Gender and perceived power in manager—subordinate relations

Abstract

A field study in three organizations investigated gender differences in subordinates' perceptions of managers' power. For 55 female and 55 male managers matched on position power, one subordinate per manager (N = 110, half male and half female) completed a questionnaire. Perceived reward, legitimate, expert and referent power were all intercorrelated, but unrelated to coercive power. Male and female managers did not show the expected differences in combined, reward, coercive, legitimate and referent power. Contrary to predictions, subordinates rated female managers higher than male managers on expert power. Male managers with female subordinates were rated lower on combined and expert power than other gender combinations. Implications are discussed.

The Effect of Credibility on Perceived Power1

“…Without specific information about the other three power bases, subjects made specific attributions about the power of the manager in the vignette, which would follow from attribution theory (e.g., Heider, 1958;Kelley, 1973). This would also explain why some of the scale intercorrelations reported in this study were higher than have been previously reported in the literature (Hinkin & Schriesheim, 1989;Ragins, 1989;Ragins & Sundstrom, 1990).…”

“…The power bases correlated significantly with each other, which suggests that the French and Raven bases of power are not completely orthogonal constructs. Other studies have also found significant patterns of intercorrelations between measures of the French and Raven's power bases (e.g., Frost & Stahelski, 1988;Hinkin & Schriesheim, 1989Ragins, 1989;Ragins & Sundstrom, 1990).…”

The Development and Validation of a Scale Measuring Global Social Power Based on French and Raven's Power Taxonomy1

“…In the past, researchers have attempted to measure the overall power of a source by simply adding together ratings of the five individual French and Raven (1959) power bases (Ragins, 1989(Ragins, , 1991Ragins & Sundstrom, 1990;Stahelski & Patch, 1993). The results of this study demonstrate that this practice is not appropriate.…”

“…We have no independent verification that the power relationships reported by the graduate students are veridical. Other researchers have, in fact, examined power relationships from multiple perspectives (e.g., Ragins & Sundstrom, 1990). However, it has been proposed that the perception of the individual's power is important in determining the person's actual power (Tedeschi, 1990).…”

“…In the past, to measure the overall power of a source, researchers have simply summed ratings of the five individual power bases (e.g., Ragins, 1989Ragins, , 1991Ragins & Sundstrom, 1990;Stahelski & Patch, 1993). This process has been employed in order to determine who is perceived as more powerful, given the use of different influence strategies (Stahelski & Patch, 1993), and to assess if perceptions of overall leader power are related to perceptions of leader effectiveness (Ragins,199 1) or a leader's gender (Ragins & Sundstrom, 1990).…”