Cross-National and Cross-Cultural Differences in Preferences by Gender for Preferred Leader Behavior Dimensions

There is a long history of leadership research and debate regarding similarities and differences among genders. Social Role Theory (Eagly, 1987) suggests that societies have certain behavioral expectations of men and women. Acting like a man is agentic (e.g., assertive, confident, and self-reliant); acting like a woman is communal (e.g., nurturing, supportive, and emotionally expressive). Sex roles are enduring aspects of culture and function as a normative constraint denoting generally accepted types of behavior (Eagly & Karau, 2002). Dissimilar male and female qualities suggest that each would prefer certain leader behaviors more than others because leaders are expected to follow societal norms (Erez and Earley, 1993). Paris et al. (2009) in a 27-country study found female managers preferred leaders to exhibit more team-oriented and participative leader behaviors than male managers. These ideas of gender role expectations are more formally detailed in Role Congruity Theory (Eagly and Karau, 2002), which is an extension of Social Role Theory. According to this perspective, the traditional leadership role embodies characteristics principally associated with male qualities. In analyses of samples of across 22 countries, of more than 3000 employed businesspeople, the Centre for Cross Cultural Comparisons (CCCC) have searched for differences, and determining directions of differences for samples from many cultures relating to how employed businesspeople prefer their leaders to behave. Our studies and presentation will detail specific differences for gender x leader preference dimension means x country of residence for samples from 17 countries, related to Hofstede’s VSM08 7-dimensional model of cultural value dimensions.