A research study by Jane Sturges (1999) found that male and female business managers measure success by very different metrics. Sturges interviewed 18 female and 16 male managers in a leading UK telecommunications company with the aim of answering two questions:
1. What do managers conceive career success to be for themselves? and
2. Do female managers have different ideas about what career success is for them than male managers do?
Based on the interviews, managers were categorized as belonging to one of four types of business-orientation categories.
1. Climbers, who defined career success largely in terms of their position in the business hierarchy and their progression through promotions and increases in pay grade.
2. Experts, who measured career success as achieving a high degree of competency at their job and being recognized personally as good at what they did. For Experts, the content of their job was more important than their hierarchical position in the organization.
3. Self-Realizers, who determine success by the idea of achievement at a highly personal level; personal enjoyment in the job and maintaining a balance between their home and work life was a common measure of success for this group.
4. Influencers, who defined success as being able to do things at work that had tangible and positive outcomes for the organization they worked for, regardless of their position in the organization’s hierarchy.
Here’s the breakdown of where the male and female managers fell on the business-orientation categories:
What’s so interesting about this is that three of the four business-orientation categories are dominated by one sex. Additionally, while most of the men, regardless of categorization, defined success by the position they attained in the organization’s hierarchy. None of the women defined success strictly by hierarchical advancement, and those that did indicate it was a component of success saw hierarchical achievement as a means to some other end. Clearly, there’s a big difference in how male and female managers define personal success.
Sturges adopted a fairly traditional socio-cultural driven interpretation for her findings, suggesting that, “…managers’ ideas about career success reflect the social context in which they develop as adults” (p. 250). That is, specific societal-driven learning shapes managers’ idealizations of business success. Sturges added that the “…effects of socialization on women managers’ conceptions of career success are likely to be reinforced by their experiences as women in what is still a male-dominated profession” (p. 250). Given this, she hypothesized that if women have learned that the gender imbalance in business means that advancement to the highest managerial levels “…is not readily available to them, then they might choose to refocus their ideas of what success is on other less tangible and more internal criteria, which they believe to be more easily attainable” (p. 250).
While learning via socialization is certainly a possible interpretation of the results, the field of Evolutionary Psychology offers an alternative perspective. Evolutionary psychologists utilize Darwinian evolutionary theory to predict and explain human behaviour patterns. In brief, Evolutionary Psychology assumes that natural and sexual selection pressures in the past produced behaviours that conferred advantages on our ancestors, and that these genetically influenced behaviours are still with us in our modern environment.
So, what sorts of behaviours were selected for in ancestral males and females? According to Evolutionary Psychology, there were some profound differences between the sexes. Because reproductive costs are high for females (gestation, nursing, and childrearing are very energetically expensive), ancestral females looked for male mates who could provide resources to sustain themselves and their offspring. In addition, they became very good at social interaction. Women able to form strong social alliances gained advantages with respect to shared childrearing, reciprocal food and information exchange, and emotional support; empathy was a strongly selected trait in women. In contrast, competition for social status, territory, and resources was selected in males. Males did form social alliances, but these were generally narrowly focused on the tasks of hunting, warfare, or intra-group politics. In the end, those males lacking in resources were less likely to attract mates, making them evolutionary dead ends.
Fast forward to the modern corporate environment. Sturges’ findings fit well with Evolutionary Psychology theory. Males, evolved to compete for prestige, social status, and resources comprise all of the Climbers. Evolutionarily successful women were those who could simultaneously manage childrearing and survival tasks; this fits well with Self-Realizers’ needs to balance home and work life. Six of the seven Self-Realizers were women. Because women were not spending their time competing for tribal dominance and leadership, and because of their social support networks, individual women were able to become “specialists” in various “industrial” and social roles (e.g., midwifery, clothing manufacturing, herbalism, shelter maintenance, matchmaking, etc.). Seven of the nine Experts were women. What about the fairly even split between the sexes in the Influencers category? We humans are a highly social species that naturally organize into groups. If individuals contribute to the collective good of the group, such that the entire group is stronger, this has a direct personal benefit for the individuals whose influence brought about this positive outcome. In the past, both sexes experienced evolutionary pressures to influence tribal systems; the same predispositions are still seen in the modern organizations.
It is important to note that Evolutionary Psychology does not discount socialization. Classic studies by Albert Bandura (1977), for example, on observational learning demonstrate the significance of social reinforcement on human behaviour. That said, as further research highlights the differences between men and women in the business sector (e.g., see Ruderman & Ohlott, 2005 for sex differences in information processing, stress responses, and motivation), a greater appreciation and understanding that these distinctions may be due to evolutionarily selected genetic predispositions is warranted. While genetic predispositions can be altered via learning, unique techniques need to be developed to take into account the evolved underlying differences in female and male psychology to make programs in executive coaching, leadership development, and human resources more successful and productive (e.g., see Hopkins, O’Neil, Passarelli, & Bilimoria, 2008). Further, by accepting evolved differences in male and female managers, organizations could benefit by recognizing and utilizing each sex’s adaptations to their advantage. Don’t fight evolutionary predispositions, but work with them for greater business success.
My next blog will move back to a more traditional behavioural modification topic, token economies, and their application to business and education. See you in a week!
References
Bandura, A. (1977). Social learning theory. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall.
Hopkins, M.M., O’Neil, D. A., Passarelli, A., & Bilimoria, D. (2008). Women’s leadership development strategic practices for women and organizations. Consulting Psychology Journal: Practice and Research, 60(4), 348-365.
Ruderman, M. N., & Ohlott, P. J. (2005). Leading roles: What coaches of women need to know. Leadership in Action, 25, 3-9.
Sturges, J. (1999). What it means to succeed: Personal conceptions of career success held by male and female managers at different ages. British Journal of Management, 10, 239-252.
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