The Role of Gender in the Adoption of Management Paradigms

The aim of this study is to examine how gender and the distribution of sexes within an organization affect the adoption of management innovations and management paradigms. Our primary data consists of expert interviews. In addition to interview data, we studied personnel magazines and the President’s letter to shareholders in the annual reports of both companies in order to gain numerical data on the emergence of management paradigms and their timing. Personnel magazines offer perspective to the internal communication of the companies whereas annual reports depict companies' external communication. The findings suggest that in a male-dominated organizational culture, belittling of new management innovations and softer sides of management may serve as a means of maintaining masculine organizational culture. Hence, adoption of management innovations is not a gender neutral process, as male- or female-dominated organizations may have very different norms regarding how it is appropriate to talk about management practices.