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1 – 10 of over 2000Sanne Feenstra, Janka I. Stoker, Joris Lammers and Harry Garretsen
A key obstacle to women’s advancement to managerial roles and leadership positions is the stereotype of the “good” manager, which is characterized by masculine traits. Although…
Abstract
Purpose
A key obstacle to women’s advancement to managerial roles and leadership positions is the stereotype of the “good” manager, which is characterized by masculine traits. Although this gendered managerial stereotype has been very persistent over the past decades, Powell et al. (2021) recently showed that business students in the USA reported a decreased preference for masculine leadership traits and an increased preference for feminine leadership traits, resulting in a so-called “androgynous” manager profile that contains both masculine and feminine characteristics. This study aims to replicate Powell et al.’s (2021) findings among an older sample of working adults in The Netherlands.
Design/methodology/approach
The present study tests for changes in the managerial stereotype in a sample of 5,542 Dutch employees across 2005, 2010 and 2020.
Findings
In line with Powell et al. (2021), the results confirm employees’ decreased preference for masculine and increased preference for feminine leadership traits in 2020 compared to 2005. Nevertheless, Dutch employees still favored masculine over feminine leadership traits in 2020, contrary to the findings by Powell et al. (2021).
Practical implications
These observed changes in the managerial stereotype could prove to be an important step forward for women’s advancement to management and leadership positions.
Originality/value
With the present study, the authors demonstrate cross-cultural generalizability and conclude that the stereotype of a “good manager” is not only changing among US business students but also among working adults in The Netherlands. Overall, this study strengthens the observation that the stereotype of a “good manager” is becoming less gendered.
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Basak Denizci Guillet, Anna Pavesi, Cathy H.C. Hsu and Karin Weber
The purpose of this study is to examine and discuss whether women executives in the hospitality industry in Hong Kong adopt a feminine, masculine or gender-neutral approach to…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this study is to examine and discuss whether women executives in the hospitality industry in Hong Kong adopt a feminine, masculine or gender-neutral approach to leadership.
Design/methodology/approach
This study focuses on women with positional power in senior-level leadership roles within the hospitality and tourism industry in Hong Kong. A qualitative approach was taken to capture the multiple dimensions of these female executive’s leadership orientations. The participants included 24 women executives.
Findings
Participants’ representations show that women have a multitude of leadership styles that operate on three continua. Not all women executives display leadership orientations that adhere to their indigenous culture values. Individual differences or differences related to the organizational culture are still relevant.
Research limitations/implications
A low number of women in leadership positions in Hong Kong limited the selection process of participants. There might be a selection bias based on that the participants volunteered to participate in the research study and some declined. Findings are based on participants’ memory to reflect on their leadership styles.
Originality/value
Because of the traditional and conventional definitions of leadership, women leaders might feel that they should behave in a masculine way to be taken seriously as a leader. There is a need to understand whether women executives today manage to defeat these stereotypes and comfortably display a feminine approach to leadership. A culture that values and leverages feminine approaches in addition to masculine approaches is likely to have higher engagement and retention of women.
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Sujoko Efferin, Dianne Frisko and Meliana Hartanto
The purpose of this paper is to reveal the relations between management control system (MCS), leadership style and gender ideology. It investigates how a female leader’s gendered…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to reveal the relations between management control system (MCS), leadership style and gender ideology. It investigates how a female leader’s gendered personal values are formed, translated, produced, and reproduced in her leadership style, the subsequent MCS and organisational life.
Design/methodology/approach
This is an interpretive case study that uses the anthropological lens of emic and etic views. The emic view is derived from the interpretation of the company’s subjects. The etic view refers to the interpretation of outsiders (the researchers and previous literatures). The combination of these two views enables an in-depth understanding of the case. Interviews, observation and documentary analysis were used to collect the data.
Findings
In a gendered society, a female leader will gain full respect if she demonstrates leadership behaviours that fit her subordinates’ gendered expectations. The leader’s and followers’ common gendered cultural background will result in leadership and followership that support each other. Gendered leadership produces gendered MCS. Gendered MCS is based on gendered cultural values that direct the behaviour of organisational members to focus on certain competencies based on a single gender perspective. In turn, the gendered MCS sustains and reinforces the gendered leadership.
Research limitations/implications
The study does not focus on the potential value of including feminine measures in MCS. In the future, MCS literatures need to explore the strategic advantages of introducing measures into the system in order to develop feminine competencies in organisation. Furthermore, the processes by which MCS reinforces gendered practices in a society are not explored in the study. Therefore, another important next step is to examine the patterns of the reinforcement processes and their magnitude in strengthening the biases beyond organisational boundaries (e.g. in professional and industrial practices).
Practical implications
This study encourages leaders to consider the use of masculine and feminine characters in MCS to increase organisational effectiveness, build a more humane organisational atmosphere, establish organisational cohesion and harmonise different personal aspirations.
Originality/value
MCS literatures tend to hide gender bias in the system. This study offers insight on how MCS translates, produces and reproduces societal gendered practices in organisational life.
