The Relationship Between Gender And Leadership

Published Date: 02 Nov 2017

The Topic of this dissertation is the relationship between gender and leadership in the education industry -- how leaders with different gender affect their employees and how employees feel about the gender of their leader, as this could be a good positive effect on the institution or a negative effect.

Perspective views from both leaders and employees of an educational organisation are going to be discussed in this dissertation as an organisational study. Moreover, the theories of the gender and leadership topic are from previous research is used as expansion of results from educational organisation are covered in this research.

1.1: Background of study

The student body in universities have changed significantly during the last half century. The enrolments rates for female and male university students are about even at 50% for each gender group but in some educational institutions the female rate surpasses the male enrolment rate (HigherEducationStatisticsAgency, 2012). With the number of female student bodies increasing year by year, it might be assumed that leadership in education institution would reflect the demographics of this increased majority. However in reality this has not been the case. According to the statistics shown, 44.5% of all academic staff in the UK were female (HigherEducationStatisticsAgency, 2011/2012). But when it comes to senior positions such as professorships, only 20.5% were held by women. Similarly, across all other roles in educational organisation, including management and services, women are well represented but again feature poorly in leadership positions. This means men still continue to dominate in the most coveted leadership positions throughout the education profession.

Despite equal opportunities legislation and a gender gap continues to persist in this area of academic profession. Women are still at a disadvantage in becoming leaders. Although there is a trend of a gradually increase in the proportion of women leaders, there is not a significant change (Coleman, 2002). Moreover, Shirley Hufstedler who is the first American secretory of education said, "The large gender gap in education leadership reflects the large gender gap in every other profession and business." The reasons for the gender gap have long been debated and many theories have been advanced to explain the existence of the gender gap in leadership and the different leadership styles between men and women.

Masculine management model is characterised by power, competitiveness, hierarchical authority, lead from front, higher control of leader, unemotional and analytic problem solving. On the other hand, feminine mode of management is characterised by cooperativeness, collaboration of managers and subordinates, lower control for the leader, and problem solving based on empathy and rational (Loden, 1985). This leadership stereotype theory of Loden was actually first developed earlier by Sargent, Hennig and Jardim. They raised the ideas of sex-differentiated managerial behaviour including those who are managers in organisations (Sargent, 1981, Hennig and Jardim, 1979).

On the other hand, most researchers on social science have generally agreed the theory that in fact there are no reliable evidences to prove the differences in the ways how women and men lead. Although a few of them have acknowledged that there are some evidences for gender differences in leadership style among research participants. Those researches have suggested that there are few differences in the leadership and management styles of men and women (Bartol and Martin, 1986p. 278, Brown, 1979) but most of them have agreed that women and men who occupy leadership roles in organisations behave in similar way in leadership styles (Nieva and Gutek, 1981, Stogdill and Bass, 1981;p. 499, Kanter, 1977). In the opinions voiced in popular and social scientific writings is the fact that these two have based their conclusions on quite different kinds of data. Authors such as Loden based their conclusions primarily on their own experience in organisations as well as on the impressions they learned from interviews with practicing managers. Social scientists typically based their conclusions on more formal studies of managerial behaviour in which data were gathered via questionnaires or behavioural observations and analysed. In the views of social scientists personal experience and interviews are not accepted in their conclusions. They only accept data from more formal empirical research on leadership.

Even in recent years, there are still some people believe that males were better suited than females to become leaders. It is because masculine leadership style tend to be more autocratic and directive while feminine leaders tend to take more democratic and participative approach (Powell, 2011). The social expected the women to grow with some specific personality, for example, ‘submissiveness, passivity, avoidance of aggression and competition and reticence to take risk’ (Fondas, 1993).

In summary, the background issue is relating to the gender are the most pronounced in the disparity between numbers women or men better as academic leaders.

1.2: The background of the research organisation

Limited company (A) is an organisation that provides quality assurance for all aspects of the educational organisation. Limited company (A) is there to help improve employees’ knowledge, skill set and attitude in order to refine their business performance to their customers. Limited company (A) provides courses on the most comprehensive range of technical, business applications, project management and service management, and management & personal development. As a department of Limited company (A), Business School (A) developed a partnership with the University XX to deliver degree courses that are directly relevant to students’ studies and future employability. On the other hand, the other department of Limited company (A) which is adult IT education department that provides short IT course with proof of certification for those people who at work and need to develop their IT skills through these programmes.

Generally, in organisations, when people talk about leadership, they are usually referring to the person or persons in the top most senior positions who have the most power and influence within the organisation. However, department managers are also the formal leaders. They have to be responsible for the work of the members that are under them and everyday activities of the organisation. Even though they don’t have as much power or influence as the senior managers they still have the power to hire or fire staff, inspire and guide the staff that are already working in their department. Thus, making department managers leaders within each area and department with the organisation.

1.3: Research questions

The educational access, opportunity and experience of educators in British educational institutions is influenced and often limited by their gender. Gender discrimination impacts the academic, emotional and economic lives of educators. The pivotal role educational leader play in how to improve the issue of institutional gender discrimination makes it essential to examine cultural artifacts for insights into the expressed and implied values, beliefs and commitments of future educational leaders regarding gender issues.

