Beyond the Management Gene: Rethinking and Advancing the Genetic Perspective in Management

Ahmed Maged Nofal () and Marcus Wolfe
Additional contact information
Ahmed Maged Nofal: EM - EMLyon Business School
Marcus Wolfe: UNT - University of North Texas

Post-Print from HAL

Abstract: Genetics has emerged as a promising avenue for explaining differences in management outcomes, attracting attention from leadership, entrepreneurship, and organizational behaviour scholars. Nonetheless, the field has faced scepticism and made only limited progress, stagnating in the pursuit of a so-called 'management gene' (e.g., leadership gene and entrepre-neurial gene). We argue that framing research around the search for a management gene has been theoretically limiting and empirically counterproductive, and that the genetic perspective could realize its promise through a nuanced understanding of how genetics relate to management outcomes. Drawing on five core genetic concepts (penetrance, phenocopy, polygenicity, pleiotropy, and epigenetics), we develop a framework comprising three intertwined stages that organize genetic methods according to their inferential strength. The stages focus on establishing whether genetic variance exists, identifying where it resides, and explaining when and why genetic predispositions become organizationally expressed. In doing so, the framework reframes non-detections as theoretically informative, revealing when and why genetic predispositions go unexpressed. It thus turns what were previously seen as dead ends into evidence that advances theory. It positions gene–environment relationships as a core theoretical concern, redirecting the field away from the search for a management gene and towards understanding why individuals produce divergent outcomes.

Keywords: Biology; Management (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2026-09-13
Note: View the original document on HAL open archive server: https://hal.science/hal-05756292v1
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Published in Journal of Management Studies, In press, ⟨10.1111/joms.70160⟩

Downloads: (external link)
https://hal.science/hal-05756292v1/document (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:hal:journl:hal-05756292

DOI: 10.1111/joms.70160

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Post-Print from HAL
Bibliographic data for series maintained by CCSD ().