Sacrificing personal or professional life? A gender perspective on the accounts of retail managers

This article examines the issue of multiple role demands experienced, and the sacrifices managers make, in their career and personal lives. A series of 22 in-depth biographical interviews were conducted with retail managers of large companies in the UK. Respondents reported various instances of conflict between their work and personal lives. The findings revealed more of an asymmetrical permeability for both men and women managers, with work demands more likely to spillover to personal life. Combined together, these can represent very real problems in terms of the sacrifices managers need to make with regard to their work and /or personal lives. Women managers were found to undertake the majority of household duties and are therefore more likely to suffer from role overload. However, the findings also showed that both male and female managers are making sacrifices in one domain in order to accommodate the other. Significantly, women were more likely than men to have made sacrifices with regard to having children. It is acknowledged that the research cannot be generalised to the wider population of UK retail managers. However, the findings revealed some relevant issues that should be addressed by retail companies if they want to gain competitive advantage via the people they employ.     

The Development of Female Global Managers: The Role of Mentoring and Networking

This paper explores the role of mentoring and networking in the career development of global female managers. The paper is based on data collected from interviews with 50 senior female managers. The voices of the female managers illustrate some of the difficulties associated with informal organisational processes, in particular mentoring and networking, which hinder their career development. The findings confirm that female managers can miss out on global appointments because they lack mentors, role models, sponsorship, or access to appropriate networks – all of which are commonly available to their male counterparts. The interviewees suggest that men, as the dominant group, may want to maintain their dominance by excluding women from the informal interactions of mentoring and networking. The findings further suggest that if females had more access to networks and mentors they could be socialised in both the formal and informal norms of the organisation and gain career advantages from these. The managers reveal that they encounter additional barriers in ‹a man’s world’ and remind us that there is still much to be changed.     

Ethical Attitudes in Small Businesses and Large Corporations: Theory and Empirical Findings from a Tracking Study Spanning Three Decades

This study offers a theoretical framework of ethical behavior and a comparative analysis of ethical perceptions of managers of large, mostly publicly traded corporations (those with 1,000 or more employees) and the owners and managers of smaller companies (those with fewer than 100 employees) across 17 years. The primary research provides basic data on the changing standards of ethics as perceived by leaders of large and small businesses where the cultures frequently fall into sharp contrast. Our findings reveal the extent to which the message of business integrity is gaining or losing ground within large and small companies. It does this by means of respondents’ judgments of acceptable responses to 16 scenarios profiling common business situations with questionable ethical dimensions. Based on responses from over 5,000 managers and employees (from firms of all sizes) to our scenarios at three points in time (1985, 1993, 2001), we tested two research questions. First, for firms of all sizes, have business ethics improved or declined between the years 1985 and 2001? Second, comparing responses of large and small firm executives across the 1985–2001 time frame, is there a discernible difference in their ethical standards? Our results suggest that business leaders are making somewhat more ethical decisions in recent years. We also found that small business owner–managers offered less ethical responses to scenarios in 1993 but that no significant differences existed with large firm managers in 1985 and 2001. Implications of our findings are discussed.     

A Role for Business Ethics in Facilitating Trustworthiness

The relationship between ethics and trust is ambiguous as ethics can promote trust, whilst trust can simultaneously be abused resulting in unethical behaviour. In this contribution to the debate on trust and ethics the focus is specifically on the role that ethics can play in facilitating trustworthiness. The article starts with a definition of the concept trustworthiness. It then reports on an empirical longitudinal study on trustworthiness that was conducted in a South African company in the insurance industry. The facilitators of trustworthiness that were identified in this study and their relative contributions to trustworthiness are then discussed. Finally the implications of these findings for the ethical conduct of managers are discussed. It is demonstrated how ethical managerial conduct can enhance the trustworthiness of managers.     

