An Empirical Study On Career Barriers Of Female Managers Based On LMX Theory

Career barriers are the one of the most important research areas of women career development. With the value of women managers are more and more recognizied, their career barriers is also become the focus in the organization. The LMX quality interacting with their supervisors has great influence on manager's career development at the middle and lower level. Leaders, as the delegation of the every level of the organization, play a critical role in the career development of their subordinates.Hence, this paper introduces LMX theory to explore the mechanism of the impact of gender on career barriers. Through collecting the sample data from different members led by the same leader, this paper tested the mediation role of integrative responses about LMX between gender of member and their career barriers by Structural Equaton Model (SME).And furthermore this paper explore the moderating role of the leaders'gender and enterprise culture between subordinate gender and career barriers, and the mechanism concerning the influence of LMX on the career barriers. At last, this paper tests the relationship between career barriers and career outcome. Conclusions are drawn through data analysis are as follows:(1) Female manager perceived more serious barriers.(2) LMX exert mediation role between subordinate gender and career barriers. Copared to male, female managers obtained less social exchange through the interacton with their supervisors, and therefore the quantity of the external resourses and internal motion.(3) Supervisor's gender has significant moderating role between gender and LMX. Specifically, LMX quality of female managers'interation with their male supervisor is less than male counterparts significantly. However, female manager will obtain more LMX quality than their male collegues, but their difference is not significant.(4) Supervisor support and psychological empowerment have mediation role between LMX and career barriers. LMX have indirect influence on career barriers through supervisor support and empowerment.(5) Some of career barriers, such as supervisor support and managerial motivation relate with career outcome significantly.Empirical studies from the aboved five perspect demonstrate that gender of managers have important impact on the career barriers. Moreover, this paper offers a valuable explaination for gender similarity between leader and subordinate from leader-member dyad level and certificates the moderating role of enterprise culture between subordinate gender and LMX. Furthermore, this paper explores how leaders bypass the formal systems to treat female and male subordinates justly.