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Gender, Managerial styles, Skills, Leadership, Development
Abstract
The results of this study suggest that self-reported leadership styles of female accountants differ somewhat from the leadership styles reported by male accountants. Females are more likely than males to indicate that they use an interactive style of management called transformational leadership. This leadership style was found to be correlated with several management skills associated with success. Female accountants reported somewhat higher perceived effectiveness on two of these management skills: coaching and developing and communicating. The findings also suggest that female accountants receive more developmental opportunities than do their male colleagues.
Introduction
An ongoing debate has appeared in the management literature over the past two decades as to whether female and male managers use different leadership styles. Through the early 1990s, a growing body of research emerged that concluded there were no gender differences in leadership styles. Several well-known management researchers, including Powell (1990; 1993) and Bass (1981) supported this belief. In 1990, following the publication of a Harvard Business Review article, "Ways women lead" (Rosener, 1990), the previously reached conclusion of no gender differences in leadership styles was called into question (see also Rosener et al., 1990). Even Bass, who had previously been a strong advocate for no female-male differences in leadership styles, began to question his previous conclusions (Bass et al., 1996).
Although the work by Rosener, and more recent studies by Bass, have shaken the prior conclusion of no gender differences in leadership styles, the evidence is not conclusive (Loden, 1985; Grant, 1988; Rosener, 1990; Rosener et al., 1990; Bass et al., 1996). The findings are based on a limited number of studies, and the differences, although statistically significant, are small.
Given the vast body of past research concluding that gender differences in leadership styles do not exist, the most recent findings of gender differences need to be replicated using different samples and research methodologies. The study described in this paper was conducted in response to this need for further research.
Gender differences in leadership styles and management skills were identified based on self-reported data collected from a sample of male and female accountants. Given the method of data collection, it is important to emphasize that the research results do not provide...