Civil servants’ perceptions of agency heads’ leadership styles: the role of gender in public sector organizations

This article examines public employees’ perceptions of agency heads’ leadership styles by focusing on the role of gender in organizational management. Employing a survey experiment with over 800 national civil servants in Korea, we find that female employees have more positive perceptions of transformational leadership than male employees; however, female and male employees’ perceptions of transactional leadership are not significantly different. Moreover, employee gender, when investigated along with gender representation in organizations, produces more nuanced results. Our findings suggest a clear gender gap in perceptions of leadership styles among public employees, which is further unpacked with variations in gender representation.