Eastern Indian and Afghan Women in Management : A Quantitative Inquiry on Their Leadership Proficiencies and Propensities

Women make up around fifty percent of the workplace in most large firms, especially in developing economies. Afghan and Indian women are in professional and management ranks of most industries. This study focused on the technical, human, and conceptual skills of women from Afghanistan and India to see if cultural differences and socialization in different political, economical, educational, and social systems can be a significant influencing factor. The researchers attempted to address whether Afghan and Indian women have similar or different orientations in management skills. The results of 202 respondents show that these two groups have significantly different management and leadership skills. Indian women scored extremely high on technical skills and Afghan women scored high on conceptual skills. Implications for researchers, managers, and human resource professionals are presented.


Introduction to Management
The modern workplace for most firms can be very diverse based upon many factors (gender, political views, religion, etc.) as the workforce today is filled with people from many different cultures, including Afghans and Indians.Powell and Greenhaus (2010) state, "Women who work in managerial and professional occupations, which are balanced overall in terms of sex, may be less likely to see themselves as highly feminine, than their counterparts in occupations that are less balanced in terms of sex" (p.527).As such, public and private administrators must become effective managers of individuals with diverse cultures, backgrounds, and interests.Of course, "this necessity grows out of the relativity of values and the pluralization of society" (Cooper, 1998, p. 51)."Beginning in the early 1990s, a group of researchers, with funding from the U.S. Army and Department of Defense, set out to test and develop a comprehensive theory of leadership based on problem-solving skills in organizations" (Northouse, 2004, p. 39).While they offered some rudimentary findings, the problem-solving skills needed now are likely to change based on the situational factors.Thus, the research must continue for such skills since today's leaders must be effective leaders and managers by having relevant technical, human, and conceptual skills depending on their ranks in the leadership hierarchy.Therefore, this study is focused on understanding the management skills (technical, human, and conceptual) of women from Afghanistan and India.
Management, in basic terms, can be seen as the process of achieving organizational goals with and through people using available resources in the most efficient manner possible.Generally, people use the four functions of management which are planning, organizing, leading, and controlling (POLC) to achieve their organizational objectives (Jones & George, 2009;Mujtaba, 2007).Planning means defining an organization's goals, establishing an overall strategy for achieving those goals, and developing comprehensive plans to integrate and coordinate activities.Organizing includes determining what tasks must be done, who will do them, how the tasks will be grouped, who will report to whom, and where decisions will be made.Leading includes motivating and directing employees, and communicating and resolving conflicts.Controlling, on the other hand, means monitoring performance, comparing results and goals, and making corrections and adjustments as needed in a timely manner.
Management can also be divided into levels: first-level supervisors (managers), middle managers, and top management (Mujtaba, 2007).The changing story in management today, of course, is that the layers and layers of middle managers that most large organizations used to have are giving way to self-empowered teams and flatter organizations.In their interpersonal, informational, and decisional roles, managers try to balance efficiency (how things get done) with effectiveness (what gets done) depending on the situation, tasks, and people involved (Mujtaba, 2007, pp. 36-37).Efficiency, or doing things right, is a measure of how well resources are used to achieve a goal.The key element about efficiency is to be doing the right things right.Effectiveness, doing the right things, is a measure of the appropriateness of the goals chosen (are these the right goals) to get the firm to its destination, and the degree to which the stated goals are achieved (Jones & George, 2009).Effectiveness is concerned with selecting the right goals and making sure they are achieved.As a manager and leader, one must consider the consequences of not being both efficient and effective in a department and/or organization.The success of a person and an organization is often determined through effective and efficient management.If a manager or leader has a sense of purpose and direction, this will become contagious among his/her peers, colleagues, and employees.Effective leaders tend to set high standards to meet and exceed the stated goals and objectives.Furthermore, effective leaders are honest and truthful; they look reality in the eye and face the facts, while strategically planning to move forward.
Finally, the three basic skills that managers use are technical, human, and conceptual.The proportion of one's time spent in these areas may change as managers move up in the hierarchy (Katz, 1955;Mujtaba, 2007).For example, senior managers may not spend as much time in technical functions as those who are in first line management.Top managers tend to spend more time using their conceptual skills.In the article entitled, "Skills of an Effective Administrator" by Robert L. Katz (1955), the different skill requirements for different positions and responsibilities are described in detail.
