Situational Analysis of Women in Managament - Essay Example

? “Situational Analysis” Discuss how increasing women’s participation in top management teams can be beneficial for organizations. The importance of a good management team for a good organization In order to have a successful business, an organization must have a management team that is good enough to run the organization efficiently and effectively. It is a difficult process however, for an organization to be successful. The management team must be properly picked out because they have a great deal of roles to play. A good top management team will ensure that things run smoothly in an organization and women are born as caretakers so they know how to go about managing techniques. The goals and mission will be communicated more effectively and everyone in the organization will know what they are supposed to do and when they are supposed to do it in order to get to the goals of the organization and women are adept at managing households and communicating effectively with every member of the family. Every employee will work towards the same goals if they understand them and are committed. Most companies are aware that they need to have a good top management in their organization. However, they are unsure how to get that perfect team and many a times unsure about women. (Finkelstein, et al., 2009) Creating the team requires that they know two aspects of their job; that is their responsibility to the organization and the lines of communication between them and the employees. Women should be crystal clear as to what they should be doing and how to do it properly. They also need to communicate the information effectively and efficiently so that other follow suit in the pursuing of goals. They should be open to employees and their feedback as well because communication is a two way street; women tend to be good listeners as well The top management job remains essentially the same; whether it is a flat structure organization or a typical hierarchical level organization with senior managers, middle managers and their own employees. It also changes with the size of the organization, but once again, even as the approaches are different, the roles remain the same. And since women always perceive themselves as an alien, they are more flexible to change and change management and so would be to the structure of an organization as well. The top management team takes charge of the decision making primarily and hence they need to have good judgment skills. A bad manager, will be detrimental both to the employees and the organization as well, and sometimes it is difficult to gauge if a manager has a sound personality fit for the job or not. The following discussion further outlines why women are competent for higher posts in organizations. (Drucker, 1974) Why women? A study of 2,500 Danish firms shows that women in top management and senior executive posts are not harmful but actually positive for an organization. Since this is a large sample size, the study seems to be plausible. However, the qualification of women is important as well; top management positions filled by less qualified women will lead the organization towards a downfall and therefore, women don’t have special knack but education benefits males and females both equally to equip them with the skill of running an organization. Women of skill and power such as Angelina Merkel and Hillary Clinton are good examples of good candidates for top posts and are a living example of leading women. (Nina Smith, 2006) Another study shows that women are good for the organization as they also bring diversity which is important in top management teams or TMTs. However, women in the top management are an ongoing issue over the years. Most men simply do not feel comfortable with women as their bosses. Especially in Asia, the barriers to entry for women are extremely high. However, those companies that did employ women noticed a positive growth in their companies and it is also foreseen as positive for their economy. Jill Abramson was the first women executive director in New York Times and she took the digital era by the reins to take step forward in the world. (Krishnan, 2005) Executive committees with women on their board showed a return on equity of 22% as compared to the 15% return for firms who didn’t have women on their committee. Studies show that women are better at social skills and development of people as well collaboration than men, where as men seem to be better at decision making in terms of individuals. However, an organization is not an isolated unit but scores of people working towards the same goal and looking for their personal development as well, so women at a senior level would help to improve the health of the organization as well their performance eventually as they understand the needs of people and interpret them in terms of the benefit they will do to the organization. Consequentially, all firms using women in their top management would lead to better firms and better companies producing better output and happier employees, thus leading to a better economy overall. With managing directors like Christine Lagarde, IMF will be able to tackle the rising unemployment problems. (POWELL, 1994) The barriers are lesser in the west and Asian countries need to strive to get to that level. 6% of women were on the corporate sector’s boards as compared to 17% women in Europe. Nissan, a Japanese company is one of the few Asian companies whose head is women, Ms Hayashi, however others do not have the privilege to even get to that level. Women’s role as a care taker is more prevalent in these economies; however, their roles can be positively translated in the workplace because an organization is like a familial unit with more cut throat expectations. (RAMSTAD, 2012) Private companies seem to be providing more opportunity to women as compared to the public sector so the gender gap is lesser in these companies. Women tend to leave as they climb up the corporate ladder due to commitments at home or family, however, even when they are aspiring for those posts, they often do not get there, and the wealthier the Asian economies, the more the gender gap tends to be. (Toegel, 2010) Unilever is one of the companies that realize the importance of women. McKinsley argues about the fact that even though women may have familial commitments, they can be taken into consideration and women should not be totally disregarded just because of their family lives. This is also a biased approach to hiring; women have distractions, but so do men, such as sports, flirting and even