Organizational Silence - Chapter 11

Organizational Silence is diffenately an issue of great concern for me and my company. I find that having a micro-manager that is not interested in hearing about his mistakes or errors has built a system of silence and quiet dissonance among all of the managers in the company. I think that on the franchise level, Organizational Silence is not as big as a problem, do to the managers being more open with their employees that they manage. I believe that there is an opportunity for a manager to create an environment of Organizational Silence among her employees, but I do not believe this has happen at any of the revenue centers. Only at the main office and among the managers do we currently have an issue of Organizational Silence. This needs to be worked on, slowly, which I have been trying to carefully “chip” away at the stone wall preventing progress in the company.

Chapter 11 - Extra Readings

Good Leadership Requires Executives To Put Themselves Last

Mr. Leven sounds like he has always put himself last over the company. He seems to be open of the rare Level 5 Leaders running companies that Jim Collins discusses in his article "Level 5 Leadership." I think he did the right thing both times, first with listening to his lawyer when he quit Days Inn of America and then as CEO of US Franchise Systems, he did not listen to his lawyer, and came clean regarding the company's inability to meet its projections. Showing the investors and banks that he is a straight shooter should carry a lot of future trust in him and his company's ability to do the right thing, even when it hurts.

For Lt. Withers, Act of Mercy Has Unexpected Sequel

When John Withers discovered that the men under his control were keeping two Dachau prisoners, he supported their active and critical thinking decision to help Salomon and Peewee. By doing this, he put himself in jeopardy of a dishonorable discharge, but solidified his leadership with the men.

How a Marine Lost His Command in Race to Baghdad

Joe Dowdy made the cardinal sin in an organization like the military, going against the existing system and showing that you can get result a different way than the only way you are allowed, will get you fired. There is little a manager can do when his leader with high concern for results and low concern for people gives him an order to follow. Some time might have been lost, but Dowdy had high concern for his people and a mid to strong concern for results, which lead to him slowing down, thinking creatively and getting results without the loss of life of his men. The existing system of the Core is results over men, and creativity is for civilians. Dowdy built a lot of respect by thinking about his men first, and creatively about how to get the results without major loss of life. I would expect that Mattis lost a lot of respect from his direct reports and enlisted men when he fired Dowdy after he completed his mission with minimal casualties.

New Wine, Old Bottles
When I took on the responsibility of managing my family's casino, I really did not know what to do. I had limited experience managing people before, and know there were 100 people I was responsible for. I was fortunate to have hired a very experienced GM, and I ended up making a mutual contract with him, and developing a strong relationship over the next 12 months. I was able to transfer all the power he needed to perform his job. I am told by my boss that I do not "micro manage" "my employees" enough, but I think the servant leadership we have established at the casino is extremely successful, and the GM and all the managers enjoy the responsibility.

Extra Readings - Level 5 Leadership

I think this is a good article that shows how qualitative and quantitative research methods can complement each other, and give a better picture of a situation than just applying statistical analyses like a blunt instrument in the hopes of finding statistically significant trends in the data. Level 5 Leaders seemed to be able to break companies' current systems that are counter productive to the companies success. They do this by creating a system of openness and trust with their management team, and then allow them to participate in developing a clear vision of where the company is going in the next 5 and 10 plus years. They also give their people all the credit and they never shrink away from the mistakes.

I have successfully passed multiple undergraduate and graduate courses in statistics, econometrics, and regression analysis. These courses taught me that the only sound research that is supportable and even worth reading was statistical analyses based on quantitative research methods. Fortunately, I have taking a very liberal course in Sports Physiology which touted the benefits of qualitative research methods in discovering variables that have significances in creating results, but can not be measured affectively though Quantitative methods.