This study examines gender focused educational leadership in the last decade as indicated by the dissertation title. As we became aware of the problems of the gender inequality in leadership positions in an educational institution. The research that has been carried out on an educational organisation (A) is to provide a systematic method, quantitative and qualitative integration results of the current view point from the employees in which the leadership styles of men and women were compared and statistical analyses were performed on the resulting data. A set of research questions are listed below:

What are the current satisfaction rates of the managers and the leaders in both Business School (A) and IT Training Department (A) from their employees?

Which gender of leaders/managers have the higher satisfactory rate from their employees on average in Business School (A) and IT Training Department (A)?

Why is there a gender gap in educational organisation?

What value do leaders place on different aspects of school leadership generally?

What do employees think of their leader’s characters in respect of their leadership styles in Business School (A) and IT Training Department (A)?

What are the ways that management of Business School (A) and IT Training Department (A) can do to improve effectively employee satisfaction to their leadership?

How do the leaders with different gender affect their employees’ working styles? The management advantages and disadvantages of each gender leading style.

What specific knowledge or skill about best practice in leadership do employees suggest their leaders to learn so they can improve to be a better leader?

What professional development activities add significant value to the work of educational leader?

How do different leaders perceive their leadership roles and what value do they place on them?

How prepared are employees for leadership positions?

These questions focus primarily on aspects of the view points from the employees of their leader’s leadership capability and perceptions of school leaders, rather than on the leadership capacity of the schools within which they work. The questions also link with elements of different leadership styles of different genders. In particular, they address issues that connect with how best to make provision for school leadership development.

1.4: Aim and objectives of the study

The objective of this dissertation is to investigate the relationship between gender and leadership in educational business industry.

To differentiate whether different gender lead to different leadership style behaviours can be identified in a sample of educational organisation (A)

To differentiate impact of different gender of leadership of education administration on educational organisation at both the school reputation and school ranking.

To differentiate impact of different gender of school principals on employees’ self-perceptions of satisfaction with their principal, and employees’ self- perceived effectiveness to produce desirable educational outcomes

To identify the unique leadership challenges and opportunities of women facing in educational industries.

To understand how gender plays a role in organisation, personal and society as advancement or obstacle.

To develop more effective strategies for managing multiple departments

To learn how successful woman negotiate for what they need to be an effective leader.

To examine the relation between gender of school principals, school learning environment constructs and antecedent variables; and identify, using quantitative and qualitative data gathered from respondents, leadership strategies that enhance teachers’ perceptions of school learning environment, and teacher job satisfaction.

1.5: Hypothesis

A several of hypothesis were developed to serve as the basis for critically analysing both the quantitative and qualitative data collected during the investigation.

People always think that male and female leaders have different leadership styles and working performances. Even in recent years, there are still some people believe that males were better suited than females to become leaders. It is because women tend to employ a more democratic, participative style while men tend to take a more autocratic, directive approach (Powell, 2011). The society expects that women to grow with some specific personalities, for example, ‘submissiveness, passivity, avoidance of aggression and competition and reticence to take risk’ (Fondas, 1993). The main prediction of this study is that gender-stereotypic differences in leadership style are less pronounced in organisational studies (of educational organisation (A)) comparing occupants of the same managerial role than in leadership studies of other types. It is because the specific characters of the female personality make them more suitable than men to be the educational organisations leader. Beyond this prediction, our purposes as reviewers are primarily descriptive and exploratory, even though other predictions might follow from the issues we have discussed. For example, if, as suggested, female managers often face a less supportive environment than male managers and these women might strive so hard to overcome anti-female prejudices that they behave counter stereotypically as a result. The ratings of leaders' behaviour could produce findings that are more stereotypic than those produced by measures grounded more firmly in behaviour. Rather than set forth a series of speculative hypotheses that take these and other considerations into account, we prefer to present our review and to discuss such issues as they become relevant to interpreting our findings.

1.6: Summary

This chapter outline the problem, aims, hypotheses and research question to be addressed in the present research. The next chapter describes the research methodology that was employed to address the hypotheses and research questions posed.

Chapter 2: Literature review

2.0: Introduction

The purpose of this chapter is to review literature to the present investigation in order to place the focus areas of this study – the relationship between gender and school leadership.

2.1: Definition of leadership

In an organisation, leadership usually defines as the ability to influence other people to move towards and achieve the organisational objectives (Garfield, 1992, Wilcox and Ebbs, 1992, Wall et al., 1992, Covey, 1991). The U.S.Army had mentioned that "Leadership is influencing people by providing purpose, direction, and motivation -- while operating to accomplish the mission and improving the organization"(U.S.Army., October 1983). Leadership is a process by which a person influences others to accomplish an objective and directs the organization in a way that makes it more cohesive and coherent. (Clark, 1997). It is quite similar to the definition of leadership that defined by Northouse. He thought that leadership is a process in which an individual inspire a group of people to achieve a common goal. Leadership and its influence are very important and essential to every organisation (Northouse, 2007,p.3). A good leader will bring a positive influence to the organisation so that the organisation could grow and expand effectively by using the right strategy (Bennis and Nanus, 1997, Bryman, 1992, Roueche et al., 1989, Gleazer, 1980, Bolman and Deal, 1991). A strong leader would bring strong impact to the life of his/her followers and his/her company’s future.

