One More Time: Do Female and Male Managers Differ?

Executive Overview There has been a dramatic change in the "face" of management over the last two decades. That face is now female more than one-third of the time. What are the implications for the practice of management? Most of us are aware of traditional stereotypes about male-female differences, but how well do these stereotypes apply to the managerial ranks? Do male and female managers differ in their basic responses to work situations and their overall effectiveness (and if so, in what ways), or are they really quite similar? This article reviews the research evidence gathered on these questions since women managers were first noticed by researchers in the mid-1970s. The implications of this review are discussed, and contrasted with recommendations offered in recent articles by Jan Grant in Organizational Dynamics and Felice Schwartz in Harvard Business Review. The title of the article is styled after the title of Frederick Herzberg's classic 1968 Harvard Business Review article, "One More Time: How Do You Motivate Employees?" Herzberg addressed a question that had been addressed many times in the past but had never quite gone away. So does this article.