The UK supermarket industry: an analysis of corporate social and financial performance

In a previous paper (Moore, 2001), the headline findings from a study of social and financial performance over three years of eight firms in the UK supermarket industry were reported. These were based on the derivation of a 16‐measure social performance index and a 4‐measure financial performance index. This paper discusses the formulationof the indices and then reports on: discussions with two supermarket firms concerning the overall results; inter‐relationships between individual financial performance measures; inter‐relationships between individual social performance measures; stakeholder group analysis; and inter‐relationships between turnover, age and gearing with social performance measures. The paper discusses these inter‐relationships, incorporating comments from the interviews with the two supermarket firms, and reports on both factor and cluster analysis. The interviews lend support for Preston and O’Bannon’s (1997) Available Funding Hypothesis in both its positive and negative form. The findings show that there are individual or combinations of related measures that could be used as surrogate measures for social and financial performance, instead of deriving a full index. However, the recommendation is that a full index continues to be used until there is further corroboration of these results. The findings also provide statistically significant support for the Negative Synergy Hypothesis (Preston and O’Bannon, 1997), show a statistically significant association between pre‐tax profits (both lagged and contemporaneous) with community contributions, and show that all statistically significant associations between individual social performance measures are positive – suggesting that they are mutually reinforcing. The association of size with social performance, noted in the previous paper, is also reinforced. Findings in relation to the proportion of women managers and the number of women on the Board and positive associations with other social and environmental performance measures raise interesting gender issues for business ethics. Factor analysis leads to no clear conclusions but cluster does show two or three clear clusters of firms, where size would seem to be the main but not sole factor. Further areas of research are noted.     

Decision making behavior in smaller entrepreneurial and larger professionally managed firms

The main findings in this study are that: • Entrepreneurs from smaller firms are less comprehensive in their decision behavior than professional managers from larger firms, with comprehensiveness defined as the degree to which an individual follows a formal rational decision process; • As decision comprehensiveness declines, so too does organizational performance, both among entrepreneurs and professional managers.The present study was based on the responses of 15 entrepreneurs from smaller firms averaging 25 employees and 13 CEOs and other top level corporate executives from larger, more professionally managed firms averaging 740 employees. The firms were randomly selected from a list of mid-Atlantic electronic manufacturing firms. Field interviews and questionnaires were employed, as well as a decision scenario involving a series of questions to which the entrepreneur or professional manager responded.After reviewing the literature on entrepreneurship, the researchers noted that most of it focused on developing profiles of entrepreneurs—for example, that they were high achievers, impatient and made decisions quickly. However, little—if any—research has focused on the behavior of entrepreneurs, particularly when compared to that of professional managers. Given this gap in the research, a field study was designed to compare the decision behavior of entrepreneurs and professional managers. It was expected that entrepreneurs would be less comprehensive than professional managers, but given previous research on comprehensiveness, it was difficult to predict the consequences of this less comprehensive model for performance.The researchers note in the discussion and conclusion that the results of the study have major implications for entrepreneurs and professional managers. Granted that decision comprehensiveness should be emphasized, they question the ability of entrepreneurs to change their decision behavior. It is argued that many of the drawbacks of comprehensiveness can be overcome by more sophisticated planning techniques and information processing systems. The paper concludes by stressing the need for research on techniques and ways to train entrepreneurs and managers to be more comprehensive.In summary, the present study has produced some important preliminary findings. It confirmed in larger scale studies, they could have major implications for the manner in which entrepreneurs and professional managers are trained and developed.     

Transformation of marketing management in Russia: A qualitative and theory building approach