As emphasized by most management scholars, research has shown that education and experience help managers acquire relevant managerial skills that let them perform their jobs effectively.Jones and George (2009) provide the following definitions for human, technical, and conceptual skills: 1. Technical skills are job-specific knowledge and techniques.The specific kinds of technical skills depend up on the manager's position in the organization.
2. Human skills include the ability to understand, alter, lead, and control the behavior of people and groups.
The ability to communicate, to coordinate and motivate people, is the principal difference between effective and ineffective managers.
3. Conceptual skills include the ability to analyze a situation and distinguish between cause and effect.Senior level managers require high conceptual skills because their primary responsibilities are planning and organizing the long-term vision of the organization.Conceptual skills are often gained through formal education, reflection, and experience.Katz (1955) was able to illustrate the management and ranks relationship by emphasizing the importance of human skills (i.e.high emotional intelligence levels) in all three management ranks: supervisory, middle, and top.Schwartz, Jones, & McCarty (2010) explain, "Although emotional intelligence is now part of the vocabulary in most organizations, few leaders we've worked with are fully comfortable engaging their own emotions or managing the emotions of others" (p.123-124).Galbraith (2010) explains how women have natural human skills, "Women tend to prefer to build connections with other people and see themselves as relative equals" and further states, "Thus, a relationship defined by power over others is not as natural a state for women as it is for men.Women leaders often see themselves in the center of a web of relationships, rather than atop a pyramid" (p.46).Katz (1955) suggested that top managers have high conceptual skills, high human skills, and average technical skills; middle managers have high human skills, average technical skills, and average conceptual skills; supervisory managers have high human skills, high technical skills, and average conceptual skills.
Modern managers of a cross-cultural workplace should be able to use these skills as part of their management and leadership style.Maxwell (2010) states, "Cross-cultural connecting requires a lot of mental, physical, and emotional energy" (p.153).It should also be noted that promotion in management hierarchy is often linked to a manager's ability to acquire the management skills and competencies that a particular company believes are important.The skills needed in management are the same for women and men managers.Research demonstrates that men and women are equally effective in leadership and management positions.

Women and Management
The glass ceiling is a concept "popularized in the 1980s to portray a barrier so subtle that it is transparent, yet so solid that it prevents women and minorities from moving up in the management hierarchy" (Morrison & Glinow, 1995, p. 169).The glass-ceiling phenomenon has haunted women for many years and has become a focal point in many research studies (Babcock, 2008;Beckman & Menkhoff, 2008, Lantz, 2008;Cabrera, 2009).Throughout the years, many theories explaining why women have been marginalized have emerged.One explanation is, "Women's absence from executive positions is simply a function of not having been in managerial positions long enough for natural career progression to occur" (Northouse, 2004, p. 274).A different explanation is that, Men are more likely than women to negotiate for resources, training, and other factors that boost job satisfaction and success.It stands to reason that men who seek out career opportunities will advance more quickly in their organizations than equally qualified women who do not.(Babcock, 2008, p. 1) In the workforce, women are also considered to be conservative and less competitive which can hinder an organization from reaching its goals and objectives."Women are significantly more risk averse, tend to be less overconfident and behave less competitively oriented" (Beckman & Menkhoff, 2008, p. 379).Researchers have demonstrated that women in developed nations are also facing the same trials and obstacles in management.Heckman et al. ( 2010) explain how their data suggest that "whites and men will be much more likely than their nonwhite or women counterparts to receive favorable customer satisfaction judgments, which should accelerate their journeys up the organizational ladder" (p.257).Beckman and Menkhoff (2008) stated, "we find that women hold significantly lower positions than men in Germany, and Italy, a fact which goes hand in hand with significantly lower personal assets under management and shorter working hours" (p.370).The disparity between men and women in management has been referred to as racism and sexism."The rate of upward movement of women and minority managers provides clear evidence of nothing less than the abiding racism and sexism of the corporation" (Morrison & Glinow, 1995, p. 169).For example, some have claimed that "women leaders are themselves the problem, whether because they are simply less suited to executive demands than men, unavailable because so few are sufficiently qualified, or lacking in self-confidence" (Northouse, 2004, p. 274).
