All Articles Tagged "CEO"
Male CEOs With Daughters Pay Their Employees Better Wages, Says Recent Study
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A recent study published in the Administrative Science Quarterly revealed that a male boss is likely to pay his staff better wages following the birth of his first daughter. The study, which analyzed the impact that fatherhood has on style of management was co-authored by David Gadis Gross, one of the associate professors at Columbia School of Business. More magazine recently caught up with Gross to discuss his findings, check out some what he revealed during the Q&A.
On what led him to participate in the study:
“I think individual managers can make a lot of difference; personalities matter. But we don’t have a lot of systematic evidence of why certain managers manage in certain ways. This study is an initial attempt to start filling in that big gap. I have two children myself, and I certainly think that has had an influence on me. When you’re a parent, whether a father or a mother, it affects you, and I think it affects you whether you have boys or girls.”
On what the study revealed about a male supervisor after he has his first child:
“For the first child of either gender, women employees’ wages actually increase, and for the first daughter, wages of both employees—men and women—increase.”
On finding that fathers tend to become more generous after having a daughter:
“Fathers don’t seem to play with daughters the same way [they do with sons]. They seem to be more nurturing, they seem to be more focused on developing social skills and less on achievement. By having a daughter, especially his first daughter, a male CEO, to some degree, [may go] through some process of socialization that could make him more generous toward his employees.”
“There’s a paper that’s been around for a couple of years that looks at male U.S. congressmen, and finds that if they have daughters of reproductive age, they tend to vote a little bit more favorably on women’s reproductive rights issues. So, you can see a situation where if a CEO has a daughter, he might start to regard his female employees more benignly.”
MN Daily Salute: Ursula Burns
Source: WENN
Ursula Burns
Calling: Madame Chairperson and CEO
Why we’re saluting her:
Ursula Burns is the first African-American woman CEO to head a Fortune 500 company and a true example that one can work their way from the bottom to the top.
Burns, the daughter of Panamanian immigrants, grew up in New York City projects, raised by a single mother. After attending a Catholic all-girls school on the eastside, Burns went on to obtain a bachelor of science degree in Mechanical Engineering from Polytechnic Institute of NYU in 1980 and a master of science in Mechanical Engineering from Columbia University a year later.
After graduating from the Polytechnic Institute, Burns worked for Xerox as a summer intern and a year later she permanently joined the company after completing her master’s degree. Throughout the ’80s, Burns worked in various roles in product development and planning but then in 1990, a senior executive offered her a position as an executive assistant. Though Burns initially feared the position would be a dead-end job, it turned out to be a role that allowed her to quickly rise through the ranks of the company. Just one year later, Burns became executive assistant to then chairman and chief executive Paul Allaire, and by 1999, she was named vice president for global manufacturing.
In 2000, Burns became a senior vice president at Xerox and in this role she began working closely with soon to be CEO Anne Mulcahy. Nine years later, Burns ended up succeeding Mulcahy as CEO in July 2009.
Three years into her role as CEO, Burns used her position to speak out against Augusta National Golf Club’s male-only membership policy, saying that if they didn’t start accepting women, Xerox wouldn’t sponsor the Masters on her watch. In August 2012, the club opened its membership to women for the first time in 80 years. That same year, Burns made Forbes Most Powerful Women in the World list, ranking at number 17. And for her hard work, determination, and ability to build herself from summer intern to Chief Executive Officer, we salute Ursula Burns.
From Intern to CEO to Commerce Secretary? Xerox’s Ursula Burns Is a Possible Nominee
AP Photo
Will the Commerce Department be lead by a black woman?
Xerox chairwoman Ursula Burns is rumored to be a potential nominee for the job of Commerce Secretary. This would make her the first black woman and only the second woman to ever hold the position of Commerce Secretary.
Burns is already a sitting member of the President’s Council on Jobs and Competitiveness, Bloomberg reports, and has consulted the President on economic matters. (The story also says Amex CEO Kenneth Chenault could be a candidate to replace Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner.) President Obama said during the election — when business know-how became an important character trait for the candidates — that the cabinet needs a “secretary of business.”
She spent three decades working her way up the ladder at Xerox from intern in 1980 to making history as the first African-American woman to be named CEO of a Fortune 500 company in 2009. And she was the first woman to replace another woman as CEO of a company.