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Patricia Lewis and Yvonne Benschop
This paper aims to examine the discursive constitution of leadership identities by senior women leaders working in the City of London. This study draws on postfeminism as a…
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to examine the discursive constitution of leadership identities by senior women leaders working in the City of London. This study draws on postfeminism as a critical concept to explore this constitution, as it has produced the cultural conditions for the reconfiguration of masculine and feminine gender norms in leadership.
Design/methodology/approach
In a qualitative study, 13 women leaders in positions of power in the City of London were interviewed. Discourse analysis techniques were used to unpack the postfeminist shaping of leadership identities
Findings
At the heart of the leadership identities that senior women leaders construct is a gendered hybridity that is a multifaceted calibration of masculine and feminine attributes and behaviours. Postfeminist discourses of individualism, choice and self-improvement are entangled with discourses of authenticity, relatability and connectivity as particular leadership assets. The gendered hybridity of leadership identities unfolds the possibility for a fundamental makeover of leadership by opening-up space for a transformative change that accommodates women leaders.
Originality/value
To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is among the very few studies that foreground the leadership identities that women leaders construct within the confines of postfeminist gender regimes. It shows how these women invoke authenticity, unfolding possibilities for the transformational change of and political challenge to traditional gendered leadership in their organizations.
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Stacy Blake-Beard, Mary Shapiro and Cynthia Ingols
The purpose of this paper is to explore the relationship between leaders’ expressed traits and their impact on their country’s COVID-19 outcomes. Some leaders are over relying on…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to explore the relationship between leaders’ expressed traits and their impact on their country’s COVID-19 outcomes. Some leaders are over relying on masculine traits and dismissing feminine traits. An alternative – androgynous leadership – supports leaders in drawing from the full portfolio of behaviors.
Design/methodology/approach
This paper has a theoretical approach using an extensive review of the literature.
Findings
Leaders can take a number of actions to fully embrace androgynous leadership. These actions include building a diverse “tempered” team, communicating with respect, recognizing the impact of framing and moving from autopilot to realizing their best androgynous self.
Research limitations/implications
Research limitations include a critique of Bem’s framework as outdated and dichotomous; a categorization of feminine, masculine and neutral behaviors that is determined by the authors; and a focus on leadership style that does not take other dimensions, such as health-care systems, into account.
Practical implications
The authors propose that an “androgynous” leadership style has been used effectively by some political leaders around the globe in the COVID-19 crisis. The COVID-19 context has provided a laboratory for developing and building competence as androgynous leaders.
Social implications
The mental capacity to look at a situation, pause and explicitly select effective behavior is necessary, but oftentimes, it is not put into practice. By not drawing from a larger portfolio of androgynous behaviors, the opportunity for leaders to their best work is missed.
Originality/value
There is an acknowledgement of the benefits of the combination of masculine and feminine leadership traits. There are also clear recommendations supporting leaders in developing their androgynous leadership skills.
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The purpose of this paper is to review six different ways that have been used to “see the elephant” that constitutes the intersection of sex, gender, and leadership.
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to review six different ways that have been used to “see the elephant” that constitutes the intersection of sex, gender, and leadership.
Design/methodology/approach
The proportions of women in positions of power and authority, leader preferences, leader stereotypes, attitudes toward women as leaders, linkages of leadership theories to gender stereotypes, and sex differences in leader behaviour and effectiveness are reviewed.
Findings
The managerial playing field continues to be tilted in favor of men and behaviours associated with the masculine gender stereotype, a phenomenon that occurs despite what leadership theories and field evidence would suggest.
Research limitations/implications
Future research should continue to track trends in proportions, preferences, stereotypes, attitudes, behaviour, and effectiveness pertaining to the intersection of sex, gender, and leadership. Scholars should not limit themselves in the kinds of research methods they apply to this task.
Practical implications
The challenge for organisations is to take advantage of and develop the capabilities of all individuals in leader roles and then create conditions that give leaders of both sexes an equal chance to succeed. The goal should be to enhance the likelihood that all people, women and men, will be effective in leader roles.
Social implications
Leader behaviour should have no gender.
Originality/value
This review encourages scholars to share what they have learned from their own ways of seeing, in this journal and elsewhere, and to listen carefully to what other scholars have to share.
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Nicola Patterson, Sharon Mavin and Jane Turner
The purpose of this paper is to explore the convergence of female entrepreneurship, women in management and leadership fields from a gender perspective to bring a gender…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to explore the convergence of female entrepreneurship, women in management and leadership fields from a gender perspective to bring a gender consciousness to the development and construction of the emerging entrepreneurial leadership theory base.
Design/methodology/approach
A conceptual paper that argues for the convergence of the entrepreneurship and leadership fields to enable an interchange of ideas, and learn from the developments within each field from a gender perspective. Whilst scholars have recently begun to explore the concept of entrepreneurial leadership, these early developments have remained gender blind, gender defensive and gender neutral.
