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"AMERICA'S COMPETITIVE SECRET: WOMEN MANAGERS" (JUDY ROSENER).
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Critiques book on barriers to women & benefits they bring to a business when placed in management positions.... More...
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Paper Abstract:
Critiques book on barriers to women & benefits they bring to a business when placed in management positions.
Paper Introduction:
Judy B. Rosener, in her acclaimed work entitled, AmericaŐs Competitive Secret: Women Managers (1995), presents a strong academic case for increasing efforts in the business community to achieve gender parity in top management. This essay reviews RosenerŐs arguments and critiques her theories on gender parity. The emphasis of this essay is on RosenerŐs theory of beta leadership styles and its impact on the Quality of Work Life (QWL) as well as traditional business practices.
After three decades of attention and concern directed toward women's parity in the workplace, there is still only a handful of success stories for women moving into upper management. While society is moving in the right direction, the movement is slow. Women have made strides, especially in
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Clearly, both ways of seeingthings can be useful in an appropriate setting, but the beta styleleadership of diffused awareness simply makes business sense. While society is moving in theright direction, the movement is slow. What do women bring to the workplace? Other barriers are stereotypes and biases such as: women will notrelocate; women are risk-averse; women get pregnant and lack commitment tojobs; and women will not put in the time for client responsiveness. According to Rosener, the beta leadership style associated with womenwould help companies thrive in the new competitive world while at the sametime -- and, in fact, because of -- improving the Quality of Working Lifein contemporary business culture. The underlying key to this exceptional business performance, however,is the tendency for women executives to enhance the Quality of Working Lifein the business environment. Indeed, there is a large talent pool of highlyeducated, experienced individuals whose attributes are underutilizedprimarily because they are women. After all, it has been 35 years since BettyFriedan burst onto the scene in 1963 with the publication of her ground-breaking book "The Feminine Mystique," which attacked the notion that womencould only find true fulfillment raising children and tending to a home.Her vision set the wheels of social and workplace change in motion forwomen. For example, if you look at the Working Mother list of 1 BestCompanies, only seven have achieved parity (meaning the percentage of womenin the company is reflected among the upper echelons). It is apparent that women bring needed qualities, skills and abilitiesto the workplace of the 199 s and beyond. Insteadof only emphasizing equality and fairness, proponents of gender parityshould refocus the debate to the business-side of the equation. Beyond this, however, there is data to support thecontention that women's styles translate into exceptional leadership. The emphasis of this essay is on RosenerŐstheory of beta leadership styles and its impact on the Quality of Work Life(QWL) as well as traditional business practices. Nevertheless, social statistics show that only about 1 percent of thecorporate officers in Fortune 5 companies are women. Instead, you have to remove it from above. Theargument must be made that it makes business sense to utilize the betamanagement style. This essay reviews RosenerŐs arguments and critiques hertheories on gender parity. Women have somewhat different perceptual patterns, ways ofseeing the world. The feminine perspective tends to operate with diffuseawareness, offering a more global picture of the world which isconstructive for long-term business planning. By impressing the principle of business efficiency offered by the betaleadership style, the business community stands much to gain. ReferencesRosener, J. According to Rosener, parity should be made a business issue. After three decades of attention and concern directed toward women'sparity in the workplace, there is still only a handful of success storiesfor women moving into upper management. Judy Rosener answers thisquestion with the theory of beta leadership style. One misperception that nurtures the glass ceiling is that time willtake care of it. In workplace behavior, focused consciousness translates into theability to concentrate on making choices, on establishing action plans andsetting specific goals. So, why don't more companies puttheir money where their talent is? Diffuse awareness sees the linkages between things,relationships between people and the scope of the whole picture, includingthe sensitivity to individuals' feelings. AmericaŐs competitive secret: Women mangers. People think parity for women will happen in time. Astudy by Convenant Investment Management in 1993 found that companies withstrong women participation in management found that corporate womenperformed exceptionally well as business leaders (pp.165-166). Of the top earners in these companies,women comprise a miniscule proportion of the top salary earners. Over the years, they have not proportionatelyhad positions with bottom-line responsibility. The improvement of lines of communication, in turn,leads to an aura of greater understanding and compromise, leaving managersand workers with a sense of