Genetics and Business

A recent article in Christchurch’s Press entitled “Mental stamina gives edge”(Saturday, January 13, not online) points out that management theory over the last 30 years has not given sufficient consideration to genetic factors.

According to psychologists, having a high level of “mental energy” is essential for success in business and “positive” mental energy comes from interest and curiosity.

Generally, it is people with high IQs who have high levels of curiosity and who can sustain interest in mentally demanding challenges, and twin studies indicate that IQ is largely a genetically determined factor. Similarly one of the other main factors in business success is a low level of neuroticism, which is also determined by genetics.

According to Amanda Sinclair, a professor of management at the Melbourne Business School, “mental stamina” is not a very glamorous characteristic and in business management people don’t tend to associate with the “dazzle of leadership”. Sinclair states that research into “mental stamina”, has been downplayed as a significant factor in business leadership because it has not been fashionable to think of leadership as being genetic.

The author of the article goes on to point out that business schools have an investment in the belief that leaders are “made not born”. In recent decades there has been an enormous amount of investment in business school training with MBA programmes seen as essential for training managerial elites.

However, if leadership and management ability are largely determined by native intelligence and temperament, then society shouldn’t be putting so much time and money into generic business management training. Hopefully, this means that elites in business and government can now spend more time acquiring real world experience in the specific fields in which they intend to work.

At the university level, this should also give them the opportunity to address their cultural and scientific ignorance by taking more papers in subjects like history and the natural sciences.