The gender differences were often small, and men sometimes earned higher marks in some critical areas, such as strategic ability and technical analysis. But overall, female executives were judged more effective than their male counterparts. ''Women are scoring higher on almost everything we look at,'' says Shirley Ross, an industrial psychologist who helped oversee a study performed by Hagberg Consulting Group in Foster City, Calif. Hagberg conducts in-depth performance evaluations of senior managers for its diverse clients, including technology, health care, financial-service, and consumer-goods companies. Of the 425 high-level executives evaluated, each by about 25 people, women execs won higher ratings on 42 of the 52 skills measured (www.businessweek.com).
The growing body of new research comes at a time when talent-hungry recruiters are scrambling to find execs who can retain workers and who can excel in the smaller bureaucracies of New Economy companies. Women think through decisions better than men, are more collaborative, and seek less personal glory, says the head of IBM's Global Services Div., Douglas Elix, who hired two managers within this year--both women. Instead of being motivated by self-interest, women are more driven by ''what they can do for the company,'' Elix says. Adds Harvard Business School Professor Rosabeth Moss Kanter, author of the 20-year-old management classic, Men and Women of the Corporation: ''Women get high ratings on exactly those skills needed to succeed in the global Information Age, where teamwork and partnering are so important." (www.businessweek.com).
It's no surprise, then, that some executives say they're beginning to develop a new hiring bias. If forced to choose between equally qualified male and female candidates for a top-level job, they say they often pick the woman not because of affirmative action or any particular desire to give the female a chance but because they believe she will do a better job. ''I would rather hire a woman,'' says Anu Shukla, who sold her Internet marketing-software company Rubric Inc. earlier this year for $390 million. ''I know I'm going to get a certain quality of work, I know I'm going to get a certain dedication,'' she says, quickly adding that she's fully aware that not all women execs excel. Similarly, Brent Clark, CEO of Grand Rapids-based Pell Inc., the nation's largest foot-care chain, says he would choose a woman over a man, too. Women are more stable, he says, less turf-conscious, and better at ''all sorts of intangibles that can help an organization.'' (www.businessweek.com).
But if women are so great, why aren't more of them running the big companies? Thousands of talented women now graduate from business schools and hold substantive middle-management jobs at major corporations 45% of all managerial posts are held by females, according to the Labor Dept. Yet only two of the nation's 500 biggest companies have female CEOs: Hewlett-Packard Co.'s - Carly Fiorina and Avon Products' - Andrea Jung. And of the 1,000 largest corporations, only six are run by women (www.businessweek.com)
Several other studies showed similar patterns. Personnel Decisions International, a consulting firm in Minneapolis, looked at a huge sample of 58,000 managers and found that women outranked men in 20 of 23 areas. Larry Pfaff, a Michigan management consultant, examined evaluations from 2,482 executives from a variety of companies and found that women outperformed men on 17 of 20 measures (www.businessweek.com).
To eliminate such potential distortions, Kabacoff conducted a differently designed study in 1998. He compared male and female managers who worked at the same companies, held similar jobs, were at the same management level, and had the same amount of supervisory experience. When he examined 1,800 supervisors in 22 management skills, he found that women outranked men on about half of the measures. Female managers were graded more effective by peers and subordinates, but bosses still judged men and women equally competent as leaders. ''Men and women seem to be doing roughly equally effective jobs, but they approach their jobs differently,'' says Kabacoff (www.businessweek.com).
Although women and men are represented in almost equal proportions in the wolrd's population, participation in employment, or at least paid employment, is less evenly balanced. World Bank estimates show that about 59% of the world's labour-force are male and 41% female (World Bank, 2001).
Across the world, men are over-represented in industries such as manufacturing and construction, and in many industrialized countries women are over-represented in the service sector. So, for example, in the second half of the 1990s in the UK, 86% of the female labour-force worked in services compared with 60% of the male labour-force, whereas only 13% of working women were employed in the industrial sector compared with 38% of men. This situation is very similar to that found in the USA (World Bank, 2001).
Appendices - 2 shows the proportion of men and women in both the labour-force and in managerial and administrative occupations for a selection of industrial nations in 1999. Because the occupational definitions used by different countries vary somewhat, abd because management is notoriously difficut to define precisely, these figures should be treated with caution since they permit only fairly crude comparisons to be made (Thomas, 2003).
On the basis of the above survey Whirlway should appoint Jasmine Carusi as their CEO, as this survey proves that female executives are taking over men in every possible way and also taking into consideration the betterment and bright future of Whirlway.
REFERENCES:
* http://www.usatoday.com/educate/college/careers/hottopic35.htm
* http://www.businessweek.com/2000/00_47/b3708145.htm
* Thomas, A. (2003) Controversies in Management: Issues, Debates, Answers, Second Edition, London, Routledge.
* World Bank (2001) World Development Indicators 2001, Washington, DC: World Bank.
APPENDICES - 1
Where Female Execs Do Better: A Scorecard
None of the studies set out to find gender differences. They stumbled on
them while compiling and analyzing performance evaluations.
SKILL (EACH X DENOTES WHICH GROUP MEN WOMEN
SCORED HIGHER ON THE RESPECTIVE STUDIES)
MOTIVATING OTHERS XXXXX
FOSTERING COMMUNICATION XXXX*
PRODUCING HIGH-QUALITY WORK XXXXX
STRATEGIC PLANNING XX XX*
LISTENING TO OTHERS XXXXX
ANALYZING ISSUES XX XX*
* In one study, women's and men's scores in these categories were
statistically even
DATA: HAGBERG CONSULTING GROUP, MANAGEMENT RESEARCH GROUP, LAWRENCE A. PFAFF, PERSONNEL DECISIONS INTERNATIONAL INC., ADVANCED TEAMWARE INC.
Source: http://www.businessweek.com/2000/00_47/b3708146.htm
APPENDICES - 2
Men and Women in the labour force and in management, selected countries, 1999 (%)
Countries
Total Employment
Managers/Administration
Men
Women
Men
Women
Australia
56.53
43.47
75.21
24.79
Canada
54.13
45.87
64.87
35.13
Denmark
54.23
45.76
76.60
23.40
Finland
52.95
47.04
71.31
28.69
Germany
56.75
43.25
73.69
26.31
Greece
63.12
36.88
75.06
24.94
Ireland
59.52
40.48
66.09
33.91
Italy
63.89
36.11
81.18
18.82
Japan
59.28
40.72
90.70
9.30
Netherlands
57.98
42.02
77.23
22.77
New Zealand
54.65
45.34
62.67
37.33
Russian Federation
52.18
47.81
62.78
37.22
Sweden
52.15
47.85
71.20
28.80
United Kingdom
55.16
44.83
66.70
33.30
USA
53.52
46.48
54.90
45.10
Source: International Labour Organisation, Yearbook of Labour Statistics, Geneva:ILO,2000.
(Thomas, A. (2003) Controversies in Management: Issues, Debates, Answers, Second Edition, London, Routledge)
BIBLIOGRAPHY
* http://www.usatoday.com/educate/college/careers/hottopic35.htm
* http://www.businessweek.com/2000/00_47/b3708145.htm
* http://www.businessweek.com/2000/00_47/b3708146.htm
* Thomas, A. (2003) Controversies in Management: Issues, Debates, Answers, Second Edition, London, Routledge.
* World Bank (2001) World Development Indicators 2001, Washington, DC: World Bank.
* Marshall, J. (1984) Women Managers: Travellers in a Male World, Chichester: Wiley.
SIDDHARTH GOYAL BBA - COHORT - 2006
I.D. NO: 020106010 MODULE NO: U51000
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