look through the hectical nature of the job, and the streams of information the manager has to deal with, we still see a lot of planning, organizing, coordinating and controlling. This makes sense. Let’s consider a situation where a manager has to implement a new type of software. He will have to plan when the different steps of the implementation can take place. He also has to coordinate among his team members who is responsible for which part of the job, and he should make sure the employees know what to do and have the right resources (organize). Lastly he needs to control the whole process to ensure that the software is correctly implemented. All four of Fayol’s tasks are present. However, these alone are not sufficient. For example, the manager will have to motivate the team to complete this project. Mintzberg is right when he says that there is no coordinating, controlling, planning or organizing when you present “a gold watch to a retiring employee”[14]. But to say that these four items are totally not included in the job of a manager might be wrong. Rather I would say that this set of tasks misses something: interaction with people.

Can we learn to be a manager?
Noting that the job of a manager is quite complex, I asked the two managers whether they think managing is something you can learn. They both expressed the idea that being a manager is something that for a large part should come natural. As a person you need to have certain competencies. Training and education can help to improve certain skills that might still be underdeveloped, but cannot turn a bad manager into a great one. For Adam a training program that gave a lot of room to discuss experiences with other managers was very helpful. This is also the view expressed in recent literature. Spoon-feeding theories is not wat managers are looking for, but subjects should be dealt with in a practical manner for education to be of value.[15]

Do women fit the job description?
Now that we have a clearer idea of what the job of a manager entails, let’s take a look whether men and women differ in such a way that one would be more suitable to be a manager than the other. A study from 1990 finds that in general women have a more democratic and participative management style, while men are more autocratic and directive.[16] Robert Myatt examines 250 360-degree evaluations and finds that both men and women should listen better and improve their communication and commercial skills. Results also show that women are often perceived to lack self-confidence, and could do better on self-promotion and dealing with feedback. When it comes to emotional intelligence, men still have a lot to learn.[17] In an evaluation of thousands of 360-degree evaluations this last finding is confirmed. This study even finds that women outshine men on all of the GELI items except for envisioning.[18]

It thus seems that women perform well when it comes to interaction with people, which we have just seen is an important aspect of the managers’ job. So why are still so few women in management positions. In the EU, in 2009, only 11% of board positions in the largest publicly quoted companies was held by women. In the Netherlands this number is somewhat higher, but still does not reach the 20%. Only Sweden and Finland have a number higher than 20%.16 Also, 15 of the Fortune 500 companies have a female CEO, which is only 3%![19] For some graphs on women in leadership positions in Europe please click here.

What are the reasons for this? One of them could be the glass ceiling. An invisible barrier women are said to face when they try to advance in their careers. This barrier would be there because of stereotypical thoughts that women do not posess the characteristics a manager should have, or the ‘old boys’ network which makes that men are more easily promoted, because managers are chosen from the group of people closest to the one deciding. Another possible influence is the fact that organizations might fear that women are likely to be less committed to there job at some point, because of family commitments. Whether this is actually the case does not matter, as long as the perception is there, it will create a barrier. Some evidence that such a perception indeed exists is found by Jenny Hoobler, Sandy Wane, and Grace Lemmon. Interestingly, both male and female managers held the perception that women would be likely to experience a family-work conflict.[20]

This is a very important point. The glass ceiling is all about perceptions. Not only perceptions of companies that hire more men than women, or perceptions of women that feel they have less chances to get to the top, also perceptions of the society around them. Concerning the perceptions about the suitability of women for the manager’s job there might be good news. A study by Emily Duehr and Joyce Bono finds that managers give more equal ratings to women and successful managers compared to 30 years ago. Something that is of concern however, is the finding that male students still seem to hold the same stereotypes. An explanation offered for this could be that roles have changed more in organizations than in real life.[21] I find this strange. I had the idea that generation after generation it becomes more accepted that women pursue a career. When my grandmother got married, she had to stop working. In my parent’s generation I believe there will still be women who are brought up with the idea that they belong at home with their children, but have slowly come to realize that there are more options for them. Therefore, in our generation these stereotypical ideas should be even more vague. But maybe I am too positive about this. I do know there are still men, also in my surroundings, that have some more ‘old-fashioned’ ideas. Some men even take the idea one step further and claim that not women are being discriminated, but men. One of them made a serie of short movies about his ideas on the subject of gender equality. Some of his points are valid, but one thing he said particularly struck me, which nicely fits the discussion about perceptions. He talks about the fact that women take maternity leave for six months, then have to work shorter days and sometimes take a day off because they cannot get a babysitter, but wonder why they do not get promoted. According to this video “having children and having a career is an either/or situation”, because “she can do both, but then both jobs suffer, and the children, the company, and the woman all loose.”[22] My critique to this statement may not be surprising: where is the man in this story? Having a baby surely is a choice of both partners, so why is it automatically the women’s job that suffers from this?

