With special guest Judy Wajcman from the London School of Economics!

This is a very exciting event for us — our first all-female episode cast! And what a terrific way to wrap-up 2020 as the COVID-19 pandemic has ushered in a full year of major change and renewed a lot of conversations about how we work, live, and cooperate in organizations and societies.

In this episode, we discuss a classic study of managerial behavior, Melville Dalton’s “Men Who Manage: Fusions of Feeling and Theory in Administration” published in 1959. The book was the result of a ten-year study in the behaviors and social structures of managers at three firms. The study provided an intimate look at how men (as these were all men at the time) entered into the managerial culture of a firm, how the separations between managers are workers were structured and maintained, and how managers felt about their standing — which ranged from secure to tenuous. Dalton’s study was powerful because he succeeded in building trust with the managers and therefore earning access to their inner feelings and fears.

Despite being more than six decades old, the study is still very relevant not only for understanding what happens within the circle of managers but also how the boundaries can exclude others, particularly along gender lines. We therefore thought it was important to include a more contemporary feminist perspective on these issues, as the conversations about equality and fairness in the workplace are very active nowadays. For Part 2 of this episode, we welcome to the podcast special guest Judy Wajcman, author of many books on gender, work, organizations, and the impact of digital technologies on everyday life. In 1998, Judy published “Managing like a man: Women and men in corporate management,” which provides an interesting contrast to the experiences expressed by the subjects of Dalton’s study and whose evidence debunks many of the myths around possible gender differences in how men and women manage.

Together, we hope these two parts serve to further the conversations about management and how to remove gender barriers so we can have more inclusive and more successful organizations.

Read With Us:

Dalton, M. (1959). Men who manage: Fusions of feeling and theory in administration. Wiley. Reprinted in 2013 by Routledge.

Wajcman, J. (1998). Managing like a man: women and men in corporate management. University Park, Pennsylvania: Pennsylvania State University Press.

To Know More:

Episode 61: Power & Influence in Organizations — Dan Brass — referenced several times in the episode