Earlier in this study, it is stated that manager is the leadership of his or her team. The differences between leader and managers is "Leader are people who do the right things and managers are people who do things right." (Bennis and Nanus, 1997,p.18) This is a reciprocal relationship between leadership and management but leadership are not always good managers and managers are not always good leaders. (Brunn, 1993, P.10)

Two leadership theories have become dominant in the literature. They can be envisioned as process leadership and trait leadership. The Process Leadership is that the Leaders perform the process by applying their knowledge and skills of leadership (Jago, 1982). However, there is also a leadership called Trait Leadership we know that can affect our actions. It is called Trait Leadership because in that concept it was commonly believed that leaders were born rather than made. The two types of leadership, process and trait leadership are shown in the graph below (Northouse, 2007,p.5)

trait_process_leadership.png

Figure 2.1: process and trait leadership (Northouse, 2007).

The opening quote of this paper listed only one of many definitions of leadership. This paper will list a few more definitions to start off and these definitions will form the basis of our understanding as we tackle the remainder of the process of determining the correlation between leadership effectiveness and gender. Some common definitions of leadership include the following: The creative and directive force of morale (Munson and Miller, 1921) or this definition is the process by which an agent induces a subordinate to behave in a desired manner" (Bennis, 1959). Yet another definition is as follows, —The presence of a particular influence relationship between two or more persons" (Hollander and Julian, 1968). Still another reads, —Directing and coordinating the work of group members" (Fiedler, 1967). Leadership is

Also an interpersonal relation in which others comply because they want to, not because they have to" (Merton, 1968). —Transforming followers, creating visions of the goals that may be attained, and articulating for the followers, the ways to attain those goals" (Tichy and Devanna, 1986, Bass, 1985) Lastly, leadership is —Actions that focus resources to create desirable opportunities" (Campbell, 1991).

2.2 Educational Administration

Nowadays, every educational institution orbits around a diverse set of goals, programs and operating rules and procedures. The goals of most educational groups in the western nations are knowledge of making, enforcement, and evaluation of policy (Maxcy, 1991). Educational administration is a network which sought to secure a balance in the name of the public interest.

  

Leadership in education can be seen as a process and product which powerful groups are able to sustain and control their interests. Good leadership should be able to smooth transmission of knowledge between the different departments but this is not always the case as some departments hold on to their knowledge and don’t pass on this causing a breakdown in communication and thus making this an internal challenge for leaders, head teachers, department heads in trying to achieve their goals (Gunter, 2001,p12-14). 

Another challenge to the educational institution is external factors such as legislation, economic crisis and political involvement. All these factors need to be considered by the leadership so the administration can strive and be successful and also be adapted (Gunter, 2001,p.15-20). 

Leadership is about the location of entrepreneurial behaviours in the roles and tasks for senior and middle management posts. Management systems in schools are designed to control and deliver education outcomes and goals thus Head teachers have to make a distinction between ‘leadership’ and ‘management’ conceptually, if not always in practice. 

Head teachers are being positioned as leaders or mangers in which distinctions between these 2 processes are made in order to facilitate the separation of the leadership elite from the everyday workers/workforce. Leaderships are being defined around notions of controlling uncertainty through charismatic behaviours and strategic tasks, while management is about the everyday maintenance of running the university (Gunter, 2001,p28-29).

The school management was used to be mainly the capacity of head teachers to keep other teachers and students in a state of subordination before (Grace, 1995;p.29). After war there was an evolution of the change and belief in the connection between education and the democratic culture. This was the time when the relationship between the head teacher and the staff was based on educational values and ethical issues of working with children. Education administration was about supporting educational objectives and the status within the profession came from pedagogy. However, the comprehensive school made the internal arrangements for the organisation of teaching and learning more complex; children are increasingly organised in mixed ability classes, and schools grew in size (Grace, 1995). The education was led to a period of social democratic managements in which activities were still rooted in values 

 

The author Fondas had talked about the relationship between gender and leadership. She identified that, generally, the word ‘leader’ refers to those who are working in a higher position in an industrial, governmental, educational, political or any other professional organizations (Fondas, 1993). In fact, she made a conclusion after gathering enough information from reports, "historically, gender precluded most females from becoming leaders in such organizations"; therefore, as a result, people believed that males were better suited than females to become leaders. 

 

People always feel that there are distinctive differences between male leaders and female leaders. For example, in several renowned studies, we can easily notice the difference between males and females in their decision making styles. Women has been classified as who tend to employ a more democratic, participative style while men tend to take a more autocratic, directive approach (Powell, 2011). And this theory is based on both academic research and observations of real leaders. 