Like I said in previously a few blogs back, regarding “'Good to Great, or Just Good?' Interesting statistical evaluation of an article that could not be supported based off of the existing evidence. I would think that maybe the author was looking at other things as well, and maybe if all the managers in the United States think the book is in the top 10 business books in America or the World for that matter, that maybe it has something that the Evidence-Based Management can not see. "

Chapter 10: Extra Readings

The Dean's Disease: How the Darker Side of Power manifests Itself in the Office of Dean, Arthur Bedeian

System vs. Dean's Disease: I would have to say, that this is an effect caused by the system of how the university and college departments are set up, instead of bad ego maniacs trying to get into power so they can start dominating their co-workers. The dean's may be pushed into this preserved class of power abusing managers because faculty members do not understand the pressures of the position, and over time, the deans start to feel ostracized by their previous co-workers. Demands from administrators and influential donors on the deans will also add pressure to bend the deans' previously high "moral values" as "real life" business issues that are not dealt with by researcher and professors are now the every day norm.

What is Deans' Disease? The dean's disease as described by Arthur Bedeian, is the almost unavoidable transformation of a new dean from a well intentioned (if he ever was well intentioned) to a power corrupted morally bankrupted administrator / salesman. It is his argument that many deans are affected by their new found power to influence faculty by the control of resources, and they begin to abuse both coercive and reward power. The deans delude themselves into believing that they power is based off of legitimate power and expert power. "They develop an over inflated sense of self as they come to believe that they are really as gifted and as intelligent as others tell them."

Safeguards against the "dark side of the dean's disease" are: Establish values that are the high in "integrity, honesty, fairness, and selflessness", and Encourage independent though within the faculty.

Staying on the Course: For a dean to keep from being infected by the Dean's Disease, he should maintain " relations with faculty colleagues by routinely joining the daily lunch crowd, attending one's disciplinary meetings, maintaining one's subject area identification, and periodically teaching an undergraduate class."

Extra Readings - Gary Loveman and Harrah's & Diamonds in the Date Mine

These articles about Gary Loveman and the transformation of Harrah's into a modern corporation ready for the 21st century are a text book example of excellent Decision-Making Processes. When starting as COO he first spent as much time as possible identifying programmed decisions and nonprogrammed decisions within Harrah's. This way he could assume that the employees responsible for the programmed decision were more than capable of managing this part of the business, so he could work on the nonprogrammed problems that really required his creativity and intellect. Focusing the company's energies on empowering the employees to run the business better and marketing to the correct customer base with the correct marketing tools. It was these two main goals of Gary's that really took Harrah's to the next level during 1998-2003. I am especially impressed with the terminations and new hires he executed to change the company. They were supportable, calculated, and very logical - the Meritocratic management style he champions seems to be highly effective. I find it interesting that some of the core ideas that he has implemented since becoming COO and then CEO have started to wane since 2007. That being said, his style of managing the company and rebuilding its corporate culture right out of a our text book, Figure 9.1. From Recognizing the problems, gathering data, selecting the best course of actions, implementation, gathering feedback, and then following up. Overall, a very impressive job by an academic that was previously an unproven manager. I have always been very impressed with the Total Rewards program Harrah's has for its players club, and enjoyed reading a first hand description of how Gary and his team put it all together.

Readings-Evidence-Based Management and Good to Great

Evidence-Based Management & Good to Great, or Just Good?

If you want to have an operation, ask a surgeon if you need one. Ask a professor of organizational behavior if your management is not managing correctly, and he will tell you they are not. The system that is in place across the country and the world for that matter, limits the ability for managers to grasp these concepts. Even if they grasp them, in most organizations, implementing Evidence-based management is easier said than done. You would have to have most of your people on board with it, which would mean that they would all have to understand it, and believe in it. I believe that currently, social systems are in place to limit management and physicians ability to implement evidence-based management.

I am a strong believer in Intuition and its power to prevail over evidence-based decisions. I believe that management should always evaluate evidence and statistics first, before making a decision, but in the end, if after all the evidence is looked at, they think it just doesn’t feel right, then they should make the decision based off of their gut. I think that this opinion is shared by a lot of people, but not voiced strongly because of the lack of evidence to support it. Interesting that my statement on this topic is not supportable either.

