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By
Muhammad Usman Janjua
Roll no. 35
I, Muhammad Usman Janjua, hereby declare that the present term project report, titled
‘Gender differences in management styles’ is made by me as a part of course which I
am taking in 6th semester, ‘Principles of Management’. This report is an original work
completed under my supervisor, Dr. Tariq Majeed, and is free from plagiarism. I also
confirm that the report is only prepared for my academic requirement, not for any
other purpose. It might not be used with the interest of the opposite party of the
cooperation.
3
Dedication
Acknowledgement
I acknowledge the efforts of my course instructor, Dr. Tariq Majeed, who is teaching
us Principles of Management in 6th semester. His efforts are highly appreciable in
teaching us this subject.
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Table of Contents
1 Introduction.................................................................................................1
1.1 Background......................................................................................................1
1.2 Importance.......................................................................................................3
4.1 Conclusion.....................................................................................................21
5 References...............................................................................................24
6
6 Vita............................................................................................................25
7
List of Figures
List of Tables
Executive Summary
During a long period of time, it was a common belief among societies that
men possessed several qualities and characteristics that are better for management.
However, with the recent more inflow of women in the management positions in the
organizations, several questions are now appearing: Do the women bring a different
management style in the organizations? Do the women “people oriented style” is
more effective than the traditional “command-and-control” style? Which Management
style is better?
The aim of this report is to look at several researches that described the
managerial styles of male and female. It attempt to define the perceived differences
between them. Then it focuses on the results from the studies on the effectiveness of
managers between the two genders. These results have been analyzed through
readings of several researches.
It has been found through studies that both genders i.e. male and female are
equally effective in the business world. The success of the organization is affected by
a variety of diverse individual factors and has very less to do with the gender
differences. The commonly held perception among the individuals is that the male
managers are more effective than the female managers. This perception about male
managers being more effective bring not only loss to female managers but also to the
organization itself.
In this report, I will explain the gender differences in management styles and
discuss which style is better. As the number of female managers are increasing, can
they bring a change to the business? The advancement preventing barriers for women
will also be discussed. Business leaders should know that gender stereotyping should
be avoided for the peaceful running of the organization.
In the end, I will be discussing some practical examples of two companies.
Both of them are run by 2 founders (1 male and the other female). Their management
styles are discussed. Then a case study is made of a company named ‘Bayer’. Then I
will give some suggestions for good management styles.
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1 Introduction
1.1 Background
Gender plays a very important role in human society. It is an old conception
among people that both males and females have different roles in society. This
concept was true till the Pre- World War I period. At that time, people have no
information about how things need to change as the time passes. So these gender
roles in the world are changing with time.
The world has changed so much that today’s modern society is far more
advanced and complex compared to the old traditional society. The progress of any
society depends on the spiritual relationship between leaders and the followers. We
can find leaders in many forms. They can be managers, entrepreneurs or they just can
be simple employees working in an organization. There is no proper definition of a
leader. But the main factor that distinguishes leaders from followers is the thinking
quality of leaders. There is a clear visible difference between the qualities of leaders
and followers.
There is no such thing as a universal leader. Different kinds of leaders are
assigned for different tasks. But this concept is also not true. Because there are some
situation adaptive leaders, who adapt to various situations and act accordingly. The
basic role of any leader is to guide the followers to achieve mutual goals. These goals
can be classified in various forms. They can be either political or some spiritual goals.
The basic foundation of any society’s progress depends on its leaders
capabilities. If the leader is not capable of doing a specific task to which he or she was
assigned then the whole team under that leader supervision is surely going to collapse.
Therefore the leaders of today’s top societies are considered to be the driving force of
the society. Today, leaders are considered as a valuable assets of a society and
everyone wants to cultivate management and leadership skills in them to be the
leaders.
When a baby is born, the first question which people usually ask is “Is it a boy
or girl?” The baby’s gender determines which characteristics he or she would have. If
the baby is a boy, then he is more likely to be strong and tough in the future. And
more caring, emotional and loving if the baby is a girl. These different characteristics
the individuals maintain their management styles differ a lot.
