Styles of management and communication: A comparative study of men and women

While women increasingly are assuming positions of prominence in modern organizations, and while considerable research exists demonstrating that, in general, males and females in some respects differ in their communication patterns, no previous study has sought to determine what differences, if any, exist between the communicative behaviors exhibited by male and female supervisors in organizations. Thus, the present study was undertaken to discover whether female managers enact a “male” role when they assume supervisory positions or provide a style of leadership which is somehow distinguishable from that typically enacted by males. Data provided by 150 subjects randomly selected from three organizations showed male and female managers to differ in several dimensions of communicative behavior. However, while those differences initially seemed to suggest that female managers supervise more effectively than male managers, subsequent analyses indicated that further research is needed before one can conclude that females are generally superior to males in management.