Accommodative and Exploitative Management Styles: A Perspective from a Gender Equal Society

Abstract: This thesis introduces two management styles labeled “exploitative” and “accommodative” with their fundamental definitions derived from Brenner & Vinacke studies in the 1970’s. Three hypotheses regarding gender, success and age, with the main variable being a gender neutral society, are created and researched through the creation of a questionnaire with the help of statements from the MACH IV, PCL-R, the HR-frame and Hofstede’s masculinity and femininity theories. 60 managers working for Swedish companies in Sweden responded to the questionnaire which resulted in a majority of the managers leaning towards an accommodative management style. The results suggest that the gender neutral society of Sweden is affecting how managers choose their management style, in turn, it also suggests that female managers do not have to adopt an exploitative management style in order to become successful managers, contradictory to certain literature. While the results also seem to propose that age is not a factor in the choice of management style either, several reasons lead the thesis to recommend further research on the topic in order to both validate the thesis results, but also to determine if this method could be useful for various managerial scenarios in the future.