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12
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1.2 Importance
With more and more women advancing to the top management positions now
a days it becomes a valid question to ask “whether there are any valid stereotypes that
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will prohibit the placement of women climbing the top ladder of an organization?” or
“ How much the performance of an organization will change by a women leading it?”
A lot of researches have been done on this subject and is expanding ever with
time. The answers to these two questions will be provided in this report with the help
of evidence extracted from useful online resources [CITATION 1 \l 1033 ].The subject
of gender discrimination in the management is of highly interest these days. Due to
the advancement of the world and the awareness among the general public, the
practices once considered legal and ethical are now being abolished. The women are
now allowed to work outside and there are some women who are leading some of the
great companies today.
The men and women both do the management responsibilities completely
different. And we are interested in finding out how much differences actually exist
among the male and female’s way of management. In the recent years, more and more
foreign female student’s perusing a masters in management degree are being offered
scholarships at great universities throughout the world. Comparing to very small
number of scholarships given to male students.
It clearly indicates that the world is bracing for something change to occur in
the management chain of organizations. It is very important to learn the stereotype
leveled against women as commanders of their organizations. Furthermore, this is an
area which requires extensive research and proven facts to develop lasting mitigating
measures.
refers to the behaviors, roles constructed by society, activities and norms that a
particular society considers appropriate for men and women [CITATION 2 \l 1033 ].
It has been an old practice to distinguish between sex and gender. Sex can be
more precisely defined as a biological characteristic dealing with genetic variation
among individuals. The main formulation of the chromosomes pairing lead to the
formulation of genetic variation among individuals. Gender can be considered as a
multi-dimensional construct that consists of different roles, behaviors and experiences
of individuals based on their presenting sex. Gender can be simply indicated by
observing the behavior of men and women. However, since gender is a
multidimensional, it consists of much more than biological sex. Rather, gender is a
complex phenomenon.
There are two types of ways for observing gender i.e. sex typing and gender
stereotyping. These phenomenon occurs from the early age. Children observe which
activities are related to which sex and continues to process information in terms of
gender schema. On the other hand, children are often more exposed to sex-typing
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when in school. If parents clear the facts which their children are storing in their
minds by observing others positive social change will be promoted.
Gender also includes the social responsibility and the interaction with others
of individuals in a society. These ideas regarding gender are culturally accepted and
will definitely change in different cultures. If we see this fact historically we would
come to know that men always have high social status in a society compared to
women meaning men have more opportunities and wealth than females. Due to the
recent change in the views of the society about the gender, the consideration of gender
differences and management is a topic worthy of discussion.
2.2 Gender
Influences on
Behavior
We have recently witnessed a resurgence of interest among the unstipulated
public in gender differences in various aspects of human functioning. As the
organizations have experienced this huge influx of women into the working life
researchers have been studying such gender differences [CITATION 5 \l 1033 ].
Adler and Izraeli were two feminist writers of their time. According to them,
there are two basic contrasting views regarding women in management. One is the
equity view and the other is the complementary-contribution view. The first view i.e.
Equity view is based on the assumption of similarity between male and female and it
strives to provide equal access and identical norms to both men and women.
According to this view all men and women must be treated equally and so is the case
with their duties and responsibilities. If a certain group of men can perform a certain
task or a job then no matter what this view states that the woman certainly can do the
same task provided their personal non-willingness to do that. America is the most
developed nation in this world. The “melting pot” metaphor usually used for the
United States is usually used in this context. Despite of such diversity, both male and
females are treated equally.
The other view, complementary-contribution view, assumes differences
between male and female and strives to recognize the value of these differences.
There is a prolong debate going on around the world since its presentation between
the two views , however, provided the empirical evidence provided by the numerical
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2.3 Gender
Stereotypes
It is a well-known fact but nobody would like to discuss it that adult men and
women are different in terms of Psychological behaviors. The society likes to
determine the gender differences based on the genetically differences and on the
socialization of the individuals.
