Corporate Strategy

A Feminist Perspective

Angelique Du-Toit

• Publisher: Taylor & Francis
• Year: 2006
• Print ISBN: 9781138010406
• eBook ISBN: 9781134214938
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Commerce
• Subtopic: Commerce Général

This book takes a fresh look at corporate strategy, exploring it from a feminist perspective. Challenging male-dominated theory, Corporate Strategy looks at unquestioned assumptions held about strategy in practice and academia, including whether women approach strategy differently from men, and if so, how their approach differs?

Reviewing the histories of strategy and feminism, the book explores the reasons why so few serious works on strategy have been written by women, and investigates the continued lack of women at senior levels within many organizations. Angélique du Toit draws on postmodern arguments to illustrate the claims made for the necessity of diversity within organizations, and challenges the fact that positions of power, both in society and organizations remain the exclusive right of men. Corporate Strategy argues that if an organization is to survive and succeed in the global economy, it has to pay more than lip service to issues surrounding diversity.

1 Introduction

The inspiration for writing this book came from my research into the field of strategy, which started some years ago. It struck me some way into the process that there were very few journal articles or books of note written by women on the subject of strategy. I found this puzzling and decided to discover the reason for it. After some time it finally dawned on me that it was not mysterious at all and, in fact, it was quite obvious. My personal experience as a manager has been no different from that of many other women; the majority of senior positions in organizations are dominated by men. This is confirmed by Rodgers et al. (2003) who observed that leadership continues to be the exclusive domain of the white male.

Interestingly enough, I found this to be the same in academia, as certain subject areas are also dominated by men, strategy being one of them. In fact, in a recent academic newspaper, an adviser to the European Commission was quoted as saying that the way research was structured as well as the criteria used for measuring excellent research were seriously biased against women. Committees with the authority to appoint and award research funding and accolades are dominated by men who favour the approach and type of research carried out by men. Bottom line, women get a raw deal when it comes to competing with male colleagues for limited funding and prestigious research awards. This very much reinforced my own experience, as I had great difficulty in getting any of my ideas on strategy published in the mainstream journals, as this posed too much of a challenge to the traditional paradigms of strategy. It may not come as a surprise that most of the articles in those journals are published by men.

If we therefore perceive strategy to reside at the senior levels of an organization and if the majority of the senior managers are male and equally, the majority of academics in the field of strategy are male, then both the practitioners and academics will approach strategy from a masculine perspective. The next question I then asked myself was whether women would approach strategy from a different perspective to that of men? The journey I embarked on to discover the answer took me down some very interesting roads. I encountered studies into the science of complexity, which as a matter of interest has been called a feminine science by some authors. The reason will become clear later. I also found inspiration in the discourse of postmodernism, particularly social constructionism which advocates that our reality is pretty much of our own doing. How different would our strategic realities be if we approached them from a feminist perspective, if in fact a feminist perspective does exist? This is what I set out to discover and I invite you to come on the journey with me as described in the following chapters. Allow me to set the context.

Despite the vast array of publications on strategy, from the most intellectual of debates to the most practical of applications, we can sum strategy up in one sentence. It is a process, albeit an elaborate one, that helps us to make sense of our organizational realities. Furthermore, it is an activity that everyone in the organization participates in and contributes to, despite the reified state strategy is held in by those seeking to protect their positions and domains of power. The sense we make determines the meaning we assign to our experiences. In the same way as a scientist is perceived as the objective observer, there is a belief in both the practice and the theory that strategists are equally able to detach themselves from their organizations and make decisions devoid of personal agendas. However, this is not the case and our personal need to assign meaning to our lives is intricately connected with the meaning we try and make of our organizations.

It is interesting to note that the strategic sense an organization makes tends to be dominated by a small group of people in the organization and, we can therefore argue, reflects a limited point of view. We tend to assume that the act of strategic formulation is the domain of the chief executive and/or the senior management team. If we stop for a minute and think about the fact that those senior managers are more often than not white (in the West), middle-aged men, we can argue that the sense they make and the meaning assigned to their experiences, are from a rather limited perspective and do not necessarily reflect the rich diversity of their organizations.

