Implicit Leadership Theories free essay sample

Since the beginning of leadership literature, many researchers and studies tried to explain effective leadership from different perspectives. Early studies focused on the identification of traits that distinguished leaders from followers. Despite many studies have been carried out in the field, there was no universal list of traits presented containing characteristics that would guarantee success of leaders (Lussier Achua, 2004). This failure led to the shift of attention towards behavioral leadership theories. Researchers tried to identify differences in the behavior of effective and ineffective leaders. Although several widely-used behavioral models have been built up, such as Mintzberg’s leadership theory, there was no ultimate agreement among researchers of the field, because studies generated mixed results (Lussier Achua, 2004; Kenney et al. , 1994). As a result, scholar’s interest turned towards contingency leadership theories, which aim to explain the required leadership style, given certain leader traits and/or behaviors, followers and situation Categories not only provide shared systems of names, but also help individuals to simplify the external world. We will write a custom essay sample on Implicit Leadership Theories or any similar topic specifically for you Do Not WasteYour Time HIRE WRITER Only 13.90 / page This simplification is especially important, since individuals are incapable of remembering on all the relevant information observed about an individual. When the stimulus had been compared to the potential preexisting categories, and placed in one of the categories based on the similarity to its members, in the following the characteristics of the category, not the observed information itself helps the individual to interpret the stimulus’ behavior. With other words, categorization helps the organizational sensemaking process (Lord et al. , 1984; Foti Lord, 1987; Phillips, 1984; Kenney et al. , 1994). This is why ILTs do not represent objective realities (Epitropaki Martin, 2004). According to Lord et al. (1984), the matching process of the stimulus to the preexisting categories is an automated, unconscious process. While simplifying the concept of ILTs, Kenney at al. (1994) acknowledge that leadership lies in the eyes of the observer. As they explain, follower responsiveness is the key to effective leadership. In order for a leader to be able to utilize his or her power, the significant moderating effect of leadership perception needs to be considered. Keller (2003) also points out that the importance of ILTs originates from its potential influence on the leader-follower interaction. Keller (2000, 2003) mention in her studies that the formulation of the schemas are not only affected by early childhood experiences, parent-child relationships, and parental traits and behaviors, but personality traits of the observer (Lord et al. , 1999) as well. Although this suggests that there might be significant differences in the different preexisting categories of different individuals, these differences remained unexamined to date. More attention has been paid to the perception differences on country level. Numerous studies detail the effect of culture on ILTs (Dorfman et al. , 2004; House Javidan, 2004). Moreover, studies also mention the potential effect of the gender of the stimulus on the observants’ perceptions (Phillips, 1984; Lord et al. , 1984; Cronshaw Lord, 1987). The following chapter will further elaborate on the relationship between ILTs and the effect of cultural differences on it, and the effect of the leader’s gender on ILTs. Implicit Leadership Theories and Culture The cross-cultural literature has very often drawn a strong link between culture and leadership styles. Shaw (1990) explained in his study how culture effects leadership on three fields: in the content of employee/manager schemas, in the structure of schemas, and in the automatic or controlled way of information-processing of individuals. His study concludes that there are culturally influenced differences in leadership prototypes across different cultures. These different prototypes are usually referred to as Culturally Endorsed Implicit Leadership Theories (CLTs) (Koopman, den Hartog Konrad, 1999). Dorfman, Hanges Brodbeck (2004) examined in their study whether the structure and content of cultural belief systems will be reflected in the CLTs as well. They expected to have positive relationship between cultures and CLTs based on the argumentation that over time, members of the same cultural clusters start to share common beliefs about leaders, they develop leadership prototypes. These common leadership clusters are the function of the common values, expectations and behaviors of the given culture. They used data gathered during the GLOBE project to find evidence for their hypothesis. Their findings show that the societies studied had a unique profile concerning the culturally endorsed implicit theory of leadership (House at al. 004). The findings also show that the differences in CLTs across cultures are more strongly associated with the cultural values (Should Be items on the questionnaire) than with cultural practices (As Is items on the questionnaire). As Dorfman, Hanges Brodbeck (2004, p. 701) explain, this finding seems to be logical, since â€Å"values reflect an idealized state of what should be and, therefore, ought to c orrespond to individuals’ implicit beliefs regarding idealized leadership attitudes†. Studies examining CLTs have three shortcomings. First of all they are usually U. S. based, and aim to set up leadership prototypes based on the U. S. sample (Schein, 1973, 1975; Brenner et al. 1989; Heliman et al. 1989). Other studies, although numerous, base their research on the findings of the GLOBE study (Koopman et al. 1999; Dorfman House, 2004; House et al. 2002; Dorfman et al. 2004; Paris, 2004). Most of the publishing experts belong to the GLOBE researcher circle, thus publishing studies with very similar content. The third limitation of these studies was the lack of combination of ILTs with the culture and gender dimensions. Although Schein and Muller already realized these shortcomings, they only compared the U. S. with two developed Western-European