The difference in the real and the expected behavioral properties in the men
and women play a major role in the real life scenarios. However with the
advancement of the world in the education, it’s a proven fact that the women who
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study MBA as an education pursuing a managerial career develop that good much
managerial qualities as defined by the masculine stereotype [CITATION 6 \l 1033 ].
Studies that described the evaluation of the managers by their peers, bosses
and by themselves have found that there are huge differences in the way men and
women lead. The women managers tend to do their respective managerial tasks in a
much participative way whereas male managers are more democratic, and laissez-
faire.
Laissez- faire leadership is a let them do it style, meaning the manager let the
people do as they chose. The female managers lack this quality. No evidence has been
found on the differences in the managerial styles between men and women based on
their reliance on the strong, deep or close relationships with their team members. Also
we cannot classify male and female managers based on some specific task definition.
At the same time, women are better at “Transformational Leadership Style”.
Transformational leadership style is a theory of leadership where a leader
works to identify some needed change among their teams , then the leader creates a
vision to guide the change and then finally he or she execute the change with
committed members of the team. It is basically an integral part of full Range
Leadership model. However, it might not be wrong to say that women and men do not
differ greatly in their organizational Effectiveness.
Organizational effectiveness is the concept about how well or productive an
organization is in achieving the pre-determined goals set by it. In a more recent work,
Kabacoff (1998) completed his research on the gender differences in the management
styles. In his work, he analyzed 900 pairs of managers from opposite sexes, working
at similar positions, within the same organization and observed their several traits of
management styles and their organizational effectiveness.
However, his work casts shadow on the participative leadership also known as
Democratic leadership of the female. His work also showed that female managers are
more concerned about the interpersonal and task oriented styles, while at the same
time male managers tend to seem more concerned about “vision- creation”. In general
we can say males were more innovative compared to females.
Despite of this amazing work on the current topic under discussion by great
people of the past, there are some drawbacks that this report intends to overcome.
First, the research done to study the behavioral differences in the management styles
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between male and females was done solely based on the opinions and thoughts of a
small number of managers, peers and bosses.
The gender stereotypes may affect these judgments. Especially at male
dominant offices where males took females as a women rather than a colleague or a
boss. The stereotyping problem in defining our differences between male and female
managers can be simply avoided by comparing data from whole organizations rather
than that extracted from a small quantity of people. Just by looking at the recent
increase in the percentage of females being pulled into the top job positions, we can
observe that the gender differences in behaviors do exist.
Second, the managerial jobs that are usually done by women will be discussed
further. Unfortunately, such findings have been neglected due to the increase presence
of women at positions like HR than engineering. The individual level studies done on
this subject forgets to take into account the stereotype factors due to selection into
different managerial areas cannot be done according to these studies, they are not able
to differentiate the fact that whether the extent to which these managerial differences
are from the difference in the leadership qualities or due to the differences in the
challenges that are faced by males and females at job.
These studies do not contain any information about the presence of women at
management positions of different departments. So, instead of comparing individual
differences between male and female in management styles we can simply analyses
the different policies for male and female for management positions in companies.
The reason is that due to this stereotype concept which take female as women rather
than a colleague, boss or a leader , if a women is handled a certain manager
responsibility she will also be handled a dozens of some other responsibilities. She
will be expected to complete all the tasks just because she was a female and was
provided with a management position.
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females compared to males. On the other hand, men adopts a more strict style of
management.
We can see from the above discussion that women have better managerial
styles. If we go in depth for a second and ask a question “What are the possible
reasons behind these differences?” Women have to face hurdles to get to the top levels
of management so this can become their motivation of maintaining a very strong
image over male management leaders. The general differences in the management
styles of the two genders are listed in Table 3.1.