Although the body of literature on strategy for both academics and practitioners spans many years, no publication has examined strategy from a feminist perspective or, indeed, any other diverse perspective for that matter. In fact, the practice of strategy in organizations is reserved for the board room and as with the bedroom, what goes on in there is not often talked about beyond its walls, shrouding it in mystery. In the case of the board room it is inhabited by a small group of the elite, an elite, as Rodgers points out, that is more often than not white middle-aged males.

As I mentioned earlier, we observe the same imbalance of genders in the field of academia where the theoretical pontification of strategy takes place and which is also dominated by men. The domination of modernism and its associated assumptions continues to exclude the voices of diversity in much of the literature. It cannot be otherwise as the theoretical reflects the practical and the practice is protected for the few by the old-boy network. It is as a result of my own frustrations with the limitations of the strategic literature that I decided to draw on an eclectic collection of disciplines to challenge the absence of diversity from the strategic literature.

As with the field of strategy, there is a long history of literature covering all aspects of feminism. Yet never the twain has met hitherto and the purpose of this book is not only to achieve such a meeting, but also to explore the reasons why this has not been done before. As strategy is activity associated with the senior echelons of an organization and there are very few women present at this level, this may be one reason why a feminist perspective has never entered the debate and equally therefore, the publication of strategy. It can be argued that organizations are the product of men, designed by men for men and are therefore dominated by masculine characteristics from strategy to management, not to mention leadership.

As a female manager of SMEs as well as blue chip organizations, a consultant and an academic, I feel well qualified to express my views on corporate strategy. Not only will I express such views boldly, but they will reflect a feminist perspective to redress the balance and offer an alternative view of strategy. The purpose of this book is to specifically challenge the functionalist and mainly male-dominated perspective of organizational strategy. I will argue that if we approach strategy from a postmodernist and feminist perspective it will be more inclusive and creative and will more accurately reflect the diverse nature of organizations and the communities they aim to serve. My experiences working as a manager in different countries, and with culturally diverse colleagues, have led me to conclude that the strategies of organizations, both small and large, remain largely the domain of the inner sanctum of senior managers. As the majority of senior managers are men, I conclude that it is predominantly a male-dominated perspective.

Many who belong to groups other than the small group of elite, middle-aged men who run and control our organizations experience the effects of inequality in many ways, some subtle and some not so subtle, such as ageism, sexism and racism. Diversity of all kinds – cultural, sexual orientation, values and beliefs – are marginalized within organizations. Even the phrase ‘diversity’ has an underlying assumption that everything we label as diverse is in fact different from what is perceived as the norm – a norm that predominantly reflects the beliefs held by the male population of the world. Anything outside this reality is the other. Diversity is not embraced within organizations and remains an enigma. Diversity scares us because it challenges the way we perceive the world and our particular version of the truth.

Gender bias occurs frequently in many spheres of life and in both overt and covert ways and the study of strategy is one such example. The concept of a glass ceiling is the metaphor often used to describe such prejudice and discrimination and can be perceived as one reason why the voice of feminism has not influenced the field of strategy. Mainstream organizational theorists and writers have traditionally written from a rational and male-dominated perspective, with perhaps the exception of authors such as Stacey. Feminine ontology is intrinsically marginalized in many discourses, especially the discourse of organizations and leadership (Shildrick, 1997). This denial of the female existence runs deep in our societies and is also reflected in the renditions of history. The history of a class society, such as most historical societies were, is a history about the rulers and the rulers have predominantly been men.

Throughout the history of strategy, certain schools of thought have emerged, tentatively moving away from the traditional presuppositions of strategy. The move away is influenced by approaches such as postmodernism which has been associated with feminism by numerous writers. Interestingly, managerial thinking has always been influenced by scientific discovery. The science of chaos and complexity theory has also found its way into organizational literature and that of strategy in particular. The theories of complexity promote an understanding of the relatedness of organizations to others within the context of their existence. The science of complexity is also described as a feminine science since it demands a holistic way of thinking, a characteristic normally associated with women. If organizations are perceived as complex adaptive systems, the traditional command-and-control, mechanistic style of management will be totally inappropriate.

