Scurrying around the corridors of the business school at the National University of Singapore (NUS) in his white lab coat last year, Michael Zyphur must have made an incongruous sight. Visitors to management schools usually expect the staff to sport suits and ties. Dr Zyphur?s garb was, however, no provocative fashion statement. It is de rigueur for anyone dealing with biological samples, and he routinely collects such samples as part of his research on, of all things, organisational hierarchies. He uses them to look for biological markers, in the form of hormones, that might either cause or reflect patterns of behaviour that are relevant to business.

Since its inception in the early 20th century, management science has been dominated by what Leda Cosmides and John Tooby, two evolutionary psychologists, refer to disparagingly as the standard social science model (SSSM). This assumes that most behavioural differences between individuals are explicable by culture and socialisation, with biology playing at best the softest of second fiddles. Dr Zyphur is part of an insurgency against this idea. What Dr Cosmides and Dr Tooby have done to psychology and sociology, and others have done to economics, he wants to do to management. Consultants often talk of the idea of ?scientific? management. He, and others like him, want to make that term meaningful, by applying the rigour of biology.

To do so, they will need to weave together several disparate strands of the subject?genetics, endocrinology, molecular biology and even psychology. If that works, the resulting mixture may provide a new set of tools for the hard-pressed business manager.

Say ?biology? and ?behaviour? in the same sentence, and most minds think of genetics and the vexed question of nature and nurture. In a business context such questions of heredity and environment are the realm of Scott Shane, a professor of management at Case Western Reserve University in Ohio. In a recent book, Born Entrepreneurs, Born Leaders. How Your Genes Affect Your Work Life, Dr Shane proffers a review of the field. Many of his data come from studies of twins?a traditional tool of human geneticists, who are denied the possibility of experimental breeding enjoyed by their confr?res who study other species, like flies and mice.

Identical twins share all of their DNA. Non-identical twins share only half (like all other siblings). Despite a murky past involving the probable fabrication of data by one of the field?s pioneers, Sir Cyril Burt, the science of comparing identical with non-identical twins is still seen as a good way of distinguishing the effects of genes from those of upbringing.

The consensus from twin studies is that genes really do account for a substantial proportion of the differences between individuals?and that applies to business as much as it does to the rest of life. Dr Shane observes genetic influence over which jobs people choose, how satisfied they are with those jobs, how frequently they change jobs, how important work is to them and how well they perform (or strictly speaking, how poorly: genes account for over a third of variation between individuals in ?censured job performance?, a measure that incorporates reprimands, probation and performance-related firings). Salary also depends on DNA. Around 40% of the variation between people?s incomes is attributable to genetics. Genes do not, however, operate in isolation. Environment is important, too. Part of the mistake made by supporters of the SSSM was to treat the two as independent variables when, in reality, they interact in subtle ways.

Richard Arvey, the head of the NUS business school?s department of management and organisation, has been looking into precisely how genes interact with different types of environment to create such things as entrepreneurial zeal and the ability to lead others. Previous research had shown that people exhibiting personality traits like sensation-seeking are more likely to become entrepreneurs than their less outgoing and more level-headed peers. Dr Arvey and his colleagues found the same effect for extroversion (of which sensation-seeking is but one facet). There was an interesting twist. Their study?of 1,285 pairs of identical twins and 849 pairs of same-sex fraternal ones?suggests that genes help explain extroversion only in women. In men, this trait is instilled environmentally. Businesswomen, it seems, are born. But businessmen are made.

In a second twin study, this time just on men, Dr Arvey asked to what extent leaders are born, and to what extent they are made. Inborn leadership traits certainly do exist, but upbringing, he found, matters too. The influence of genes on leadership potential is weakest in boys brought up in rich, supportive families and strongest in those raised in harsher circumstances. The quip that the battle of Waterloo was won on the playing fields of Eton thus seems to have some truth.

Twin studies such as these point the way, but they provide only superficial explanations of what is going on. To get at the nitty gritty it is necessary to dive into molecular biology. And that is the province of people like Song Zhaoli, who is also at the NUS.

One way genes affect behaviour is through the agency of neurotransmitters, the chemicals that carry messages between nerve cells. Among these chemicals, two of the most important are dopamine and serotonin. Dopamine controls feelings of pleasure and reward. Serotonin regulates mood. Some personality traits have been shown to depend on the amounts of these neurotransmitters that slosh around the junctions between nerve cells. Novelty-seeking, for example, is associated with lots of dopamine. A tendency to depression may mean too little serotonin. And the levels of both are regulated by genes, with different variants of the same underlying gene having different effects.

Recent years have seen a surge of research into the links between particular versions of neurotransmitter-related genes and behavioural outcomes, such as voter turnout, risk-aversion, personal popularity and sexual promiscuity. However, studies of work-related traits have hitherto been conspicuous by their absence. Dr Song has tried to fill this gap. His team have analysed DNA from 123 Singaporean couples to see if it can be matched with a host of work-related variables, starting with job satisfaction.

In this case Dr Song first checked how prone each participant in the study was to the doldrums, in order to establish a baseline. He also asked whether they had experienced any particularly stressful events, like sustaining serious injury, getting the sack or losing a lot of money, within the previous year. Then he told participants to report moments of negative mood (anger, guilt, sadness or worry) and job satisfaction four times a day for a week, using a survey app installed on their mobile phones.

He knew from previous research that some forms of melancholia, such as seasonal affective disorder (or winter blues), have been linked to particular versions of a serotonin-receptor gene called HTR2A. When he collated the DNA and survey data from his volunteers, he found those with a particular variant of HTR2A were less likely than those carrying one of its two other possible variants to experience momentary negative mood, even if they had had a more stress-ridden year. Dr Song also found that when carriers of that same variant reported lower negative mood, they also tended to report higher job satisfaction?an effect which was absent among people who had inherited the remaining two versions of the gene.

This suggests that for people fortunate enough to come equipped with the pertinent version of HTR2A, stressful events are less likely to have a negative effect on transient mood. What is more, for these optimists, better mood turns out to be directly related to contentment with their job. In other words, it may be a particular genetic mutation of a serotonin-receptor gene, and not the employer?s incentives that is making people happier with their work.

? The Economist Newspaper Limited 2010