1 Transactional Transformational
Less Autocratic More
2 Autocratic less Democratic
Democratic
3 Assertive Flexible
4 Task-Oriented People-Oriented
5 Competitive Cooperative
6 Self-Contained Expressive
2.5 Hypotheses on
the
Organizational
Consequences of
Sex-
Differentiated
Managerial
Styles
This section deals with the answer to question, are workplaces having females
as managers tend to run differently or the same as those in which there are males as
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managers. We need to take a look at how the labor relationships at work field should
be if there exits individual leadership differences in the males and females
[ CITATION 7 \l 1033 ].
Some of them will be discussed shortly below. Of course, not all those
qualities that an individual should possess implies to the organizational level but we
will not take that into account, at least here. There is no common ground for defining
whether these qualities should be task based or based on the organizational norms and
terms.
influence the behavior of their subordinates. They achieve their leadership goals by
keeping the morale of their employees high. For example, if some of their employee
did good work they congratulate him or her. For them, their employees matter most to
them. They create a feeling of responsibility within their employees which makes
them to achieve their goals and objectives. On the other hand, less interpersonally
oriented managers do not rely on these qualities to achieve the organizations goals.
Now if we look this quality from the glasses of a gender stereotype, it clearly
suggests that women tend to be more interpersonal oriented compared to men. We
observe direct personal interactions between managers and employees in firms with
leaders having interpersonal style of management. The presence of more woman at
high positions will promote the development of this trait more.
On the other hand, male leaders do not depend on the interpersonal
relationships to progress their leadership. They just want a task to be done without
realizing the needs and the problems their employees might face in the process of
doing an action. They are more concerned about the outcomes then about the
conditions under which a certain task can be done to achieve these goals. So we will
find very small number of organizations having male as managers promoting
interpersonal relationships.
The overall progress of an organization depends on the several factors not just
on the decision making process. The managers are responsible for providing a certain
direction in which their employees proceed to achieve the goals of the organization.
So, it’s the responsibility of managers to provide a caring environment for their
employees. The female managers does the jobs and we often find organizations
providing a very friendly environment to its employees where females are in
management positions.
Hypothesis 2: More personal interactions occur between managers and
employees at organization with more women in management positions.
change are qualified as more democratic managers. Whereas those who adopt a
directive approach , taking everything in their hands and take all the decisions by
themselves without even consulting their subordinates are referred to as Auto-cratic
managers.
This later type is mostly associated with masculine managers according to
stereotypes, characterized by dominance and control. On the other hand, the
democratic type is most often related to the feminine stereotype, emphasizing a higher
involvement of all of the workers in the decision making process. The democratic
style is preferred over the auto-cratic type of management.
It’s a general desire in every human being that they must be heard. The same
applies to the workers in any organization. They want to be respected so that they
could further work for the same organization in the future. Good managers are those
who listen to their sub-ordinates. Unfortunately, due to the dominance desire in the
men, they really find it hard dealing with the scenarios where they have been given
the responsibility by their superiors to take some serious decisions. They won’t care if
someone does agree with them or not. They will utilize the power they had and will
take action.
There are some male leaders which do listen but here we are talking about the
majority cases and the fact is the majority of them do not want to consult. Females on
the other hand due to their genetic soft feelings in them want to make sure that each of
the worker who works under them do not feel that he or she is being ignored in the
company’s decision making processes. They want their employees of the organization
to fully realize that their opinions matter.
Hypothesis 3: The higher presence of women in the management
departments of organizations should consult more to their employees before making
decisions.
Now that we know that the cultural values in different countries affect the
leadership norms, let us now take into account the gender differences here. It should
be noted that most of the research work done on finding the gender differences in
leadership have been conducted in the United States. In the 1990s, the United States
has still an unequal distribution of males and females in the labor force.
According to US Department of Labor report in 1991, there were about 80%
in the labor force. Whereas under 60% women were in the labor force. This shows
that’s males work more outside their homes than females. This perfectly fits the
stereotype concepts discussed previously in the report. According to theorists such as
Williams and Best [1982], due to this unequal distribution in the work force between
male and female the American males are still characterized by Agentic qualities
more so than American females. In the work place, the males tend to show different
managerial qualities than females.
