> Joanna Bujes said:
>
> Anecdotally, the best woman manager I ever had was a
> woman; the worst
> was also a woman. Overall, I have found that the
> reserach you quote is
> quite true for first line managers (just above
> grunts); women tend to be
> better: more humane, more flexible, more supportive,
> more socially and
> operationally intelligent. Unfortunately, in my
> experience, once you
> get above that level I have never observed a
> difference. Once they
> break through the glass ceiling, they behave just like
> men and support the
> same system wholeheartedly.
I had similar experiences. What matters is not gender, but the type of position within the organization and the type of interaction it entails. Corporations are by nature hierarchical institutions and thus need to make sure that their functionaries form a stratum that is separate from the organization staff as well as "outside" groups. Blurring that distinction on both, professional or personal level, would undermine the hierarchical structure of the organization. Familiarity breeds contempt.
To create and maintain that hierarchical separation, corporate functionaries interact only with one another, also outside the organization and on the personal level. This was perfected by the first highly successful transnational corporation, the Roman Catholic Church. Priest celibacy may look absurd to laymen, but it assures the loyalty of the functionaries to the organization rather than to the people outside the organization. A married priest has his first loyalty to his wife and her kin, an unmarried one - to the organization that provides his subsistence, its leadership in Rome and its hierarchy. Illegitimate priest sex is not a problem because it can further enforce loyalty and bond to the organization - it creates a sense of guilt, which is then absolved by the church hierarchy, which also protects the "culprit" from social and legal consequences of such sex.
Ditto for modern corporations. The top functionaries live in a "celibacy" of a sort i.e. an artificially created (and very comfortable!) world of junkets, country clubs, business class travel, personal networks etc. that is insulated from the masses. That assures that functionaries, either male or female, are loyal to the organization and the corporate functionary class rather than to some "outside" group.
Wojtek