Leadership training has become a multi-billion dollar global industry. The reason for this growth is that organizations, faced with new technology, changing markets, fierce competition, and diverse employees, must adapt and innovate or go under. Because of this, organizations need leaders with vision and the ability to engage willing collaborators. However, according to interviews with business executives reported in the McKinsey Quarterly, leadership programs are not developing global leaders.
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By Lana Goldsmith, Intern
Scott Shane is the A. Malachi Mixon III Professor of 
Entrepreneurial Studies at Case Western Reserve University. In this post, Shane deliberates the pros and cons of genetic testing in the workplace. This is an adaptation from his new book Born Entrepreneurs, Born Leaders: How Your Genes Affect Your Work Life which shows how a heightened awareness of your own – and your colleagues’ – genetic predispositions can make you a better employee or employer.
Our genes impact numerous aspects of our work lives, from our tendency to start businesses to our job satisfaction to our leadership abilities to our decision-making styles. While we aren’t yet at the point where companies can use genetic information diagnostically, we might be in the near future.
Some observers have pointed out that as knowledge of how our genes affect our behavior in the workplace grows, companies might benefit from using this information. That raises the question: Should companies be allowed to use genetic information in the workplace?
Many, it seems, have come down against this prospect. In the United Kingdom, the Nuffield Council on Bioethics concluded in a 2002 report entitled Genetics and Human Behavior, “Employees should be selected and promoted on the basis of their ability to meet the requirements of the job. . . . Employers should not demand that an individual take a genetic test for a behavioral trait as a condition of employment.” (p. 183.) And, according to an April 24, 2004 article in the Wall Street Journal, Jane Zhang and Shirley Wang report that, in the recent genetic nondiscrimination bill, Congress made it illegal to use genetic information “to make hiring, firing, and other job placement decisions.” (p. A11).
Like many things dealt with definitively, there is another part of the story, which makes the issue less simple than it appears at first glance. Congress in the United States and the Nuffield Council in the United Kingdom clearly addressed one side of the issue: companies should not be allowed to hire people on the basis of something that they have no control over and can’t really change, because doing so would be inherently unfair.
On the other hand, how “fair” are other selection criteria relative to genetic testing? Numerous studies have shown the bias that people involved in the employment process have for physically attractive job candidates of the opposite sex. But appearance is, in large part, outside of one’s control, and is hard to change. So how is it fair to allow managers to make employment decisions on the basis of physical appearance, but bar them from using selection tools that incorporate genetic information?
What about the issue of fairness that comes up if we do not allow companies to use genetic data to assign people to jobs or training? If employers aren’t permitted to use hereditary information in this way, and they subsequently punish people for poor performance on the job, then we are implicitly allowing the companies to engage in genetic discrimination.
To see what I mean, take the example of a company which provides its employees with financial rewards if they take courses to develop their leadership skills, as Stephen Robbins and Tim Judge’s best selling textbook, Organizational Behavior (13th edition, Prentice Hall, 2009) reports a number of companies do. A sizeable portion of the difference between people in the ability to direct others comes from their DNA. This means that some people are genetically inclined to do better than others in leadership develop
