Document Type
Article
Publication Date
Spring 1981
Abstract
Twenty college professors from the United States and England came to Boston for three weeks in July to participate in the second annual Summer Institute on Women in Organizations. Sponsored by the Institute for Case Development and Research, a department within the Simmons College Graduate Programs in Management, the Summer Institute was developed with a grant from The Ford Foundation. It provided an introduction to the case method as a pedagogical tool that develops analytical and problem-solving skills; training in the use of Simmons's cases on women managers; and practice teaching experience with follow-up critique by peers and Institute faculty. Faculty included Drs. Margaret Hennig and Anne Jardim, founders and codirectors of the Simmons College Graduate Programs in Management and coauthors of The Managerial Woman; and Dr. Herman Gadon, Professor of Management at the College of Business Administration, San Diego State University, and coauthor of Effective Behavior in Organizations. Arva J. Clark, Director of the Simmons Institute for Case Development and Research, was Summer Institute Director.
The Simmons Graduate Programs in Management embody a new concept in management education for women. Curriculum for the Master of Arts in Management degree reflects a fundamental concern for women's career development as well as a commitment to the traditional functional areas. This special attention to women's objectives is achieved through unique behavioral courses developed by Drs. Hennig and Jardim. These courses are based on the assumption that a woman, because of her socialization, enters an organization with assumptions and expectations that differ significantly from a man's, and that traditional management programs have failed to prepare women to survive and prosper in what is basically a masculine culture. In this culture, "networks," the informal system of relationships that provide the learning and support critical to career development, often do not work for a woman as they do for a man because few women have experience or contacts within these networks.