Society and the products of society are, according to a constructivist philosophy, the result of the interaction of those who comprise a particular society. The core of my challenge is based on the fact that organizational reality is created by a minority population for a majority population, namely men, and the rest of the organization colludes in upholding their fantasies of reality. I am reminded of the Emperor’s new clothes. Despite the fact that he is naked, everyone colludes with the illusion that he is clothed.

Legislation and the need for political correctness have merely driven a bias against that which is different underground. It is not possible to change the hearts and minds of people through legislation. Discrimination is alive and well, but is now mainly expressed covertly as opposed to overtly. As a woman trying to make my way to the upper level of the organizational hierarchy, my personal experiences testify to the existence of barriers to prevent the status quo from being challenged. The social rules by which we govern our organizations and societies become the norms by which we are all governed and allow ourselves to be governed. Žižek advises us that, ‘Only to the already enlightened view does the universe of social customs and rules appear as a nonsensical “machine” that must be accepted as such’ (1989: 80).

The organizational theories by which we govern our organizations are often linear and one-dimensional and seem far removed from reality as we experience it. Nor do they adequately capture the dynamic and ever-changing environment of the manager. Wider social and ethical debates are conveniently omitted from the management agenda and continue to place decision making in the hands of a self-elected group of experts. Furthermore, organizational literature does little to prepare you for the pressures, frustrations, contradictions and double standards you come to associate with the role of manager. In order to stimulate debate I challenge what I perceive the dominant organizational paradigm to be, namely that of functionalism. I propose an alternative model and advocate an approach to organizational management very different from the political systems we attempt to duplicate in organizations.

We observe and experience functionalism in organizations by the obsessive need for measurement and as managers we don’t feel comfortable if we don’t have the latest ratios, sales statistics and any relevant analysis to satisfy our illusion of being in control. The deluded state of control provides us with the equally deluded state of being able to predict the future, hence the need to formulate a strategy. The game of strategy depends on a number of beliefs. The strategic games we engage in assume that whilst we carry out our analysis, both the organization and the environment will bow to our will and remain in an unaltered state until we have completed our analysis. However, we all know from experience that organizations and their environments are dynamic and in a constant state of changing and becoming. The eventual conclusions we draw are therefore based on erroneous information that may have changed many times over.

Managing a dynamic organization is beyond the perceived control of the functionalist and often beyond the limits of the known. The dichotomy of control and freedom to explore requires the light hand of a conductor or facilitator. The intuitive nature of decision making contradicts much of the organizational literature, which is based on prediction and control. There is an increase in management development programmes to assist managers in developing their intuitive abilities. Retreats are perceived as one way of getting in touch with one’s subjective or creative nature. Such skills require managers to transcend their need for control and certainty and to come to terms with uncertainty and unpredictability. As a manager, many of my intuitive decisions were dressed up in the familiar management speak and backed up by numbers to make it palatable to my superiors, especially if it did not follow the espoused, logical and linear path to decision making – a masculine perspective of the world.

As mentioned earlier, management theory is hugely influenced by the science of the day and the associated paradigm dominating science. The staple diet of science is to view society as ontologically prior to man and attempts to place man within that wider context – man as observer rather than as participant and, therefore, attributing an independence to man. A deep-seated view is that of order and the need to provide an explanation of what is observed. Organizational literature reflects a functionalist assumption that it holds the answers to the challenges faced by organizations – answers that not only exist outside of the organization, but can and should be imposed externally.

Strategy formulation reflects a further belief which leads managers to delude themselves into thinking that they can, in a wise and all-knowing manner, detach themselves from their organizations, environment and positions, and make decisions based on pure and untarnished information. However, my experience and the experience of others contradict such a belief in many ways. We have a tremendous influence in what we experience as our actions significantly contribute to what we ultimately come to experience. Decisions we made, or did not make, come back to haunt us in one shape or another, often long after the event. We are both part of our own problems as well as the solutions. However, the functionalist paradigm continues to advocate the manager’s need and ability to predict future outcomes based on sound analysis by distancing himself/herself from his/her organization and his/her environment. Predictability is the very essence of strategy formulation and reflects the intrinsic and unquestionable need of management to control the future. My experience of organizations is that people, and that includes managers, are not the rational and predictable creatures science has led us to believe. Herein lie many of the difficulties faced by managers and organizations. The erroneous belief that managers operate from a logical and rational basis, devoid of personal bias, is continuously reinforced by organizational literature, especially that of strategy.