Women also face employers who do not want to take the risk of hiring a top manager who may have to take time off due to a maternity leave.For example, If a businessman is required to choose between a man and a woman possessing the same qualification levels, he would opt for the man, due to some misconceptions widespread among businessmen, such as the idea that women involve a cost when they take a maternity leave, that they create controversial relationships with their colleagues or they do not meet the necessary skills to be good executives.(Lopez-Fernandez et al., 2009, p. 42) The new workforce has been described as a political arena full of different groups, behaviors, beliefs, and attitudes (Bolman & Deal, 2003).With globalization, women and minorities are continuously striving for managerial positions where they can use their conceptual, technical, and human skills to complete tasks and build healthy relationships."Management and executive positions, along with professional and technical jobs, are among the fastest growing occupations...However, these occupations include jobs not traditionally held by women and minorities, who comprise the new workforce" (Morrison & Glinow, 1995, p. 168).Minority women, such as Indians and Afghans are also a significant part of the new workforce but "research on certain minority women, particularly Asians and American Indians, has essentially slipped through the cracks" (Morrison & Glinow, 1995, p. 170).The researchers of this current study were unable to locate prior research comparing the management skills of Afghan and Indian women.

Cultural Traditions: India and Afghanistan
Culture is a prominent factor in the differences people share.Such differences can be critical in effectively managing workplace diversity.Additionally, culture is important because shared values tend to regularize human behavior and make individuals more predictable (Mujtaba, 2007a).Knowing how others perceive and value their environment provides a guide for managers to anticipate behavior and respond effectively.This point is becoming increasingly more important as globalization brings distant peoples into closer contact while they face cultural, economical, and legal challenges (Scarborough, 1998); and the growth in international trade has dramatically increased people's understanding of the similarities and differences between diverse cultures (Gardenswartz et al., 2003;Ishii & Bruneau, 1994).
Some studies on cultural differences within the context of management have been conducted by Munene, Schwartz, and Smith (2000) and these researchers concluded that the Asian and African cultures tend to emphasize hierarchy, paternalism, and mastery in contrast to egalitarianism, autonomy, and harmony.Moreover, Asian and African managers often stress reliance on formal rules and superiors in reaching decisions as compared with the cultural profile of people in the United States or most European countries.
In today's competitive world, understanding and responding to culturally-driven behaviors are paramount to succeeding in cross-cultural management (Mujtaba, 2007a) because "the people in an organization are crucial to its performance and the quality of work life within it" (Rainey, 2003, p. 219).Afghanistan has a rich culture where people tend to socialize as a part of their cultural mores.However, they are also demonstrating more individualistic values as they attempt to secure long-term independence from undue foreign aid and political influences.Navigating between individualistic and collectivistic cultures and recognizing the shifts in diverse cultures can have a direct impact on how international firms and their people actually perform.People of an individualistic culture tend to value the needs, concerns, and identity of oneself above the needs of the community.As concluded by Mujtaba et al. (2007), collective cultures tend to focus more on world peace, being helpful to others and group interests, instead of an individual's personal needs.
Traditionally, both India and Afghanistan are collective and high-context cultures where women often stay home to take responsibility for rearing children while men work outside of the house.As a result, professional interactions between men and women are often limited, especially in rural areas."Given the cultural orientations of males in the Indian society where exchanges with the opposite sex are limited, it is likely that efforts at ingratiation will enhance a male superior's favorable demeanor towards female subordinates" (Himanshu, 2009, p. 66).With globalization and modernization, women are playing bigger roles in the workforce of both countries.
There has been a paradigm shift where women are encouraged to go out and work.In Afghanistan, both men and women work inside and outside of their home to help support their family."Contrary to popular views in the west, many Afghan men oppose traditional ideologies of male superiority and dominance" (Rostami-Povey, 2007, p. 297).Women in India are also becoming more accepted in the workforce due to economic reforms.Interestingly enough, While social, legal, and economic reforms have helped women to join the workforce in India, the continuing influence of normative attitudes and values have prevented them from altering the perceptions of the society as well as their own regarding their sex-roles.(Buddhapriya, 2009, p. 34) The changes in the global economy have introduced new gender roles that have made organizations more diverse and full of managers with different managerial skills and propensities.