As you can figure she has had many naysayers. In an interview with Black Enterprise magazine in 1997 she said, “The fact that I did it faster than others has nothing to do with my race and gender. It was my performance.”
Karen Arena, a Xerox spokeswoman, said Burns “has no plans to leave her leadership position at Xerox.” With no confirmation from the White House and that statement from Arena, we’ll have to wait and see if history is made again by Ursula Burns.
If You Want To Get Far In Your Career, Talk Less?
Every office has a chatty Cathie whose non-stop talking is usually harmless enough that the gab is more of an annoyance than a problem. But if the Cathie’s of the professional world want to go far in their careers they may want to do one thing: zip it up.
According to a new study from Yale researchers that points out yet another double standard women have to contend with in the work place, it’s not necessarily just talking that’s a problem, it’s speaking up. While a man who is vocal in the work place is seen as a good leader, an extroverted woman who does the same is seen as being too aggressive and in some instances still “chatty.”
For the study, participants were asked to read a fictitious story about a CEO, described as either a talkative man, a talkative woman, a quiet man or a quiet woman, and then rate how they perceived their competency on a seven-point scale, with seven being the highest. Although the exact same narrative was given for both genders, the competency ratings were quite different. The competency of talkative male CEOs was a 5.64, on average, compared with 5.11 for quiet males. Talkative female CEOs, on the other hand, were seen as less capable, receiving a rating of 4.83 which was even less than quiet female CEOs, who received 5.62.
“When men talk a lot and they have power, people want to reward them either by hiring them, voting for them, or just giving them more power and responsibility at work,” Victoria Brescoll, the study’s author, told Business Insider. “But when women do it, they are seen as being too domineering, too presumptuous. Women perceive this, and that’s why they temper how much they talk.”
In an additional experiment, 206 participants were asked to imagine themselves in specific roles and through a series of questions, Brescoll concluded that the participants tend to think that “a female CEO who talked more than other CEOs is significantly less competent and less suitable for leadership than a male CEO who spoke for the same amount of time.”
The study gives two possible explanations for this finding:
“It may be that while men show a strong positive relationship between talking time and power, women show no such effect (or a much weaker one) for at least two reasons. The first stems from the different ways men and women approach leadership and power. Some research has found that women lead in a more democratic, non-hierarchical fashion than men, while men are more sensitive to and more comfortable with hierarchy and may behave in ways that reinforce their position in the hierarchy. In contrast, women may talk to establish and maintain relationships with others and therefore would be likely to speak for the same amount time as their counterparts, regardless of their power.
“An alternative explanation, which predicts the same interaction pattern, has to do with women’s potential fear of backlash. Further analysis revealed that only the high-power women adjusted their talking time over concerns of being disliked, perceived as “out of line” or controlling, and other reasons consistent with a fear of experiencing backlash.”
Brande Victorian is a blogger and culture writer in New York City. Follower her on Twitter at @be_vic.
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Desiree Rogers on Leaving the White House: I Like to Be in Charge
While many saw Desiree Rogers’ short stint at the White House as a blemish on her career in light of the party-crashing incident, Rogers saw her leave as an opportunity to do something she really wanted to do. Since then, the former social secretary has become CEO of Johnson Publishing, working to rebuild two iconic black brands, Ebony and Jet.
In a recent interview with Businessweek, Rogers discussed the new strategy behind the publications: I wanted to make Ebony prettier and more relevant. With Jet, people would say, ‘What are you going to do to my Jet?’ We’re being very careful not to fall into a vacuum where we assume all black people want to read the same thing. That said, there are broad issues that impact the community. My daughter is 21, and she doesn’t see the world in white and black. But she wants to read about our history. She helped me think about things in a different way.”
Rogers is off to a strong start. I haven’t seen so much buzz surround Ebony in years. The redesign of the mag has caught the attention of a younger generation who had written the publication off, and new website is expected in January. Rogers also seems secure in her choice to enter the publishing world.
“Washington is like playing the Super Bowl, only there are no timeouts, no potty breaks, and the arena is filled with the media. In government, you have to learn to put yourself second in a big way. But I am a business person at heart. I like to be in charge.”
How do you think Desiree Rogers is doing so far with revitalizing Ebony and Jet?
