When it's time to hire that next CEO, companies may have yet another reason to consider taking down the glass ceiling and promoting a woman into the job.
Research at Michigan State University indicates that, all other factors being equal, women generally are better suited for positions of trust and security than are men.
"Increasingly, women are holding corporate positions of power and trust," said Judith Collins, an MSU professor of criminal justice and industrial and organizational psychologist, who conducted the research. "This research indicates that, from a security standpoint, they are extremely well-suited to such positions. That's something that companies need to consider as they hire for the future."
The research will be presented Nov. 9-11 at a joint conference of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) Research and Study Group on Officer Selection and the International Military Testing Association (IMTA) in Monterey, Calif. Addresses and research presentations will focus on testing and behavioral measurement, occupational analysis, manpower trends and organizational behavior.
The audience will include experts from NATO countries, Partners for Peace nations and invited nations.
The research could be used, Collins said, to enhance the hiring processes that both private and public organizations use in selecting top managers, as well as to determine effective deterrents to white-collar crime.
Collins interviewed 71 women imprisoned for white-collar crime and 172 women holding upper-level administrative and managerial positions, studying both personal and situational factors in the women's lives. Personal factors include a person's inherent personality traits; situational factors are environmental in nature, relating to such things as family and friends.
Within those general categories, the research measured factors of socialization, self-control, empathy and responsibility, as well as leadership activity, social involvement and social dominance.
"Females, in general, score more positively on all of these measures than males," said Collins, who has conducted similar research on male executives. "Those measures of integrity clearly indicate women are a better risk in these high-level positions than men."
When women do commit crimes, she said, the research indicates that their motives are much different. They tend to be more "other-directed," meaning that they perceive the crime as benefiting others rather than themselves.
"It's very interesting that the reason for the criminal behavior was empathy," Collins said. "A common characteristic for most criminals is lack of empathy. In other words, they are thinking only of themselves and their own needs. The females who committed crimes were actually full of empathy; they took the money, for example, because their spouse was unemployed, their parents needed money, or their children needed help.
"That could mean that there's a whole different set of rules we have to live by when we're putting people through the hiring process. Are we asking the right questions? Are we weighing the right factors?"
The research is important, Collins said, as more and more women reach upper-level management position. In 1996, for example, females made up 44 percent of the total number of people employed in executive, administrative and managerial occupations, up from 39 percent in 1988, according to statistics from the U.S. Department of Labor Women's Bureau.
As the number of women in executive positions has increased, Collins says, so have the opportunities for them to be involved in white-collar crimes, defined as fraud or embezzlement for ones' own personal gain. In fact, Collins notes, the number of women incarcerated for such crime has increased steadily as they've gained in the workforce - from 116 in federal prisons in 1990 to 181 in 1996 in federal prisons. But this number is considerably lower than for males.
Media Contact: Judith Collins, School of Criminal Justice
(517) 432-4236
or Deb Pozega Osburn, University Relations
(517) 355-2281 [email protected]
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