Findings
A central argument is that female entrepreneur leader's experience social role incongruity. In order to be perceived by their followers as credible and legitimate entrepreneurial leaders, women are expected to manage their dual presence across the symbolic spaces of femininity and masculinity, doing gender well and doing gender differently to meet social role expectations of being a woman, whilst also meeting dominant masculine constructions of leadership and entrepreneurship.
Practical implications
This paper extends understandings of entrepreneurial leadership, highlighting the importance of foregrounding gender, to make visible and integrate the historical developments of gender within the entrepreneurship and leadership fields. Both scholars and practitioners must “unlearn” and “rethink” our learnt state of being in relation to gender, leadership and entrepreneurship in order to move beyond the “given” and disrupt masculinities' hierarchical superiority.
Originality/value
The paper argues that blends of agentic and communal behaviours must be recognized as accessible to both women and men for effective entrepreneurial leadership. This will provide female entrepreneurial leaders the fluidity to do both and be something else as a person. Offering understandings of gender to extant gender blind, gender neutral and gender defensive constructions of entrepreneurial leadership will progress understandings of the framework emerging from this conceptualization.
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Nicola Patterson, Sharon Mavin and Jane Turner
This feminist standpoint study aims to make an empirical contribution to the entrepreneurial leadership and HRD fields. Women entrepreneur leaders' experiences of gender will be…
Abstract
Purpose
This feminist standpoint study aims to make an empirical contribution to the entrepreneurial leadership and HRD fields. Women entrepreneur leaders' experiences of gender will be explored through a framework of doing gender well and doing gender differently to unsettle the gender binary.
Design/methodology/approach
Against a backcloth of patriarchy, a theoretical gender lens is developed and a feminist standpoint research (FSR) approach taken in this study. There are five case studies of women entrepreneur leaders operating small businesses across North East England in sectors of IT, law, construction, beauty, and childcare. In each case study a two‐stage semi‐structured interview process was implemented and the women's voices analysed through a framework of doing gender well and differently.
Findings
This paper highlights the complexities of gender experiences offering four themes of women entrepreneurs' experiences of gender within entrepreneurial leadership: struggling with entrepreneurial leadership; awareness of difference; accepting and embracing difference; and responding to difference, which are offered to challenge the gender binary and capture the complexities of how gender is experienced.
Research limitations/implications
The field must begin to shift its focus from the dominant masculine discourse to foster understandings of gender experiences by using gender as an analytical category to enable the field to truly progress.
Social implications
Women are still an under‐represented group within entrepreneurship and within the higher echelons of organisations. This requires greater attention.
Originality/value
This feminist study calls for both scholars and practitioners to analyse critically their underlying assumptions and bring a gender consciousness to their HRD research and practice to understand gender complexities within entrepreneurial leadership and organisational experiences more widely.
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This paper seeks to explore a critique of the limitations of mainstream leadership research and publications and offers a critical management analysis through drawing on a…
Abstract
Purpose
This paper seeks to explore a critique of the limitations of mainstream leadership research and publications and offers a critical management analysis through drawing on a feminist reading of leadership in organizations.
Design/methodology/approach
There has recently been witnessed a growing interest in the promotion of effective leadership within both organizational studies literature and organisational policy as the route to ensuring employee commitment and enhanced organisational performance and the achievement of ever demanding goals and targets. This turn to leadership is represented in both an upsurge of research studies and a proliferation in the promotion of leadership as the organisational panacea. An analysis of the literature on leadership was undertaken, giving due consideration to mainstream and more critical accounts in relation to illustrations drawn from the UK National Health Service (NHS).
Findings
This paper explores mainstream literature on leadership and finds it wanting, in terms of its failure to deliver a common understanding of the concept, in its generally uncritical accounts, and its inability to expose the androcentric nature of the core assumptions within hegemonic discourses of leadership. Drawing on critical feminist readings in relation to the UK NHS, a more critical account of leadership is presented.
Practical implications
Greater awareness is required for the adoption of culturally sensitive and locally‐based approaches that take account of individuals' experiences, identities and power relations and that allows for the presence of a range of masculine and feminine workplace behaviours.
Originality/value
This paper provides an overview of the dominant themes within the literature on leadership as they relate to the UK NHS, and presents a feminist critique of the more subtle ways in which notions of leadership in organisations fail to consider their potential for bias.
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Bonnie Kelinske, Brad W. Mayer and Kuo‐Lane Chen
This study examines the differences between 64 male and 53 female college students in their perception of various benefits of sports participation. Potential benefits of sports…
Abstract
This study examines the differences between 64 male and 53 female college students in their perception of various benefits of sports participation. Potential benefits of sports participation include moral reasoning (caring versus fairness), socialization, competition, health and fitness, and leadership traits (masculine versus feminine). Responses to a questionnaire indicate that there is no difference between males and females on perceived benefits of sports participation with regard to moral reasoning, socialization, competition or health and fitness. There was, however, a significant difference between males and females with regard to competition as a motivating factor to participate in sports. There was also a significant difference between males and females in terms of leadership traits. Males perceived that sports gave them more masculine traits than what females perceived. There was no difference, however, between males and females in their perception of femininity leadership traits from sports participation.
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