Male managers as animal show-offs

I’ve been a freelance writer for 15 years now, so the world of office politics is something I know about only through second-hand accounts and television shows.

I say that just so you know I can’t personally vouch for the accuracy of the study that caught my eye this week.

The study, authored by Jeffrey Braithewaite of the University of New South Wales in Australia, just appeared in the Journal of Health Organisation and Management under the catchy title of “Lekking displays in contemporary organizations: Ethologically oriented, evolutionary and cross-species accounts of male dominance.”

The university’s press release was more succinct: “Why your boss is white, middle-class and a show-off.”

A lek (the word is Swedish for the kind of fun, free-form games children play) is a gathering of males, in certain species, for the purposes of competitive mating display.

According to the abstract of Braithwaite’s paper, “such lekking behavior involves…strutting, puffing out, catching attention via the use of ornamental physical characteristics, exhibiting gaudily-coloured body parts, singing or splashing, and other courting and wooing strategies.”

Lekking is particularly common among the various species of grouse, several of which are native to Saskatchewan. However, according to Braithwaite, it’s also common among another species we’re much more familiar with–us.

The paper’s abstract sums up his findings this way: “Within the organizational lek male managers display mainly by power dressing, positioning, and exercising power and influence via verbal and behavioural means. Social and religious mores prohibit overt sexual coupling in organizations but lekking for other rewards is nevertheless pursued by male managers.”

Braithwaite arrived at this conclusion after interviewing and observing hundreds of health workers over 15 years, and drawing on the archaeology and anthropology of the earliest known humans. Essentially he decided that much of what goes on within organizations (his particular focus was health organizations, but he thinks the results can be applied more widely) is the result of behaviours hard-wired into us by evolution.

These behaviours include male domination, people protecting their turf and ostracizing those who don’t agree with the group (including whistleblowers), and bullying.

“This tribal culture is similar to what we would have seen in hunter gatherer bands on the savannah in southern Africa,” Braithwaite says. “Groups were territorial in the past because it helped them survive. If you weren’t in a tight band, you didn’t get to pass on your genes.

“Such tribalism is not necessary in the same way now, yet we still have those characteristics because they have evolved over two million years.”

Some specific examples: male managers often combine a dark suit (to show how serious they are) with a pink shirt or bright tie to draw attention to themselvves (similar to male peacocks flaunting their tail feathers). They like to brag about their fancy cars and expensive gadgets. They have larger chairs than everyone else. They talk more loudly and interrupt more often. They like to use lots of management jargon and acronyms to set themselves apart. They spend most of the day in meetings, which they tend to dominate–and prefer to hold in their own offices, which are typically larger and nicer than everyone else’s, and which they jealously guard. (On the lek, male birds claim and defend a specific piece of land.)

Although the paper specifically compares these behaviours to lekking, it also points out that male chimpanzees, capuchin monkeys and Japanese macaques assert themselves in very similar ways.

And just to be fair, Braithwaite notes that although the study focused exclusively on men, he has found that some female managers become “Alpha females” to compete with men, while others adopt “a more team-oriented style.”

Knowing how hard-wired this behavior is is important, Braithwaite feels, because “we need to stop being simplistic and realize that changing behaviours and encouraging teamwork is much harder than we think.” Understanding “the unwritten rules which drive people” can help us recognize those rules and work round them.

Maintaining civilization, after all, is primarily a matter of working against the animal instincts that may have served our ancestors well but are counter-productive today.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I feel a sudden urge to go buy a bright-red tie.

Permanent link to this article: https://edwardwillett.com/2008/10/male-managers-as-animal-show-offs/

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