Above we considered the case for the United States, where there are same
cultural values. However, this same may not be true for a country with different
cultural values, characteristics and practices. The Swedish unit for equal opportunity
statistics [1991] reported that almost 90% of men and about 85% of females in
Sweden are in work force. Since the percentage of both genders working outside is
very high in Sweden, both male and female may be equally characterized by Agentic
and communal characteristics.
The result of that could be similar leadership qualities of men and women.
Considering this as a true, we could find an interactive effect between country and
gender on leadership behaviors and styles. In general we would say that the
interaction of gender and country will demonstrate a clear effect on the degree of
emphasis placed on leadership behaviors and styles.
2.7 Advancement
Preventing
Barriers for
Women
In the above all discussion we compared the gender differences in the
management for male and females. We have seen how both of these compare in the
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process of management. In this section, our focus will be on the barriers that prevent
women from carrier advancements. These are as follows.
We have seen that most of the management work done in the past was done by
male. Women was neglected of the jobs and were not provided with any opportunities.
But we have seen that with the increase in awareness in the world, the number of
women in the work force has increased. The effects of the past still exists in our
current job force system. The career advancement opportunities are less for women
compared to men. A recent study by Tharenou (1999) estimates that although the half
of the workforce in developing countries is of women but only 5 % of the women
make it to the top management positions.
The worrying fact is that although there seem to be equal entry-level
opportunities for both women and men in all organizations but the road for females to
the management positions is often blocked. While it is an undeniable fact that the
economy of any developed country depends partially on men and women, the women
still struggle to get to the executive levels in the current 21st century.
The phenomenon described above is known as the glass ceiling effect, the
term originally used by a Wall Street journalist in 1986. Glass-Ceiling effect is known
as the blockage of women from reaching to the top positions in an organization.
Researchers- Henderson and Bialeschki (1995) - did an intensive study to
identify the career advancement barriers for women in the real work place. They did a
nation- wide survey including women from recreation and leisure industry. The
purpose of the study was to observe the behavior which are the main barriers for
preventing women from advancing in career. It was found that the main factors
preventing women from advancement were Gender Discrimination and Stereotyping.
More than half of the women reported that they were sexually harassed. In addition to
these main factors, other factors that contributed to the career advancement were “No
Training for Women”,” lack of mentors” and “ Exclusion of women from only male
networks”. Figure 2.3, shows the difference in the placement positons of women and
men in management positions.
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more interested in the big picture. Glen is aged 65 and McArthur is 41. For McArthur,
Glen is her mentor but not only her working partner.
“Lingua Trip” is another such example. The company was founded in 2015 by
Mariana Mogilko and Dmitry Pistolyako. The company basically teaches students to
learn foreign languages to help them study abroad. Mariana possess a participative
style of management. She is involved in the personal meetings with her employees
and to solve the company’s problems by adopting a friendly behavior. Dmitry is very
directive in his behavior. He expects his employees to fully understand and complete
the task he provides them. Both of them mixes their style of management and are
running with great success.
innovation and product design, manufacturing and distribution channels that is why
“Bayer” wants more number of these people in management places in his company to
shape our decision making and therefore our future. So is it all about customers?
Michael tells peter about other reasons. Talent pools are changing fast. The
number of highly educated people in the growth of markets is increasing with record
numbers of graduates in China and India. Women now represent 60% of the
university graduates in US, Europe and many other countries around the globe. They
study business, law, Science, Agriculture and also IT and Engineering. We can’t afford
to neglect this talent. So is it all about customers and talent?
Michael explains that it’s also about innovation. We know from studies and
surveys that groups including a range of views background and experiences
consistently outperform groups of like-minded experts. A good mix of gender and
cultural will help them to innovate. Peter wants to know how cultural and gender
balance in management really benefits the bottom line.
Michael states that the companies with the highest gender and cultural balance
in management stand out. Over 2 years these companies achieved on average 53%
more return on equity and even margins 14% higher than the least balanced
companies. Peter is amazed. He understands that it’s about customers, talents,
innovation and the bottom line. He wants to know how he can explain this to his team.
