From Cabal to Collaboration
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| Harvard Business School Baker Library |
The Harvard Business School's efforts to change its culture, and current discussions about gender, work, and family, are inspiring and hopeful. They involve collaborations between men and women around common principles and goals, like excellence, equity, and building more humane work environments. Cross-gender collaborations are beginning to replace gendered cabals as forces of change.
As male-dominated domains, some business schools, journals, and areas of expertise have been controlled by male cabals. This is an old-school way of seizing and maintaining power: Banding together in a furtive group that is loyal to its members, shares information extensively within its boundaries, uses this information strategically against outsiders, and has each other's backs no matter what. Being part of a cabal is like wearing armor. It can protect you while fighting but can be suffocating and constrain your freedom of movement.
To be sure, many men, like women, are excluded from and marginalized by male cabals. Some refuse to take part, and every now and then a woman might gain admittance. Cabals tend to be socially and demographically homogeneous, though, as homogeneity aids the disclosure, trust, and loyalty they require.
In my 15 years as a business school professor, I’ve seen the cabal strategy used by some ambitious women to try to beat men at their own game. This is certainly understandable. Individual options for making it as a woman in a business school, like working twice as hard or trying to gain men's acceptance by being the appeasing "good girl," a female chauvinist pig, or a tomboy, are often unappealing. Better to tackle the problem as a group. Group strategies can be transparent, such as forming advocacy committees or participating in loose networks of support, or covert, like cabals.
Unfortunately, even if female cabals are successful in improving the body count of women in business schools, they end up reifying the old-boy game, its rules, and its masculine norms. One cabal I was recruited to join included annual exclusive gatherings at a spa. It felt like a privilege to be invited and membership seemed highly valued. The one time I went, the senior women bought sex toys for a bride-to-be and organized a trip to a strip club to watch men disrobe. The names of these women almost always appeared in groups on publications, and it seemed that whenever possible, they got job offers for each other and their students.
Another cabal that briefly ensnared me was led by a senior woman who promised less senior ones absolute protection and loyalty if they spoke out on issues she didn't dare to and advocated her for formal positions of leadership. The cabal criticized male ones for strategically violating confidentiality to undermine others, but turned around and did the same thing themselves. Mean-spirited discussions of outsiders' private lives were relished like special sauce. While it felt good to briefly be accepted by an influential group after the loneliness of marginalization, it also felt dirty and wrong, like lying or cheating.
Cabals form out of weakness in position and continue out of weakness in principle. Rather than advocating on behalf of a principle, like equal opportunity, cabals advocate on behalf of their friends, even if their friends are wrong, and against their enemies, even their enemies are right. If a member's work isn't so impressive, you support her no matter what. It's what the men do (or so the thinking goes) -- why should mediocre men have advantages that mediocre women lack? If a member does unethical things, reassure her it's okay or look the other way and keep your mouth shut. To speak out against a member of the cabal is to have its ranks forever close against you, and its power, and all the information it gathered from you, turned into a whisper campaign. By forming or joining a cabal you become a bully, or used by one. Some women call this “feminism,” but this is not feminism. Feminism is about equality, not about an Animal-Farm style replacement of the farmer with the pigs.
If others agree that “sunshine is the best disinfectant,” the new way to address gender inequity and other problems in business schools (and beyond) is to admit the problem, bring it into the open, and lead transparent efforts of change. Heterogenous collaborations that advance general principles and make excellence and equal opportunity possible may be the new norm as the number of women and minorities in business schools grows and as men and women interact more as equals in the home and at work, making their interests and concerns converge. Whatever the reasons for this shift toward openly admitting and addressing the problem, if other business schools follow suit and this becomes common management practice, we will have reimagined how change can be compassionate, inclusive, and fundamental. Now that’s radical.
To be sure, many men, like women, are excluded from and marginalized by male cabals. Some refuse to take part, and every now and then a woman might gain admittance. Cabals tend to be socially and demographically homogeneous, though, as homogeneity aids the disclosure, trust, and loyalty they require.
In my 15 years as a business school professor, I’ve seen the cabal strategy used by some ambitious women to try to beat men at their own game. This is certainly understandable. Individual options for making it as a woman in a business school, like working twice as hard or trying to gain men's acceptance by being the appeasing "good girl," a female chauvinist pig, or a tomboy, are often unappealing. Better to tackle the problem as a group. Group strategies can be transparent, such as forming advocacy committees or participating in loose networks of support, or covert, like cabals.
Unfortunately, even if female cabals are successful in improving the body count of women in business schools, they end up reifying the old-boy game, its rules, and its masculine norms. One cabal I was recruited to join included annual exclusive gatherings at a spa. It felt like a privilege to be invited and membership seemed highly valued. The one time I went, the senior women bought sex toys for a bride-to-be and organized a trip to a strip club to watch men disrobe. The names of these women almost always appeared in groups on publications, and it seemed that whenever possible, they got job offers for each other and their students.
Another cabal that briefly ensnared me was led by a senior woman who promised less senior ones absolute protection and loyalty if they spoke out on issues she didn't dare to and advocated her for formal positions of leadership. The cabal criticized male ones for strategically violating confidentiality to undermine others, but turned around and did the same thing themselves. Mean-spirited discussions of outsiders' private lives were relished like special sauce. While it felt good to briefly be accepted by an influential group after the loneliness of marginalization, it also felt dirty and wrong, like lying or cheating.
Cabals form out of weakness in position and continue out of weakness in principle. Rather than advocating on behalf of a principle, like equal opportunity, cabals advocate on behalf of their friends, even if their friends are wrong, and against their enemies, even their enemies are right. If a member's work isn't so impressive, you support her no matter what. It's what the men do (or so the thinking goes) -- why should mediocre men have advantages that mediocre women lack? If a member does unethical things, reassure her it's okay or look the other way and keep your mouth shut. To speak out against a member of the cabal is to have its ranks forever close against you, and its power, and all the information it gathered from you, turned into a whisper campaign. By forming or joining a cabal you become a bully, or used by one. Some women call this “feminism,” but this is not feminism. Feminism is about equality, not about an Animal-Farm style replacement of the farmer with the pigs.
If others agree that “sunshine is the best disinfectant,” the new way to address gender inequity and other problems in business schools (and beyond) is to admit the problem, bring it into the open, and lead transparent efforts of change. Heterogenous collaborations that advance general principles and make excellence and equal opportunity possible may be the new norm as the number of women and minorities in business schools grows and as men and women interact more as equals in the home and at work, making their interests and concerns converge. Whatever the reasons for this shift toward openly admitting and addressing the problem, if other business schools follow suit and this becomes common management practice, we will have reimagined how change can be compassionate, inclusive, and fundamental. Now that’s radical.
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