 

When people study on the topic of relationship between gender and leadership, their main concern is why there are differences between male and female leaders. People believe that is one of the main reasons that cited for the low proportion of women leaders. However, it is not the only one reason. There are still some other reasons that lead to the outcome of the low proportion of women leaders. In Fondas’ study, she found that one of the reasons is that "females’ life aspirations are diminished by their early childhood socialization in the nuclear family (Fondas, 2010). Generally speaking, the nuclear family defines appropriate gender behaviour to their children. Men and women were risen up by different expectation. For girls, in general, the public world would expect their female character grow to be "submissiveness, passivity, avoidance of aggression and competition, reticence to take risk, and other qualities our culture considers – ‘feminine’." One research reveals that, even in high school, boys would get more support and encouragement from their parents to pursue their goals than girls would when they both have the same college and career aspirations. People believe that boys’ specific character would let them achieve their goals much easier and become more successful leaders as well.  

 

The situation of female leaders had been improved recently for women especially in most of the developed countries in last decades. However, throughout the human history, people barely can find a well-known successful woman as a leader of big corporations, legislative organisations or monetary institutions which have great impacts on our society. That’s because the unique character of female, their attentive, patient, gentle and sensitive make them more suitable for the education industry. Therefore, as a result, there are more female teachers and lecturers than male.  

 

2.3 Qualities of Effective Leaders

The basic characteristics of successful leader are to be independent, assertive dominant, ambitious, and self-sufficient, risk taker and be a motivator.

An effective leader is someone who can motivate a person or a group people to accomplish a goal, task or objective set by them and without them having to be heavily involved. We can liken this to a sporting team in which the team comprises of individual players each with certain set of skills who have been honed into a finely tuned instrument by virtue of the coach orchestrating them into a cohesive unit to achieve the goal. In this manner, and only with the correct and right motivation and care, will this group of individuals gel into a team and accomplish more together than they ever could as individuals.

With the above framework set in place, one would argue that leadership effectiveness is not gender-specific, but there seem to be many attributes that are found in both males and females that lend themselves to becoming an effective leader.

2.3: Different types of leadership style

Leadership style is the specific way of leaders to provide guidance, implement plans, and motivate employees in the organizations. Leadership style is to permanent and continuous patterns of behaviour when people working with and through others, used and must be understood by the people (Moghimi, 1998). Moreover it is an approach the leader to influence his/her followers for purposes uses (Rezayian, 2006). There are many different types of leadership. For example, ethical leadership, servant leadership, spiritual leadership, authentic leadership, transformational leadership, distributed leadership and so on but this dissertation is only focused on managerial leadership, transformational leadership, instructional leadership, participative leadership, distributed leadership and transactional leadership which are the most popular types of leadership styles in educational industries. Every different kind of leadership has its own advantages and disadvantages.

2.3.1: Managerial leadership

Managerial leadership is the most common type of leadership. This kind of leadership focuses on carrying out functions, tasks and behaviours and are carried out competently in the work of others within the organisation (Leithwood et al., 1999; p.14). Authority and influence are allocated to formal positions in proportion to the status of those positions in the organisational hierarchy and most members in the organisation are rational (Bush, 1995).

Caldwell argues that managers and leaders of self-managing schools must be able to develop and implement a cyclical process involves goal setting; needs identification; priority-setting; planning; budgeting; implementing; and evaluating (Caldwell, 1992;p.16-17).

It is significant to note that this type of leadership does not include the concept of vision, which is central to most leadership models. Managerial leadership focuses on managing existing activities successfully rather than implementing new ideas to make the school better. This approach is very suitable for school leaders as trying to implement new changes will have to go through the bureaucratic hierarchy to have approval but this will take a long and not necessary be approved. (Taylor, 1911). Managerial leadership has certain advantages, notably for bureaucratic systems, but there are difficulties in applying it too enthusiastically to schools and colleges because of the professional role of teachers. If heads and lectures do not ‘own’ innovations but are simply required to implement due to externally imposed factors and changes then they are likely to do so without any enthusiasm, leading to possible failure of the system (Bush, 2003:46).

2.3.2: Distributed leadership

The term 'Distributed leadership' is the new trend in the leadership theory and the study of school improvement recently. It is defined as "one of the forms of leadership that involves all the different aspects of collaboration experienced by the heads, teachers, and members of the school's improvement team in leading the school's development" (Heck and Hallinger, 2009). This new leadership style is receiving lots of attention recently and a continued growing support by other researchers. Two alterations in the perspectives of educational researchers and policy makers have been shown by previous research results. First of all, there is an increased curiosity in how leadership is shared or 'distributed' among administrators, teachers, and parents in schools (Leithwood et al., 2009, Spillane, 2006, Gronn, 2002).The theory of distributed leadership is firstly concerned with the organizing leadership at all the levels of the organization; it is not just relying on leadership from the top. It is about engaging the many rather than the few in leadership activity within the school and actively distributing leadership practice (Harris, 2008). The point here is about leadership practice, not leadership functions. A distributed leadership model is premised on the mutual effects of a lot of different leaders rather than the actions of an individual leader.