Study Methodology
The research question for this study is: Do Afghan and Indian women have similar or different orientations in management skills?For this survey, the overall sum of the scores determine the likelihood that a participant is better at a specific skill.The research hypotheses for this study are as follows: x Hypothesis1 -Afghan and Indian women will have similar scores for technical skills.
x Hypothesis2 -Afghan and Indian women will have similar scores for human skills.
x Hypothesis3 -Afghan and Indian women will have similar scores for conceptual skills.
The Skills Inventory survey instrument provided by Peter G. Northouse (2010, pp. 64-65) was distributed to Afghan and Indian women by using Facebook as a social-networking instrument to get good participation.More specifically, the first author joined an Afghan social group (325 members) and Indian social group (275 members) on Facebook equating to 600 potential participants.He then posted on the main page of each group that he is looking for participants to participate in a study on "Eastern Women and Management Skills" to illuminate and promote their capabilities and strengths.Interested respondents were sent an email with the survey attached.A total of 202 surveys (Afghan surveys 102 and Indian surveys 100) were completed successfully by participants who live throughout the United States.So a total of 202 responses, which represents a 33% response rate, were used for analysis.According to Northouse, the skills inventory: Assists you in understanding how leadership skills are measured and what your own skills might be.Your scores on the inventory will give you a sense of your own leadership competencies.You may be strong in all three skills or stronger in some skills than in others.The questionnaire will give you a sense of your own skills profile.If you are stronger in one skill and weaker in another, this may help you determine where you want to improve in the future.(2010, p. 63) The skills inventory is designed to measure three broad types of leadership skills: technical, human, and conceptual.One can score the questionnaire by doing the following.First, sum the response on items 1, 4, 7, 10, 13, and 16.This is one's technical score.Second, sum the response on items 2, 5, 8, 11, 14, and 17.This is one's technical skill score.Third, sum the responses on items 3, 6, 9, 12, 15, and 18.This is one's conceptual score.
Many instruments have been used by different researchers to assess an individual's skills for management and leadership (Katz 1955;Rahman & Yang, 2009;Garman et al., 2006;Buttner et al., 1999;Egbu, 1999;Mumford et al., 2000).Instruments are designed to yield information about an individual's skills that can be used for training and development purposes.For example, Rahman and Yang (2009) explain, One of the earliest surveys conducted to ascertain the skills required by senior logistics executives was performed by Murphy and Poist.In this survey they used three sets of skills: business skills, logistics skills and management skills.Business ethics was found to be the top-rated business skill, and personal integrity was found to be very important among management skills, whereas transport and traffic management was found to be the top-ranked logistics skill.(p.141) Other researchers have used instruments that linked managerial skills to creativity."To date, the relationship between managers' creativity and their self and other ratings on managerial skills has not been examined" (Buttner et al., 1999, p. 229).Furthermore, Holtkamp et al. (2007) used an instrument by the name of Organization and Leadership Effectiveness Inventory (OLEI) to check for agreement on different leadership characteristics.Regardless of the instrument, many researchers understand the importance of managerial skills when planning, leading, organizing, and controlling.
The age range for both the Afghan and Indian females in this study was within the range of 26-39.When comparing education levels in this study, 9 Afghans have completed high school (8.8%), 86 held a bachelors degree (84.3%) and 7 held a master's degree (6.9%).For the Indian females 76 have a bachelor's degrees (76%), 21 have a master's degree (21%) and 5 have doctoral level degrees (5%).The industry that these participants worked in vary; for example, there were 17 Afghans that worked in education (16.7%), 16 worked in government (15.7%), 12 in a private sector (11.8%), 47 in retail (46.1%) and 10 in healthcare (9.8%).Alternatively, none of the Indians worked in education or retail.Seven worked in government (7%), 75 in a private sector (75%) and 18 worked in healthcare (18%).

