Italian managers? They are too few And only a quarter are women – Corriere.it

Lights and shadows, comments Mario Mantovani, president of Manageritalia, presenting the results of the latest report on management produced by his organization. It contains data on the Italian case and while a year of economic activity is closing, it makes sense to try to formulate an assessment on the matter. In a double key, either master data-statistics or referring to the systemic effects and effectiveness of management performance. Manageritalia’s research refers only to the private sector (manufacturing and services), uses various other surveys and databases, provides us with a cross-section of the activity of executives and middle managers and, ultimately, launches a heartfelt message (if not an SOS): 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 statistics.

From an occupational point of view, Italian managers correspond to 3.6% of the total employed. A percentage that places us below the three European countries with which it makes more sense to compare ourselves. France scores 6.8%, Germany 4.2% and Spain also surpasses us with 4.1%. But not finished. The absolute majority of our managers (53%) are over the age of 50 (while of the total number of employees, the over 50s are 39%). Data quite similar to the German one, but which marks a higher seniority compared to France and Spain which stop at 45%. A significant fraction of Italian managers – less than 10% – is made up of over 65s. Also in this case we are not a country for young people and we register a low propensity of the system to invest in the new generations and their ability to bring innovation, explains Mantovani.

The gender gap

The painful notes do not stop at young people: they also arrive when we move on to analyzing the genre from age. For every hundred managers, only a quarter are women and the gap is particularly high in the 50-65 age range, probably also as a result of a lower average retirement age for women notes the report. Also in this case the comparison with France does not help us: the transalpine gender gap is decidedly lower. Women in Italy become managers on average earlier than men and this may indicate a greater attention to gender equality that has emerged in the behavior of companies in recent years. At the same time however, warns the report, it is more difficult for women to maintain managerial positions. Yet the merit would be enough for women – comments Mantovani – because the companies that include the most of them turn out to have better performances in terms of profitability, market shares and labor productivity.

If the total number of Italian managers is estimated at 600,000 of which around 121,000 with executive contracts and the rest made up of middle managers, 68.6% are located in the North. Lombardy alone reaches 38% of managers 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 studying the province of birth of Italian managers, their northerner character emerges. Not even the large central-southern cities such as Rome, Naples, Palermo, Catania or Bari are able to keep up with the northern provinces in terms of training the ruling class.

The proportions

To summarize, it can be said that Italian companies are largely managed by managers residing in northern Italy, men and adults. It is true that in the North we find the largest number of multinationals and medium-large companies that make use of 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 have recourse to outsiders. However, the report also provides data on another, so to speak, counterintuitive trend. In the company size class between 10 and 20 employees, the number of employees coordinated by a manager is nine. In the upper classes, the number of employees per manager rises to 15, then to 28 and explodes to 60 in the size class of over 250 employees showing how the degree of responsibility and staff coordinated by each manager increases in larger companies. The explanation could lie in the probable greater use of consultancy-type contracts to cover de facto managerial functions, but in any case the increase in employees per manager appears significant. And it makes Mantovani say that the hierarchical structure of Italian companies tends to become flatter.

The correlation

By building a few managerial levels, the company supervises the employees less, promoting their involvement in the decision-making process, improves the speed of communication but suffers as a counterbalance the lack of a reference person and clarity on the specific role. However, the choice of a flat structure appears to have been made and this trend is driven by the services sector, which shows a very high employee-manager ratio in large companies. From quantities we pass to qualities. Is there a correlation between the managerial index and company performance? Do companies with multiple managers perform better? The answer that comes from the report – obviously discounting that Manageritalia as the party’s representative organization – is positive. Where there are proportionally more managers, average salaries are higher, ROAs are higher, the market share is larger, labor productivity is the same and companies have more assets on average. Each additional percentage point of managers is worth +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 group of 10% of the best companies, while the 10% of the worst have all negative or non-zero data. An international comparison could not be missing from the report. Italy is below the median line in a world ranking of 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 European average of use and the same is true for other countries such as the USA and the United Kingdom. A speech for, which even in the best of interpretations, concerns only the private field: In the public administration it would be desirable to make greater use of managerial skills to favor the grounding of all the projects of the Pnrr.

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