greater fairness in how they are treated, andsubstantially improves employee morale (pp. Womenalso sometimes identify that they are excluded from informal networks ofcommunication and lack mentors. The betaleadership styles can work to heighten economic efficiency by empoweringmanagement with the skills to resolve immediate problems as well as theforesight to plan for the long-term. But there arereal barriers to change. Despite the fact that women bringdesired talent and needed qualities to the workplace, they are stillsurprisingly undervalued. In otherwords, for every woman CEO, president, executive vice president, and seniormanaging director, there are hundreds of thousands of women who still arenot recognized and accorded equal value in the workplace. The beta style of leadership is described as emphasizing a concern forgrowth, learning and quality of life, with a long-range perspective thatpermits planning and an examination of different value choices. Betaleadership is more appropriate when coping with problems that require along-range perspective, when a range of values or goals has to beconsidered and when response to change is needed. It will create a working life moremeaningful and more productive. Open communication betweenmanagement and employees fosters a feeling a just and fair treatment andmakes the resolution of conflicts, when they do arise, easier toaccomplish. A flurry of reports show this clearly is not the caseeither. 1 -13). Organizational psychologists,researchers and management gurus attribute Quality of Work Life (QWL)traits to women such as: inclusion, teamwork, cooperation, participatorymanagement, comfort with ambiguity, sharing power and information, andability to resolve conflict. Judy B. 33-34). Rosener, professor of managementat the Graduate School of Management, University of California, Irvine,developed the theory of beta leadership styles to explain what women canbring to management (p. In the future, organizations and nations that choose the betaleadership style will maximize the use of its human resources.Organizations and nations which do not choose the beta leadership stylewill continue to be plagued with undervalued human resources. While Rosener does indeed make the case for arguing prudent businesssense as a tactical means of promoting women in the workplace, her bottomline point is always the affect of such gender parity on the Quality ofWorking Life. Integrating beta management leadership into the corporateworld is nothing less than a prudent and profitable business decision. (1995). Women are generallybetter at seeing the big picture -- a pretty valuable characteristic forbusiness leaders. Rosener believes you cannot break the glassceiling from below. Women have brought manypositive attributes to Corporate America. The higherechelons of management must be convinced that it is in their own self-interest to remove that ceiling. One barrier is that women do not have equal accessto profit-and-loss positions. Rosener, in her acclaimed work entitled, AmericaŐsCompetitive Secret: Women Managers (1995), presents a strong academic casefor increasing efforts in the business community to achieve gender parityin top management. It is from the beta leadership style that management willlisten to the concerns and ideas of workers and from where businesspractices will be developed accordingly. These barriers are largelyinadvertent, but they do perpetuate difficulties. To make matters worse, there is little dispute about the value womenbring to the workplace. It all has to do with how women perceive theirenvironment. Financial figurespaint an even bleaker portrait. It has long been recognized that people whofeel valued and treated fairly at work tend to be more committed to thebusiness and more product at work. The best managers now use a morecollaborative, inclusive style -- a style that women often instinctivelybring to the workplace (pp. In RosenerŐs terminology, beta style leadership is perceived as morefeminine, using intuitive, qualitative thinking and relying on supportrelationships. 3 ). Clearly, the beta style leadership translates into useful managementperformance when it comes to quality of work life issues, such as conflictresolution and equity. Logic would dictate that we should be a lotfurther along than we are. Society may be inching along in the rightdirection, but as we approach the millennium, what do we have to show forthe decades of work in this area? New York: Oxford Univ ű Î˙ As Rosener notes, by improving the Qualityof Working Life, the benefits will be multifaceted in that our workinglives will be enhanced and business performance will accordingly increase.Collaboration is the ultimate form of competition. Women have made strides, especiallyin the professional and educational arenas, and in entrepreneurial andsmall business ventures, but they lag woefully behind in the corporateword. The beta style leadership affects the work environment inways in which lines of communication between colleagues and management andworkers are improved. And, womencomprise 34 percent of MBA program candidates. Equally alarming,women comprise almost 5 percent of today's workforce, and statisticiansproject this number will increase to 62 percent within a decade. But Rosener began to realize that the onlyway to make significant change was to refocus the discussion as one ofcompetitive advantage. What has hindered gender parity? The beta leadership style will create a work environment ofcollaboration and mutual assistance.
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