countries, Great Britain and the U. S. The current study aims to replicate the research in two different cultural settings, the Netherlands, and a former-socialist country, Hungary. Implicit Leadership Theories and Gender Although the number of female managers has significantly increased in the last decades, it is still behind the balanced representation that has already been achieved in the higher education. This is especially true for top management positions (Nagy, 2001). Whereas the number of female managers was 15% in Hungary in 2004 based on the data presented by Kienbaum Kft. , in Netherlands this number was 25% in 2002 according to the of the Emancipatiemonitor 2004. Academics seeking for explanation of this phenomena identified several different groups of reasoning. Costa, Terracciano and McCrae (2001) mention two different sets of explanation in their study. The biological theories draw historical and evolutionary reasoning for the differences between the two sexes. Due to biological reasons, such as childbirth, women hold more nurturing characteristics than men. On the other hand social psychological theories argue that most gender differences are due to the adoption of gender roles of a particular culture. According to these explanations these differences might be the reasons for the unequal distribution of management between the two genders. Nagy (2003) mentions three sets of explanations, called gender, organization, and system. Gender refers to the unequal expectations, stereotypes and prejudice held by all levels of the society towards women. According to this explanation, instead of considering the actual performances of individuals, the stereotypes are the determinants in women’s promotion to managerial positions. Organization refers to the fact that the number of women in top management is very slight, as a result they tend to suffer from tokenism. They are held as a token of their gender, they are placed in the light and evaluated more critically than usual. Gender and organization interact with each other in the limited career opportunities for women, and are supported by the social and institutional system as well. Wajcman (1988) identified two potential explanations in her influential book on female managers. One of them is the limited human capital pool of women to fulfill the managerial role. According to the human capital theory women, by voluntarily choosing child caring activities, invest less in their human capital. As a result, they lack the necessary qualifications to be promoted to managerial positions. This set of explanation has been falsified by the fact that women participate in higher education on the same level with men, and their occupational aspirations are similar to that of the other gender. Despite these findings, the previously mentioned gender gap in management still exists. Furthermore, as Wajcman explained, evidence shows that women need to outperform men in order to get promoted. The other group of theories focus on personality traits, cognition, behaviors, and individual attitudes towards the job. According to this theory, the managerial role by its nature better fits to men than to women. This set of explanation gave birth to a large number of studies. The first experiments of Schein (1973, 1975) found that both male and female respondents viewed management in male terms. She concluded based on her results that the stereotype of men better fitting to managerial roles might be a major barrier for women to get promoted to managerial positions. The replication of the study in 1989 by Brenner, Tomkiewicz and Schein, however, showed different results. Male respondents still stereotyped management as being a masculine occupation, however female respondents perceived that men and women were equally likely to possess traits necessary for successful management. Since the previously mentioned studies were all U. S. based, Schein and Muller repeated the survey in different cultural settings. The research was carried out in 1992 in Germany, Great Britain and U. S. Findings showed that sex typing of the managerial position largely diverge among the countries. In Germany, where the number of female managers is very low in comparison to the other two countries studied, female respondents sex type management almost as much as male respondents do. On the other hand female respondents in the U. S. , where a large increase in female participation in management has been achieved, do not sex type management. These results show a significant progress in sex typing in the U. S. however the leader role is still viewed stereotypically in masculine terms especially by male respondents. As a result, women may not be considered for promotion to managerial positions as often as men are, even though they might possess the same characteristics and social capital. While studying personality traits and behavior as a possible cause for the limited number of women in managerial positions, some concerns have been brought whether women manage differently from men. Studies of this question present contradictory results. Van Engen (2001) described in her book the wo different sets of arguments academics represent. According to the first view women manage differently from men, men using more task-oriented, while women using more people-oriented style. The findings of van Engen also supports this view. She found that men tend to use more masculine, while women more feminine type of leadership. However, only 1% of the variance in the leadership styles could be explained by gender differences. On the other hand researchers favoring the similarity position state that men and women manage in similar ways. Nagy and Wajcman both found evidence for this view. Based on the findings of Nagy (2001) the values of both male and female managers are very close to each other, rather favoring the masculine leadership style. She claimed in her study that instead of making a distinction between masculine and feminine values in management, one should only focus on general managerial values. In a similar study carried out in 2003 Nagy failed to find difference in the leadership style of the two genders again, since both groups claimed to have participative values. On the other hand, still a large