The Glass Ceiling: Women and Mentoring in Management and Business

In the beginning, organisations were exceedingly simple. There were chiefs and tribes, or kings and subjects or owners and tenants or bosses and workers. With the advent of the Industrial Revolution, it got more compli‐cated. There were stockholders, board of directors, of‐ficers and employees. Now it is too complicated ‐ with stakeholders and/or, shareholders, chairman of the boards and/or chief executives, corporate presidents and/or chief operating officers, assorted vice presidents, managers and employees. Naturally, the modern organisation ‐ being complicated, even Byzantine ‐ is much more subject to trouble, or even breakdowns, than its predecessors, says Bennis.