Casual observers of Russian management are quick to portray a simplistic, well packaged, and seemingly accurate picture of life of Russian managers. Russia, they say, is imploding and disintegrating. In 1992, the inflation rate was 3,000 percent, and in the first 6 months of 1993, the monthly inflation rate ranged from 25 to 30 percent. The gross national product declined 25 percent in 1992 and continued to decline in 1993. Management life in Russia, these observers say, is unbearable, hell. Russian managers have been order-takers from central planners and regulators for more than 70 years. They have been accustomed to working in a stable and predictable environment, and therefore could not possibly be effective in the shock-therapy-induced market economy that began in January, 1992. However, these observers could not be further from the truth. I concluded from my study of Russian management decision making in 1989, 1991, and 1992 that in a rapidly changing and chaotic environment, Russian managers are quick to recognize the effects of the evolving market economy and take rapid corrective or exploitive action. The 3-year effort is a qualitative study of Russian management transformation and the development of a theoretical framework. What I found was that contrary to my findings in 1989 and 1991, the Russian economic shock therapy, which began in 1992, has infused life into Russian managers. As a result, they have been quick to recognize the effects of such economic forces as inflation, uncertainty, competition, consumer selectivity, credit, cash flow, and raw material on their enterprises. Likewise, they were also quick to respond, for example, by restructuring, downsizing, developing more competitive strategies, increasing promotions and sales force, and seeking foreign investors. In these respects, Russian management behavior resembles Western management behavior. © 1995 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.     

A Cross-Cultural Study of Managerial Work Values in Singapore

ABSTRACT

The paper presents the findings of a research conducted on work values of expatriate and local managers in Singapore. The sample included about 600 expatriate and local managers of 30 American, Canadian, British, Swedish, and Korean companies operating in Singapore. The selected companies represented 13 industries. The managers were identified on the basis of their ethnic and cultural backgrounds. Hofstede's Value Survey Module was used as the major data collection instrument. The findings revealed some significant differences between the managers of the Western and the Eastern (Oriental) cultures regarding their work values, preferred management styles, and their perception of existing managerial practices. The findings also largely substantiate the “crossvergence” argument of managerial work values.     

Formal voice mechanisms and portfolio career workers’ prosocial voice in Japan and Korea: the mediating role of managers’ issue-related leadership activities

ABSTRACT

This study analyses the relationship between formal voice mechanisms and prosocial voice among portfolio career workers (PCWs) in Japan and Korea. We particularly focus on the leadership activities of managers as human resource management agents and issue sellers. Under similar conditions, data on 400 and 409 PCWs in Japan and Korea, respectively, are gathered through web-based longitudinal surveys conducted in 2017 and 2018. The findings are threefold. First, when PCWs perceive that formal voice mechanisms are activated, they also rate the levels of their managers’ issue-related leadership activities more highly. Second, when PCWs evaluate the issue-related leadership activities of managers as being at a high level, they perceive that employment relations are based on a social exchange relationship. Third, when PCWs perceive employment relations based on a social exchange relationship, they provide their prosocial voice more actively. These results are discussed relative to the internal labour market models of Japan and Korea.     

Getting in the game: Putting golf at the forefront of your networking toolbox

Networking is imperative for career success in business, particularly in industries like sales and marketing. Success in the sales industry is directly tied to networking and building relationships. In this article, we shed light on the relationship between women, business, and golf as a potential networking tool. Many believe golf is the pièce de résistance of business networking, yet there is no research to support this assumption. To boot, women report golf as one of the primary informal networks they feel excluded from, which creates a disadvantage for women working in sales in marketing. We conducted a content analysis of over 500 pages of articles about women and golf from which three primary categories emerged: the benefits of golf for women in business, the effects of not golfing, and the reasons why women don’t golf. We include recommendations for managers who may want to encourage their teams to get in the game.     

Lessons from Japan: American and Japanese strategies and goals in the 1990s

This article recounts various Japanese business approaches touted in the 1980s as “Lessons from Japan” for U.S. managers. The logical expectation, given the sheer bulk of the literature, was that U.S. managers would become more “Japanese” in their business strategies and goals while the Japanese would have become more entrenched in their approaches. Questionnaire responses from 95 Japanese and 70 American firms suggest, however, that U.S. managers tend to make few shifts from the strategies and goals they emphasized in the 1980s. Meanwhile Japanese managers report that they expect to move toward more “American” business practices. © 1993 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.     

