Does management have a women issue?*

In a recent piece for the FT, Tim Harford bemoaned the underrepresentation of women in economics, particularly academia. Despite a number of women economists in high policy positions (Janet Yellen, Christine Lagardère), there has only ever been one female economics laureate (Elinor Ostrom in 2009, who showed that ‘the tragedy of the commons’ was not inevitable) and given the numbers studying it, women economics professors were much rarer than they should be. Harford cited one of the exceptions, Cambridge professor Diane Coyle, who observed crisply: ‘it is not possible to do good social science if you are so unrepresentative of society’.

This got me thinking. If that goes for economics, the senior social science, it’s even truer of management, its envious younger sister. While economists of course affect people indirectly, through their influence on high-level policy, how managers do their job is a daily factor for good or ill in every workplace (more people leave their job because of their relationship with their immediate manager than for any other reason, for instance). So it matters that in 2023 management theorists and practitioners are still using concepts and structures that were almost exclusively developed by men; and white men of a certain age at that.

The bias is reflected in the management literature. Bookshop selections, lists of ‘great management books’ and, I have to admit, my own 30-year, fairly randomly accumulated library are all overwhelmingly male. Or take management surveys and histories. From my bookshelves, the index of Stuart Crainer’s Key Management Ideas: Thinkers than changed the management world (1996) references 15 women against more than 150 men, and of the 56 names that make up his concluding ‘Glossary of management thinkers’ just three – Rosabeth Moss Kanter, Mary Parker Follett and Jane Mouton (co-designer of the management grid) – are women. Likewise in Art Kleiner’s Management Heretics: Heroes, Outlaws and the Forerunners of Corporate Change (1996). His long and otherwise notably diverse index yields just six women. Michael Mol and Julian Birkinshaw’s Giant Steps in Management: Innovations that change the way we work (2008), in an eight-age index likewise lists six women, one of whom is an economist, another the author of a single HBR article, and a third Margaret Thatcher. Needless to say, their bibliographies or lists of further reading are almost exclusively male.

To be clear, this reflects past history rather than today’s attitudes, and although dismaying may not be surprising. Management is the product of its origins and history, which in the case of today’s dominant Anglo-US version passes through the army, the church, particularly the Roman Catholic church, and slavery, all primarily male pursuits, as was 20th century industrial management (think of the obsession with management science). In Managing the Human Animal (2000), LBS’s Nigel Nicholson, writing as an evolutionary psychologist, spells it out. If among all possible alternatives today’s business organisations are hierarchical, competitive, goal-focused and specialised, it is because that’s what suits male motivations and aspirations. The world of business organisations, he concludes, ‘remains male in design, rationale and functioning.’

This might help to explain the conspicuous continuing male bias in positions of power, in both the corporate and business school arenas. It has shifted a bit in women’s favour during the pandemic, but while women make up 50 per cent of the workforce, in the US only 37 per cent of midlevel managers, 26 per cent of senior managers and five per cent of CEOs are women. In 2019/20, UK business schools employed more than twice as many male as female professors. This at a time when women have overtaken men in educational achievement – and are outscoring male colleagues in leadership tests. In one study, women were rated better leaders than men at every level and in every one of 16 leadership competencies except strategic vision – not just in the ‘soft’ areas such as building relationships and communicating that have long been associated with women, but also ‘hard’ domains (driving for results, championing change, analysing and solving problems) that have always been been assumed, by men, to be their preserve.

The sad conclusion is that apart from the American Mary Parket Follett (dubbed by Peter Drucker ‘the prophet’ and Gary Hamel the most important of all management thinkers), women have yet to leave their mark on official management histories.

But this may at last be beginning to change. Although not strictly scientific, it is perhaps a sign of the times that the Thinkers 50, a bi-annual ranking of the most influential management thinkers, has since its inception in 2001 moved from a near exclusively male makeup to gender equality. Last year for the first time the top 20 contained more women than men, and women – Harvard’s Amy Edmondson and Columbia’s Rita McGrath – took the top two spots. Women are also increasingly prominent at the annual Global Peter Drucker Forum (where I am editor). As in other areas, Covid may accelerate the upward trend. According to McKinsey, harrassed senior women have performed heroics in supporting employee well-being and diversity efforts in the last year, with little recognition. They will surely be involved in the radical workplace change that is well on the way in the wake of Covid, and the rethink of management that is urgently required for the post-carbon planet.,

As in economics, the growth in women’s influence in management research and practice is long overdue. But as they take stock they will not fail to note that their male predecessors have left them a mountain to climb in tying performance to purpose, internalising unacceptable externalities, and addressing the giant deficit of engagement, the epidemic of burnout and the unacceptable costs in health and mortality of oppressive and ill-designed work practices, to name but a few.

Joan Robinson, a contemporary of Keynes who is sometimes described as the first great woman economist, once wrote: ‘The purpose of studying economics is not to acquire a set of ready-made answers to economic questions, but to learn how to avoid being deceived by economists’. Perhaps those wanting to demystify, and demythologise, today’s management should take that motto to heart.

  • This is an earlier version of my recent FT piece – with a different enough starting point to make it worth putiing up, I thought