ترکیب جنسیتی زیردست مدیر و درک تاثیر سبک رهبری بر احساسات، عزت نفس و تعهد سازمانی

A theoretical model was developed to investigate the relationships among subordinate–manager gender combinations, perceived leadership style, experienced frustration and optimism, organization-based self-esteem and organizational commitment. The model was tested within the context of a probabilistic structural model, a discrete Bayesian network, using cross-sectional data from a global pharmaceutical company. The Bayesian network allowed forward inference to assess the relative influence of gender combination and leadership style on the emotions, self-esteem and commitment consequence variables. Further, diagnostics from backward inference were used to assess the relative influence of variables antecedent to organizational commitment. The results showed that gender combination was independent of leadership style and had a direct impact on subordinates' levels of frustration and optimism. Female manager–female subordinate had the largest probability of optimism, while male manager teamed with a male subordinate had the largest probability of frustration. Furthermore, having a female manager teamed up with a male subordinate resulted in the lowest possibility of frustration. However, the findings show that the gender issue is not simply female managers versus male managers, but is concerned with the interaction of the subordinate–manager gender combination and leadership style in a nonlinear manner.

A recent study (Fletcher et al., 2000) claimed that women leaders especially place value on building and fostering relationships with their supervisees in order to realize performance outcomes. But this focus has not been appreciated as “real” work, being relegated to things “women do” or they are being “nice” and “helpful” (Fletcher et al., 2000) or worse being considered as a negative practice. However, no study to date has demonstrated that female managers have been able to significantly impact, either positively or negatively, organization-based self-esteem or organizational commitment. Furthermore, no study has investigated the impact of gender combinations of managers and subordinates on organizational outcomes. Also, the role of subordinate–manager gender combinations and perceived leadership style on subordinates' emotions of optimism and frustration is an unstudied area. Knowledge of these influences has significant ramifications for both theory and practice. The structure of the paper is to first outline a theoretical framework while highlighting important gaps in the literature. Specifically, gender combination and interactions, leadership styles, emotions, organization-based self-esteem and organizational commitment are reviewed. The initial section concludes with a statement of the objectives of the study. Next, methodological issues are addressed, with an emphasis on the requirements of causal claims and the appropriateness of Bayesian networks. The Results section presents a causal model, in the form of a Bayesian network, and the probabilistic inference findings based on network interventions. Finally, a discussion of results, implications and limitations conclude the paper.

The lack of a direct relationship between gender and leadership style provides partial support for the contention that management guidelines are not related to gender alone (Moncrief et al., 2000). That is, it is not simply whether the leader is male or female that is important. What is important is the gender combination of manager and subordinate, as the interaction between manager and subordinate impacts on other variables. Our study found an interacting set of relationships involving subordinate–manager combinations and leadership styles. For example, we found that the female subordinate–female manager combination with transformational leadership style had the most favorable set of probabilities for positive emotions, self-esteem and commitment (see the influence indexes in Table 3). But the female subordinate–female manager gender combination with the management-by-exception style had the least favorable profile of probabilities for the consequence variables. Further, the male subordinate–female manager combination did not show similar results with the female subordinate–female manager combination. Furthermore, our study showed gender combination to have a minor impact under the high commitment intervention (influence indexes ranged from 100 to 106) and under the low commitment intervention (influence indexes ranged from 94 to 106). In contrast, leadership style, frustration, optimism and self-esteem had much greater influences on the commitment state (see Fig. 3 and Fig. 4). In general, the findings demonstrate that it is not simply female versus male managers, but a more complex nonlinear interaction of the subordinate–manager gender combination and leadership style.