Critical Analysis of the Article by Titus Oshagbemi and Roger Gill

The leadership styles of men and women differ, and this has drawn more attention from various angles as women progressively fill positions of leadership that were previously held by men. Due to gender stereotypes that have a negative view of female leaders, historically, males have been seen as the better candidates to hold leadership positions than women. Neubert and Taggar's research revealed a stereotype among groups that varied in age, sex, education, and marital status. Women who are delegated to hold leadership positions find it difficult because of the views that people hold on them. People tend to hold positive views on male leaders compared to their views on women. Leadership positions have been for a long time seen as a male position than a woman’s. Several research studies have revealed that in the traditional societies, masculine characteristics generally are considered to be more positively valued than the feminine characteristics. Specifically, these gender stereotypes portray men as independent, competent, effective achievers, active, emotionally stable, and rational. Women on the other side are portrayed to be lacking all these characteristics. To change these views of the stereotypes, several research have been conducted throughout the world. Titus Oshagbemi and Roger Gill conducted such a research in the UK to study on the leadership styles and behavior of male and female managers.

Critical Analysis of the Article by Titus Oshagbemi and Roger Gill

The authors of the article, Titus Oshagbemi, and Roger Gill wrote it in October 2002. They submitted it in 2002 and it was published in 2003. This report puts a focus on whether the two researchers and authors of the article used biased or none- biased evidence in their research and studies the approaches used to evaluate their argument and conclusion. This report will then look on the pieces of evidence used by the author, their creditability, and methodologies used to obtain information from managers for the argument. Finally, recommendations for the study of differences and similarities between male and female managers would be offered to give improvements for future research.

The authors of this article attempt to find any similarities and differences between the female and male genders in leadership, their styles, and behavior. Titus and Gill argue that there are a number of similarities between the male and female top leaders of organizations in different sectors of the UK economy. In the article, they start by acknowledging the work of other authors in regard to this topic. They state in brief what other researchers have discovered and then they proceed to find their own set of statistics from a study research. The statistics were obtained through a questionnaire offered in the United Kingdom. Titus and Gill then proceed to analyze their obtained statistics and then reach a conclusion. There is bias in the majority of the literature that the authors first introduce. These work of literature, only point out the positive attributes of female leaders and do not give much thought about the male counterpart. The other researchers should have identified the differences and similarities between the male and female gender and not just identifying the better characteristics that the female gender holds more than the male. This kind of information becomes misleading to the reader since they are made to believe that females are better at the top management than male.

Most of the authors that are quoted in the article are from the United States of America and therefore the experiences they give is in regard to their own country. These articles quoted many therefore not turn to be of much importance to a reader who is interested in the topic specifically in the United Kingdom. The study done by Oshagbemi and Gill, 2002 found that females in the top managerial positions will delegate duties to other co-workers less than their male counterparts. However, there are no significant statistical differences in their consultative, directive, and participative leadership styles (Titus and Gill 2003, p. 296). They also found that, in leadership styles, there are no significant differences between female and male managers. The only of the seven aspects that showed significant differences is inspirational motivation. The other six aspects management-by-exception, idealized influence, contingent reward, laissez-faire , intellectual stimulation, and individual consideration had no significant differences (Titus and Gill 2003, p. 295). Unlike the findings in other research studies on the same topic, the study found that there exist more likenesses between the female and male than there exist differences (Titus and Gill 2003, p. 296). However, the authors suggested that even though women managers to a certain extent have some similar attributes to men in behavior and style, they will likely to be less autocratic and more participative.

To conduct their research, the authors write that they issued out questionnaires to managers of firms in the UK. The questioners were offered at different levels in organizations in all regions of the UK. The responses received were just below 30 percent of the total number of questionnaires issued with the number of male managers being higher than the female managers. The authors covered various sectors of the economy such as manufacturing, finance sector, utilities, telecommunication, and public sectors. They used a two-tailed t-test and Levine’s test. From the survey, the authors found out that female managers do not in most cases delegate duties as much as the male managers. They found that in women leaders who delegated less than men leaders, they found out that controlling behavior was prevalent in these type of female leaders. In addition, in male and female subordinates, the males are less satisfied when their boss adopts a directive leadership compared with the female counterparts (Titus and Gill 2003, p. 294). In addition, they found that, in leadership style, male and female leaders empirically diverge only in inspirational motivation.

The authors in their model of discussion of the results, adopt two forms of leadership, transformational and transactional. They define transactional leadership as a process of exchange between leaders and their subjects. The leaders in this transactional leadership provide goods and services to meet their followers’ expectations and desires. The followers are then set ready to meet objectives that the leader requires from them. In Transformational leadership, the leader’s personal values, beliefs, and qualities are the basis for leadership. The leader is expected to bring valued change in the vision, strategy, culture, products, and technologies of the organization.

Conclusion

In conclusion, the research study by Oshagbemi and Gill’s fails to research on the influence of gender on job satisfaction. The research results on participative, consultative, and directive leadership styles were not similar to other findings in this area. Therefore, more research should be attempted to solve these differences in the findings.

References

Oshagbemi, Titus, and Roger Gill. 2003. "Gender differences and similarities in the leadership styles and behavior of UK managers". Women in Management Review. 18 (6): 288-298.

Taggar, Simon, and Mitchell Neubert. 2004. "The Impact of Poor Performers on Team Outcomes: An Empirical Examination of Attribution Theory*". Personnel Psychology. 57 (4): 935-968.