Gender Differences in Evaluation of Performance and Leadership Ability: Autocratic vs. Democratic Managers

Luthar, H.K., (1996).  Gender differences in evaluation of performance and 

Discover the differences in men and women managers who use different styles for leading organizational members.

How are managers perceived if they elicit a more domineering style of leadership as opposed to one that is more representative?  Even still, how are males and females perceived differently for using the same styles?  An autocratic female leader in fact was perceived as a higher performer than a male with an autocratic style of leadership.  However, democratic leaders overall are considered higher performers.  This laboratory experiment was conducted to find the impact of autocratic and democratic leadership styles on the perception of how well male and female managers perform.

The researchers define a democratic style of leadership as friendly, helpful, encouraging participation.  It is closely related to the participative style of management in which leaders have a role in decision making and performance strategizing, but do not command the workers in these areas.  The autocratic manager is directive, controlling, discouraging or suppressing in nature.  This is the traditional manager that gives commands or orders the workers to complete an act.

This study took 290 undergraduate seniors in a business policy course at a large university.  The students were given a 3 page case study about the management style of a leader.  A questionnaire was required to be filled out as part of the class assignment following the reading.  The researchers then took these questionnaires to evaluate the perceptions of these students.

The following hypotheses made by the researchers were found to be supported.  First, subjects perceived democratic managers to be higher performers than autocratic managers.  Second, a higher level of leadership ability will be attributed to democratic managers.  The gender contrast findings were that autocratic female managers may be viewed as higher performers than autocratic male managers.  In both cases, females evaluated autocratic female managers higher than autocratic male managers, and males evaluated autocratic male managers higher than autocratic female managers.

The latter two findings were speculated to be so because females relate better to a female manager and the autocratic style can have a minimizing effect.  Females also could have found the autocratic styles of males more harsh or threatening.  The researchers concluded that gender dissimilarity was the cause for the variations in the ratings of male and female managers.

In the conclusion it is said that the implications for business application is for managers to adopt a more democratic style, whether male or female.  The gender difference effects found implied that managers should be sensitized to the differences that are to be expected if an autocratic style of management is used.  This could be done in the training of upper management.

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