Comparison of leadership style of male and female managers in Kuwait: An empirical investigation

Some empirical investigations have been conducted on male and female leadership styles and how female leaders cope with being a leader (Eagly et al., 2003; Swim’s, 1994: Hall and Carter's,1999; Eagly and Carli, 2007). Some other researchers have investigated the decision making process of male and female managers and found out that there is no difference between these groups (Essers and Benschopp, 2007).


Introduction
Some empirical investigations have been conducted on male and female leadership styles and how female leaders cope with being a leader (Eagly et al., 2003;Swim's, 1994: Hall andCarter's,1999;Eagly and Carli, 2007). Some other researchers have investigated the decision making process of male and female managers and found out that there is no difference between these groups (Essers and Benschopp, 2007).
Form a business perspective, it is difficult to determine if there is a difference of gender in leadership and if male and female have different leadership styles. Although there are many studies contributing to this field, we still know little about impact of gender on leadership styles. Furthermore, most studies have been conducted in Europe and North America. Therefore, the main question is, if this can be generalized to other cultures (Javidan and Dale, 2005). There is a gap in empirical investigations on this topic in Middle East, especially in Kuwait.
In line with reviewed literature, the main aim of this study is the investigation of gender impact on leadership style and explaining the difference of male and female leadership behaviors in Kuwait. This analysis is relevant not only for scientists, but also for practitioners, as there is still a gap in empirical investigations supporting theoretical clarity on the effect of gender on leadership behavior outside developed countries.

Literature Review
Lewin introduced different leadership styles: autocratic, democratic and laissez-faire (Lewin, 10239), which is the base of leadership theories. According to outcomes of several research projects, male qualify as better leaders in terms of performance (Schein, 2007: Essers andBenschopp, 2007 Another approach is the full range leadership theory (Avolio and Bass, 1991). In this approach, three typologies of leadership behavior are presented: transformational, transactional and laissez faire. The nine distinct factors are defined as five transformational, three transactional and one laissez faire. Transformational factors are inspirational motivation, charisma, idealized influence attributed, idealized influence behavior, intellectual stimulation and individual consideration measures. Transactional factor are contingent reward, management-byexpectation active and management-by-expectation passive. Transformational and transactional leadership are viewed by different authors as either competing or complementary and according to outcomes of some studies, transactional style is less effective than transformational style (Benjamin, 2006) and transformational style is positively correlated to performance of organizations.

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Several studies have investigated differences in leadership styles between male and female leaders. This paper analyzes weather Kuwaiti male and female leaders differ in their leadership behavior. Explorative approach is applied for this research study. This study is based on a small sample in Kuwait and based on a self-rating of managers in Kuwait. In our study, we used similar approach as Eagly and Johannesen-Schmidt (2001) -rating was done through subordinates, peers and superiorsthis would help to have more in-depth analyses. The quantitative analysis involves 62 leaders (38 male, 24 female) from different industries in private and governmental sector in Kuwait. Results indicated no major differences in leadership behavior by gender in Kuwait, which is similar to outcome of some studies conducted in western countries. It should be highlighted that the percentage of male and female respondents varied between different organizations. Future research should emphasis on equal sampling. It would be also interesting to analyze the difference in male or female dominated industries. This study offers knowledge for developing leadership skills in Kuwait. Very few studies have concentrated on difference in leadership styles outside Europe and North America, this study provides a new perspective in a different cultural context. The finding is that female leadership is interpersonally oriented, whereas male have a task-oriented approach.
Task-oriented leadership is related to authority, hierarchy and achieving goals, whereas interpersonal leadership style is based on empowerment and motivation (Grisoni and Beeby, 2007; Melero, 2011).
Other researchers have categorized leadership style as autocratic and laissez-faire and argued that men have an autocratic leadership style, which is characterized as a strategic style and more decision making oriented, and female tend to prefer a participative decision making style (Bird and Brush,2002; Eagly and Johnson, 1990). Although researchers have been analyzing the characteristics of effective leaders and the differences between male and female leadership behavior, it is important to review situational leadership theories. According to situational leadership theories, effectiveness of leader behavior depends on the contextual variables, such as the nature of the activities and characteristics of subordinates: -situational contingencies dictate your style for that moment‖ (Lumsden, & Wiethoff, 2010, p. 258).
Due to narrow body of research in leadership in Kuwait, an explorative approach is applied. The main focus is on the full range of leadership paradigm (Avolio & Bass, 1991), distinguishing between transactional, transformational, and laissez-faire leadership styles.  1996) and have consistently shown that transformational leadership leads to higher subordinate performance and satisfaction levels than transactional leadership. Transactional leaders also produce positive effects on these variables, but such effects are always lower than those achieved by transformational leaders (e.g., Molero, Cuadrado, Navas, & Morales, 2007). Lastly, laissez-faire is negatively correlated to effectiveness and satisfaction.

Research methodology
The current research study was a quantitative study and assessed leadership style by using the Multifactor Leadership Questionnaire (MLQ) 5X, 2nd Edition. All 45 items were used to collect the data. The scale ranged for 1 (very low) to 5 (very high). Table 1 summarizes transformational, transactional and laissez-fair leadership styles.

Data collection
The data collection was conducted in November 2015; 100 questionnaires were distributed to Kuwaiti managers in different industries. Out of 100 distributed questionnaires 62 returned completed resulting in 62% usable responses. The sampling procedure was simple random sampling and the researcher went to several organizations and respondents to brief on objectives of the study and to give guidelines in answering the questionnaire. The questionnaire was first translated into Arabic by a translator team, reviewed by two subject matter experts and then validated through a pilot test and distributed in both Arabic and English language.

Results
The purpose of this study was to analyze the difference in leadership style between male and female in Kuwait. There were fewer female respondents (n=24) than male respondents (n=38). All of the survey participants are from Kuwait and from both public and private sector. It should be highlighted that 85% of Kuwaitis work in public sector. The demographic data is presented in table 2. Most of participants are in the age ranging from 40 to 50 (45.1%), followed by 29 to 39 (30.6%). 37.1% of interviewees has 11 to 15 years of experience in leading positions and 33.9% of them has 6 to 10; 27.4% has 1 to 5 years and only 1.6% has more than 15 years of work experience in leading positions.

Discussion
According to the outcomes of this study, male and female leaders use the same behaviors and there are no major differences between male and female leadership style in Kuwait. This result is in opposition to researchers, which have found that men tend to practice transformational leadership and female transactional (Eagly et al., 1992).
Another interesting outcome is that Kuwaiti leaders apply both transformational and transactional leadership approach and the assumption of the author is that they responded to the questionnaire based on contextual situations and do not follow the same leadership style at all times. This is an important topic for further investigation.

Limitations and directions for further research
This research analyzed Kuwaiti leadership style, however, the contextual issues were not take into consideration. It is essential to apply situational theories and measure the effectiveness of leaders depending on contextual elements. According to situational leadership theories, effectiveness of leader behavior depends on the context. The majority of work force in Kuwait is non-Kuwaitis; however, most leading positions are assigned to Kuwaitis. It might be interesting to analyze the impact of nationality and culture on leadership style. Further analysis should cover how subordinates and superordinate rate the leadership styles, as the results in this study are limited to self-rating of leaders. This study did not analyze contextual variable such as nature of tasks. It is also important to mention that 85% of Kuwaitis work in governmental sector, which means future research should be conducted with a fair sampling between private and governmental sector.