Leadership Styles among Genders of Retail Managers

Themes that affect leadership have long aroused the interest of the academic community, especially regarding the categorization of the diverse forms of exercising this position and the impacts of these differences on the organizational environment. In this perspective, the interfering elements in the formation of the leader's style profile are also relevant, as the workforce is increasingly heterogeneous in terms of race, ethnicity, gender and other culturally diverse groups. However, segmentation of leadership styles is still observed exclusively by gender, which may give rise to spaces for the practice of prejudices and discrimination. In view of this, this work aims to identify the significant differences of styles of leadership between genders in the retail trade. To do so, a quantitative approach was carried out with a sample of 100 managers, male and female, self-reported by the participants, using the MLQ questionnaire from Bass, corroborated widely in several countries and populations. Data were treated using descriptive frequency statistics, as well as the Cronbach Alpha tests for reliability analysis, Confirmatory Factor Analysis for validity, and the T-Test for independent samples. The results indicate that the female gender has greater presence of the transformational leadership trait and the additional factors (extra effort, efficacy and satisfaction); and the transactional leadership styles and Laissez-Faire did not present significant difference of presence between the genders. Finally, this research demonstrates that there is evidence that scale is appropriate for different organizational cultures.