“Mad Men” is my day job, part I: Portability, or why Joan needs that money

I mentioned earlier that “Mad Men” is basically the audio-visual supplement to my day job as a researcher at Harvard Business School. My boss, Boris Groysberg, primarily studies high achievers at professional-service firms. He’s particularly interested in how women advance in male-dominated environments.

You can see the relevance.

Dawn and Joan gaze in disgust and consternation at the face of the patriarchy (not shown).

Joan Harris has made some stunning advances, both professional and personal, this season. She handed over her administrative duties to the super-efficient Dawn, and promoted herself to “account man” with the support of Jim Cutler and Ken Cosgrove. (Joan’s whole process of becoming an account rep is a classroom-worthy case study of the importance and boundaries of relationships in the business world. Before she re-invented herself, Joan made sure she had support from above–a senior partner and the head of accounts backing her play–as well as someone to fill the role she was trying to step out of. Though not stated overtly, it’s clear that one of the reasons Joan chooses Dawn to succeed her as office manager is that, as one of only two or three African-American secretaries at the agency, Dawn isn’t looking for girlfriends in the secretarial pool or a husband in the executive suites. She focuses on doing excellent work and keeps herself aloof. Joan knows Dawn will be fair and stick to policy rather than doing favors and bending rules for her friends.)

Because of her professional rise, and greater honesty and warmth in her personal life, many critics have found it strange that Joan is also increasingly money-hungry and still deeply resentful of Don for keeping the firm from going public last season. This is where Boris’s work comes in.

Boris writes about portability: the extent to which a worker can move around in the labor market without losing value. You know who is portable in “Mad Men”? Don Draper, that’s who. Don’s power at Sterling Cooper Whatever MacGuffin Foo is based on the fact that any other agency would hire him in a heartbeat. He has a clear portfolio of accomplishments and the nature of his work is such that it can be done anywhere. Give him a file box of product research, a pad and pen, and Don Draper is ready for action.

You know who is not portable? Joan Harris. Joan has tremendous company-specific human capital: She knows everything about SC&P’s operations, clients, vulnerabilities, future projections. She has a deep understanding of the psychology of the people she works with. She has off-the-books leverage over name partner Roger Sterling.

If she moved to another firm, she would lose all of that. If she even could move to another firm. It’s doubtful she could take any clients with her if she did–she’s a new account rep and no one is especially loyal to her yet. While women are breaking into creative, client work is overwhelmingly male-dominated–as are most of the client businesses themselves–and Joan would be faced with the depressing, overwhelming task of making men take her seriously all over again if she were to try to start somewhere new. She could easily get a job as office manager elsewhere, but that would be a step down. Joan spent 16 years building her career at SC&P, and that work simply won’t transfer elsewhere.

This is why Joan so desperately wants the cash that a buyout–or a public offering, like Don blew up–represents. She’s a queen in her little kingdom of SC&P–a second-floor office! a 5% partnership!–but if anything happens to that little kingdom, and plenty has already, she goes back to being Head Secretary and Dirty-Joke Target at some other shop on Madison Avenue. Unlike Don, and even Peggy, she won’t have other agencies offering her comparable or better jobs. And unlike Roger, Jim, and the rest of the male partners, she doesn’t have any wealth to tide her over.

This is why she wants the buyout, and why she’s still so very angry at Don for spiking the public offering. Don has two forms of security: job portability and wealth. Joan knows–although she hasn’t found a b-school professor to give her the words for it yet–that she doesn’t have the former. It’s no wonder, as a single mother in the 1960s, that she’s so bound and determined to get herself the latter.