Dame Stephanie Shirley changed the workplace in 1962 when she set up a firm to help women work from home. It grew into a global IT business. Now a full-time philanthropist, she reflects on career women, flexible working and CSR

Flicking through the July issue of Director I've just handed her, Dame Stephanie Shirley stops at the Director of the month page. "I look at a young man like that and I wonder what does he want to hear from someone at 75?" she says, before answering herself, "There are eternal truths from business."

And who better to tell them than this business woman, known until her DBE in 2000 as Steve Shirley? (She changed back to Stephanie because, as she rightly points out, "Dame Steve doesn't work very well"). Anyone with an interest in flexible or remote working, the importance of corporate social responsibility or the social impact of computers and IT would get plenty from an afternoon in her company. And that's before we start on the business of philanthropy.

For a spell in the late 1980s, she was case-study meat and drink for business school professors, who hailed the FI Group, the computing business she founded in 1962 (since rebranded Xansa and acquired by and merged with French firm Steria last year for £470m), as a model for the modern networked organisation. From employee share ownership, to its social focus and corporate responsibility, the business that Dame Stephanie started as "a 20th century cottage industry for women", was ahead of its time. But it was for its pioneering structure that the business was best known.

The idea was to build a company around a network of women working from home, a concept that must have sounded alien in 1962. But the roots of the business were practical and based on a disappointing personal experience of work. "I was in the early computing industry in the mid-1950s. My business started for social reasons. Firstly, I thought I saw the importance of software, which at that time was given away free. I was laughed at for thinking I could sell software. Secondly, I was blocked in the corporate world by what we now call the glass ceiling. And I saw that other women were blocked as well. There were a lot of women leaving university with a decent maths degree, which is what you needed for the computer industry. I set up the organisation called freelance programmers. It was written, as a pun, without capital letters because we had no capital. The idea was to provide jobs for women with children. That modified to careers for women with children and then to careers for people with dependents," explains Shirley.

It's natural that after 46 years of banging the flexible-working drum, Dame Stephanie is a little frustrated that we aren't more advanced. In the process of arranging the interview, some of this frustration was evident. "Why in 2008 do we have to focus a Director issue on remote and flexible working? After all, the economics (both directly to sales and indirectly via HR) are long demonstrated. Perhaps there's still a psychological war to sort out," she wrote.

Having worked for over 40 years at improving the organisational  environment for women, it's tempting to assume that Dame Stephanie must also be disappointed there aren't more women in senior positions. But she prefers to dwell on the changes that the last four decades have seen. Put bluntly, her view is that there aren't more women in senior positions because women choose not to put themselves in such positions.
"I feel there is very little holding women back any more in the workplace. In 1962 when I started the company, women couldn't drive a bus or fly an aeroplane. Importantly, you couldn't be on the stock exchange. These were things you couldn't legally do. Some of [the lack of women in top management positions] is choice. Top management is very onerous and if you have a choice you may decide to opt out of it. The tasks leaders have to do are pretty difficult and it's not so much gender that determines that, but how you feel your personality can fit into it. Not everybody likes to do that. Women are opting out. We have a genuine choice now."

Dame Stephanie is also clear that a lack of suitable technology is not what is holding back the development of more flexible working patterns. "I've always maintained that flexible and remote working is not a matter of technology, but more a matter of culture and management style. You have to accept that people can actually work in teams even though you can't see them. You've got to trust them to be working away without seeing them come in from nine to five. In my day we used to clock-on in the morning and we'd be reprimanded if we were late. Then, time spent was very important. I have tried to move on from thinking about time spent to work done. A whole lot of things follow as soon as you focus more on work done."

So how does she view her influence on organisational life in the UK? "Leadership is all about culture and that was probably a more important thing that I did. Not only creating the culture of my own company, but suggesting very different forms of relationships between customer and supplier, between management and staff and between employees and consultants."

Mark Goyder, founder director of "think and do tank" Tomorrow's Company (of which Shirley is a patron), describes her as "the classic entrepreneur". As he says: "She saw an obstacle in the market and saw that the market wasn't providing what she wanted, so she provided it herself. People today probably don't realise how revolutionary her business was and what a pioneer she was. She infused the whole of FI group—and then Xansa—with that entrepreneurial, can-do spirit. And yet the organisation was very outward looking as well, very aware of the positive impact it could have on society. That's how it differentiated itself. In a way the business epitomised Tomorrow's Company. It was 15-to-20 years ahead of its time."

Since she retired 15 years ago, Shirley has let what she calls her social focus come to the fore even more and has re-invented herself as one of a new breed of "business philanthropists". The Shirley Foundation has given away some £50m, mostly to causes that fall into two-connected-areas: IT and autism (a disorder suffered by her late son). But this is not a case of someone rich giving away money on a series of whims. She has used her entrepreneurial and leadership skills, not to mention the experience of over 30 years in business, to "invest" millions of pounds in a series of ventures, including lobby group Autism Speaks and the Oxford Internet Institute, a research body looking at the social impact of the internet more than what she describes as the "bits, bytes and bots". As with her career, Dame Stephanie's entrepreneurial streak is hard to suppress. "I'm always starting things," she says. "I set up a school that has a turnover of £10m and employs 300 people. And I set up a care home that has a turnover of £4m. These may start as one-man bands, but if they meet social needs they grow into medium-sized businesses."

Goyder describes Dame Stephanie as being "hard-headed about the business of philanthropy", an approach that she would agree with. "Most of the things we learn in business are applicable to philanthropy," she says. "Charities have to be business like. We have to be transparent with what we do with donors' money. We must be efficient, yes, but also effective in what we are doing." Her approach to campaigning for autism—a disorder that she says costs the UK economy some £28bn a year—is typical. "I did a budget for how much was needed to get at the causes of autism in 2001. It came out at almost £0.5bn and I decided it wasn't something I could fund. So I knew I would need partners. It's the same in business, you have to learn to work in partnership and form alliances. Not just mergers and acquisitions, but getting into partnerships with those with complementary skills. The charitable world is learning to do that." 

As Shirley talks of her love for IT and computers, I notice that her large desk is computer-free. "No, I don't have a computer," she admits, looking just a little sheepish. "I'm an obsessional person. If I had one I would spend all my time on it. Anyway, the work I do now is conceptual, so I don't need one."

From anyone else, such a claim might sound contradictory, a little obtuse even. And yet as an example of the unique pattern to Steve Shirley's logic, it's perfect.