As for “Good to Great, or Just Good?” Interesting statistical evaluation of an article that could not be supported based off of the existing evidence. I would think that maybe the author was looking at other things as well, and maybe if all the managers in the United States think the book is in the top 10 business books in America or the World for that matter, that maybe it has something that the Evidence-Based Management can not see.

Extra Readings for Chapter 9

Senate Select Committee on Intelligence

This article reports on the 500-page document that criticizes the US intelligence community. The document states that the community was "group thinking" and was based on a system of communal agreement rather than a more aggressive system of challenging assumptions and arguing conclusions in order to get more detailed and supported analyses. This seems to be the system that was in place at the time, but I would of like to hear a discussion of how they American Intelligence community had slipped into a system of lowered expectations on the quality of intelligence out overall, and how the system was weakened to begin with. I would bet that this slippage in the system was built up over years or decades of Senate and Congressional Committees chipping away at the ability of the intelligence community to actually affectively gather quality information, until by 2000+ the information coming out of these areas from the UN was better than the information the very few operatives that the CIA had on the ground could provide.

Chapter 8 - Extra Readings

Strategies of Effective New Product Team Leaders:

This article looks at work teams in high-technology firms that are responsible for New Product development (NPD). The authors argue that team leaders need to change their behavior and the way they interact with team members. Diversity among the team members and open communication is a requirement for successful NPD teams. Creativity can be weakened due to micro-management, department-specific loyalties, and restricting information on need-to-know basis. Teams in the classic example of linear thinking and how it can lead to "interdepartmental rivalries and to escalated costs and time delays." This article reminds me of the book I am reading right now by Senge, The fifth Discipline: The Art and Practice of the Learning Organization. How system thinking in organizations is important in preventing interdepartmental rivalries and activities that cause symptoms like lack of commitment in team members and stifling creativity.

Sin of Commission

I agree with everything that this article states, that poorly constructed incentive plans can seriously hurt the performance of your company. George Zimmer's comment on "you want incentives to be just large enough but not too large. . ." is a perfect statement. It also needs to help drive the corporate culture and system of the company. The area's I look at when implementing an incentive plan is customer service, keeping the business looking clean and in good condition, sales, expenses, and employee turnover.

What I have stopped agreeing with, that this article states, is that financial incentives are very low on the reason people work where they work. Over the past two months, we have spoke about financial incentives as being a weak reason people work where they work. First, no its not. It’s the top reason people do the work they do, with very few exceptions. There is the story of this person or that person deciding that they want to devote they lives to helping others, and are going to live meakly forever. I would say most of these people have sometime of emotional break that drives them to make this life altering commitment to poverty. The other 99.9% of people work everyday where they do because of the money. They might of decided along time ago that they wanted to be a doctor, an engineer, an artist, social worker, etc. . . but they are where they are because based on the financial compensation they receive, there is no better place for them to work with their given / current professional qualifications. We all try to convince ourselves that we aren't just in it for the money, but in reality, if we weren't working for the money, and really didn't need the money, we would workless, and most likely, if we didn't need to work, we would be sitting on a beach somewhere, swinging a golf club, or floating on a boat having the time of our lives. We might work once in awhile because it makes us feel good about ourselves, but really, people want money so they can buy things that make them feel good about themselves.

Compensation and Performance - Arrow

Fast growing industry with highly profitable sales reps. Industry wide system vs company system. The Arrow can try as they may to keep the salespeople from interacting as W-2 jumpers, but the industry wide system that has developed will keep them from being successful in there fast paced, low company loyalty. It is very often that companies are worried about increasing the paying to their salespeople too fast, that the only option for a salesperson is to leave to another company to keep their salaries up to industry averages. What I don’t understand about the jumping, is if they being compensated properly, then there should be no incentive to jump to another company for purely financial reasons.