Results
The results demonstrate that Afghan women have high scores on conceptual skills, followed by human, and then technical skills.Indian women on the other side, have high scores on technical, followed by human, and then conceptual skills.Both Indian and Afghan women have high scores on human skills that allow them to effectively work with others at all levels.The first hypothesis, "Afghan and Indian women will have similar scores for technical skills" cannot be supported as Indians have a significantly higher score (t= -82.51; p-value= 0.01; r=0.9856).Therefore, the first hypothesis is rejected.The effect size (r) usually represents the strength of association between two means that are continuous measures.These results fall in the large magnitude of effect size (Valentine & Cooper, 2010;Effect Size Calculator, 2010).

Insert table 1 here
The second hypothesis, "Afghan and Indian women will have similar scores for human skills," cannot be supported as Afghans have a significantly higher score (t= 14.77; p-value= 0.01; r=0.72).Therefore, the second hypothesis is rejected.
The third hypothesis, "Afghan and Indian women will have similar scores for conceptual skills," cannot be supported as Afghans have a significantly higher score (t= 84.95; p-value= 0.01; r=0.986).Therefore, the third hypothesis is rejected.

Pragmatic Implications and Recommendations
In this study, the data have indicated that Afghan women have higher conceptual skills and Indian women have significantly higher technical skills.India is a country that has embraced technology and implemented technology in the classrooms.Young Indians are exposed to technology, the internet for research, and social networking websites that prepare them for the cyberspace workplace.Also, Agarwal and Mital (2009) state, The fact that Indian students are using SNWs [social networking websites] to understand the business environment, improve job prospects, and participate in formal discussion forums is indicative of their preparedness and zeal to contribute to their future place of work in India or abroad.(p.109) This may explain why Indians scored higher on the technical skills when compared to Afghans.Many countries such as the United States outsource services to India because of their technical skills and the ability of over 300 million college educated professionals who communicate fluently in English.As a matter of fact, "the successful technology manager is often distinguished not by command of any single set of knowledge or skills, buy by an ability to master changing demands-to learn, in other words" (Austin, Nolan, & O'Donnell, 2009, p. 338).
Afghanistan is a developing nation where most students and the general public do not have access to computers, up to date books, or the internet because of 30 years of non-stop war which has forced the country to regress."The Afghan workforce needs to be educated and trained so they can create a peaceful environment for themselves and effectively compete with their neighbors in the marketplace" (Mujtaba & Kaifi, 2010, p. 43).
Afghans have been forced to develop their abilities for analyzing situations and distinguishing between cause and effect, hence, high scores on conceptual skills.One researcher explained, "Given that the Afghan community has been largely illiterate, the relationship between parents and school administrators and teachers was a delicate one" and further states, "The schools generally requested help from students' fathers for renovations and improvements to classrooms and schools, which accorded with traditional gender roles and expertise" (Hoodfar, 2007, p. 280).Afghans have mastered the art of improvising and being able to solve complex issues.A case in point is how the Afghan people were able to defeat the former Soviet Union (Superpower of the 1980's) by improvising and outsmarting their enemy by using Afghanistan's rough terrain as an asset and strategic resource."Moscow's ultimately unsuccessful 10-year war [1979][1980][1981][1982][1983][1984][1985][1986][1987][1988][1989] in Afghanistan" resulted in many casualties and much embarrassment for the Russian's who were defeated by "men on horseback" (Tanner, 2009, p. 34).
Afghans also have higher conceptual skills because they have been trained from a cultural perspective to plan and organize their daily actions around faith and spirituality because Islam is not only a religion but "a complete way of life" (Livengood & Stololska, 2004, p. 185).For example, when Afghans leave their house, they often strategically plan where they can pray throughout the day and also perform ablution, if needed.Thus, Afghans are able to improvise and control situations, plan and organize accordingly, and lead by example.Furthermore, successful managers in top management positions are expected to have human skills to complement their conceptual skills.As a matter of fact, Afghan respondents from a high-context culture of Afghanistan are more relationship-orientated.Interestingly, their task orientation score is also in the moderately high range.Therefore, managers and supervisors should feel comfortable in knowing that Afghan employees will complete the task at hand in a timely manner while maintaining a healthy relationship with their colleagues, peers, customers, and superiors.(Mujtaba & Kaifi, 2008, p. 120) Many Afghans have proven to be strong leaders in their professions.A case in point is Dr. Mohammad "Mo" Qayoumi, the President of California State University, East Bay.A leader from the field of medicine includes: Dr. Abdul Wali, who is co-chief of staff at Kaiser Permanente (the nation's largest Healthcare Maintenance Organization) (Kaifi, 2009).Many Afghans have become successful entrepreneurs, managers, executives, and educational leaders at various institutions throughout the western world.
