The Major Differences in Leadership Approaches Used by Male and Female Leaders - Research Proposal Example

According to Hollon (2009), there has been significant growth of female professionals and leaders in the workforce in recent years. It is suspected that there may be fundamental differences in the behavior of male and female leaders.  Organizational change is an essential factor to achieving sustained growth, and these changes are led by both female and male leadership teams.  There needs to be further research on discovering the differences between the approaches female and male leaders take to implement organizational change.

The findings of this research will provide insight to organizations, whether public, private or nonprofit, to be vigilant of the potential differences that may exist within their leadership teams and improve the alignment of each leader to the appropriate role in the organization based not just on their experience and capabilities, but on their leadership style and approach.   Background of the Problem During the research process, several articles were selected by the researcher to provide an overview of past research that is related to the area of inquiry.

It was also helpful to research the similarities between male and female leaders to narrow the focus to the actual differences between the two genders. Although many articles were reviewed and research results were studied, failure to find items regarding the differences in the approaches to successfully implement organizational change in a female versus a male-dominated organization further shows that this research topic is a much-needed one for the business world today. In a challenging environment with companies competing/benchmarked against one another, long-term organizational success depends on developing the most competent managers, regardless of gender (Spurgeon & Cross, 2008).

Female managers can become transformational leaders and add significant value to organizational performance, and a male-dominated culture could inhibit effective team-working and reduce organizational performance (Spurgeon & Cross, 2008). Transformational failures occur regardless of the gender of the organization’s leaders. It has been suggested by Hopkins, O'Neil, Passarella, and Bilimoria (2008) that women and men also have divergent conceptions of career success.