The Australian business community has responded to the diversity agenda by producing initiatives considered best practice policy (EOWA, 2006b). However, the modest advancement of women to executive level positions suggests policies are not working to full effect.
Recognition of talent is most commonly facilitated by the value systems that underpin organisational cultures. Management literature has long emphasised good cultural fit in the selection of senior managers (Simpson, 2005; Burton, 1997). Cultural fit needs to be understood in the context of a range of forces that bring various levels of influence to corporate environments and determine a set of behavioural dynamics.
While corporations seek to facilitate diversity through cultural change and innovation in both policy and practice, a legacy of immovable work practices, attitudes and behaviours continues to undermine female presence and female authority in most workplace environments.
6.1 The dominant corporate culture
An examination of the complexities of incorporating gender equity into corporate culture reveals organisation dynamics and patterns of behaviour that result in men and women negotiating the career ladder to radically different effect. There is a relationship between distinctive organisational cultures and behaviour towards women. In particular, the data reveal a correlation between organisational settings and the capacity to embrace diversity initiatives.
6.1.1 The narrow business model
While most organisations in the study are attempting to encourage diversity in their workforce, elements of a narrow business model can thwart the effective operation of diversity initiatives. The narrow business model reflects practices that are exclusively market-driven, and that reward short-term market success.The pressure for short-term results can divert energy from the longer to the shorter-term. Some corporate leaders have acknowledged that growing pressures for short-term financial performance impact negatively on organisational culture and mitigate against longer-term sustainability and market success.
It shouldn't be a choice between shareholder value and sustainability - maximum, long-term shareholder value comes from sustainability... The way we have managed and led our companies in the past is not the right way, given the lack of sustainability and humanity of our companies. (McFarlane, 2006:1-2)
In any public organisation with quarterly analyst reports...they always do things on a shorter and shorter time frame and you can't change the business. (Male manager)
The success here is hitting the numbers. Success here is dancing to the right tune at the right time. (Female senior manager) The way corporates need to set up their business, you need that hard commerciality... It's a comfort with that street smartness, that practicality...markets move quickly. When you've got that gut feel you need to make a decision... we are risk-takers. (Female senior manager)
This strong short-term profit orientation demands adeptness at 'hard' skills. Capacity for rationality, numerical competency, and expedient decision-making is highly valued.
You have to communicate in a direct way. The numbers have to be right and we cannot go to the client with the wrong information. It's the cut and thrust of the market. (Female manager)
While left brain adeptness is paramount to business success, research indicates that longer-term viability requires skills that transcend a narrow numerical focus (Schmidt, Hurwitz, Lines &, Montgomery, 2002). The annals of the Harvard Business Review are awash with cases that align business success with longer-term business drivers.The study finds that managerial competence in Australian business is often aligned narrowly with a demonstrated capacity in the 'hard' skills.The 'softer' skills associated with emotional intelligence and relationship building, which build sustainability for the longer term, are not as valued.
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The language of relevance is numbers. It is the language of success. If you don't report and speak that language you are invisible or mute. (Female manager)
Very business focused, very good on the numbers, at driving results...they are some key attributes of successful leaders. (Male manager)
It's very much about achievement of results in delivering projects or revenue or whatever, not in staff management and working relationships and team development. (Female manager)
Behavioural skills and motivating and empowering a team would not be the key success factors to getting on here. (Female manager)
It's a very left brain organisation.You need to be mathematically brilliant. Creativity is actually suppressed. (Female senior manager)
Indeed, contemporary corporate Australia applauds a leadership construct with a strong left brain orientation and stereotypical masculinity. A highly competitive culture rewards confidence, decisiveness, and ruthless individualism. The 'tough nut' may be rewarded as a 'good guy' even when he is a bully. A 'command and control' leadership style is valued and may prevail. Indeed, in a culture that requires quick decisions there is a tendency for leadership to be viewed as an individualistic enterprise aligned with the heroic actions of a few individuals at the top. This culture eschews reflection and has little time for questions. Indeed, a display of ambivalence and uncertainty is eschewed as weakness.
