Question

Several of the studies cited in this chapter (and a whole lot of studies that have not been cited in this chapter) shed important light on the issue. Eagly and Johnson (1990) “Gender and Leadership: A Meta-Analysis” report observing that women tend to be more democratic, while men tend to be more autocratic, and marginal differences in terms of being more task or relationship oriented. Given increased environmental uncertainty, pervasive globalization, competitiveness to the point of near hyper-competitiveness, technological turbulence at an increasing rate, and other factors you are probably well acquainted with, has prompted a response of increased use of teams (chapter 14—remember?), flatter organizational hierarchies, more organic structures, and a wealth of other responses…

Question #3:

Do these environmental and organizational conditions suggest the superiority of a more feminine style of leadership, over the masculine and directive/autocratic style that appears to be better suited to control-oriented, mechanistic, centralized, top-down bureaucratic organizations of the 18th, 19^th, and 20^th century?

Answer 1

Answer: Yes, these environmental and organizational conditions clearly suggest that the feminine style of democratic leadership is superior to the autocratic style of masculine leadership. The democratic leadership style is more suitable for the organizational and environmental conditions like flatter organizational structure, hyper competition, technological change as it supports the involvement of the people. The people’s involvement and participation is required for managing the environmental and organizational conditions that require change and teamwork. The masculine or autocratic systems that is mainly based on command and obey structure is only fit for the bureaucratic organizations of 18^th,19^th and 20^th century where orders percolated from top to down.