No abstract

The trend in research on power and leadership in organizations toward greater interest in the role of followers is examined. The historical development of this trend is reviewed, along with current applications aimed at greater follower involvement in organizations. Problems and prospects of empowering subordinates are discussed, along with challenges to be met. Although power and leadership research has made notable progress in addressing questions of relevance to organizations, suggestions are offered for additional work to be done.

Although blatant expressions of sexism in the American workforce appear on the decline, many researchers note that discrimination is not disappearing but is instead becoming more subtle and ambiguous. Drawing from Sue et al.’s construct of microaggressions, which examines manifestations of prejudice ranging from subtle to overt, the present research provides the first known empirical investigation of gender differences in third-party perceptions of microaggressions against women at work. Undergraduate women and men read vignettes describing interactions between male supervisors and female subordinates, which portrayed potentially discriminatory supervisor behavior, ranging in explicitness from subtle to blatant. Results indicate that although both men and women perceive differences in microaggression explicitness, women tend to detect greater discrimination than men, particularly when instances are subtle in nature. Both genders expect microaggressions to generate more negative work outcomes as explicitness increases. We discuss practical implications of our research, including the importance of raising awareness of workplace gender microaggressions, especially its most subtle forms, and of developing supporting programs to help observers of discrimination, who may be more likely to be women in cases of perceived microaggressions against women. Future research directions for addressing the broad range of discrimination facing working women today are also explored.

No abstract

The relationship between personality attributes and transformational leadership and the effects of transformational leadership on subordinate satisfaction and performance were examined. High scores on transformational leadership were associated with a distinct personality pattern characterized by higher levels of pragmatism, nurturance, and feminine attributes and lower levels of criticalness and aggression. This enabling pattern formed the core of transformational leadership. Although leader scores on transformational leadership correlated significantly with subordinate satisfaction, no performance effects of transformational leadership were found for six different objective measures of performance. Implications for models of transformational leadership are discussed.