Men and women as managers: A significant case of no significant difference

What does it all mean? We've reviewed five studies involving almost 2,000 people compared on a total of 43 scales. We've studied matched pairs and controlled for level of managerial achievement. And after all is said and done, we have detected a total of two overall differences between male and female managers. One of these, involving managerial work motivation, favors females: Their work motivation profiles are more “achieving” than those of their male counter-parts. The other difference, pertaining to interpersonal competence, favors the male managers: They are more open and candid with their colleagues than are females. Add to these the more titillating than significant anomalies of differing back-up style preferences and we are left with one conclusion: Women, in general, do not differ from men, in general, in the ways in which they administer the management process.Managers themselves and their subordinates concur. It seems that the disproportionately low numbers of women in management can no longer be explained away by the contention that women practice a different brand of management from that practiced by men. Whereas this may amount to good news in some quarters, we ought not be prematurely elated by discovering that women manage just the way men do. Carolyn Sherif has pointedly called attention to the fact that all is not necessarily well in today's male-oriented management activities.We of course view management in its more global aspects: The important issue to us is how an individual manages in relation to achievement criteria. Individual achievement and organizational health ultimately depend on the way management is practiced. And we now see that the way management is practiced is not related to the sex of the manager — the issue is generic rather than gender-bound.     

Direct marketing managers in UK charitable organisations

Although the charity sector is one of the United Kingdom's biggest users of direct marketing, little is known about the characteristics of the people who manage direct marketing within charities. This paper presents the results of a survey of 115 direct marketing managers in the UK's largest fundraising charitable organisations; focusing on their experience, motivation, training and educational backgrounds. The degrees to which respondents' employing organisations placed a high value on the marketing function and the extents to which various categories of direct marketing manager possessed wide-ranging general managerial competencies were also examined. There was little evidence of the ‘hybridisation’ of direct marketing specialists. Rather, individuals exhibiting hybrid manager attributes were sometimes put in charge of direct marketing.     

When is Effort Contagious in New Venture Management Teams? Understanding the Contingencies of Social Motivation Theory

Consistent with social motivation theory, prior research on managerial motivation suggests that effort is contagious across management team members. In this study, we draw on belongingness theory to develop a model on important boundary conditions to social motivation theory in the management team context. The model predicts that new venture managers react to their teammates’ higher effort levels by investing higher effort levels themselves primarily when they are confronted with a threat – namely, low venture performance and high environmental hostility – but that effort is less contagious when managers face little threat. We test our model with a sample of 103 new venture managers nested in 51 management teams in a longitudinal setting capturing managerial effort over 26 weeks. While we do not find a direct relationship between teammates’ effort and a new venture manager’s subsequent effort, we find support for the crucial role of threat in triggering the contagion of managerial effort. We discuss the contributions of our study for research on management teams, performance feedback, and entrepreneurial effort in new ventures.     

Competitive sustainability and stakeholder engagement: Exploring awareness,motivation, and capability

In adding to competitive dynamics and sustainability literature, this study examines the role of a supplier and consumer on a focal firm's sustainability competitiveness through the awareness, motivation, and capability (AMC) perspective and stakeholder engagement research. Regression analyses are performed utilizing secondary sustainability and financial data to test proposed environmental and social competitiveness hypotheses. A constraint factor model is also tested. This study finds that a focal firm's motivation is positively associated with its own sustainability competitiveness. The study also finds that awareness and capability are negatively associated with environmental and social competitiveness. Finally, whereas suppliers' AMC have no significant impact, customer awareness and capability do. The findings reflect both conformity and divergence from the AMC model when applying it to a supply chain context as well as enhance the managerial understanding of how a supply and customer base can impact their own sustainability competitiveness.     

