领导者性别身份的评价差异:基于内隐领导理论的实证分析

The Differences of Leaders’ Gender Identity Ratings: An Empirical Analysis Based on the Implicit Leadership Theory

本研究基于内隐领导理论,运用配对问卷法,探究领导者性别身份的三种评价差异:自我评价与下属评价的差异,男性领导与女性领导的下属评价差异,男性下属与女性下属的评价差异。结果显示,与领导者自评的性别身份相比,下属易高估领导者的男性化;且下属评价男性领导的男性化显著高于女性化,而评价女性领导时两者并不存在显著差异。此外,男性下属对领导者男性化的评价高于女性下属的评价。

As a significant part of people’s self-concept, gender identity refers to people’s self-understanding of their gender based on social or cultural expectations. According to the two-dimension model of gender identity, masculinity and femininity are two independent dimensions of gender identity, and self-rating and subordinate-rating are two principal approaches using questionnaires(such as BSRI) to evaluate leaders’ gender identity. However, by using these two rating methods, researchers often reach different results. Hence, this study firstly tried to find out whether there were any substantive differences between self-rating and subordinate-rating in leaders’ gender identity.In the studies of gender identity and leadership, gender role congruity perspective was always the choice of researchers as their theoretical basis. However, since both target stimulus’(leader’) and perceivers’(subordinate’) characteristics played important roles in leadership perception, it was insufficient to consider such research mainly from the target stimulus’ s(leader’s) perspective. Thus, this study adopted the implicit leadership theory and stood on both leaders’ and subordinates’ sides to explore the influences of leaders’ sex and subordinates’ sex. Based on the implicit leadership theory, this study explored three differences in the evaluation of leaders’ gender identity, which were the differences between self-rating and subordinate-rating in leaders’ gender identity, the subordinate-rating differences between male leaders and female leaders in leaders’ gender identity, and the differences between male subordinates’ rating and female subordinates’ rating in gender identity of leaders. By using a matched questionnaire survey, this research collected 70 valid department samples(including 70 leader samples and 230 subordinate samples) from employees of the Chinese government and government-affiliated institutions. Specifically, leaders were asked to rate their own gender identity, while subordinates were asked to rate their department managers’ gender identity.The results are as follows:(1) Subordinates tend to overestimate the masculinity component of leaders’ gender identity compared with leaders’ self-rating, while there is no significant difference between leader-rating and subordinate-rating in femininity dimension;(2) Subordinates’ rating of male leaders’ masculinity is significantly higher than that of femininity, while there is no significant difference between masculinity and femininity when evaluating female leaders;(3) Male subordinates rate higher than female subordinates in the masculinity component of leaders’ gender identity, while male and female subordinates’ evaluation of femininity is almost the same.In summary, this study explores three differences in leaders’ gender identity ratings based on the implicit leadership theory, which may not only contribute to theory development for future research, but also shed light on the internal mechanism exploration. Furthermore, this study gives some suggestions to both leaders and organizations. For leaders, depending on their gender and organizational types, they can shape their behaviors to make themselves match subordinates’ prototype;For organizations, when they choose or promote a leader, they need to consider whether a candidate comprehensively fit with their organizations’ leadership prototype. Therefore, a leader or organization can be much more effective.