Diagram 2.9: Distributed leadership process (Resourcebank)

http://resourcebank.sitc.co.uk/Resources/ip-leadership/Site/images/diagrams/Figure-8-1.gif

Distributed leadership has its own remarkable disadvantages. The distributed leadership is a exchanging and communicating information system and process for the organisation to learn and develop. It means the distributed leadership cannot be forced in the network or empowered. Therefore, it also shows that the distributed leadership only can be disturbed but not able to controlled for (Spillane et al., 2001). However, the distributed leadership is not necessarily or intrinsically good thing. It depends on the case or the real situation at that moment. In the very first place, it is possible for distributed leadership to be counter-productive, particularly if it is equated with the simplistic notion of everyone leading. Thus, when distributed leadership suggest that everyone within the group has the ability and capacity for leadership, in practice, leadership will progress in accordance with the needs of the organisation. It is impossible for everyone to lead the group at the same time. It will depend on actual situation, need and capability. Plus, some members may participate in leadership activities more than others. Clearly, it can be engineered by offering new opportunities to lead, by generating broad based leadership and by providing the creative spaces for dialogue and discussion within the network. "Inevitably distributed leadership will look different in different contexts. It will reflect the inherent diversity and variability of activity within and across networks" (Hargreaves and Fink, 2006).

2.3.2: Transformational leadership

Transformational leadership theory is very inclusive; it contains widely multi-level angles basic point of views of leadership process. It is a very theoretical and practical to the leadership theory that transformational leaders and their followers help each other to achieve a higher level of morale and motivation through the power of their vision and personality (Burns, 2010). Transformational leaders gather trust, respect and administration from their followers (Bass and Riggio, 2006). There are four components including intellectual stimulation, individualized consideration, inspirational motivation and idealised influences. All leaders with these factors usually have strong values and ideals, they can encourage employees to have reciprocal co-operation and similar struggle beyond their own personal interest successfully, in order to move towards and achieve the team's greater goals (Allix, 2000, Chirichello, 1999).Therefore, transformational leadership happens when the transformational leader takes a visionary position and inspires people to follow them with this new vision. Higher levels of personal commitment to organisational goals and greater capacities for accomplishing those goals are assumed to result in extra effort and greater productivity (Leithwood et al., 1999;p.9).

Transformational leadership involves eight activities (Leithwood, 1994):

• building school vision;

• establishing school goals;

• providing intellectual stimulation;

• offering individualised support;

• modelling best practices and important organisational values;

• demonstrating high performance expectations;

• creating a productive school culture; and

• developing structures to foster participation in school decisions.

Transformational leadership is essential for autonomous schools (Caldwell and Spinks, 1992; p.49-50). As with all the other kinds of leadership styles, there are some advantages and disadvantages of implementing transformational leadership. Transformational leadership is based on inspiring employees to do good work by setting a great example as a leader. This theory believes that people can raise, improve themselves into a higher level of efficiency and productivity through positive motivation from their peers. Moreover, why transformational leadership stands out from other leadership styles is because it has the ability to quickly appraise a company's current circumstances and conceive a plan for growth or improvement within a short space of time. The style also has great abilities to deal with challenging company situations because these leaders have an excellent vision to see the bigger picture and where the future of the company is heading towards.

Transformational leadership‘s weaknesses are also significant. First of all, the transformational leadership does not take situational dynamics into consideration and assumes that all employees want to work together towards a larger goal. Secondly Transformational approaches are not very effective in situations like if employees do not have the necessary skills set or experience to finish a task or are not motivated enough to execute without a prompt or tangible reward. The outcomes of transformational leadership changing actions, goals of the organisation will cost the organisation in the short term as employees don’t like change when they have been use to a process for a long period of time. They need a period of time to adjust. Transformational leaders must have enough time and energy to build trust and convincing others to believe there would be a great future by sharing their vision. Organizations would hope to achieve instant results by installing a transformational leader are likely to be frustrated and disappointed. Third aspect, the transformational leadership theory explains the "what" but they don’t have enough details about the "how." They only give a little information about how a leader should articulate and communicate his/her vision and empower their followers. Last of all point, in the transformational leadership theory, they are left out the explanations of transformational leadership strategy and mission.

2.3.3: Participative leadership

The theory of Participative leadership is democracy: Workers are able to input into managerial decisions---although the final decision is still down to the manager (Leithwood et al., 1999;p.12). This model which lets others have a say in decisions rather than managers just implementing them increases school effectiveness as employees feel they are part of the organisations; participation is justified by democratic principles; and in the context of site-based management, leadership is potentially available to any legitimate stakeholder (Leithwood et al., 1999;p.12).

The participative approach is very important because this makes staff bonding together and eases the pressures on school heads as everyone is working together thus lessons the burden of leadership will be less if leadership functions and roles are shared out instead of all being tasked by one individual (Sergiovanni, 1984; p.13).

2.3.4: Transactional leadership

Transactional leadership is when the relationships with leaders and teachers are based upon exchanges for an valued resource (Bush and Bush, 2003). Teacher interactions between administrators are usually episodic and short-lived and are limited to the exchange value and transaction (Miller and Miller, 2001;p.182) .