I'm never wrong. Or perhaps I'm often wrong but never uncertain. It's a masculine thing not to acknowledge you are wrong. It's not always conscious either. Attack is the most common form of defence. (Male senior manager)
There is zero tolerance for saying, 'I don't know the answer'. (Female senior manager)
There is often a lot of aggressive behaviour, often a lot of personal abuse. People often say they play the man and not the ball or, in my case, play the woman and not the ball. (Female senior manager)
There is a need to make commercial quick decisions... Some people see it as aggression. (Female senior manager)
Everything he knows, he learnt on the footy bench. He looks for loyalty - that matters. He's a command and control guy. (Female senior manager)
The study finds that corporate cultures with a strong orientation towards a narrow business paradigm exhibit a marked ambivalence towards the participation of women, particularly at the senior level.The promulgation of cultural traits aligned with a narrow notion of leadership is reinforced by selection criteria, which align leadership capacity with a confidence and assertiveness that is particular to men. Women who wish to survive or indeed excel in these cultures collude with many of its tenets. For those women, survival often means exit.
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There is an element of senior management that is male that really has difficulty dealing with females. Sometimes in a meeting you can see they are uncomfortable because they like being surrounded with like-minded people...You never will quite be in the inner circle. (Female senior manager)
There's male dominance, I feel there is a level of nervousness around women in the workplace. (Female manager)
Maybe it's me but I think the paradigm is still with the six foot tall executives who have naturally booming voices. (Female manager)
I think corporate Australia sees leadership as a bunch of male characteristics. (Female senior manager)
They don't see me as a competitor. I could never be a CEO because I am a woman. (Female senior manager)
I said to him, 'Why didn't I get the GM role? I'm easily moveable [willing to work any where]'. He said,'I thought you were only joking and what about [your partner]?' He can't imagine me or another woman going into the executive level. (Female senior manager)
The way we structure recruitment favours males. Males are more assertive. Males tend to present in a confident way; females present in a more circumspect way. They [men] will say,'I can do it'. Females will say,'I can do it only if...' (Male senior manager)
Within uncompromisingly masculine and short-term results driven cultures there is little desire to deviate from the behavioural norm. Success in the market provides little incentive for change, resulting in a culture of conservatism that undermines creative and innovative thinking.There is limited capacity to recognise the benefits of diversity and to incorporate it into practice. Indeed difference is viewed as a threat and those deviating from the norm are referred to pejoratively as eccentric or a poor cultural fit and are marginalised or ejected.
There's a very internal focus and through that a very selffulfilling, reinforcing leadership style...The leadership style is hierarchical, conservative, distant and paternalistic. (Female senior manager)
It is an environment that is hard to acknowledge, you can't change it. It self-perpetuates.” (Female senior manager)
If you've grown up in an organisation and you are suddenly surrounded by people who are starting to threaten you because they think in a different way or speak in a different way...that may lead to some of the issues we have around here about embracing diversity. (Male senior manager)
As a company we are not ready for the eccentric style and approach.We are not ready as a company to see through the layers. (Female manager)
A culture of conformity remains deeply intolerant of men and women who aspire to a broader notion of authority.
There's a tendency for people not to disagree with people above them. People fight the fight but don't challenge the culture. (Female senior manager)
[It's] almost to the point where male executives who demonstrate a kinder, more concessional view are almost isolated because of that, or vilified as being pansies or gay or whatever because they are just being more moderate. (Female senior manager)
There is a culture and I'm struggling to describe it, not 'yes men' but people who won't stand outside the pack... (Female manager)
It's been OK to impose the male dynamic on the workplace but you hear about the feminisation of corporate Australia - that is not acceptable. (Female manager)
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Positive business outcomes support a 'why fix it when it's not broke' mentality, mitigating the need for major organisational change and reinforcing the cultural status quo.
I think one of the great risks for the big companies is that at our core we are dinosaurs...we've been incredibly successful by doing the same things in quite a monocultural way for a really long period of time. (Female senior manager)
Indeed, the cultural focus of narrow business environments encourages insularity and distance from broader social agendas. This dynamic reduces an organisation's ability to recognise the need for innovation and to accommodate significant internal change, including the growing presence of women.While the diversity agenda is acknowledged, engagement is tentative and limited to meeting compliance standards.
We do the compliance reporting there and there's a sense of,'We're EOWA compliant so we're fine when it comes to women'. (Female manager)
Around here you hear the words but you choose not to listen to the content. [of diversity] ...People see it as a label, not a philosophy. So their acceptance of it is at face value. (Female senior manager)
People here, in my experience, are unwilling to confront diversity of thought or culture head on. That's why it's harder to get hold of. Of course, they'll embrace it in a public environment, even on a one-on-one basis and more particularly in a group but actually...we say we'll do what's necessary to look all right. (Male senior manager)
These organisations remain locked in established practices and values and there is little opportunity for broader social practices and ideas to develop.
When you are running intensive business, compliance is critical...and that demands a leadership style that is about enforcing that compliance. It is a learned response over time.That's why organisations struggle and take so long to change because they don't have the agility. (Male senior manager)
For years, [organisations] never did recruiting from the outside... When they did, the insiders were in a very poor position to compete because merit meant something different from what it had meant internally for years. (Female senior manager)
I think in a highly operational multi-site organisation...it's a learnt social response to reject diversity of thought or gender or individuality of some description.You've got a real dichotomy between the needs of the marketplace and the style and organisational principles of the company. That becomes very evident when a company needs to change. (Male senior manager)
The study finds some ambivalence for diversity initiatives in the attitudes of participants. Diversity programs are seen to not only distort level playing field dynamics but to inhibit women from competing on an equal footing.
I know that is probably politically incorrect to say it. I always believe that, in one sense, you make your own luck in this world.You can have all the coaches and all the assistance but in the end...nobody else can do it for you. People can help you along the way but in the end you'll get judged by the market, your peers, or whatever for what you are as to where that career ends up. (Male senior manager)
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6.1.2 A culture of winners
Within a culture that fosters competition, individuals strive for success.
They fear marginality and avoid opportunities to critically analyse the work environment. A number of participants displayed defensiveness to suggestions that corporate culture does not easily accommodate a female presence. Women and men interpret characteristics such as an aggressively competitive environment or a market-driven, 24/7 work ethic in pragmatic rather than problematic terms. These elements are considered the reality of senior corporate life rather than evidence of cultural hostility towards women.
I think to some extent, executives are a self-selecting group. There is only a certain type of person who wants to be an executive... The requirements of the role include being very committed, having an appetite for working 60 to 70 hours a week. (Male senior manager)
People gang up on you but that's work... Some women and men will see that as aggressive and can't cope with it [but] it's normal everyday business, isn't it? (Female senior manager)
No-one is going to get to senior management unless you can perform... You have to be prepared to put the hours in. In the corporate world, you have to be prepared for the work ethic. (Female senior manager)
There is an expectation that you check your emails seven days a week and are on call seven days a week. Some days I start at 7am and finish at 11pm. (Female senior manager)
A gendered analysis of the issues facing women in management is also widely rejected. A number of participants in the study are reluctant to support arguments of systemic sexual discrimination and prefer gender neutral interpretations of workplace dynamics. On the question of promotional opportunities, many women argue personal choice plays a far greater role in shaping their careers than cultural resistance to female advancement.
We also create our choices around glass ceilings... If certain opportunities present we make choices about which roads we choose. (Female manager)
There is just not a big enough pool of women to fill [senior] positions and even if there are, they don't necessarily want to move up to that level. They're conscious of the work lifestyle ... I guess a lot of women just opt out. (Male manager)
At the end of the day, women have choices to make... I'm not surprised women are under-represented... A lot of women don't want to be senior woman in corporations because they want to have more flexibility and more choice and dedicate more time and focus to other elements of their life. (Female senior manager)
I'm not actually ruthlessly ambitious. I don't care if I go up, down or sideways, although I want to be involved. My driver is not money, it's about being involved. (Female manager)
6.1.3 The stigma of feminism
Australian research has found a strong negative association in the 'free market' psyche between aggressive cultural change strategies and feminism. Feminism is considered the voice of an elite that represents no authentic ethical content (Sawer, 2003). It is perceived to be part of a politically correct fashion that bears little relevance to the viability of legitimate commercial enterprise. Feminism is seen to taint level playing field dynamics and the identification of real talent. Cultural change interventions that reflect feminist principles such as positive discrimination are widely rejected by the business community. Historically the business community was opposed to affirmative action legislation that proposed company targets and preferred non-regulatory approaches (Braithwaite & Bush, 1998; Spearritt, 1997).
The study finds a subtle cultural rejection of diversity, articulated through a marked hostility towards feminism. Both women and men are keen to avoid association with a feminist agenda. The data contain derogatory references to 'redneck femos','women's libbers', 'socialist feminists' and 'political correctness bullshit'. Feminism, and by implication women's issues, are portrayed as radical, out of control and extreme.
Feminism means to them, people who are feisty, hard to get along with, ugly...so they don't want to be aligned with that. That's a very practical decision because the people who employ them would feel very threatened by that sort of thing. (Female senior manager)
If there is a women's forum it is seen as proactive, discrimination... bra burning. (Female senior manager)
I come across as easy to get along with, not immediately feisty on this stuff, [an] in your face redneck femo. (Female manager)
Business women's networks don't cut it for me.You can't speak freely.You want Chatham House rule. I would value networking with women who have made it. How do you learn and what are the lessons? (Female senior manager)
A number of respondents articulated misgivings about the specific fostering of female talent, reflecting fear, embarrassment, hostility, or indeed elements of all three. Resistance is expressed subtly. Managers convey a lack of enthusiasm or respect for implementation of programs rather than open hostility.
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There was a bit of laughter and all that stuff but we've run a professional women's network. (Male senior manager)
Men have given lip service to the need to support women but nothing happens... There needs to be some willingness to change the way we do things. Otherwise, it's just a bunch of girls having lunch. (Female manager)
When I did the women's program that they have [here] there was a lot of,'You are going off to do secret women's business and why should you get the extra privileges?' So that caused quite a bit of a stir with our male colleagues, wondering what the hell we were doing and why we had that opportunity. (Female manager)
I've tried to get development programs for women...and the manager I reported to said he wanted results in 12 months. He wanted to see women stepping up the ladder and applying for jobs. It doesn't work like that. You need at least five years or six years and then do a full blown analysis to see if it's working. It would be working but he's no longer supporting it. (Female manager)
In some circumstances, a lukewarm response from management clearly undermines program popularity and encourages cultural hostility. Both men and women feed into this culture.Women, in particular, are keen to disassociate themselves from any initiative that might further diminish their status in the eyes of male colleagues. Some women fail to take up opportunities offered by female friendly programs such as women's networks and talent promotion opportunities out of fear of marginality. Others express active hostility to initiatives.
We used to have a women's network but it fell away. It definitely wasn't given any senior support and it was almost considered the mothers' club. At the time I was asked to join it I almost felt like a little girl going off to join my mother's friends. (Female senior manager)
At the beginning of the women's networking, people would be too afraid to ask their line manager if they could go to it. (Female manager)
6.1.4 Scratching beneath the surface
Conversations about the place and treatment of women in the corporate world are not easily conducted in the workplace. The real conversation about women in business is not occurring in the open. Concerns and criticisms remain hidden and unspoken.
A lot of the old sexism has gone or it may have gone underground. There are things people know they cannot say anymore but they may be thinking it... Scratch the surface. (Female senior manager)
With my own manager who was pretty traditional, a generation ahead of me... I sensed there was something that he couldn't put his finger on that made me not quite leadership material. It was never articulated but it was something I felt. (Female senior manager)
A leading Australian banking executive alluded to this dynamic in a recent speech.
We have few really honest conversations about gender issues in the workplace - because all of us, men and women, bring our own biases to the table. (McFarlane, 2006: 9)
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6.2 The contemporary business model
While most organisations reflect elements of a narrow business model (Hewlett & Luce, 2005; Charlesworth et. al., 2002; Meyerson & Fletcher, 2000; Sands, 1996) models shaped by the pragmatics of a globalised economy are increasingly making an impact on organisational culture in Australia.
A self-consciously contemporary business model has emerged in the corporate landscape.This model openly challenges the narrow status quo as outdated and inefficient. A radical mindset promotes expansion of the conventional business agenda and, by implication, a broadening of cultural reference points.
Everything has changed to meet the greater efficiencies required. People have to act more business-like because they don't have a great lot of resources to throw around. We've had to become more professional, there's been a change in values in the workplace...to reflect a balance between the bullish blokey type world and the more sensitive one, attuned to issues which might affect people outside the work environment. (Male manager)
The study finds a number of participant organisations are striving to establish cultures that are more contemporary and arguably more sustainable.Through strategic planning initiatives these organisations argue that realignment of the business mindset is necessary to transcend the short-term and ensure long-term viability.They seek to establish a balanced agenda that mixes business,workforce and the community.
We need a new and radical way forward, a paradigm shift in our conception of what a company is and how it behaves. (McFarlane, 2006: 2)
The cultural implications of this paradigm shift are significant for the implementation of diversity.A contemporary business model consciously promotes proactive social rhetoric and promotes sustainability through investment in intellectual capital, diversity, and the pursuit of creative and flexible workforce planning initiatives. Leadership is inclusive and relationship-orientated, allowing those who fit outside a narrow, conformist model to aspire to leadership positions. Performance is judged by standards which transcend a narrow notion of fiscal success. Command and control authority is relinquished for an approach that views leadership as a shared and distributed practice (Fletcher, 2004) through the delegation of accountability and responsibility.
Caring for our people is a core value in this department and that means modelling work/life balance and showing you don't ask too much of people... We place a high value on social capital here, people trying to enjoy work rather than just being here, so a good leader will try and make that happen... I really believe that in this department those values are really taken seriously. (Male senior manager)
I think women would have a strong connection with those values.They are not the old blokey values that you work until you drop and go to the pub. I wouldn't go as far as saying they're female. I think they are modern workplace values that recognise the equality of people and the need to be fair in all things, whereas the old blokey culture is more about being comfortable. (Male senior manager)
Organisations that are consciously moving towards a more contemporary environment approach diversity as a tool for cultural change rather than just a compliance issue. Leadership is proactive and acknowledges that a dearth of senior women is problematic. Space is provided for crucial conversations about diversity, enabling old assumptions to be challenged and new initiatives to be undertaken.
If you are going through enormous change processes, let's debate about what we need, let's debate about the broadness of the skill sets that we need. I've said to my leaders, 'Don't come and ask me for objective criteria.You have judgement.You tell me who is talented and who is not and debate with me how you came to your conclusions'. (Male senior manager)
While we are in this talent war...you don't just suddenly stumble into a world that's all OK. It's actually got to be a positive step to get a positive reaction... The intangibles are the things that we have to work on now, I think. It's a conscious step by people to do certain things. (Male manager)
These organisations tend to actively intervene in diversity. They recognise that a laissez faire approach will not overcome cultural resistance, at least not in the short term.They explicitly promote quotas or gendered career pathways to address the shortage of senior women.
6.3 Conclusion
While diversity has been established on the business agenda, the mainstream culture of corporate Australia is highly gendered. Business imperatives reward values and behaviours that are aligned with masculinity, such that leadership is a masculine enterprise and female authority is excluded. Creating a culture that complements the masculine and feminine remains a challenge.