Pay fairness and intrinsic motivation: the role of pay transparency

The fairness of managerial pay can be judged in terms of its distributive justice properties (‘is my pay fair when compared to others’) and its procedural justice properties (‘is my pay fairly determined’). While both types of justice have been studied extensively in the organizational literature, their relative importance in predicting work-related outcomes is still open to debate. In this paper, we provide field evidence that the relationship between pay justice and managers' intrinsic motivation is moderated by pay transparency, which is the extent to which managers know each other's pay levels. In a homogeneous sample of 139 Slovenian bank managers, we find that procedural justice is a better predictor of intrinsic motivation when pay transparency is low, and that distributive justice is a better predictor of intrinsic motivation when pay transparency is high. These findings that are congruent with fairness heuristic theory (Van den Bos, Lind, Vermunt and Wilke 1997a) suggest the importance of considering pay transparency for understanding and designing fair managerial pay systems.     

Using the endowment effect to explain managerial resistance towards codetermination: Implications for employment relations from the German case

This article provides an innovative defence of codetermination by way of exploring two of the most significant theorised objections to it from neo‐liberal and libertarian perspectives, namely the defence of the right to manage as freely chosen by employees and employers alike, and the right to manage being the most efficient, lowest transaction cost mode of employee governance. Instead, we focus upon management preference emanating from the endowment effect, and manifested in management style and ideology, as a more credible explanation for management's support for its prerogative to manage. The endowment effect prompts both strong employer and manager objections to codetermination and weak employee willingness to seek it because humans place more value upon items currently in their possession than upon those they do not possess. We explore this argument by examining the experience of codetermination in Germany. The significance of our argument lies in identifying managerial preference as the key variable to be challenged and changed in order to pacify management opposition to codetermination through political, ideological, and institutional means.     

From skyhooks to walking sticks: on the road to nonrational decision making

The amount of information that should be processed to reach a rational solution is so vast that it overwhelms our limited memory and analytic capacity. To grapple at all with real problems, we must shrink them to mind size. As Nobel Laureate Herbert Simon has suggested, we must learn to "satisfice." Using examples and a case history of managerial succession, Agnew and Brown demonstrate the importance of nonrational factors in decision making. "Skyhooks," their first major concept, are composed of an individual's strong beliefs and biases that appear almost as acts of faith without any obvious foundation. They help the exceptional executive operate on a limited set of alternatives. But while skyhooks give direction, they do not provide the means to reach a destination. Simpler conceptual models, or "walking sticks," are necessary to cover the rocky trails. Agnew and Brown offer four walking sticks that can be applied to managerial succession problems. The first walking stick considers executive decision making in three parts--nonrational, semirational, and rational--and covers the conditions in which each component comes into play. The second helps examine human resources as fixed or fluid and as assets or liabilities to develop a schema for manpower accounting in executive succession. Playing vs. talking a good executive game is the topic for walking stick three. The concern here is to distinguish the real players--who can manage systems--from the mere talkers, who can manage only fragments of systems. The fourth walking stick draws on the law of resource gravitation and crystallization, a law with implications for trainers: You can't fashion management training to fit all comers; instead, you must tailor it to what the trainees already are and know.     

Towards the entrepreneurial university: the principal-agent problem

The purpose of the paper is to explore how an individualized incentive system could increase professors’ motivation to contribute to the university’s mission to become entrepreneurial in transition countries. The paper proposes a conceptual analysis that draws on the principal-agent problem to examine incentives that may stimulate institutional change. It considers the framework of a university becoming entrepreneurial and assumes that the principal is dean while the agent is a professor. It contributes to the national innovation system literature by providing new insights about the institutional change in transition countries. The contribution is threefold: it distinguishes between an ordinary and an entrepreneurial university, it explains relationship between micro and meso levels in the process of institutional change towards entrepreneurial university, it refines knowledge on individualized incentive system acting as a motivation for professors to contribute to university becoming entrepreneurial. The paper challenges studies that dismiss the micro level role of human agency in institutional change. The conceptual arguments have important managerial implications for all public and private institutions.