Exploring determinants of success in corporate ventures

Previous work (Biggadike 1979) has shown that corporate ventures (CVs) typically realize their first profits as eight-year-old “adolescents.” Eightyfour such CVs drawn from the PIMS database were explored to search for strong predictors of financial performance. This analysis resulted in several findings that corporate level managers (i.e., managers of portfolios of business) can act upon to influence CV performance, as well as numerous other findings that lower level managers can use to strategically position their operations better. Some of these findings are either contrary to those reported elsewhere in other studies of CVs or contrary to results of more mature businesses. These conflicting findings should be of particular interest to the growing number of academicans studying CV management.Corporate level managers are responsible for selecting the markets in which they will fund the development of new CVs, and maintaining a corporate environment conducive to the support of the CVs as they develop. Results of this research indicate that in selecting markets to enter, corporate managers should look for situations in which high market growth can potentially reduce the effect of competitive pressures; in which they are likely to realize a technology-based advantage: and in which they can stand up to international competition. An in-house environment stressing a hands off attitude on the part of corporate level managers appears most appropriate.Business level managers directly involved with the operation of the adolescent business can improve their CVs chances of success through good strategic positioning. By aggressively maintaining a high market share after an early entry into a broadly defined market, they can expect to move more quickly down their learning curves and beyond their break-even points. Given the choice of one or the other, a product that stresses quality over price is more likely to produce higher profits, although customers are obviously able to shop for value by considering both price and quality. Finally, any of the adolescent business' resources devoted to vertical integration should emphasize downstream rather than upstream development.Where the supporting results differ from those results expected and/or reported elsewhere, such differences are described and possible explanations offered. Before turning to the results, we need to describe this work's position within a broader context of developing literature on corporate ventures.     

Students as surrogates for managers: Evidence from a replicated experiment

Using students as surrogates for managers in experiments is commonplace, yet the validity of this practice has not been fully established. To explore the appropriateness of using student samples, we replicate an experiment previously conducted employing a sample of senior managers involved in financial reporting. The result is that although student and manager responses are significantly different from a statistical perspective, both samples lead to the same conclusion for this experiment. The findings suggest that having some disassociation between students and the target population they are meant to represent does not necessarily make them inappropriate surrogates. To examine when inferences are best supported, we explore the comparability for student subgroups and managers along dimensions of experience, knowledge, culture, and gender. Copyright © 2016 ASAC. Published by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Women Managers in Hong Kong: Personal and Political Agendas

The proportion of women managers in Hong Kong has been steadily increasing in recent years. Hong Kong's ‘can-do’ spirit, education system and laws against sex discrimination probably have contributed to the increase. However, roles in the private (home) and public (work) spheres remain highly gendered. This has led to intense worak–family stress for women managers, some of whom also face sex discrimination at work, such as negative attitudes toward women, the old-boy network and sexual harassment. However, the overall level of awareness of sex roles and sex discrimination among women managers is low. Furthermore, women managers tend not to court open and direct confrontation. Instead, they tend to pursue individualistic personal coping strategies. Women managers rely on support from their extended family and hire domestic help to cope with work–family stress. Women managers also work hard to prepare themselves for a job move when they perceive or encounter sex discrimination. They tend not to make demands of their husbands, the workplace, or the government due to concepts about the private and public divide and about gender roles in these two spheres. We argue that political agendas which push for more flexible gender roles, state childcare and women- and family-friendly organizational policies are needed to bring more women into management at a faster pace.     

How Small Is Too Small? Firm Size as a Barrier to Exporting from the United States

The purpose of this paper is ask whether there is a minimum size that firms must achieve to take advantage of the benefits of exporting from the United States. An analysis of 2,822 firms in 49 different industries in South Carolina, a rapidly growing export–driven state, was conducted to address this question. This paper builds on the contributions of previous research in the areas of small to medium–sized enterprises (SMEs) and export success and SMEs in the export development process. Analysis of manufacturing exports from South Carolina indicates that firm size serves as a necessary as well as a sufficient condition for export success among small manufacturing firms. Reasons for this are discussed, and implications for managers and policymakers are offered.     

