Good Story on Women in Senior Management and Performance

The Financial Times has an interesting piece on a new McKinsey study suggesting, at least in Europe, a correlation between having a high proportion of women in leadership roles and superior financial performance.

The report, launched at the Women’s Forum for the Economy & Society in Deauville, France, finds these companies do better than their sector in terms of return on equity, operating result and share price growth. The management consulting firm also reports that companies around the world where a third or more of the senior team are women score higher, on average, than those with no women on nine criteria of “organisational excellence”. These criteria include accountability, innovation and work environment.

Apparently, there has been research in the U.S. showing comparable results among the Fortune 500. McKinsey points out that this is an issue of correlation and not causality - there is no proof that senior women cause the improved performance. It could be that the presence of female senior managers helps change the corporate culture in ways that make higher performance more likely, or it could be that a culture that brings in a significant number of women happens to be the type of corporation that does better. I'd provide a link, but this is a subscription-only source.

Managers See Top Take-Home Pay in Surprising Places

Where do you think managers make the best money? The US? Germany? The UK? According to the Hay Group, a management consulting firm, if you take into account cost of living and taxes and look at the what the effective buying power is, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates top the list. There are seven European countries in the top 20 and the US at spot 24. According to the press release with the information:

“Companies are operating in an increasingly open and competitive global economy, and emerging markets are offering managers higher disposable incomes than established countries –which is making these locations an attractive prospect for management talent,” said Iain Fitzpatrick, Director Reward Information Services for Hay Group North America.

The company used its own proprietary data to make the comparisons. Here's the table of results:

Hay Group's Management Buying Power

Rank	Country	Disposable Income
1	Saudi Arabia	229,325
2	UAE	223,939
3	Hong Kong	203,947
4	Russia	157,348
5	Turkey	154,762
6	Mexico	152,283
7	Ukraine	149,118
8	Thailand	147,547
9	Singapore	142,655
10	Argentina	138,188
11	Poland	128,537
12	Spain	128,197
13	Switzerland	127,732
14	China	126,281
15	Greece	126,102
16	Malaysia	126,026
17	Brazil	123,766
18	Lithuania	122,941
19	Germany	122,427
20	Ireland	117,010
21	Portugal	116,678
22	Romania	115,280
23	Austria	112,906
24	United States	104,905
25	Netherlands	103,823
26	Australia	103,578
27	Japan	102,604
28	Italy	101,487
29	South Africa	100,257
30	New Zealand	100,136
31	France	98,117
32	South Korea	97,867
33	Latvia	97,409
34	Czech Republic	97,352
35	Egypt	97,001
36	India	92,750
37	Hungary	91,358
38	Belgium	89,632
39	Slovakia	86,632
40	United Kingdom	86,367
41	Denmark	82,697
42	Canada	81,613
43	Estonia	80,908
44	Norway	77,202
45	Sweden	75,581
46	Finland	74,038
47	Indonesia	71,839