CEO is trying to micro manage general managers. Not possible in a company as large as they are now. Kaufman needs to move the HR function down several levels within the Regional VPs of the sales force. I would give the Regional VPs and the general managers more control over their people. It's not possible for the senior management team to know 4,000+ people personally, or know the leading salespeople in market areas that are outside the company. Without that ability, the CEO and HR department can not make an educated decision on the hiring and firing of people.
I think Kaufman is stuck in his idea of what a CEO does in a small company, and the system that he is trying to force the company's employees to function in, is strangling moral. He needs to re-focus his job on not being the HR manager and trust that the middle level managers he has hired can due the job of managing their employees. I think he feels that he has lost his grasp on the individual employee, and thought that EPR's would be the way for him to make sure the managers are doing everything right. Also, he seems to be very concerned that he received a 2 on his evaluation. Finally, sense implementing the EPR's, Operating Income has decreased every year.

Chapter 6 - Extra Readings

Get Rid of the Performance Review!

Samuel Culbert builds a compelling argument against Performance Reviews, but some of his assumptions are weak at best. First, Performance Doesn't Determine Pay is in no way a truisms. In every company I ever worked for, performance within the established system was directly linked to promotions and pay increases, including bonuses. The only place I have seen where performance was not linked to pay was in union shops. Secondly, One Size Does Not Fit All. Well, true, but I am not convinced that it is even remotely beneficial to allow major deviations from the system accepted normal behavior just because not everyone is the same. Companies have certain corporate images that they want their employees to portray the public, and employees that can not, or will not act within the accepted normal behavior of the job, should not have to be tolerated just because the poor person has personal issues at home. Finally, in the section Immorality of Justifying Corporate Improvement, he states that "it's immoral to maintain the façade that annual pay and performance reviews lead to corporate improvement." I think immoral is a strong word, inappropriately used, and inflammatory. Additionally, he states in this section that he feels that "every organization should be considered partially a public entity" which smacks of Fascism.

I guess I just don’t get it, or I am just still fighting some of the ideas and philosophies that are presented on the book and the extra readings. Maybe its that I don’t work with 5,000 highly educated engineers and MBA's at SAS. I understand the theory, but does the theory really work in practice. It makes for a much more employee friendly work place. Disney is a great place where these ideas and theories are put to practice, but do these theories work everywhere on every business.

I believe that if used correctly, performance reviews can be useful for both the employee and the company. I do not think that waiting for 12 months to give any feed back to the employee is wise at all. Open communication and a strategy of positive reinforcements and extinction should be used to guide to workforce proactively. To a lesser degree, punishments should be used prior to firing an employee. I like goal setting and management by objectives, and I liked Culbert's "Alternative." Managing people is not a one time a year evaluation. It’s a constant interaction between manager and employee. I think performance reviews fall short of the mark when weak managers use them as the primary interaction with their workforce.

Nordstrom (HBS 0-191-002)

Well, Nordstrom’s has raised several generations of sales forces. Just because you have a generation of employees that just don’t know any better, or maybe they know better, but the pay is just too good to risk to saying anything because the gravy train may not come anymore. This is a modern day example of the benefits of Unions, and why they still may be needed in some cases. I am not surprised at all, that the employees ousted the Union. The Union, in trying to protect their rights, was endangering their higher than industry average pay, at least that’s what the employees believed. What is more likely, is that the employees made more because they worked more hours than any other retailers in the country, they just didn’t clock in for the hours. Its companies like Nordstrom that blemish capitalism and make people champion the misguided ideas of socialism. The system that the Nordstrom family has created to increase incentive for their workforce to sale more retail than any other retailer in the country, no long with hold water in the 21st Century. Not only that, but its dangerous for the company to continue to do business like old granddad did in 1901. The system could be easily changed in several small ways to #1 - be more humane, #2 - be more legal, and #3 - less suppressive to their employees.

