CEO Children and Gender Wage Gap
If you’re a woman interested in equal pay in the workplace it might be helpful to learn the sex of any children your CEO has. Your workplace pay parity may be influenced by the answer. Read the rest of this entry »
Admired vs. Ethical, A Corporate Paradox
For those who hold store in “best of” lists it’s been a busy week. First, Fortune ran their Most Admired Companies list. Apple, Google, Berkshire Hathaway, Southwest Airlines and Proctor and Gamble took the top five slots in that order.
Then www.ethisphere.com weighed in with the 2011 World’s Most Ethical Companies, those who do the right thing. And none of the top five Fortune companies appear on the ethical list, although Colgate-Palmolive, a Proctor and Gamble competitor did.
Have we arrived at a moment when ranking companies begins to approximate the rankings of colleges that have bedeviled students for so long? And given the choice would the management of a company prefer to be admired or ethical?
In the coming weeks we’ll be talking to academics, the corporate executives and the consumers who use the products to try to make sense about the distinction.
Tags: Corporate Ethics, Fortune
Where the Female Executives Are–Country by Country
Overall the numbers of senior executives dipped in the last two years according to research from the Grant Thorton International Business Report, an annual survery of the views of senior executives of privately held companies by the accounting and risk management firm of the same name. The percentage of female senior managers dipped from 24% tin 2009 to 20% in 2011.
Thailand led with 45% of senior management positions held by women, followed by Georgia (40%) Russia (36%) Hong Kong and the Phillipines (tied at 35% )
The data revealed the countries of the G7 lagged behind Asia/Pacific. Great Britain(23%) and the United States(15%). Stil the United States did better than Germany (11%) and Japan (9%). What can we learn from the Pacific Rim?
It’s Still Lonely for Women at the Top
Yesterday was the 100 Anniversary of International Women’s Day 2011. Throughout the blogosphere there were opinions, even tributes. Arianna Huffington wrote an essay about her mother. Tina Brown, now editor-in-chief of Daily Beast and Newsweek was championing the second Women in the World Summit. And on Careerdiva.net Eve Tahmincioglu who didn’t want to blog about the day asked hard questions about the distance women have traveled and what they need to still accomplish.
Now, it seems that many women are heeding the motto of former Secretary of State Madeline Albright who recently spoke at Ted Women and said, “There’s a special place in hell for women who don’t help each other.”
There are several grass roots organizations that have gained traction recently and are poised to assist qualified women gain a place on corporate boards. DirectWomen, 2020 Women on Boards currently in Boston but expects to expand nationwide this year, and WomenCorporateDirectors in 27 cities worldwide are all gaining visibility.
Recently Mary Ann Jorgenson, an attorney and CEO of DirectWomen provided a brief overview of the organization. It had its start as part of an American Bar Association initiative to identify board ready qualified female attorneys. The attorney’s who go through an intensive 2 ½ day program are selected by a competitive winnowing process (only 1 in 5 makes it through) and are chosen in part for their business judgment and problem solving skills. Of 60 womenwho have participated, 15 now sit on corporate boards.
Ms. Jorgenson says the biggest impediment may be the mind sets of those screening for the boards. “They want other CEO’s,” she said. Still she said attorneys, especially those with experience in risk mangement and regulatory issues, may be more in tune with the current needs of corporations.
What’s your experience with women’s organizations?
Criteria for Joining A Corporate Board
I recently interviewed Constantine Alexandrakis a search consultant at Russell Reynolds Associates in Chicago, who also has responsibility for corporate officer searches.
He’s noticed a gradual shift upwards in the last decade of the percentage of women on the boards of the S&P 500 ( a different number than David Matsa used) from 12% to approximately 16% now.
Asked why the number isn’t higher, and he gives a tutorial on how a hypothetical board search considers specific skills for an open board position. Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: board of directors, executive search, management and leadership skills, women on corporate boards
Lessons in Shattering the Glass Ceiling
Attention recently turned to corporate boards in Europe again after a report commissioned by the British government said women should comprise at least a quarter of the boards of the largest British companies by 2015. The report stopped short of the mandate that’s existed in Norway since 2005. There 40% of corporate boards are required to be women by law. Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: Amalia Miller, corporate boards, female executives, Frank Matsa, glass ceiling, leadership, management, mentoring, networking, stock prices
Review–As One
Recently I received a review copy of a book called As One by Mehrdad Baghai and James Quigley. Mr. Baghai lives in Australia, earned his consulting stripes at McKinsey and is now associated with Alchemy Growth Partners and Mr. Quigley is the visible Global CEO of Deloitte Touche and Tohmatsu.
While some might consider As One a calling card for new clients, the authors appear to have tapped into the zeitgeist and applied it to the business environment. Mr. Quigley for one acknowledges the era of top down, “command and control management” may be way too narrow for modern times, a fact that has reverberated on the nightly news programs lately.
Top Jobs for the Class of 2011
Back in January we reported 47% of accounting majors received job offers before graduation, followed closely by business majors, 45% of whom received offers.
Now the results of a new survey conducted by the National Association of Colleges and Employers (NACE) 3 have been released. Among the class of 2011 accounting majors are currently receiving the most job offers. Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: Accounting, career choice, Consulting, entrepreneurship, Financial Analysis, Investment Banking, Management Training, National Association of Colleges and Employers, Sales, Young Entrepreneur Council
The Nuances of Smiling at Work
Could smiling make a difference in workplace productivity and employee satisfaction? In a new study led by Brent Scott assistant professor of management at Michigan State University the answer is only if it’s genuine. “Employers think that getting their employees to smile is good for the organization, but that’s not necessarily the case,” said Dr. Scott. “Smiling for the sake of smiling can lead to emotional exhaustion and withdrawal and that’s bad for the organization.”
Dr. Scott and a former doctoral colleague, Christopher Barnes, studied a group of city bus drivers during a two week period. They examined the effects of a fake smile compared to cultivating positive emotion by recalling pleasant memories or thinking about a current situation in a more favorable way.
The study, which appears in the current issue of the Academy of Management Journal found gender differences. The mood of women worsened even more than the men and they withdrew from work according to Dr. Scott who attributes the reaction to the fact women are expected and show greater emotional intensity and positive emotional expressiveness than men.
Turns out Peter Pan might have been right in his belief to think lovely thoughts. Dr. Scott found that thinking of a tropical vacation or a child’s dance or music recital, for example was all it took.
Keys to a Successful Career
Even as we examined the influences on the rise of two black executives the EEOC was preparing to hold hearings about whether unemployed job applicants are being discriminated against.
With some employers only considering currently employed applicants, there are those who say denying jobs to the already-unemployed can also have a disproportionate effect on certain racial and ethnic minority community members. Algernon Austin, Director of the Program on Race, Ethnicity, and the Economy of the Economic Policy Institute, says that unemployment rates for African-Americans, Hispanics and Native Americans are higher than those of whites. Restricting applications to the currently employed could place a heavier burden on people of color, he concluded. Read the rest of this entry »
