Logo image
Back
Respectful leadership: Reducing performance challenges posed by leader role incongruence and gender dissimilarity
Journal article   Open access   Peer reviewed

Respectful leadership: Reducing performance challenges posed by leader role incongruence and gender dissimilarity

Suzanne van Gils, Niels Van Quaquebeke, Jan Borkowski and Daan van Knippenberg
Human relations (New York), v 71(12), pp 1590-1610
01 Dec 2018
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1177/0018726718754992
PMID: 30473588
url
https://doi.org/10.1177/0018726718754992View
Published, Version of Record (VoR)CC BY V4.0,  Open

Abstract

Business & Economics Management Social Sciences Social Sciences - Other Topics Social Sciences, Interdisciplinary
We investigate how respectful leadership can help overcome the challenges for follower performance that female leaders face when working (especially with male) followers. First, based on role congruity theory, we illustrate the biases faced by female leaders. Second, based on research on gender (dis-)similarity, we propose that these biases should be particularly pronounced when working with a male follower. Finally, we propose that respectful leadership is most conducive to performance in female leader-male follower dyads compared with all other gender configurations. A multi-source field study (N = 214) provides partial support for our hypothesis. While our hypothesized effect was confirmed, respectful leadership seems to be generally effective for female leaders irrespective of follower gender, thus lending greater support in this context to the arguments of role congruity rather than gender dissimilarity.

Metrics

18 Record Views
32 citations in Web of Science
33 citations in Scopus

Details

InCites Highlights

Data related to this publication, from InCites Benchmarking & Analytics tool:

Collaboration types
Domestic collaboration
International collaboration
Web of Science research areas
Management
Social Sciences, Interdisciplinary
Logo image