SAS Institute (SGS Case: HR-6A)

Perspective: Reading this case, I had to remind myself that the employees that Goodnight is employing, are highly educated, very well compensated individuals. Their production is also very high, and throwing $25,000+ in annual benefits is a drop in the bucket for the amount of annual production and revenue they produce for the company. When the average salary of an employee is $25,000 or less, it becomes much more cost prohibitive to provide employee benefits as extensive as SAS is providing.

Private vs. Public Companies: Dr. Goodnight is exactly right with his business philosophy of long term profitability vs. short term profitability. SAS Institute has been able to effectively make the long term capital investments necessary to maintain its competitiveness over other companies due to it being a privately held company with no public stockholders demanding steadily increasing quarterly earnings.

Having a Plan: Or should I say the lack of having a plan. Dr. Goodnight’s plan reminds me of the “Invisible Hand.” I would have to say its more of being in the right place at the right time.

I would conclude, that based on the period of time, and the type of industry, SAS Institute hit the “Perfect Storm.”

Specialty Medical Chemicals (Case: HBS-9-399-094)

Dr. Winthrop received over 200 patents in his lifetime. The company was basically built off of his innovations and the day to day management of the company was done by professional business people. He was the creative researcher that built the company. A corporate system of keep to the old seems to have been built into the fabric of the company. Barry Tompkins was just the type of CEO that could build that type of corporate system, and keep it maintainable. Very little creativity seemed to ever be encouraged at SMC.

When looking for a replacement for Tompkins, the board decided to look for a person that would not undo “a lot of what Barry had accomplished.” Not really possible, as Tompkins had built a company that was systematic and steady, not innovative and growth oriented.

The job search landed a biology major with New Product Marketing experience. The problem being that there is little new product development at SMC and Carl has little experience in the other area’s of a pharmaceutical company.

SMC has a corporate system that does not encourage its management to work together. In fact, the system encourages them to be self interested, and greedy with information in order to protect their own needs. The annual “evaluations” continued to mark the VP’s with high marks and top salaries, even when the overall performance of the company was sub par.

Carl needs to step up and communicate with his VP’s on what he wants from them. He is waiting for them to “get it”, but they are all longtime employees of SMC, and are not familiar with the group give-and-take that his previous CEO from Merck had built into his management team. That system needs to be developed, through trust and open communication with the team members, in groups and individually.

The consultant Wells, basically told Carl everything he wanted to hear. He had already know most of what the final evaluations told him. If anything, the whole exercise was a waste of resources and time.

I think all of the management VP’s are motivated to achieve success in their own departments. Carl needs to change the system (carefully) within SMC to redirect the VP’s motivations to be the overall success of the company, and not just the individual departments. I liked his idea of changing the departments to Pharmaceuticals, Biotech, and Generics, as this will require his VP’s to start thinking about all the departments instead of just their own.

Chapter 5 - Extra Readings

Two Football Coaches Have a Lot to Teach Screaming Managers

Tony Dungy and Lovie Smith are great motivators. Both understand what each motivates each of their players. I would think that they are both surround themselves with Theory Y people. I don’t think that they would be very successful coaching players that were Theory X people. As for coaches and CEO's and bosses that still think yelling at and belittling employees is the way to maintain control and show their own power over others, are dinosaurs. They are a dying breed, that have become a liability to company's, no matter how good they are at the other aspects of their job.

Get Healthy - Or Else

This is an interesting article to me because I currently working on alternatives for my companies health insurance. Over the last 5 years, annual increases of +20% have basically made supplying insurance for my 150 employee unaffordable for most of them to even pay the 25% pro rata share of the month premiums, and for the few people that do purchases it, the costs are increasing 51% this year. We are at a loss for what to do about it. We are exploring several options, but the fact of the matter is, its going to be so costly, that we expect several more employees to decline coverage this year.

As for Scott Miracle-Gro and their CEO Jim Hagedorn, there wellness program has a ton of holes in it. The intrusion and heavy handedness of the program is what would concern me. If I was to try to introduce this program into my company, I think I would base it on an exclusively award system, versus an punishment for not quitting smoking. In stead of insurance costing people 40 or 60 or even 100 more if you don’t participate in the wellness program, it should be that your insurance premium would be reduced by 40-100 for participating in the program.

