Perceptions of leadership style as affected by gender and culture: A cross-national study

Researchers and practitioners have debated whether women managers differ in leadership style from men. Most research on the managerial style of female executives has been conducted in Westernized industrialized cultures or countries. Gender-related management style has received little attention in Latin America. This study explored the influence of leadership style and gender between countries presumed to differ in individualism vs. collectivism. College students (234 American, 276 Mexican) were presented with one of four vignettes of an interaction between a supervisor and subordinate in which gender of the leader and leadership style (task-oriented or relationship-oriented) were crossed. The principal hypotheses were that (1) mean effectiveness ratings of the female leader would be lower than for the male leader; (1A) this effect would be more pronounced among male participants than among female participants; (1B) mean effectiveness ratings would be lowest for vignettes depicting women leaders using the task-oriented leadership style, compared to those depicting women using the relationship-oriented style or men using either style; (2) Mexican participants would rate effectiveness higher for task-oriented leaders vs. relationship-oriented leaders, compared to American participants; and (2A) this effect would vary by the interaction of leader gender and participant gender. However, the only significant effect was a higher effectiveness rating for relationship-oriented leaders than for task-oriented leaders. Results did not differ when various measures based on the Cultural Values Scale were substituted for Country. It was noted that the individualism-collectivism distinction may no longer be relevant to college-student participants, and may at this time be poorly defined and measured.