Gender Issues and Leadership—Moral Maturity

According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor and Statistics (2005), women’s participation in the workforce increased 37% from 1970 to 2009. The report also showed that women hold half of management, professional, and related occupations. Leaders today need to be aware of the role of gender in leadership effectiveness.

In today’s workplace, gender roles can be viewed as a set of perceived behavioral norms directly associated with males or females. Most researchers argue that individual behavior is a consequence of both socially enforced rules and values, and individual disposition.

Some psychologists have identified stages in the development of moral maturity and the role of gender in moral maturity, and applied this research to leadership. According to Kohlberg (1981), a mid-20th century psychologist, moral development (physical and mental development) can be separated into six different stages. These stages are punishment avoidance, egoism, interpersonal relationships, society or law, social contract, and universal principles.

The first two levels focus on self; people at these levels choose to do the right things either to avoid punishment or to please themselves. Levels three and four focus on others; people at these levels choose to do the right things to please others around them. These others could be family, friends, or colleagues. Levels five and six focus on universal principles. People at these two stages recognize that there are universal moral principles that hold for everyone, everywhere, regardless of personal happiness or law. They choose to do the right things out of choice rather than any compulsion.

Based on his studies conducted on schoolchildren, Kohlberg concluded that people who reached higher levels (especially level six) are more morally mature than those who are stuck at lower levels. He also suggested people rarely get beyond level four. Kohlberg’s studies also stated that women were inclined to get stuck at level three—the level of interpersonal relationships, while men were more likely to be more morally mature than women.

References

Kohlberg, L. (1981). Essays on moral development: Vol. I. The philosophy of moral development. San Francisco, CA: Harper and Row.

Gender Researcher Focus

Recently, some researchers have tried to assess if organizations have overcome the male dominated organizational structure and neutralized the male dominance behavioral norm. Researchers Calas and Smircich (1991) explored Freud’s works for information about leadership and concluded that “leadership seduces only those who are of the same kind—masculine or masculine–identified—and promotes, as ‘leadership knowledge’ only a homosocial system of organization, i.e., based on the values of masculinity, including masculine definitions of femininity” (p. 571). Many researchers believe that the gender differences apparent in early childhood play, social relations, and conflict resolution are carried over into adulthood. They also believe that these gender differences are manifested as created value systems. These value systems are often analyzed and investigated to determine if they can be avoided or resolved.

Researcher Joanne Martin (1990), who explored leadership from a feminist perspective, commented that, “If feminist perspectives were fully incorporated, the usual emphasis on rationality, hierarchy, competition, efficiency, and productivity would be exposed as only a very small piece of the organizational puzzle” (p. 19). Her theories and perspectives are examples of how researchers are attempting to resolve leadership gender differences.

Regardless of researchers’ support of or opposition to gender relation theories in organizational development, sexuality continues to influence organizational control and organizational leaders must accept its role in organizational growth. Leaders can help foster gender sensitivity within their companies. To create a gender sensitive environment, a leader may set up a monitoring system, and assess situations from a gender perspective. Organizational leaders will need to assess their environments and be aware of developments that affect ever-changing gender-related concerns.

Calas, M. B., & Smircich, L. (1991). Voicing seduction to silence leadership. Organization Studies, 12(4), 567–602.

Martin, J. (1990). Deconstructing organizational taboos: The suppression of gender conflict in organizations. Organization Science: A Journal of the

Culture and Leadership

Culture refers to the underlying values, beliefs, and codes of practice of a society or an organization; it is subjective and reflects the meanings and understandings that people typically attribute to situations. Leaders will most likely deal with two aspects of culture: organizational culture and cultural diversity. Let’s examine organizational culture first. Organizational culture is often viewed as a unifying force that appeals to an entire organization and is the sum total of the organizational image. A change in an organizational culture is a change in the ethos, image, and values that influence organizational action. The core aspects of culture are social expectations, universal beliefs that bring individuals together, and material elements or artifacts.

According to theorists Deal and Kennedy (1982), culture is the most important factor that contributes to the success or failure of organizations. They identified values, heroes, rites and rituals, and a cultural network as the four dimensions of culture. Factors that influence the organizational culture are:

• Level of artifacts or visually identified surroundings: This may include items like the dress code, physical work environment, signs, and banners.
• Shared values or beliefs: These are usually implied and spoken and are accepted as part of a regular workplace. These may include practices of time management, detailed planning processes, philosophies, or possibly slogans.
• Frequent social interactions: This includes interactions outside of the work environment.

The sum of all these factors together forms and defines the culture of any organization.

Deal, T., & Kennedy, A. (1982). Corporate cultures: The rites and rituals of corporate life. Harmondsworth, London: Penguin.