Jesica's Story

I think the culture of Duke University Medical Center and the other hospitals an other organ harvester companies are more of time is of the up most importance in these time of operations, where they need to get the organs harvested, and then transported, and then placed in the transplant patient. Corners were being cut due to the implied urgency of the operates, and that falls on the surgeons and the management of the hospitals and harvesters. The liabilities on that this type of behavior promotes, is huge, and risk analysts, managers, and surgeons should of be more in touch with the dangers. I don’t think all the blame falls on the Jagger, but the whole system set up needs to be changed in order minor over sights turning into major problems.

Southwest Case Study

Ann Rhoades' pondering the implied problems of competitive pressures, over confidence on the part of management and employees, and the future succession of the CEO position from Kellsher are not the real points of issues that she should be concerned with. I think all these issues will always be handled seamlessly as long as Southwest maintains the corporate culture that Kellsher has woven with his fellow employees. The real trick for Southwest is not to concern themselves with Continental, United, Reno Air, Jet Blue, etc. . . These airlines didn't start with the same hurdles that Southwest did. Kellsher and Southwest started with the US government passing laws in order to keep the company from successfully starting up. When a group of people start something together and have to ban together and trust one another because its them against the rest of the world, the team comes first, and everyone helps out. That is what I think Kelleher meant when he said, "We have to be the world's first company to refute the old law that companies die from excessive prosperity."

Southwest needs to realize that some other airline will always be out there trying to take their customers away from them, but these companies are not going to change there corporate cultures to do it. They look at the smiling flight attendants and the happy pilots and the unions of Southwest and think that its just a "gimmick." They think that it must be something else, just tell the employees to fake it, and smile. Just work as hard and fast as Southwest's people do. United isn't going to start 2-day workgroup classes to build employee moral and build a better working relationship between the pilots and mechanics. Continental and United should of concentrated on what they do best and worked on doing it better. No one every became successful by pointing at someone else and saying, "I don’t want them to be successful anymore, lets try to hurt them by meditating their business model that we don’t know anything about."

Southwest needs to continue reinventing ways to keep their corporate culture a happy and positive, team oriented place to work. Additionally, I believe that their hiring practices, if applied to a CEO search, would result in good candidate to succeed Kelleher. I believe that all of the companies future hurdles will be easily over come if they are able to continue their successful HR / Customer Relations programs.

Chapter 4 - Extra Readings

To a United Pilot, The Friendly Skies Are a Point of Pride:

Cat. Flanagan is an example of the perfect employee for United. From his strong organizational commitment, which is easily identified as affective commitment. I would have to question his "belief in the goals and values of the organization." I believe his actions are more closely related to his ethical beliefs and values that this is the way he should act as a pilot, over United's corporate culture of its ok to have poor customer service. United has serious problems with employee moral and customer service, and having one person as the "great ambassador for the company," doesn't cut it. A company as large as United can not just point at one person, and say, "be more like him."

I wonder if Capt. Flanagan has any cognitive dissonance over United and its employees acting in a way completely opposite from his own attitudes and behavior. He obviously has strong ethics, values, and internal locus of control. He is a great example of someone who has a high level of organizational citizenship behavior, and has a level III cognitive moral development.

Rules of Engagement:

This article champions the new trend of removing the "rigid, controlling workplaces of the past" and creating more positive work environments, by reducing cognitive dissonance through modeling the work force with participative management. Additionally, it states that companies can increase job satisfaction and organizational citizenship behavior, and affective commitment to the organization though flex time and "work-family balance." There is strong evidence that companies with positive work environments and high empl0yee engagement cultures, have higher corporate profits and less employee turnovers and absences.