pornography. The reason that Unilever wanted women on board was that they are consumers as well. Globally women contribute about $18.4 trillion to spending and this is greater than the GDP of the BRIC countries therefore it is a sizeable amount. And who could better understand what women want than women themselves? Katherine Stone was an example of a leading woman in Unilever who was handling global talent in 2010. (Pynchon, 2012) Also, the size of educated women workforce is increasing as the graduates from university in developed economies are majorly women and this is on a rising trend. This means that they are the talent pool that an organization can benefit from. As previously mentioned, they also fulfill the criteria of a diversified TMT and diversity seems to be the key for innovation and synergy. This leads companies to growth and further innovations. Therefore, women are 75% of their consumers, 50% of the talent in the developed world and 50% of the educated people to choose from for their TMTs. A start in promoting women leads to a wave of appreciation and others will follow suit once they see the results. A Catalyst report of 2004 states that “companies with the highest representation of women on their top management teams’ experiences better financial performance than companies with the lowest women representation.” This is found to be true both for return on a company’s equity as well as the return to shareholders. Women also seemed to better bottom-line workers and enhanced their performance as well. (Pynchon, 2012) Women also seem to have some advantages over men. They tend to be risk averse as compared to men as researched by Daniel Ferreira of LSE. Women on boards may control and calm down men who may be rash about judgments and they seem to be more concerned about what the executives were planning to and this would prevent a crisis before it happened. (Welbourne, 1999) Women can get to innovative ideas better because they are experts on grabbing an opportunity. They have a knack of observing everything is it their neighbors or their business partners and they take inspiration from everything in their life as well as model others to do the same. They can in this way even inspire bottom line workers to do better and be motivated to work towards organizational goals. They also have the ability to be leaders when they are given the opportunity to shine and be themselves. They are focused and they keep their eye on the goal and the horizon and plan strategically as to how to get there. Therefore when an opportunity arises they are always ready to seize it. Many women in America are reshaping their entire enterprise such as the CEO and Chairman of both PepsiCo and Kraft foods. They also tend to have lesser ego and they don’t get distracted in the workplace. Women also know how to network well. They can navigate a situation and can test if their ideas are workable or not. They also follow through an entire plan and then make a decision considering the best possible outcome. This allows them to be more creative and spot any areas that others might have missed and the will seek them out, test them and put them to use. Women are also valuable in the sense that they help everyone be a part of the team and feel important; they are more willing to listen and help out others and so usually have an open doors policy. And for a company’s ROI to be high, people need to be on your side to take that risk and no one will want to take the risk for a hard headed boss who doesn’t lend his employees an ear. Women also consider relationships to be important and they are good at building and maintaining them as well. They focus not only on building a relationship, but building a healthy one that will flourish in the long run which creates a healthy and positive working environment. They also do not quit so sustainability tends to be higher. Why are women good leaders? Because they work on establishing relationships and connections between people and they don’t waste time on areas that will not benefit an organization. They pay attention to detail and help lead the change as well balance it with their family life as well. Women, by nature, are built to give; give life, give life, provide support and nourishment for their family. And this translates to companies as well. They look towards the bigger picture; not just their own needs but the needs of others and the company as a while. That is why they can think better and in the long-run because their judgment isn’t just clouded by their own selfish needs. They will not hover around a short term strategy and will focus more on an excellent strategy for the long run and at the same time uplift the morale of those working around them in order to get results. This is basically the ‘immigrant perspective’ on women. They are sensitive to the needs of others and understand them better because they have been wired to feel like an immigrant in this male dominated world. They live in the same place, but feel different from the rest. And therefore they are more open to change, and change is the only thing that is constant, so they thrive well in organizations. Society, consumer needs, tastes, economy, everything moves and changes rapidly, and women can lead the change. Even powerful and strong women like Oprah Winfrey who are idolized today have been abused; however they come back resilient and every ready for life and its challenges. (Llopis, 2011) Bibliography Drucker, P. F., 1974. Management : tasks, responsibilities, practices. s.l.:s.n. Finkelstein, S., Hambrick, D. C. & Cannella, A. A., 2009. Strategic leadership : theory and research on executives, top management teams, and boards. s.l.:Oxford University Press. Krishnan, H. A., 2005. A few good women—on topmanagement teams. Journal of Business Research, 58(12). Llopis, G., 2011. 4 Skills that Give Women a Sustainable Advantage Over Men. Forbes . Nina Smith, V. S. M. V., 2006. Do women in top management affect firm performance?A panel study of 2,500 Danish firms. nternational Journal of Productivity and Performance Management, 55(7), pp. pp.569 - 593. POWELL, G. N., 1994. INVESTIGATING THE "GLASS CEILING". Academy of Management Journal, 37(1). Pynchon, V., 2012. Unilever Aims for Gender-Balanced Management by 2015. Forbes. RAMSTAD, K. C. a. E., 2012. Report: Women in Asia Face Barriers to Top Jobs. Wall Street Journal . Toegel, G., 2010. Business Benefits from Authentic Women. BloomsbergBusinessWeek . Welbourne, T. M., 1999. Wall Street likes its women : an examination of women in the top management teams of initial public offerings. s.l.:Cornell University. Read More