Impact of Gender and Transformational Leadership on Ethical Behaviors

Using a sample of 102 managers from a large nationalized bank in India, the study looked at the effect of leader femininity and masculinity on transformational leadership and the relationship between all the three with leader ethical behavior. Results show that leader’s femininity is the stronger predictor of transformational leadership and masculinity explains additional variance in transformational leadership. Femininity, masculinity, and transformational leadership are positively related to leader’s ethical behaviors. The relationship between transformational leadership and ethics is stronger for those lower on femininity as compared to those higher on femininity. Leadership is the ability of an individual to influence, motivate, and enable others to contribute towards the effectiveness and success of the organizations of which they are members. A constant change that has become a part of life for many organizations highlights the increasing importance of transformational leadership. Superior performance or performance beyond normal expectations is possible only by transforming followers’ values, attitudes’ and motives from a lower to a higher plane of arousal and maturity (Bass, 1985). A number of authors have speculated the difference in feminine and masculine leadership styles. Increasingly, feminine leadership is seen to be more transformational. Ethical behaviors in organizations have also become an actively discussed topic that is seen as more and more important. This paper reports a study done to see the role of femininity and transformational leadership in enhancing ethical behaviors in organizations. THEORY AND HYPOTHESES Transformational Leadership Leaders can be classified as transactional and transformational. According to Bass, transactional leaders decide what their followers should do to realize their personal and organizational aims; they classify these aims and help their followers to achieve their goals. On the contrary, transformational leaders motivate their followers to do more than they really expect they can do, increasing the sense of importance and value of the tasks, stimulating them to surpass their own interests and direct themselves to the interests of the team, organization, or larger community, and raising the level of change to a higher level (Bass, 1985). Transactional leadership is a process in which the leader-follower relationship is reduced to simple exchange of a certain quantity of work for an adequate price. Contrary to this, transformational leadership is a far more complex process, the realization of which requires more visionary and more inspiring figures (Simic, 1998). Transformational leadership occurs when one or more persons engage with others in such a way that leaders and followers raise one another to higher levels of motivation and morality, and results in a transforming effect on both leaders and followers (Burns, 1978). It is based on leaders’ shifting the values, beliefs, and needs of the followers. Leaders broaden and change the interests of their followers, and generate awareness and acceptance of the purposes and mission of the group. Transformational leaders inspire and motivate followers in ways that go beyond exchanges and rewards. Transformational leadership consists of four factors—charisma, inspirational motivation, intellectual stimulation, and individualized consideration. Charisma is providing