Companies with positive work environments and employee engagement cultures, are companies that most likely have very capable and experienced management team. They most likely have a high level of performance in all of the companies departments, from finance, marketing, research development, operations, etc . . . I believe that if a company's CEO was an innovator of change in all areas of the corporate structure, that he would allow for a better workplace for the employees. Without changing the workplace in some way to increase organizational commitment of the workforce, major changes can not be successfully implemented into the company. If a new CEO wants to save a failing company, or take a new direction that will lead to great success in the future, attitudes and behaviors of the workforce must be change to increase job satisfaction and organizational citizenship behavior.

Chapter 3 - Extra Readings

Bob Sutton's Blog - MindSet & Can Personality Be Changed?

Dweck research on learning and intelligence states that if you can convince an individual to believe that intelligence is malleable, that they will learn faster, easier, and continue getting smarter as it relates to IQ. I would think that a persons personality would have to be modified as well, if for instance they had characteristics that caused barriers to them believing that intelligence is malleable, how would you convince them that they can increase their IQ. I believe that both intelligence and personalities are malleable, but I think its not as easy as just deciding on day that you can believe in malleable intelligence or personalities. People have different levels of adaptive functioning, from high to low abilities, or fast to slow adaptive personalities. Dweek's paper states that "modest interventions have brought about important real-world changes." I believe we can modify personalities by changing social perceptions. Identifying barriers to social perception and understanding the characteristics of the situation are key to convincing an individual to believe in malleable intelligence and personality.

Chapter 2 - Extra Readings

In Today's Workplace, Women Feel More Free to Be Women

This article leaves me thinking that its not really up to the women to modify or change their behaviors, but its men's responsibility to enter the 21st Century. In most cases that I have seen, women have dived into the murky waters or business and are swimming with the sharks just fine. Its men that have been unwilling or unable to adapt to the new breed of business sharks.

Calling women who are comfortable with themselves and are able to act natural in an office as performing "psychological manipulation" and ". . .all things are equal, that females have the advantage. If you have an advantage you shouldn't be allowed to use it." These are just excuses made by men who do not want to compete with women. A man can go have drinks with a co-worker or watch a ball game, which if a woman did that with a male co-worker, it would be considered a date! Is that fair? Should men stop hanging out and having a drink with they co-workers out of "fairness"? The answer is no. Men and women have different positives and negatives in business but it doesn't make it unfair.
I have never let a woman who cried or batted her eyes are me get a special deal or make the sale over a man with a better deal or product, because I have self respect and restraint. If you are unable to say no to a woman or treat her like a person because you can't control your lust for the female species then get out of business!

Study says flirtatious women get fewer raises, promotions

This article states that women who use flirtatious behavior to get ahead in the workplace receive fewer promotions and lower salaries. Statistically significant, but the question that isn't asked is, Why did the women who received less promotions and salaries few they needed to use sexuality to get ahead? Could it be that the women that did not use flirtatious behavior in the workplace felt that they did not need to use their sexuality to get ahead, because they have superior business skills? If that is the case, then its possible that the flirtatious behavior is just an identifier of women that have a sub par business skill set.

Teaching Smart People How to Learn - BADM 720

This article explains some of the scenarios I have been part of between my management team when trying to deal with even small failures. When a manager or professional has the ability through having a higher education or the power to deflect the failures off on someone else or ignore the failure completely, this is tough to avoid using. Open discussions do not always work at getting the person to take ownership of the mistake or failure. It is very often that I would rather avoid the painful experience than to have to force a colleague or my manager to see the errors of their ways. I am just as guilty of assuming they just can not be taught to change. The main ingredients in implementing a positive learning environment in a company is the commitment to performance evaluations and safe open communication between managers and professionals. Easier said than done, but worth the effort in the long run.

The Top Business Schools:

For MBA graduates who plan on beoming more than an analyst, communication and writing skills become more and more important as they progress in their careers. Effective sales and management need good communication skills. One is not just born with this skills, but they are a product of practice makes purfect.

How to Get Hired: