The Impact of Gender Difference on Leadership Effectiveness: The Case of ABIG PLC
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Date
2020-07
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Addis Ababa University
Abstract
The purpose of this study was to assess the impact caused by gender difference on leadership effectiveness in ABIG PLC, a multi business company engaged in wide range of sectors. The study tried to find out if female and male leaders actually employ different sets of leadership styles and if those differences in leadership styles can have any worthy impact on the effectiveness of their leadership. In order to measure leadership effectiveness three measures were selected, namely: goal achievement, team’s smooth internal process and external adaptability. The study also attempted to see if female leaders are more of relationship-oriented and transformational than male leaders and in contrast if male leaders are more of task-oriented and transactional. This study followed a cross-sectional, quantitative and explanatory research. All the necessary data were collected from both the primary and secondary sources. The primary data was collected through questionnaires regarding gender differences from the company's employees and their impact on leadership effectiveness and secondary sources was gathered through books, papers, journals, articles and company’s website and related records. Questionnaires of close-ended questions, Multifactor Leadership Questionnaire (MLQ) and Likert scale type of questionnaires prepared by Google Forms were distributed for employees in non-management level to find out the factors affecting their leaders’ effectiveness. Descriptive statistics of the study shows relationship-oriented leadership is dominant among female leaders of the company and transactional leadership is the least used by female leaders. As for male leaders, task-oriented leadership was found to be the most used and relationship-oriented is the least used leadership style. The results of this study showed that women’s leadership style does not result in less effectiveness of leadership and the researcher would like to recommend that top management should not hesitate to bring females up in to leadership positions as long as they are qualified and competent
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Keywords
Gender, leadership, leadership styles