Inclusive Managers

Abstract

Many organizations acknowledge that inclusiveness, or the practice of directly engaging colleagues in activities, is becoming increasingly important as businesses become more complex. However, inclusive managers remain significantly understudied in large-sample archival research, largely because inclusiveness is difficult to measure. We overcome this barrier and develop a measure of managers’ inclusiveness by observing the interactions among corporate managers during conference calls, the only circumstance where interactions among managers can regularly be observed. We examine inclusive managers’ characteristics, individual career outcomes, leadership team outcomes and firm outcomes. We find that inclusive managers are more likely to be female and older. They are twice as likely as the average manager to be promoted to CEO, and teams composed of inclusive managers have greater retention. In addition, firms where inclusive managers are promoted to CEO experience more positive stock market reactions to the promotion announcements.