proportion of respondents stated that there is a distinguishable masculine and feminine type of leadership. This finding shows the strong presence of sex stereotypes towards managers. The research carried out by Wajcman (1988) shows very similar results. She found that individual differences within the groups of men and women managers far more outweight the differences found between the two groups. She concluded that there is no such thing as feminine leadership style, rather women adopt to the requirements and characteristics of the male management style. She found furthermore that sex role stereotyping was very strong even despite the lack of actual differences. These stereotypes, as described earlier, are one of the primary reasons for the limited number of women in managerial positions, especially on the top. However, this limited number of female leaders is not only an effect, but a cause of inequality as well. The previously mentioned studies showed that men tend to possess more sex stereotypical views towards female managers than women do. If men, guided by their perceptions, are likely to act in a way that preserves male domination and advantages, male supremacy in managerial positions can be a primary cause of workplace inequalities (Wajcman, 1988). Getting to managerial positions is not the only difficulty women have to face during their working career. Sex segregation in the labor market not only occurs vertically leading to the glass ceiling, but also horizontally, generating occupational sex segregation (Wajcman, 1988; Koncz, 2002; Reskin Roos, 1990). Statistics show that women tend to be overrepresented in occupations of lower prestige and less salary, such as being nurses, as opposed to the overrepresentation of men among doctors. A very interesting experiment has been carried out by Williams (1989) about men and women in nontraditional occupations. She studied the state of female marines and male nurses, both occupations being highly sex segregated in the U. S. While women in the marines faced barriers of discrimination in both written and unwritten rules, male were welcomed in the nursing occupation: instead of being negatively discriminated, they were even better treated by physicians than female nurses. Findings show that even though some women get to the same positions as men, they tend to have less responsibility (Wajcman, 1988), and lower salary (Koncz, 2002) than men. Also, getting to top level or prestigious positions highly depends on one’s social networks, which is usually a men’s network. Women, because of their gender, are excluded from this chain. For instance when my father joined the Rotary Club and came home from the first meeting, I asked him about how the meeting went, what the club was about, and whom the members were. He admitted that there were no women members of the club at all. As a reason he explained that all the individual clubs had to follow certain guidelines, but besides these they were allowed to create their individual regulations. One of their rules was that women could become a member under the condition that another women member recommended her. Not surprisingly no women could make it to the membership. Hypothesis The above analysis discussed how stereotyping, and its behavioral manifestation, discrimination acts as a major barrier for women at the workplace. This might be a reason for the limited number of female managers. The current study aims to study stereotyping in the Netherlands and Hungary, two countries having different historical, cultural, social and legislative backgrounds concerning the state of women. First of all the picture on successful managers will be compared based on the data gathered in both countries. Later on the stereotypic thinking will be investigated by comparing the successful manager picture to both the male manager and female manager pictures in both countries. We suppose that the characteristics of male managers will be closer to the characteristics of the successful managers than the characteristics of female managers in the answers of the respondents. Hypothesis: it is expected that the managerial position will be stereotyped as being a male occupation in both countries. In the Netherlands the number of women working full-time is still relatively low. Due to the historically present breadwinner–based households, the very short official maternity leave and the poor state of the kindergarten system, many women choose to stay at home or work part-time. These might me the major source of sex stereotyping of the managerial positions in the Netherlands. On the other hand, the number of female managers is relatively high (25% in 2002) compared to Hungary (15% in 2004). As we could see before, this might have a positive influence on breaking the stereotypes. Furthermore, feminism, feminist organizations and women studies are very well developed and accepted in the Netherlands. This might be the reason that the Netherlands scored very high on the Gender Egalitarianism Should Be score of the GLOBE study. In Hungary, due to historical reasons, women’s contribution in the workplace equally to men has been a very wide and well-accepted phenomena. The legislative and social background has been built up accordingly, way before the Netherlands. Nurseries and kindergartens are wide-spread and well developed in order to support working mothers. Hungary also scored the highest on the Gender Egalitarianism As Is scale of the GLOBE study. These facts show that sex stereotyping should be very limited on the workplace compared to countries where these circumstances are not present yet. On the other hand the number of female managers is very low even compared to the Netherlands, feminism and women studies are almost nonexistent phenomena in the Hungarian society, and traditional sex roles are still strongly present in the everyday life of people. All in all, we could see that certain trends and institutions already exist in both countries that would promote the disappearance of sex role stereotyping in the managerial positions. On the other hand it is also clear that some forces – although they are completely the opposite of each other in the two countries – still support the stereotyping viewpoint in both Hungary and the Netherlands.