Does leadership only have one gender?

Abstract: Title: Does leadership only have one gender? - A study about the influence of gender and leadership roles on the leadership style and use of management controls in Sweden. Seminar date: 1 June 2022 Course: BUSN79, Degree Project in Accounting and Finance, Master level, 15 ECTS Authors: Rebecca Rosenqvist and Christina Papadopoulou Supervisor: Elin Funck Key words: Social Role Theory, Management Control, Enabling and Coercive Control, Communal and Agentic Characteristics, Feminine Culture, Leadership style and characteristics Purpose: The purpose of this study is to examine whether gender roles and leadership roles have an influence on leadership style and consequently on the use of management controls. This will be investigated in Sweden, where the culture is considered to be feminine. Thereby it is also investigated whether culture has an effect on leadership style and characteristics. Specifically, a connection between the feminine culture in Sweden and leadership style and characteristics will be examined. Methodology: A qualitative strategy has been used for this thesis, within which an exploratory study has been conducted to gain new insights into the topic. The data collection method that has been used is semi-structured interviews. Eight different Swedish people in leadership positions have been interviewed about their perception of their leadership style and characteristics. Theoretical perspectives: Two theoretical frameworks have been used in this study. The first one is the social role theory that is discussing different social roles people have, specifically the gender role. It further discusses different characteristics which are divided into communal and agentic. The communal characteristics are more expected from women and agentic characteristics are more expected from men. Furthermore, the theory about the management controls enabling and coercive are used to look into how these controls are used by the leaders interviewed. These two theories are then combined to see if any connections can be found between gender roles, leadership roles and the use of management controls. Empirical Findings: All interviewees showed characteristics of being communicative. Both female and male interviewees (6 out of 8) from public as well as private organizations showed more communal characteristics like being relation- and learning-oriented, caring and supportive.Only two interviewees (one woman from private organization and one man from a public organization) showed more agentic characteristics, such as being task- and result-oriented, and distanced. Enabling controls were used by all interviewees to some extent. Coercive controls, such as set rules and routines were partly used by some interviewees. However, the organizational structure of the different organizations influenced the extensive use of rules and routines. Conclusions: Concluding from the findings it is evident that there is a positive connection between communal/female characteristics and leadership style and the use of enabling controls. Further it can be assumed that the feminine culture in Sweden has an influence on the leadership style, since the majority of the interviewees had rather communal/feminine traits and there were no differences seen between the genders. However, there was no clear connection found between agentic/male characteristics and leadership style and the use of coercive controls.