Due to societal conditioning and cross-cultural tendencies of human nature, some managers assume that employees from high-context cultures such as Afghanistan are likely to be more relationship-oriented which may distract employees from not completing their tasks in a timely manner.For example, they may not be assertive enough to pressure their peers toward being more productive when there is a backlog or even to ask for help when necessary because they do not want to appear pushy or rude.Of course, such assumptions are often wrong as the Afghan respondents in this survey have higher conceptual scores when compared to their Indian counterparts.
These results are important elements for multinational managers, administrators of USAID (the United States of America's International Development) agency, NGOs (non-governmental agencies), and other contractors recruiting professionals for jobs and assignments in and around Afghanistan or India.As a matter of fact, Afghan leaders from all professions have started emerging.There are currently many Afghan-American medical doctors, engineers, attorneys, professors, police officers, and many who work in either the private or public sectors of the workforce (Kaifi, 2009a;Kaifi, 2011).
The modern workplace for a multinational firm can be very diverse as the workforce today is filled with people who may have different management skills.Kaifi (2009) explains how using multiple frames to evaluate an organization will help a manager understand complex issues within an organization and will result in continuous improvements (p.94).The glass-ceiling phenomenon needs to be eradicated as women such as Meg Whitman of eBay proved to be a successful manager."Despite high-profile success stories of female CEOs such as Meg Whitman of eBay, only a handful of Fortune 500 firms in 2008 have a woman in the top spot.Consequently, concern remains about the progress women are making" (Wyld, 2008, p. 83).It is for certain that Afghan women bring diverse views and perspectives with an orientation toward top management positions because of their high conceptual and human skills when compared to their Indian counterparts who have high technical skills and are suited for more supervisory management positions.

Limitations of the Study
There are some limitations to this study and one is the limited amount of responses from each group.This survey can be combined with other more comprehensive instruments to enhance and confirm the results.Future studies can duplicate the research with a greater number of Afghan and Indian participants that are compared to other ethnicities.The fact that this study was conducted with a convenient sample population living in urban areas and expatriate Afghans and Indians living outside of Afghanistan and India was a further limitation.Future studies might control this variable by expanding the research population to include more respondents from various locations and providences within Afghanistan and India.Perhaps different populations, groups, and people working in various industries can be studied separately to see if culture is truly a factor in the management skills of female (and male) professionals.Finally, future researchers should consider translating the survey instrument into Persian, Pashto, and Hindi languages to facilitate the test subjects' preferred and dominant reading skills.

Conclusion
The workplace is filled with people of diverse cultures and backgrounds.Now, diverse women are making strides into higher management ranks.This study focused on the technical, human, and conceptual skills of professional women from Afghanistan and India.The results show that these two groups of respondents have significantly different orientations in management skills.Indian women have an extremely high orientation toward technical skills.This might be due to the fact that most Indian schools have traditionally done an excellent job of preparing workers to effectively deal with technical knowledge.Both groups of respondents, Afghan and Indian women, have high scores for the human skills which are important for effectively dealing with a culturally diverse workplace.Finally, the Afghan respondents demonstrated an extremely high orientation toward conceptual skills in management.This demonstrates that Afghan women feel comfortable dealing with complex issues and making important decisions.
Being that the Afghan women scored high on human relation and conceptual skills, and assuming that this is somewhat true of a larger sample, then it is imperative for the government of Afghanistan to integrate more female professionals into the higher political ranks due to their natural propensity to quickly solve challenging obstacles.In the private sectors, managers and human resource professionals in Afghanistan, India, and other countries around the globe can use this information to recruit the right employees from these two cultures so they can produce immediate and measurable outcomes for specific jobs.Lastly, future researchers can translate this survey in local languages in India and Afghanistan to study specific groups of respondents based on age, education, and work experience.