Transactional leadership is defined as an exchange process (Miller and Miller, 2001). Exchange is an established strategy for members of an organisation. Heads are the principle authority in schools, but the head requires the co-operation of teachers to secure the effective management of the school. An exchange may secure benefits for both parties so that the target and goals of the school are met. The major limitation of such a transaction is that staff/employee will not continue with this participation and involvement once the transactional arrangement period is over.

As Miller and Miller’s definition implies, transactional leadership does not produce long-term commitment to the values and vision being promoted by school leaders.

Instructional leadership

Instructional leadership differs from the other models reviewed above. It is because it focuses on the direction of influence, rather than visions, goals and values set up by the school itself.

The increasing emphasis on managing teaching and learning as the core activities of educational institutions has led to this approach being endorsed, notably by the English National College for School Leadership, which includes it as one of its ten leadership propositions.

Instructional leadership is mainly concerned with teaching and learning, including the professional learning of teachers as well as student growth (Southworth, 2002; p.79).

Instructional leadership focuses on learning, teaching and the behavior of how teachers work with students. A leader influence is to target at students and what they are leaning via the teachers. This emphasis is mainly on the direction and impact to the students rather than direct influence process itself.

Instructional leadership is very important as it targets the schools central activities mainly teaching and learning, however this leadership does not take into account other aspects of school life, such as sport, socialisation, student welfare, and self esteem (Bush and Bush, 2003;p.16-17). For all schools management is important because it provides a supportive framework for teaching and learning.

Good management is an essential aspect of any education service, but its central goal is the promotion of effective teaching and learning and to maximize student’s prospects and knowledge.

2.4: The theory of gender and leadership in educational business

Leadership in education industry requires some very significant, important particularities. A leader must set the direction for his/her educational business organization and the leader must equip those he/she leads his/her employees to go into the direction he/she has set. He/she must design the organization he/she leads around certain instruction. This involves clear communication of his/her vision, wise investment of resources, focus upon the goal, development of relationships and reference to the evidences of success as they occur. Several theories of education leadership provide the means to achieving these ends (Cleary).

First, a transformational leader typically has a charismatic vision and personality which is able to inspire his followers to accept changes at their school (Hay, 2006). This leader performs as a moral agent who raises consciousness about professional practices and values in the school. He/she encourages and promotes educational creativity and innovation and develops a sense of ownership by motivating others to commit and put effort to his vision. He/she does this by taking the specific needs of those who answer to him/her into consideration, thereby empowering them to change.

Second, a strategic leader knows the context in which his school operates and what it does well, and uses those strengths to leverage change. He understands how to adapt the organisation of the school and its staff. He has the ability to identify threats and turn them into opportunities (Lee, 2003).

Third, a distributed leadership is shared leadership. It takes the view that because essential knowledge is held by many individuals, it makes sense to distribute leadership responsibilities. Staff, resources and the school's structure are interwoven in pursuit of a common vision that has meaningful and attainable goals and shared values (Burniske and Barlow, 2004). This builds staff commitment and cooperation and strengthens the collective identity. The result is that more attention can be paid to more aspects of the school's organization, because people specialize in what they do best.

2.5: Managers and their leadership

In an organization, when people talk about leadership, usually they are speaking of the person in the top position and have the highest power to the organization. That is what people called as the leader. The leader is the person who affects the other people’s behaviours and working performances. The leader would influence his/her employees to achieve the specified organizational goals in a given situation. One the other hand, the manager could be seen as the person who works to supervising the employees or departments to ensure these staffs or departments could conduct the appointed jobs as what they required to do. In general, people believe that the words ‘leadership’ and ‘manager-ship’ are two totally different terms (Warner, 2008). They have different functions in the company. And also they have very specific and disparate characteristics. The following chart show us some detail of their different characteristics.

Table 2.10: The characteristics of leader and manager

http://www.leanexpertise.com/MTL/LeanOffice/Images/NewManagerLeaderFeatures.jpg

( According to: Diana Mora, 2009, < Leadership and Management Are They The Same??>, http://www.leanexpertise.com/MTL/LeanOffice/Module04LeanOfficeKaizen.html )

However, Henry Minzberg developed a theory named management roles theory. The Minzberg’s management roles theory is a subversion of classic management theory. The management roles theory divided the manager’s work into ten different kinds of role – figurehead, liaison, leader, monitor, disseminator, spokesman, entrepreneur, disturbance handler, resource allocator and negotiator. The upcoming picture gives a brief introduction to these ten roles (Mintzberg, 1973).

Table 2.11: Mintzberg's Ten Management Roles (LondonManagementCentre)

http://www.lmcuk.com/outputImage.php?imageName=%2FuserFiles%2F2_Management%20Tools%2Fmanagement-Mintzbergs-ten-management-roles.jpg&width=563&height=&mode=1&not_fixed=

Managers are the formal leaders of an enterprise; they have to be responsible for the work of the members in the organization. Therefore, at this point, the managers constitute the leadership role at this point. Some of these managing actions directly involved in the leadership relationship. Usually, the managers are responsible for hiring, training, inspiring and guiding the staffs that working under them in the organization. Managers have to find out some ways to achieve harmony between the employees’ personal needs and organization’s goals. In Mitzberg’s management roles theory, we can clearly see the huge impact of the managers as the role of the leader. The formal power gives the managers the powerful potentially influence. As the role of being the leader, the manager has his/ her own power and leadership influence to the organization and the employees.