     

Managerial incentives for undertaking exchange offers

This paper empirically examines management's motivation to convey information regarding firm value through exchange offers. We report a positive relation between stock price reactions to announcements of exchange offers and managerial stockholdings, and a weak negative relation with salary plus bonus. These findings are consistent with the incentives required for managers to signal firm value through exchange offer-induced leverage change.     

Worldwide willingness to delegate and country labor quality

The purpose of this article is to examine how country workforce characteristics shape the willingness of managers to delegate authority to subordinates. Using data from worldwide surveys, we tested to what extent country-specific factors, such as workforce competence, motivation, and probity, shape the willingness of managers to grant decisional power to subordinates. The results show that the willingness to delegate across the 47 countries might be explained by a combined effect of workforce competence, motivation, and probity, labeled quality of country labor. It is argued that in countries where managers perceive that the labor quality is lower (lack of competence, motivation, and probity), the managerial willingness to hand over power to subordinates decreases. The findings of this study have both theoretical and practical implications for the managerial practice of firms doing business internationally. These findings will assist companies and managers to better understand why delegation might not work as expected in one country, whereas the same practice is both effective and indicated in other countries.     

The ongoing feedback system : Experimental with a new managerial tool

This experiment represents a first step in the development of ongoing feedback systems as useful managerial tools. Additional research and testing of systems is needed. The results of this first experiment, however, are encouraging and indicate that if used effectively, such systems have the potential of improving organizational performance while also having a positive effect on employee attitudes. A consistent theme in the experiment has been that feedback systems are managerial tools, and are thus constrained in their value by the knowledge, skill, and motivation of those who use them. Wherever that knowledge, skill, and motivation exist or have been developed, the system appears to produce durable and positive changes, in a number of different work units, at a reasonable cost, and without the constant intervention of consultants. Thus the ongoing feedback system appears to meet the basic criteria for an effective and useful managerial tool and holds promise as a means for building more effective organizations.     

Well It’s Only Fair: How Perceptions of Manager Discretion in Bonus Allocation Affect Intrinsic Motivation

Perceptions of manager discretion in incentive allocation are theoretically and practically important to help explain the much‐debated relationship between performance‐related bonuses and intrinsic motivation. We argue, and demonstrate, that perceived managerial discretion is a key moderator to this relationship because of its relevance to procedural fairness. In a first study, we developed a measure for perceived manager discretion and distinguished it from related concepts. In a second experiment, we found that higher bonuses associated with higher levels of perceived manager discretion enhanced procedural fairness but those based on lower discretion did not. In a third field study, we found that actual bonuses implemented by a service organization enhanced intrinsic motivation indirectly through procedural fairness, but only when employees perceived their bonus to be based on higher levels of perceived manager discretion. Conversely, when bonus level was associated with lower perceived manager discretion, it negatively predicted of intrinsic motivation.     

我国上市公司经理管理防御程度的量化研究

经理管理防御程度的度量在我国仍是一个空白,国外学者使用的外部代替变量不能很好地反映经理人的管理防御动机。因此,从经理人个人特质出发选取六个最能反映经理管理防御行为的变量,采用内容分析法构建出经理管理防御指数。以2003—2006上市公司的数据为例进行实例验证,我们发现这种经理管理防御行为在我国上市公司中的确存在,而且防御程度呈上升趋势。     

Managers' interpretations of LCA: enlightenment and responsibility or confusion and denial?

Environmental life cycle assessment (LCA) and ‘life cycle thinking’ are popular approaches to evaluate and manage the environmental aspects of products. While LCA has been propagated as a decision‐making tool, the interest here is in LCA as a mental model, which managers may interpret and enact differently. If LCA and ‘life cycle thinking’ manage to infuse organizations with an extended sense of responsibility, this could counteract some of the ‘organized irresponsibility’ of modern markets. However, LCA use may also lead to confusion, doubt and denial. This article explores potential managerial interpretations of LCA with a small illustration from the wholesale trade, and through a conceptualization of the illustration in terms of Hatch's ( 1993 ) dynamic model of organizational culture. Copyright © 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The perceived importance of HR duties to Danish line managers