Brande Victorian is a blogger and culture writer in New York City. Follower her on Twitter at @be_vic.
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Empowerment Coach Heads to Nigeria
(BusinessDay) — Ever wondered what it takes to be beautiful, industrious, witty, besides being an author and entrepreneur with over 20 years’ experience in sales, marketing and operations management? Well, wonder no more because Anna McCoy personifies all that and more. She is the Chief Encouragement Officer of Act Now, Inc., a personal development and success training organisation, and founder of Woman Act Now, an online and chapter-based membership organisation dedicated to empowering women to dream, execute and connect with other like-minded women to achieve their goals in the now. Anna and her husband Richmond McCoy are founding partners of UrbanAmerica, a $520 million, private real estate fund which purchases and revitalises inner–city commercial properties. And PS: She is the recipient of an honorary doctorate degree from Saint Thomas Christian College.
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Oprah Winfrey Network Ready to Name New CEO: Oprah!
After a rough start for the network the Oprah Winfrey Network, or OWN, Ms. Winfrey will now take over control of the network’s direction as CEO according to reports from The Wall Street Journal. Winfrey will also have double the power, holding the role of chief creative officer as well, in the hopes that her mega network can finally go in the direction she’s been hoping for. Maybe some fresh ideas from the “Queen of Talk” will help generate some stronger ratings and some better programming. Winfrey started off as chairman of the channel around the time of its launch in January, but when the network didn’t start off with a bang like folks had hoped and planned, the appointed CEO at that time, Christina Norman, was given the boot just four months later. Peter Liguori, the COO from OWN’s partner company Discovery Communications, was made interim CEO after Norman’s removal.
We’ll see if this succession pays off when Oprah takes over the CEO chair in the fall. But now that you know she’ll be running things, everything it seems, will you finally start watching? For more on the story, check out The Wall Street Journal and The Hollywood Reporter.
Do Women Dislike Other Women in Power?
If a woman ran this world, she probably wouldn’t be in power too long.
Why you ask? Because the people that brought her into power would probably turn into her biggest critics. Homegirl would have so many haters from both genders, she’d either crack under the pressure, or stand strong enough and be bold enough in her role to become the villain in no time. Only to be replaced with the help of her peers.
I say this not because I don’t believe a woman could be president (Hillary was close), or the CEO of a company (it happens everyday, but it’s certainly easier when you start your own business), but because a woman needs a few true allies. People that won’t question her every decision, start a rumor that she’s inadequate for not agreeing with the status quo and that won’t give her attitude for ASKING you to do the job you get paid for. There’s so many fickle folk in the corporate world. Men are usually given the chance to make mistakes before they’re deemed “inadequate” for a position. Women get figuratively stomped and castigated on the low the minute an email is sent that they’ve been promoted.
“Authority, when held by a woman, can be viewed as tentative, while a man‟s
authority is often assumed.”
This statement was provided by Karen L. Proudford, an associate professor of management at Morgan State University who did a research paper on negative group-think towards women in authority in the workplace and in organizations. While it has been known for a long time that many men in big companies and orgs can be the biggest detractors of a woman making most of the business decisions, I’m starting to wonder if women are becoming worse. Trust, I’m not attacking anyone—cause I’ve been a hater from time to time, myself.
Establishing Your Reputation as a Startup CEO Before Launch
(Read Write Web) — Yesterday, I wrote about the things you can do to prepare your startup’s website pre-launch. But your online presence doesn’t solely exist on and shouldn’t solely rely on your company website. And it’s incredibly valuable that just as you work on it, that you work to develop an online presence for you, the entrepreneur.
15 Things Every Business Owner Should Know
(Inc) — 1.) Cash crunches happen from time to time, but if they are chronic at your company, then you may have to re-think the way you do business. Though cash-flow squeezes often seem mystifying, there are only a few explanations: Your gross margins may be too low, caused by discounted prices or out-of-control direct costs. Your overhead, including rent and payroll, may be too high. Your payment terms may be too liberal or your billing procedures too slack. You may be tying too much money up in accounts receivable or you have too much debt from nonpaying customers. Finally, it is also possible that you are holding too much inventory. If you feel tight on cash, investigate each of these possibilities and figure out which one is causing the biggest drain on your bank account.’