Organizational reality

What my personal experience has led me to conclude is that we continue to reinforce a perspective of reality that doesn’t reflect the experiences of organizations. My personal frustrations with organizational literature mounted as it contradicted the reality of my day-to-day experiences of organizational life. The histories of organizations are littered with the tombstones of those who doggedly clung to a strategy that reflected a reality which had long since evaporated. Many Fortune 100 organizations that dominated their industry and at the time of their rule appeared immune to failure, became extinct.

Many managers share my disillusionment with organizational strategies. We spend endless hours producing a plan for our departments with predictions and forecasts we know are a far cry from the chaos of our day-to-day activities. So we all continue to collude in reinforcing the illusive reality that gives an equally illusive feeling of being in control. In my experience, strategy formulation is more akin to the way jazz musicians create their music – extemporaneously creating compositions together without prediction or control.

Strategy is a tool to support managers in making sense of the constant stream of new information they have to deal with. It helps us to make sense of that which is unknown and to integrate it into our existing paradigms, no more no less. It is part of an ongoing process of negotiation and conversation in which every individual member of the organization participates. Strategy is seen as being synonymous with planning and control upon which the success of the organization depends. However, this is rather paradoxical. Managers conspire to create the illusion of control, and yet on many occasions as a manager one feels totally out of control. The consequence of denying uncertainty is to limit the organization’s peripheral vision, the source of awareness and openness to change and opportunities outside and beyond the norm. The process of formalizing strategy denies the informal and unplanned process of planning – the conversation in the corridor or the hunch to follow a road less travelled.

Organizations the product of men

Organizations are the products of men, designed by men for men and are dominated by masculine characteristics from strategy to leadership. The dominant paradigms of control and prediction have built paternalistic and hierarchical organizations that have protected the seat of power for the select few, the select few being predominantly male. Management presumes to have the wisdom and clarity to make decisions for and on behalf of the rest of the organization. Control is vital and often, so is fear. Organizations are mechanisms of control and organizational structures and practices perpetuate and reinforce control under the banner of rationality.

It has only been in recent years, with the rapidly changing environment and unpredictability of industries, that the hierarchy have had to concede that they are not all knowing and possibly not as much in control as they once thought. Tentative steps have been taken to introduce changes to management styles and to include approaches more akin to female characteristics such as participation and consultation (Oshagbemi and Gill, 2003; Regine and Lewin, 2003). I say tentative, as the changes remain firmly in the control of the select few middle-aged males. The masculine view of reality is reinforced and perpetuated by the selection and recruitment of those similar to the existing power base. One can therefore argue that strategy remains wedded to a one-sided, pro-managerial perspective that aims to rationalize the functionalist masculine values of how strategy should be done. Diversity of any kind, in particular the voice of feminism, is not heard when it comes to strategy formulation – a domain protected for men by the old-boy network.

The power of language

The power and influence of language on organizational behaviour are significantly underestimated and ignored. As managers, we are constantly engaged in language games of one sort or another, coupled with implicit assumptions and meanings we attempt to convey through our use of language. Language is employed in many ways to aid the construction of organiza...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Acknowledgements
• 1 Introduction
• 2 The dominant paradigms of strategy
• 3 The illusion of planning and control
• 4 Strategy and complex adaptive systems
• 5 Breaking the mould
• 6 Cultural diversity
• 7 The silent voice of feminism
• 8 The imbalance of leadership
• 9 The sexuality of women
• 10 Power and hegemony
• 11 The challenge from postmodernism
• 12 Identity, the product of social constructionism
• 13 Conclusion
• Bibliography