Michael suggests just to book a strategic debate with his team. There he can share
everything he has learned.
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building are the important parameters for effective organizational management. It was
a misconception in the past that women are insecure and are unable to get engaged in
a team play behavior. While the todays stereotype believe that women are
relationship-builders and believe in sharing power and knowledge with their
employees.
We can say from this that the traits which were described as the women
weaknesses and used to mention women ill-suited for top jobs, are the very basic
qualities and characteristics that male executives are expected to possess. Helgesen
(1990), suggests that male and female male and female managers manage in sharply
different ways, and supports the fact that female style is a way more superior, since
mother is particular, are better team players than male team players.
As a result, women form organizations where the leader is at the center instead
of at the top. Helgesen further pointed out that due to the women involvement in
household matters like handling babies, raising children give them prioritization in a
leadership role that males typically do not possess.
The number of women in the managerial positions has increased in almost all
countries in the world. This increased number of women in the management positions
in recent years has given birth to leadership-gender issue. Although, many researchers
have found out that males and females differ in their management styles, some still
argue that these differences are very small and there are no significant differences in
management styles between men and women. They argue that the organizations are
gender-neutral structures which provide the same number and type of opportunities
for men and women. It’s just in the minds of people that men and women must be
perceived entirely different in the organizations on the basis of gender only.
There is no definition of a universal leader but there are some common
qualities and characteristics of successful leaders composed of both male and female
managerial styles. So organizations and top leadership need to re-define their
definition of effective management styles leading to the evaluation of the interactive
style. Talking in this context, the females are expected to possess the respective male
characteristics to emerge as effective leaders.
The previous research further specified that women tend to possess
transformational styles of management and we have stated that transformational style
of management is an effective style. So we can say that women can emerge as
effective leaders. However, the typical stereotype conception challenge the female
35
5 References
[1] Eagly, A.H. and M.C. Johannesen-Schmidt (2001): “The leadership Styles of
Women and Men,” Journal of Social Issues, 57, pp.781-797.
[2] Gender and Leadership By Kathryn E. Eklund, Erin S. Barry and Neil E.
Grunberg
[3] Mary Clisbee, " Gender Differences in Leadership Style: A
Literature Analysis", Vol. 3, No. I
[4] Sex Differences in Managerial Style: From Individual Leadership to
Organisational Labour Relationships, Eduardo Melero, Discussion Paper No.
1387 November 2004
[5] Cuadrado Guirado, Isabel & Navas, Marisol & Molero, Fernando & Ferrer,
Emilio & Francisco Morales, J. (2012), Gender Differences in Leadership Styles
as a Function of Leader and Subordinates' Sex and Type of Organization. Journal
of Applied Social Psychology
[6] Sex Differences in Managerial Style: From Individual Leadership to
Organisational Labour Relationships, Eduardo Melero, Discussion Paper No.
1387 November 2004
[7] Bennett, Mick. 1977a. Testing management theories cross-culturally. Journal of
Applied Psychology, 62: 578-81.
[8] Dunlap, D. M., & Schmuck, P. A. (Eds.). (1995). Women leading in education.
Albany, NY: State University Press.
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6 Vita
I was born in 1997 at the end of the 20th century. With the support of a loving
and caring family, I was able to establish a strong ground base in my early school
days. I remained the top student at my school for straight 10 years.
Since my childhood, I had a dream of finding a way of getting into Air Force. I
was unable to fulfil this dream because of my eye-sight weakness. Then I applied to
military and got rejected too. After so much disappointments, I finally decided to join
an Engineering school to shape my military dreams in a new way.
I was able to design a V-10 Engine on CREO- Parametric by myself alone.
Currently, I am designing a Variable Compression (VC) - Turbo Engine. I intend to
polish my Designing skills so that one day I am able to design a ‘Fighter Aircraft’.
Along with my modeling skills, I have also developed some technical skills
too. Presenting Apple Products at my university was one of them. I worked on several
projects that required report writing in thesis format. The current Report is an
example.