Italian managers? They are very few. And only a quarter of women

Lights and shadows commented Mario Mantovani, President of Manageritalia, presenting the findings of the latest management report released by his organisation. It contains data on the Italian case, and as a year of economic activity approaches, it makes sense to try to formulate an assessment on the matter. In a dual key, either mastery of data statistics or reference to systemic effects and effectiveness of management performance. Manageritalia’s research refers only to the private domain (manufacturing and services), uses many other surveys and databases, provides us with a cross-section of the activity of executives and middle managers and, in the end, sends out an honest (if not SOS) message: more managers are needed than there are today. Also because the shadows seem to prevail over the lights. But before we get to conclusions, let’s look at the stats.

From a professional point of view, Italian managers account for 3.6% of the total workforce. The percentage that places us below the three European countries to which it makes sense to compare ourselves. France recorded 6.8%, Germany 4.2%, and Spain also recorded 4.1%. But not finished. The vast majority of our managers (53%) are over the age of 50 (while of the total number of employees, 39% are over 50). The data is quite similar to the German data, but a higher seniority compared to France and Spain which stop at 45%. A large part of Italian managers – less than 10% – consist of people over 65 years old. Also in this case, we are not a country of young people, and we register a low propensity for the system to invest in new generations and their ability to bring about innovation, explains Mantovani.

The gender gap

The haunting remarks don’t stop with the young: they also arrive when we turn to the genre analysis of age. For every 100 managers, only a quarter of them are women and the gap is particularly large in the 50-65 age group, Perhaps also as a result of the lower average retirement age for women, as the report notes. In this case, too, the comparison with France does not help: the gender gap across the Alps is decidedly less. Women in Italy become managers on average earlier than men, and this may indicate a greater interest in gender equality that has emerged in corporate behavior in recent years. However, the report warns at the same time that it is difficult for women to occupy managerial positions. However, the meritocracy will be enough for women – says Mantovani – because companies with the most women have been shown to have better performance in terms of profitability, market shares and labor productivity.

If the total number of Italian managers is estimated at 600,000 of which about 121,000 are with executive contracts and the rest are middle managers, 68.6% are in the North. Lombardi alone accounts for 38% of directors and 43% of Italian executives. Less than 30% of managers (including middle managers) are women while the share of female managers is only 20% of the total. Even by examining the province of birth of the Italian principals, their northern character emerges. Not even the great cities of the central south such as Rome, Naples, Palermo, Catania, and Bari could keep pace with the northern provinces in terms of training the ruling class.

pedigree

To summarize, it can be said that Italian companies are largely run by managers based in Northern Italy, both men and adults. It is true that in the North we find the largest number of multinationals and large medium-sized companies that benefit from managerial skills – says Mantovani – but in the South, and not only there, the presence of medium and small companies weighs heavily, 70% of which are family-run and do not turn to outsiders. However, the report also provides data on another, so to speak, counterintuitive trend. In a company size class between 10 and 20 employees, the number of employees coordinated by the manager is nine. In the higher tiers, the number of employees per manager increases to 15, then to 28 and explodes to 60 in the size class of more than 250 employees. It shows how the degree of responsibility and coordinated staffing increases by each manager in large companies. The explanation could lie in the possible increase in the use of consultant-type contracts to cover actual managerial functions, but in any case the increase in the number of employees per manager seems significant. This makes Mantovani say that the hierarchical structure of Italian companies tends to become flatter.

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By building in fewer management levels, the company supervises employees less, enhances their participation in the decision-making process, and improves speed of communication but suffers as a counterbalance to the lack of a person of reference and clarity about the specific role. However, the choice of a flat structure seems to have been made, and this trend is driven by the service sector, which shows a very high ratio of employees to managers in large companies. From quantities we pass to adjectives. Is there a correlation between the administrative indicator and the company’s performance? Do companies with multiple managers perform better? The answer that comes from the report – it obviously excludes Mangertalia as a representative organization of the party – was positive. When there are relatively more managers, the average salary is higher, the return on assets is higher, the market share is larger, the labor productivity is the same, and the company has more assets on average. Each additional percentage point for managers is equal to +0.64% of average salary, +3.4% of labor productivity and +0.84% ​​for intangible assets.

However, it must be said that these results are in turn driven by the combination of the best 10% of companies, while the worst 10% of companies have all negative or non-zero data. An international comparison could not be missing from the report. Italy falls below the middle line in the global ranking for the use of typical managerial skills, a ranking led by Denmark, Sweden and Finland. The distance from the top of the class is decidedly large, but according to Mantovani we are in line with the average European usage and the same goes for other countries like USA and UK. A speech of his, even in the best of interpretations, relates only to the private sphere: In public administration, it would be desirable to increase the use of managerial skills for the benefit of the foundations of all Pnrr projects.

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