Even they are not the traditional kind of leader, but they have strong power to control and run the organization. They have right to hire, train, inspire and guide the staffs that working in their departments. Thus, the managers are also having their leadership in the organization. And of course, different manager might have different types of leadership style.

Chapter 3: Research Methodology

3.1: Introduction

In this chapter, the research methodology of this dissertation is described in detail including sampling method, instrument used how data is collected and analysed. The study uses a mixed method approach to investigate and analyse how prevalent is gender focused in educational leadership. The purpose of this dissertation is to find out the opinions of those employees who are working in the Business School (A) and IT Training department (A) of their leaders or managers’ working styles and how they feel about working under the management of their managers. Furthermore, the results collected from the various methods are used to analysis and discussion of relationship and management styles of the gender and leadership educational industries. And last but not least, I am going to use the finding results and comparisons to test and verify the hypothetic I set up at the beginning of my dissertation. The first part of this chapter will discuss the definition of the research methodology, research philosophy and research approach. And in the following parts, I will introduce some information about the detail of quantitative and qualitative research and the method of sampling and data analysis.

Design of research method

The quantitative and qualitative methods are the research methods mostly used in business research. The quantitative research usually refers to the systematic empirical investigation of social phenomena via statistical, mathematical or computational techniques (Marcus, 2008). The main aim of quantitative research is to develop and use the mathematical models, theories or hypotheses that related to the phenomena. One of the most effective ways to utilize quantitative research is through questionnaire survey.

Qualitative research is a method of inquiry employed in many different academic disciplines, such as social sciences, market research and further contexts (Denzin and Lincoln, 2005). The qualitative research includes analysis of data such as words, pictures from an object. In the business research, the most common forms of qualitative research are interview, focus group, observation and so on. Compare to the quantitative research process, the qualitative research is lot less structured. Usually, the researchers would start a qualitative research without any fixed opinion about what are they wanting to find out. The researchers will arise the proper questions when going through the qualitative research process. During the process, they would gather the initial data, analyse them and then find a new appropriate question to ask.

To sum up, the qualitative research is generally better for exploring, understanding, and uncovering the research objectives; on the other hand, the quantitative research is usually better for confirming and clarifying the objects of the research (Miles and Huberman, 1994).

For quantitative approach used in this dissertation, the online self-completion questionnaire survey was chosen to use as primary data collection method. The Self-completion questionnaires are filled in by respondents on their own without any help from researchers and they are done to gather data from the field in order to gather and analyse the results from a sample to a large group of population. The online self-completion questionnaire survey has the ability to provide access to groups who would be difficult to reach, and it is very time and cost effective (Wright, 2005).

For qualitative approaches in this study, interview and focus group are chosen to use as strategy of primary data collection (Erickson and Wilson, 1982).

Business research interview is for the researchers to premise from the interviewee that allows to find out all the manner of information the researcher want to know (Bryman and Bell, 2003). The main task in interviewing is to understand the meaning of what the interviewees say (Kvale, 1996).

The research interview has three different types. They are unstructured research interview, semi – structured interview and structured interview. Usually, when people talk about an interview, they think of a structured interview. However, there is a disadvantage of missing some important detail in structured interview (Grbich, 1999). Therefore the face to face semi-structured interview is chosen in my research study. During semi-structure interview, the interviewer ask the questions that was planned and is free to deviate if he/she arises any other interesting questions. A semi-structure interview is a two way dialogue. It gives some freedom to the subject in choosing different way of the discussion.

The focus group is a person to group interview. The researcher gathers a group of people together in order to engage them in the conversation for the purpose of research (Minichiello, 2008, Henderson, 2009). In the focus group, the moderator would lead the group discussion and the members would choose for expertise on the topic. Focus group allows the respondents to have their ideas, impressions and interpretations. During the process of focus group, the moderator would steers the conversation of the group members in order to gain desired information and ensure the respondents stay on the topic.

3.2: Method of Research & Sampling and procedure of data gathering

3.2.1. Online questionnaires survey

Questionnaire surveys are set up based on the employees’ view of their managers or leaders. It is constructed by three sections. The first section is the background information of the responders such as gender, age and educational background. The second section is the requirement as a good manager including characteristics and skills of the managers. This section is represented in Likert scale from strongly agree, agree, neutral, disagree to strongly disagree. The third section is satisfaction rate of the staffs to their managers and what did the manager do or not do as a helpful leader.

Questionnaire is designed as simple and straight forward as it can, in order to reduce the time that respondents spend on reading and thinking the answer for questionnaire. All the questions in questionnaire are single choice questions, and each answer of the question is very specific and with clear content (see Appendix 1).

Questionnaires were sent to existing staffs (of business department and IT department) using randomised stratified samples to improve population representativeness in this study (Imbens and Lancaster, 1991). Furthermore, all of the individuals who chosen were told the purpose of the research so they understand why I am asking the questions and how their role are important to me. Upon asking the respondents to answer the questionnaire, explanation was given in order to avoid any misunderstanding during the filling up of the survey; upon collection of the completed survey questionnaires, all of the data were filed and analysed.