Eve does not think that the job or the children have to suffer. She was just promoted to director, while she has two children at home. Agreed, she does not always like it when she does not have time to take her children to school, but that is a choice she has made. A choice she thinks should be made carefully. Because if you feel guilty about seeing your children less often all the time it just doesn’t work for you. However, in her case she would not be happy if she would be sitting at home all day. This would not make her children happier either.

To summarize, stereotypes might get into a woman’s way in different manners, and lead to these differences in management occupations. What to do about it? Norway came up with a seemingly logical idea: they introduced a quota. 40% of boardroom positions of companies listed on the Oslo Stock Exchange had to be filled by women. In 2008 full compliance was reached.[23] Whether this is the way to go is the question. Striving for more equality in top positions is good, but in the end a company should hire the best person for the job. Hiring women just to reach a certain quota could have negative consequences if these women do simply not fit the job. When they do, having women on the board can be advantageous. More women on the board could lead to higher participation of directors in decision making and better alignment with the interests of shareholders. More diverse boards could also encounter increased difficulty in decision making. Whether diversity on a board is beneficial to the company is depending on the situation. A study among US firms finds that more diverse boards work when there is a weak governance structure, but that they can cause overmonitoring when there is a strong governance structure.[24] Imposing quotas thus also poses risks.

A somewhat more subtle attempt to get more women to the top is a charter written by the taskforce ‘Talent naar de Top’ (Talent to the top), which is supported by the Dutch business world and the government. Companies that sign the charter commit themselves to supporting diversity in their organization. They do this by setting clear goals and taking measures to achieve these goals. Every year they report on their achievements in this respect. To date, 140 companies have signed the charter. The good thing about this charter is that it creates awareness and increases transparity with respect to equal opportunities for men and women in the organizations that have signed this charter. Another recent example of how companies try to bring more diversity in the kind of managers they have walking around comes from march this year. Deutsche Telekom announced that it wants to reach a level of 30% of management positions taken by women by the end of 2015.[25]

Even though the thought behind them is laudable, we should be very careful with initiatives like these, even though they are less risky than quotas. Targets are nice, but we should not higher people based on targets. It is still important, both for the company and the employee, that the right person is hired for the job.

Therefore, I think that although it is important to stimulate women talent, there should not be too much focus on the numbers. We should not strive for equality in employment rates. We should strive for equality in opportunities and pay. Not only for women, also for men. The fact that in the Netherlands men also have the right to take some days off when they got a child is a good example of how men get the same chances as women. In other areas we still have a long way to go. A good example of this is the level of pay of men and women. Catherine Kirchmeyer conducted research on the career progression of men and women mangers in the 1990s. She finds that while men and women earn the same when they graduate from their MBA, nine years later men earn more than women. When another four years have gone by, this gap is widened even more.[26] In the most recent report on gender equality from the European Commission more recent numbers show a European pay gap of 17,6%. In the Netherlands this gap is even 24%.[27]

A focus on equal opportunities instead of numbers is important because people should have a choice whether they want to work or not. Barry Litzky and Jeffrey Greenhaus find that women are less likely to desire a position in senior management. This is again partly influenced by their own perception that they will have a smaller chance to reach a senior management position[28], but it is not unlikely that in general women are less driven to advance in their career than men. We do need a mindset in our society in which it is accepted that women work. But what I sometimes sense right now is that women are criticized when they work, but are also criticized when they choose to stay at home. In other words, whathever they do, it is always wrong.

So do women fit the job description? It depends on the job. There is no reason why in general a women would not be able to be a manager. Women and men are likely to differ in their approach, and therefore one can be more suitable for a certain job than the other. This is not only a matter of gender, but of personality as well. Yet we do see that less women make it to the top. This is mainly a problem of different kinds of perceptions. However, we slowly see a change in mindset, and I am confident this will eventually lead to more equality. This takes time, and we just have to deal with that fact. Trying to drastically change the situation by implementing quota is not the solution. Nobody benefits when women are hired to reach a quota rather than for their qualities.

Conclusion
We have seen that the job of a manager is a complex one. The basics are to plan, organize, coordinate, and control. However, it involves much more than that. For example, a manager needs to network and deal with a lot of information. This part of the job has been described by more recent research that has followed managers in their work. Considering these other issues, it seems as if a fifth element should be added to the set, which concerns interaction with people. This might specifically be something women are good at, since they usually outperform men in areas of emotional intelligence. However, in general there does not seem to be reasons why a women could not be as good manager as a man. Fortunately, it seems as if stereotypes are changing, given women better chances. We do not to accept that it will take time for these changing stereotypes to make more women reach the boardroom. And though it is important that there is attention for equality between men and women, we should be carefull to only strive for equal opportunities, not equal outcomes. There can be many reasons why women would not aspire to work in a management position (or to participate in the labor market at all), and we should respect that. We should do so not only when it concerns a woman. More equality should also entail that people accept men who choose to be a stay-at-home father, or want to combine their job with being a father.

