Leading Employees of Different Genders: The Importance of Gender for the Leadership‒Motivation Relationship

• DOI: 10.1177/0734371X20925520
• Date: 01 December 2021
• Published date: 01 December 2021
• Subject Matter: Articles

https://doi.org/10.1177/0734371X20925520

Review of Public Personnel Administration

2021, Vol. 41(4) 651 –673

© The Author(s) 2020

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DOI: 10.1177/0734371X20925520

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Article

Leading Employees of

Different Genders: The

Importance of Gender for

the Leadership‒Motivation

Relationship

Trine H. Fjendbo1

Abstract

Employee motivation is important for public organizations. However, it might not be the

same kind of leadership that motivates Susan and Steve. This article examines whether the

association between transformational (visionary leadership) and transactional leadership

(verbal and pecuniary rewards) and employee motivation depends on the employee’s

gender and gender-based traits. Based on gender differences in communal and agentic

traits, pecuniary rewards are argued to motivate male/agentic employees more than

female/communal employees. The opposite is argued regarding visionary leadership and

verbal rewards. Analysis of 1,294 Danish high school teachers shows female teachers on

average are more communal and less agentic than their male colleagues. Furthermore,

female teachers, unlike male teachers, are less motivated the more pecuniary rewards

they perceive. However, no other gender differences are significant, lending only partial

support for gender-based differences in the leadership‒motivation relationship.

Keywords

gender, personality traits, transformational leadership, transactional leadership,

motivation

Introduction

Like all organizations, public organizations depend on good and fitting leadership to help

improve performance and motivation. Goal-oriented leadership (e.g., transformational

1Aarhus University, Denmark

Corresponding Author:

Trine H. Fjendbo, Department of Political Science, Aarhus University, Bartholins Allé 7, Aarhus 8000,

Denmark.

Email: fjendbo@ps.au.dk

925520ROPXXX10.1177/0734371X20925520Review of Public Personnel AdministrationFjendbo

research-article2020

652 Review of Public Personnel Administration 41(4)

and transactional leadership) has been found to have a positive influence on employee

performance (Avolio et al., 2009; Jacobsen & Andersen, 2015; Wright et al., 2012). Both

transformational and transactional leadership strategies seek to motivate the employee to

work toward organizational goals but do so via different mechanisms. Transformational

leadership tries to align employee’s goals with those of the organization, whereas transac-

tional leadership tries to make it in the employee’s self-interest to work toward the goals.

In that sense, both leadership strategies are meant to increase performance by influencing

employees and their behavior. Nevertheless, we know very little about how employee

characteristics matter for the effectiveness of leadership strategies. While gender has been

shown to matter for employee motivation (Andersen & Kjeldsen, 2013; DeHart-Davis

et al., 2006) as well as job trait preferences (Bigoness, 1988; Gooderham et al., 2004;

Konrad et al., 2000), few studies have focused on whether gender matters for the degree

to which leadership strategies motivate (Pedersen, 2018). Drawing on data from Danish

public high school teachers, this article asks the question of whether employee gender, via

differences in communal and agentic traits, moderates the correlation between goal-ori-

ented leadership strategies and motivation.

This article seeks to contribute in at least three ways. Previous studies have used

communal (e.g., being caring and interpersonal) and agentic (e.g., being ambitious and

competitive) traits1 to argue for gender differences in the use of transformational and

transactional leadership (Bass et al., 1996; Carless, 1998; Eagly et al., 2003; Eagly &

Johannesen-Schmidt, 2001) or argued for gender differences in emotional labor (Guy

& Newman, 2004; Meier et al., 2006). However, many studies of the differences in job

attribute preferences do not include sufficient theoretical arguments as to why gender

matters and should lead to differences; they mostly just examine the differences

(Konrad et al., 2000). The first contribution is, therefore, to further examine the traits

at the base of the argument for why some leadership strategies fit one gender better

than the other—thus, to measure and test the importance of communal and agentic

traits in a leadership context.

The second contribution is to increase the sparse knowledge of whether the employ-

ee’s gender matters to the relationship between transformational and transactional

leadership and motivation. The previous studies connecting transformational and

transactional leadership to different genders have focused on the manager and not the

employee. Other studies have found differences between female and male employee

traits (Nielsen, 2014) that are believed to affect motivation, performance, and possibly

the effectiveness of leadership elements, such as wage systems (DeHart-Davis et al.,

2006; Gneezy et al., 2003; Nielsen, 2014; Ors et al., 2013). It is, thus, a relevant next

step to combine these insights and study whether the fit between goal-oriented leader-

ship components and gender traits affects employee motivation. Motivation is both a

goal in itself and an important step in increasing work outcomes such as performance,

well-being, and commitment and decreasing turnover (e.g., Andersen et al., 2014;

Bellé, 2013; Bright, 2008; Kjeldsen & Andersen, 2013; Vandenabeele, 2009).

Knowledge about how employee characteristics matter to the effectiveness of lead-

ership is extremely relevant for managers interested in increasing motivation through

leadership. The practical implication of gender differences in leadership effectiveness