Gender makes the difference: The moderating role of leader gender on the relationship between leadership styles and subordinate performance

An-Chih Wang, Jack Ting-Ju Chiang, Chou-Yu Tsai, Tzu-Ting Lin and Bor-Shiuan Cheng

Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 2013, vol. 122, issue 2, 101-113

Abstract: Using a predominantly male research and development (R&D) sample and a predominantly female customer service personnel sample, we investigated how authoritarian and benevolent leadership styles interact with leader gender to influence subordinate performance (i.e., task performance, citizenship behavior, and creativity). Our research extends role congruity theory (Eagly & Karau, 2002) by adopting Kelley’s (1972a, 1972b) attribution principles to offer a more comprehensive framework for explaining how leader gender affects the impact of leadership styles on subordinate performance. Our results suggest that the negative relationship between authoritarian leadership and subordinate performance is stronger for female than for male leaders and that the positive relationship between benevolent leadership and subordinate performance is stronger for male than for female leaders. Accordingly, in addition to leaders’ engaging in gender-role congruent behaviors, a useful strategy is to adopt behaviors that are perceived as a positive deviation from their gender role.

Keywords: Leader gender; Authoritarian leadership; Benevolent leadership; Role congruency theory; Attribution theory (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2013
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (15)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:jobhdp:v:122:y:2013:i:2:p:101-113

DOI: 10.1016/j.obhdp.2013.06.001

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