Obviously there is much more to management than gender (in)equality. Inequality can be caused by other factors as well, like race or appearance. When you do reach a management job perceptions also kick in. As a manager you have to be constantly aware of the environment your company operates in. The image of the company is of importance, and here issues like integrity and good governance come into play. Everything your company does will be scrutinized by the public. How you treat employees, how management is compensated, how much thought is given to the environment, and much more. This all adds to the complexity of the job.

Then which factors will lead to success in a managerial career? Gender seems to become less and less important. If you want to be a manager you will have to be able to handle a lot of information, which will reach you continuously due to the modern techniques. Making quick and sound decisions is also crucial. However, the key factor seems to be that you are able to interact with people at all levels in- and outside the organization. These are skills that can be developed by some extent, but it will be of much value when you already posses them.


And if you happen to be a woman, and want to be both a manager and a mom, you have to be able to ignore the perceptions of others and follow the path you think is right.
Overall we can conclude that there is much to discuss about management. In this blog I focused on gender equality. We have seen that progress has been made towards more equal opportunities for men and women. We still have a long way to go to get to full equality in opportunities, but I am confident that progress will contintue to be made. I am curious to see what my blog would look like if I would reflect on this same issue in 10 years, in 20 or in 50…


References:

[1] Clegg, S., Kornberger, M., & Pitsis, T. (2005). Managing and Organizations – An introduction to theory and practice (1st edition, p 500). London: SAGE Publications

[2] Peter Drucker (1993) Post Capitalist Society, chapters 1-3.

[3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henri_Fayol

[4] Henry Mintzberg. The Nature of Managerial Work, New York: Harper & Row. 197

[5] Kotter, J. (1988). The General Managers, New York; Free Press. 198 qtd in Luthans, F., Successful vs. Effective real managers, The academy of management executive, 2 (2), pp.127-132.

[6] Kotter, J., (1982). General managers are not generalists. Organizational dynamics., 10(4) p. 5-19

[7] http://www.gelionline.com/geli/product_info/product.do?open=about#a1

[8] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Parker_Follett  

[9] Smith, G. (n.d). What good managers must do.
http://www.businessknowhow.com/manage/good-manager.htm

[10] McCrimmon, M (2010) The effective manager.
http://www.management-issues.com/2010/4/14/opinion/the-effective-manager.asp

[11] Kotterman, J. (2006). Leadership versus management: What’s the difference? The journal for quality and participation. Summer 2006.

[12] Romero, J. (2010). Leadership vs. Management skills. Healthcare registration. May 2010.

[13] Thomas, T., Schermerhorn, J., & Dienhart, J., (2004). Strategic leadership of ethical behavior in business. Academy of management executive, 18 (2), p 56-66.

[14] Mintzberg, H., The manager’s job: Folklore and Fact. Harvard Business Review, 53 (4), p 49-61.

[15] E.g. Raelin, J., (2009). The practice turn-away; forty years of spoon-feeding in management education. Management learning. 40 (4), p 401-410; Mintzberg, H., & Gosling, J., (2002). Educating managers beyond borders. Academy of management learning and education, 1 (1), p 64-76.

[16] Eagly, A., & Johnson, B. (1990). Gender and Leadership style: a meta-analysis. Psychological Bulletin, 108 (2), p 233-256.

[17] Myatt, R. (2007). Why men and women are fundamentally different in their management style. People Management, April 2007.

[18] Ibarra, H., & Obodaru, O., (2009). Women and the vision thing. Harvard Business Review, January 2009.

[19] http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/fortune500/2010/womenceos/

[20] Hoobler, J., Wane, S., & Lemmon, G., (2009). Bosses’ perceptions of family-work conflict and women’s promotability: glass ceiling effects.

[21] Duehr, E., & Bono, J., (2006). Men, women, and managers: are stereotypes finally changing? Personnel psychology, 59, p 815-846.

[22] For the full video refer to http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EbucM_vyxw8&feature=related.  For the particular part referred to here start the video at 3.35.

[23] Toomy, C. (2008). Quota for women on the board: do they work? http://women.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/women/article4066740.ece

[24] Adams, R. & Ferreira, D. (2009). Women on the boardroom and their impact on governance and performance. Journal of financial economics, 94, p 291-309.

[25] Pickford, M. (2010). Deutsche Telekom introduces a “women’s quota”. http://news.icm.ac.uk/business/deutsche-telekom-introduces-a-%E2%80%9Cwomen%E2%80%99s-quota%E2%80%9D/5951/

[26] Kirchmeyer, M. (2002). Gender differences in managerial careers: yesterday, today, and tomorrow. Journal of Business Ethics, 37 (1), p 5-24.

[27] European Commission (2009). Accompanying document to the report from the commission to the council, the European parliament, the European economic and social committee and the committee of the regions. Equality between women and men – 2010. http://www.cite.gov.pt/asstscite/downloads/2010_Annual_Gender_S_AnnexSEC2009_1706.pdf

[28] Litzky, B., & Greenhaus, J., (2007). The relationship between gender and aspirations to senior management. Career development international, 12 (7), p 637-659.

Pictures:

Master and slave

Multi-tasking

Male vs female manager

Mother and manager

How did any decisions get made?