Today, HR scholars widely acknowledge that realising HRM requires the involvement of all managers and that the personal motivation of line managers plays an important role in their successful involvement. Yet, previous research has neglected to study how line managers rate the importance of particular HR duties and how the importance assigned to HR duties varies across managers. Based on a survey of 1,500 Danish managers, we find that ‘motivating others’ is considered the most important HR duty whereas ‘team building’, ‘handling conflicts’ and ‘coaching’ are considered the least important HR duties. Female top managers in the public sector exhibit the greatest interest in HR whereas men at lower managerial levels in the private sector give lowest priority to HR work. We conclude with possible explanations for the observed differences in a Danish context and beyond and provide suggestions for facilitating managerial involvement in HRM. In doing so we are well aware that the Scandinavian model of HRM in general and the Danish implementation in particular may represent a unique frame for the results.     

Multiple banking relationships,managerial ownership concentration and firm value: A simultaneous equations approach

This paper examines how the number of banking relationships affects the interaction between managerial ownership and firm performance, and sheds light on the conditions under which banking relationships play a role in alleviating shareholder–manager conflicts. Our results provide several interesting insights. We document that bank monitoring has substantial value when managers are improperly incentivized, but that it becomes less important when managers are properly incentivized. There is a substitution effect between the value-increasing benefits of managerial ownership and bank monitoring. We also find that any existing free-riding concerns from having too many banking relationships are problematical only when Tobin's Q is high and managerial ownership is high.     

Managerial Technologies, Ethics and Managing

ABSTRACT   This paper engages with a key element of Legge's work: the relationship between the technical and the moral in the application of managerial technologies, and how managers manage these different layers of meaning. Taking business planning and performance measurement as an example of managerial technologies, these are analysed for the extent to which they allow for an engagement with an ethical position, using Legge's (1978 ) characterization of the role of managerial technologies originally identified in Power, Innovation and Problem Solving in Personnel Management . The inter-related elements of the technical, the ethical and the practical are then used to explore how managers construct the meaning of management and their implications for Legge's more recent deontological and teleological ethical framework.     

企业并购经营者控制权激励动因分析

本文认为,管理主义动机是推动西方企业并购的主要因素之一,在我国特殊的制度背景下,企业高层经营管理者基于维护控制权及其控制权收益(包括政治收益)的管理主义动机则是促进我国国有企业并购行为的深层次原因。分析表明,并购有利于提高经营者的控制权收益,并且在一定程度上能满足经营者体现其“企业家精神”、自我实现的控制权需要。经营者控制权激励(即对控制权收益最大化的要求)是推动我国国有企业并购的制度动因。     

企业分拆上市动因：市值管理还是拓展融资渠道一同方股份分拆上市案例研究

以同方股份为案例,分析我国企业分拆上市的动因。研究显示：①同方股份分拆上市的公告反应显著为正,且与同行业竞争对手的超额收益存在显著差异;②具有相同分拆概念的公司获得了显著为正的超额收益,说明分拆上市具有正的溢出效应;③与行业水平相较,同方股份上市前三年的财务特征总体表现为低盈利、高负债与高成长,具有很强的融资需求。鉴于此,本文认为同方股份分拆上市的动因主要是市值管理和拓展新的融资渠道。     

Emerging managerial competencies of professionals in the Tanzanian construction industry

The managerial competencies required by professionals in the construction industry in Tanzania to operate effectively in a business environment which is changing as a result of a transition from a socialist to a free-enterprise economy, economic liberalization, globalization and regionalization are explored through a qualitative study. The study reveals that local Tanzanian construction firms are finding it difficult to compete with foreign companies for projects. This is mainly because Tanzanian professionals lack the competencies required to compete and manage projects in a liberalized market economy.

The study thus highlights the need for Tanzanian construction professionals to acquire a better grasp of both occupational and organizational competencies. In this respect, it is suggested that they need post-experience training in order to acquire the competencies required to function successfully in a commercial environment.