Organizational Culture and Leadership

Some theorists believe that there is a link between an organization’s culture and its performance; better organizational culture leads to better performance. Leaders can therefore better their organizational performance by enhancing their organization’s culture. To enhance organizational culture or make changes to it, leaders first need to analyze their existing culture. According to Schein (1992), an organizational culture researcher, the main steps in analyzing and understanding culture are obtaining leadership commitment; conducting a large group meeting to identify artifacts, values, and shared assumptions; identifying cultural aids and hindrances; and reporting assumptions and their implications. Once their existing organizational culture is analyzed, leaders can then develop strategies to either enhance or change it.

The first step to enhancing or changing organizational culture is for leaders to create a vision and strategy to address cultural issues. Once leaders are clear on their objectives, they can proceed with confidence and guide others. The process of guiding others can begin with sharing vision and strategy with all in the organization. Strategy can focus on the areas of change; for example, a change in the dress code or the work environment can initiate a cultural change.

Since culture is the result of continuous interaction between the people involved, social interaction can make or break a work environment. Socially accepted employees seem to achieve a much healthier energy level and attitude toward productivity. Leaders also need to address the importance of interaction within an organization; however, there is little that leaders can do to control interaction and make it more professional and less social. Organizational ethics can help leaders influence, if not control, employee interactions. Other deeper changes such as rebuilding core values may require long-term interventions and sometimes even significant amounts of resources.

Reference

Schein, E. H. (1992). Organizational culture and leadership (2nd ed.). San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.

Cultural Diversity and Leadership

Cultural diversity is another cultural aspect that leaders need to consider. There is a general human tendency to value one’s own beliefs and attitudes above those of others. This tendency is known as ethnocentrism, and it limits one’s understanding of other people’s beliefs and attitudes and makes people place their own racial, cultural, ethnic, and sometimes even religious group above all other groups. Leaders need to guard against their own ethnocentric behavior before they think of addressing this issue. This does not imply that leaders should give up their cultural pride and beliefs, but that they need to be aware that pride can interfere with their leadership effectiveness. To some extent, leaders may need to live with the issue of ethnocentrism, as it is impossible to completely make employees free of ethnocentric tendencies, and because ethnocentrism may not always create problems.

With more and more organizations going global, cultural diversity is fast becoming commonplace. By itself, cultural diversity is not bad; in fact, it has more advantages than disadvantages, as it helps organizations integrate diverse peoples’ points of view. However, cultural diversity can become a hindrance to effective leadership because different cultures view leadership differently. When diverse people come together in one organization, their expectations toward their leaders are as different as they are. The research conducted by House, Hanges, Javidan, Dorfman, and Gupta (2004), through their Global Leadership and Organizational Behavior Effectiveness research program, provides insights into the relationship between leadership and culture. This research has identified some cultural dimensions that affect leadership effectiveness. Your text discusses these dimensions in detail. On the basis of this research, House et al. categorized countries into ten distinct groups, called cultural clusters. Each cultural cluster has its distinct generalizations about leadership and culture. Leaders often use the research findings about cultural clusters to create training programs for employees that include information about the subtleties and features of different cultures. This helps employees develop cultural sensitivity.

Reference

House, R. J., Hanges, P. J., Javidan, M., Dorfman, P. W., & Gupta, V. (Eds.). (2004). Culture, leadership, and organizations: The GLOBE study of 62 societies. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

Module 7 Summary

In this module, you examined how gender, culture, and ethics can influence leadership effectiveness. This exploration provided you with an opportunity to think strategically and comprehensively about women, culture, and leadership. It also helped you analyze how leadership skills impact vision, organizational effectiveness, and strategy.

Here are the key points you covered in this module:

• Historically, leadership has been perceived as a masculine activity. However, with women holding half of all jobs in management, professional, and related occupations, it is not unusual to find women in leadership positions. Research does not conclusively establish that either gender is predisposed toward leadership.
• There are six major ethical philosophies—the golden rule, the golden mean, utilitarianism, categorical imperative, hedonism, and the veil of ignorance. These philosophies influence the decision-making processes of today’s European and American organizational leaders. As leaders face crises regularly, they need to practice ethical and moral decision making and consider the needs of employees, customers, stakeholders, shareholders, and even the community.
• Leaders need to deal with two major cultural aspects on a daily basis: organizational culture and cultural diversity. Organizational culture is a unifying force that strongly appeals to entire organizations and is the sum total of the organizational image. With more and more organizations going global, cultural diversity is fast becoming commonplace in most organizations. Leaders need to carefully adopt strategies to manage both types of culture.