ORGANIZATIONAL TOOLS ASK ARE EXECUTIVE MEN DIFFERENT THAN EXECUTIVE WOMEN?

Women are a Growing Force in the Executive Suite
PCI has 300 identified Corporate Level VP’s in its database. Of these, 19% are women. They probably began their careers in the 1970’s. At this time females targeting executive careers was low and the casualty rate was high among those that did try. These women executives are the pioneers who have paved the way for their younger sisters.

PCI’s database also has 1,429 Manager level executives. Of these, 33% are women, a 74% increase in a generation. The coming change is unmistakable. The Manager level is the pool from which future VP’s will be drawn. Dr. Gary Salton, Chief: R&D and CEO of PCI, said, “gender parity in the executive suite is an unstoppable trend. The career ladder for people entering college today will be gender neutral.”

Women and Men Make Decisions in Exactly the Same Way
Dr. Salton continued saying; “the question is whether this change will have an impact on the way America conducts business." To test this Dr. Salton compared the men and women executives on the way they process information. “The idea was to test if both genders favor the same level of detail, have the same preference for analysis, are willing to take the same level of action and have the same ability to generate options. If they do, it is likely that the quality of decisions will be unchanged whether it is made by a man or woman,” Salton said.

Dr. Salton measured men and women executive information processing patterns. “The result was that the genders are statistically indistinguishable,” said Salton. “This outcome applied to both the current VP’s and the up and coming VP’s,” he added.
Women Expand the Things Considered in a Decision
"I Opt" only measures information flows, " said Salton. “There are gender differences in physiology, chemistry and biological factors. This can cause men and women to be sensitive to different aspects of a situation, " he continued. "What this means is that women executives are likely to bring new things into the decision," he went on. "But the decision itself will likely be of the same quality as if it were made by men who recognized these new decision elements," he concluded.

A Better America
"The new considerations women bring into decision making are just as real and important as those visible to men," said Salton. "Bringing them into the decision equation means that decisions will be better balanced for all members of our society," he continued. "What our study shows is that the decision standards applied to these new items will meet the same standards as those used when men dominated corporate decision making. It says good things for the future," Salton concluded.

More Information
For additional information on Executive Women, contact Shannon Nelson or visit www.iopt.com or www.oeinstitute.org. You can read the entire study at Dr. Salton's research blog at garysalton.blogspot.com. You can get a free copy of the study in MSWord format and its jpeg images by emailing your request to gary@iopt.com.


ABOUT PROFESSIONAL COMMUNICATIONS, INC. (PCI)
PCI is a Research and Development firm located in Ann Arbor, Michigan. Since 1991 it has been developing "I Opt"® technology to understand, measure, predict and guide the behavior of groups using human information processing as its principal tool. PCI offers a variety of diagnostic reports that are designed to significantly improve the functioning of teams, work groups, departments and entire firms.