Men and Women of the Corporation, Essay Example

The purpose of this book is to critique “Men and Women of the Corporation,” by Kanter.  This book is critiqued according to its contribution to leadership and how it relates to the four frames of leadership. The four frames of leadership that this book review touches upon are the four Bowman and deal frames which are a framework that emphasizes the rational side of organizations, formal relationships, roles, and goals. The second one is from a human resource perspective and this emphasizes the human side of organizations, skills, attitudes. The third framework is the one that examines coalitions in the distribution of scarce resources along with conflict and power. Finally, the fourth framework examines the symbolic framework which explores how organizations create meaning through symbols, rituals and ceremonies, and myths.

Book’s contribution to leadership

The book’s contribution to leadership is that it takes an in depth look at the way women are treated within an organization, but not only women.  Women have been historically placed in administrative roles within an organization and most of the widely known positions that women hold and still hold are those of administrative assistants and secretaries. “In over half of the companies, women held only 2 percent or fewer of the first-level supervisory jobs” (Kanter, 1993, p. 17). In these positions, a woman (or the small amount of men that go into administrative roles, i.e. secretaries) tend to top out at a certain level within an organization and find that they top out in those positions and are rarely, if ever, promoted to departments that will give them the opportunity to move up in the company.

This book shows how men and women are limited by their positions within an organization and that create a behavior and consciousness that makes them feel that they are serving in dead end positions. “There is evidence that blocked opportunity and powerlessness affect the work life” (Kanter, 1993, p. 266). The point is that there needs to be structural changes within organizations so that everyone will feel like they have a quality of life, and that someone’s feelings about his or her job does in fact create an identity for that person, and this in turn will make the organization more successful.  “People at dead ends who lower their aspirations, stop trying, disengage, and make it less likely that they will ever get unstuck” (Kanter, 1993, p. 11).

The Four Frames

The structural framework in this book discusses goals of the organization which, as stated previously, deal with the formation of relationships with coworkers and supervisors, the goals of the employees, along with their goals.  Although the author went to many women’s conferences, she has not concentrated strictly on women as subjects in her book.  Rather she took a look at conceptions of roles and the way these roles were distributed in the corporation. “Participation in many feminist conferences helped lead me to a third, intermediate level analysis, one that I think has a great deal more potential for building theory, explaining observed behavior, and making change” (Kanter, 1993, p. xvii). In this way, she did not single women out and the study was able to include men too.  She noted that there is a system within organizations that was interwoven and that the behavior of men and women was not defined by their gender but rather behavior was defined by situations and roles.

From a human resources perspective, the author states that a human resources department needs to be “socially conscious.”  It needs to understand that a corporation is a group of people with identities and that work identities are extremely important to the worker as a human being. She describes this as the seminal work that must be done within a corporation.  There are women who do make it into the professional and managerial ranks that end up finding out that they are one of many men or as the author puts it; “‘Token’ women who are always different from their peers, no matter what they do, so that they can never be just normal members of the organization but always symbols of their kind” (Kanter, 1993, p. 11). These women tend to overcompensate by working harder in order to gain acceptance from their male peers.  This indicates sex discriminate, but the author does not dwell on that.  Rather she states that this scenario leads to less effectiveness in the company’s infrastructure.

The third framework that is addressed is the power and conflict that results from scarce resources.  In effect this means that the hierarchical structure (as opposed to the author’s social structure model or theory) needs to become a thing of the past because it is causing riffs between employees and is making women feel that they have to manage “like a man” and compartmentalize feelings and emotions that would contribute to the overall success of the company because a women provides a different perspective to managing. Employment practices that enhance individual welfare and the quality of work life should not be private decisions based on the voluntary goodwill or noblesse oblige of employers but rather a question of vital social concern to those outside the enterprise. (Kanter, 1993, p. 10). Once again, this review is using women as the prime example to illustrate the author’s theory which is that a corporation that is social conscious works better for the employees and the entire structure of the organization that the traditional hierarchical method that has been the norm.

The fourth framework is one that examines the organizations creation of myths and beliefs. In this sense, the age old myth is that women are better off serving in administrative rolls and dealing with bureaucratic issues because they have a “knack” for that sort of thing.  “the nature of the secretarial role, as found in practically all large organizations, is heavily bound up with the feminization of the occupation” (Kanter, 1993, p. 28). This is obviously a myth that has been perpetuated throughout the years dating back to the 1930s and before when women were sent to secretary schools that concentrated not only on their typing skills, but also on their grooming and aesthetics.

Metaphor(s)

The women’s issue is examined as an important subtheme in this book.  This is rightly so because women have had to historically battle to find their place in the corporate world and this affects the structure of the organization.  One of the most interesting metaphors that the author uses is in the very beginning of the book by Karl Marx (A socialist) in A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy: “It is not the consciousness of men that determines their existence, but, on the contrary, their social existence determines their consciousness.”  Also, and ironically is a quote from Adam Smith (a capitalist): “But the understandings of the greater part of men are necessarily formed by their ordinary employments, The Wealth of Nations.

These two quotes from two men from entirely different (actually from one end of the political and economic spectrum) show how central the author’s theme is and that is a social structure within an organization should be in place to give employees hope that they can move up the ranks of the corporate ladder without regard to gender of other social biases.  This report chooses to use the gender aspect because that is what the author is interested in, although, as stated before, the author is not exclusively concerned with gender in her book and development of her organization structure theory.

Critique of book/Debate

The author’s seminal inspiration ironically enough appears to be Karl Marx, however, that point can be debated. But her theories are very similar to the concept that Karl Marx had about the laborers being independently worthy because of the role they form within an organization. It is been pointed out that according to Karl Marx and Adam Smith that organizations create people. For a long time, people were supposed to be simply cards in spokes on the corporate wheel that kept it running and making money and being profitable and successful. This is like the idea that Karl Marx sets forth that the laborers toil why the bourgeois get rich. This is similar to what is happening in corporations and organizations today and that problem can be traced all the way back to the Standard Oil days when people were getting hired to work certain positions and they were happy to have jobs. “A few conglomerates like Standard Oil had existed before 1890, but it was during the following decades that mergers brought together formerly small and far-flung enterprises” (Kanter, 1993, p. 19). Now the labor force is more educated and more technical and unfortunately these are the type of people who should be leading a company rather than typing up and bureaucratic reports and working low paying unrewarding menial jobs. The organizational structure that this author proposes is of course theoretical and it speaks to the concerns not only of gender issues, but of the issue of the depersonalization of employees in large corporations. The author points out that the smaller the organization is, the more intimate it will be and perhaps it will be more successful than the larger corporations in implementing social consciousness theory.

The author wants to get inside the corporations that seem mysterious to people on the inside and the outside. She compares the corporation to the church hierarchy and that the insiders never see how the rest of the world on the outside works. The big question is how can a corporation function socially when on the outside society is functioning in a completely different way? The main focus of the author’s book is on the people who are in administrative roles, who run the offices and she breaks them down into two different groups. The first group is composed of technical personnel, professionals and managers and they make up what she calls the new middle class. These people are workers yet they must accept the hierarchy within the organization and the fact that they must conform to the power exercised over them. Then, at the very top of the corporate ladder there is the new elite and these people have total control, collective control over the corporation in the property it represents. This would include stock ownership and under them are the paper pushers, the record keepers, the clerics, the data manipulators, and the janitors who are all support personnel for the new elite and these people are considered subordinate even if they have the opportunity to be promoted. As the author points out, people in the later designation can be promoted, but only within their field, very rarely do you see someone working as a maintenance worker or record keeper move up into the echelons of upper management. So there becomes a class structure within the corporation that reflects society to a certain extent. It does not matter whether the worker is a man or a woman, these stereotypes are the same for everyone. The quality of all of the above work experience is important and conflict between all of these different departments within an organization is caused by the operation of interest groups within each group.  The theoretical framework can be used to suggest new structural alternatives, on the one hand, and to provide a conceptual underpinning for better-known strategies, on the other hand–strategies which are currently being applied to some managerial personnel but rarely below. (Kanter, 1993, p. 267). Indeed, the author develops a structure of integrated behavior in organizations which will give employees a better chance of growth, advancement, challenge, and more opportunity.

She also points out that success is not defined by upward mobility or vertical mobility, but rather it is defined by an employee success and happiness within their position with the opportunity to earn more money and what they are worth so that they feel good about going to work every day: So perhaps it is meaningful to suggest interrupting the cycle of powerlessness: to empower those in low-power situations by increasing their opportunities and their latitude rather than to continue to punish them for their ineffectiveness, reinforcing their powerless state of mind. (Kanter, 1993, p. 197).    People on the lower run of the corporate ladder do not feel that they are powerful enough to change their position and therefore remain stagnant because they are disappointed because they believe everything is all about vertical promotion. So these people end up being rules minded, rigid and any situation through activities that would empower them is highly recommended.

Analysis

One of the main things to take away from this book is that the author is not focusing on women or sex or sexual discrimination. She is focusing on both men and women who experience powerless at the hands of their corporate bosses. As stated earlier in this report women are considered tokens when they get into upper management yet this is not completely true because some men are considered tokens when they get into higher positions. They have a problem with acceptance and stereotyping as often encouraged within the organization. This is because they symbolize some of the employees in the lower echelon moving up. The author insists interventions that can help distribute the power and balance opportunity by engaging in reform so that barriers can change so that there is no limit to what a person can do no matter what department they find themselves in the corporation.   Large-scale change can happen but that will be more difficult than instigating change on integrative pattern.

Measurement of job satisfaction should be taken on a regular basis, along with the ability to transfer another part of the country if the job is putting too much stress on the wife and husband of the person that is working for the corporation. The types of organizations that the author is speaking about could be school systems, hospitals, big universities, government bureaucracies, even major corporations. It does not matter whether or not the job is in institutions that are public or private, the main problem is that there needs to be a transformation in the way that workers are treated so that they feel that they have empowerment and that they can move up the ranks. The author seems to be expressing an American socialist theory as far as work goes and this appears to be a worthwhile goal. This social conscious theory can be initiated however unconventional it may appear in smaller organizations to determine its success factor and then perhaps it can be integrated slowly into large corporations.

References

Kanter, R. M. (1993). Men and Women of the Corporation. New York: Basic Books. Retrieved from Questia.