Organizational acculturation in foreign subsidiaries

Organizational acculturation refers to the influence of parent organizational culture resulting in change of work values of local employees in foreign subsidiaries. A study of host country national middle managers in Southeast Asia explored the impact of organizational acculturation. In the first phase, the work-related cultural values of managers employed by Swedish subsidiaries in Singapore were compared with those of a control group of managers employed by non-Swedish companies. The second phase investigated the work values of managers in Hong Kong, Singapore, and Thailand, based on Hofstede's four cultural dimensions. The findings clearly indicated that local managers in Swedish subsidiaries had experienced organizational acculturation, as distinct Swedish values had been adopted. However, cultural change did not occur to an equal extent among the three countries nor between different cultural values. Implications of the findings for international human resource management are discussed. © 1993 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.     

An empirical study of moral reasoning among managers

Current research in moral development suggests that there are two distinct modes of moral reasoning, one based on a morality of justice, the other based on a morality of care. The research presented here examines the kinds of moral reasoning used by managers in work-related conflicts. Twenty men and twenty women were randomly selected from the population of first level managers in a Fortune 100 industrial corporation. In open-ended interviews each participant was asked to describe a situation of moral conflict in her or his work life. The results indicated a clearly preferred mode of moral reasoning among the participants who described moral conflicts. Nearly all of these predominated with a justice orientation. These findings suggest that a correlation between gender and preferred mode may be context specific.Robbin Derry is an associate professor at The American College in Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania, where she holds the Lamont Post Chair in Business Ethics. She recently completed a year as a Rockefeller Fellow at The Ethics Institute at Darthmouth College. She has presented and published numerous articles on the ethical decision-making of managers and is currently working on a business ethics textbook.     

Corporate Motives for Social Initiative: Legitimacy, Sustainability, or the Bottom Line?

This article presents results of exploratory research conducted with managers from over 500 Norwegian companies to examine corporate motives for engaging in social initiatives. Three key questions were addressed. First, what do managers in this sample see as the primary reasons their companies engage in activities that benefit society? Second, do motives for such social initiative vary across the industries represented? Third, can further empirical support be provided for the theoretical classifications of social initiative motives outlined in the literature? Previous research on the topic is reviewed, study methods are described, results are presented, and implications of findings are discussed. The article concludes with the analysis of study limitations and directions for future research.     

The Moderating Role of Trust in SME Owner/Managers' Decision-Making about Collaboration

This paper analyzes the impact of trust and trust agents on small to medium-sized enterprises' (SMEs) ability to derive benefits from it. The findings suggest that trust is a significant factor moderating the way SME owners/managers perceive the potential benefits of networks. These findings support earlier research that posited that networking provides an avenue for SME owners/managers to learn about potential business opportunities. However, Australian owner/managers that belong to networks do not demonstrate behavior and practices typical of either explorative or exploitative networks. Instead, the findings suggest that in addition to the typical networks, a third type of network should be added to the literature—embryo-explorative networks. Such networks describe SMEs owners/managers who attend network meetings and report on what they learn about new opportunities from the networks; however, they do not tend to engage in typical collaborative activities (such as joint marketing venture) as described in the networking literature. Embryo-explorative networks are defined as those that have yet to develop into the explorative networks—probably because there has been insufficient time to build trusting relationships required to foster collaborative ventures that involve some risks.     

Over the Line: Managers' experience of a labour strike

The experiences of managers who continue to work through a labour stoppage is a largely overlooked question in industrial relations research and practice. Qualitative long interviews were conducted with managers who worked through a strike. A shared narrative for managers' strike experiences emerged. Managers perceived that their prestrike workplace was cooperative and characterized by positive labour‐management relationships. The strike was experienced as contentious and personalized with managers reporting that they and their families were targets of aggression from strikers. The managers envisioned a more formal poststrike workplace characterized by less collegial labour‐management interactions. We discuss the implications of these findings and call for further research on managers' experiences of industrial relations events. Copyright © 2014 ASAC. Published by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.