Each of these data-collection efforts were undertaken in order to obtain a wide range of opinions and perceptions about those aspects of leadership development and the practice of leadership highlighted in the research questions. The school visits were made chiefly to examine and report on the specific ways in which outstanding leaders operate within particular contexts.

3.2.2: Face to face semi-structure interview

In interview research, instead of interviewing the principal or the chief leader of Business School and IT Training Department, two managers with different gender from two departments are interviewed. The female manager is from business school and the male manager is from IT training department. A full list of research questions was prepared in appropriate order and designed to provide informative data for the research. The questions ask interviewees to provide descriptive experience, valuable opinion and their knowledge. Some of the questions are required the interviewee to answer them as exactly the way how the questions was ask. Therefore I can ensure the answers are aggregated and achieved. And the rest part of the interview would be some open end questions. I can arise and add some questions based on the answer of the respondent (see Appendix 2). Each interview commenced with a brief introduction where interviewees were explained the broad purpose of this interview.

Interviewing relies on the assumption that interviewees are reflective about their experience and are able to give a verbal account of their attitudes, beliefs and actions. The methods of recording interviews are the combination of using audio recorder and taking down written note. This allows the researcher to maintain conversation in a natural style. Each interview is timed to coincide with the length of a class period. Therefore, interview times are between 45 and 60 minutes in length.

3.2.3: Focus group

In focus groups research, twelve random existing employees are chosen from both Business School and IT Training departments. Then these chosen employees are separate into two focus groups equally. A list of broad ranging questions without fixed wording or ordering is developed around the topic in order to prevent bias during the interview. The group members also are given other open end question in order to allow them to have some free and wide range discussions. Therefore during the group discussion, they can also trigger each other some new ideas through the conversation. Audio recorder is employed to gather an accurate record of the interview and so the researcher can focus on the direction of discussion rather than on taking notes (Schwartz and Jacobs, 1979). In each interview, the group members were given out clear instructions of the broad purpose of the discussion.

Achieved sources of data and their analysis

The data analysis is the process of bringing order, structure and interpretation to a mass of data has been collected in the field (Marshall and Rossman, 1999). The purpose of data analysis is to use the collected data to break down into manageable units, synthesised and patterns, thereby discovering what is important and presenting it in a form that others will understand (Bogdan and Biklen, 1998).

Data treatment of questionnaires survey

After the data is collected from the respondents using the three methods which mentioned above, the next process is data interpretation and analysis. Data collected from the online questionnaire survey is transformed into numerical information, and entered on to Microsoft Excel for basic statistic graph analysis and more professional statistical analysis (T-test, correlation analysis and regression analysis) is carried out by SPSS software (Statistical Package for Social Sciences;  IBM Company).

Data treatment of semi-structure interview and focus group

The audio records and notes are transcribed into detailed written notes but not transcribed word for word. These had to be transcribed straight after the interviews as time passes, it becomes increasingly difficult to reconstruct information. The detailed written note should contain the basic identification information (date, time, name of the interview or the interviewee, etc.).

3.7: Research risk and limitation

Every research method has its own limitation. Several research methods are used in this study. They are self-completion questionnaires, semi – structured interviews and focus group meetings. Each research method has its disadvantages and limitation.

-

Large amounts of questionnaires are distributed to potential respondents in order to prevent the low respond rate in self-completion questionnaires. One hundred questionnaires were e-mailed to the staff who were selected through stratified random sampling from the organisation e-mail system. The expecting return rate from the respondents is sixty percent or more but if the respond rate is far less than expected, I have to face the risk that the results of my research would be incomplete; and the analysed findings based on this research result will be incorrect.

Two managers from the department of Business School and IT Training Department are interviewed in the semi-structured interview surveys. However the results of two managers from the company are hardly a fair representation of all the different leadership or management styles within the organisation. It is because the opinions of two interviewees only representing themselves but not all the managers in general. The risk of this research method is the information from the interviews are not representing the all the people and a fair and general conclusion cannot be made at the end of research.

For the focus group meeting, 12 employees were taken part in the discussion. Six staffs from each department mix them and then separate them into two groups stochastically. The risk of this research method is quite similar to the semi-structured interview surveys. The respondents might be unable to represent all the reality.

Apart from the risks of the research methods, there are also limitations in this research. A case study of Business School (A) and IT Training Department (A) is used in this research but the data and information gathered for this is not representing the situation as a whole in the UK educational business industry. Furthermore, if the cultural differences of different countries are taken into account, the result from this research is not able to represent the situation of educational business industry in the rest of the world.

3.8: Summary

In this whole chapter my first purpose is to discuss my research philosophy and explain some relative theories. The second one is to expound my research strategy, including the research methodologies that adopted. And the third objective is introducing the research instruments that I have developed in and traded on the pursuit of my goals. People usually want to choose one approach from qualitative and quantitative research method. However, it is more important to focus on how the techniques complement one another. In this case, both the quantitative and qualitative research methodologies (questionnaires survey, semi – structure interview and focus group) are used in this research.