Do the advantages of androgynous leadership extend to teams? : development, validation, and testing of a team androgyny instrument

Abstract

Recent business scandals (e.g., Lehman Brothers) raise questions regarding the role of decision-making in shaping outcomes such as performance. Researchers have examined decision-making of organizational teams from a variety of perspectives, however, limited work has studied androgynous decision-making. Researchers have argued that androgynous leaders are more effective than leaders who are masculine or feminine. I argue that this may extend to the team level. The purpose of my dissertation is to use the theory of androgyny (Bem, 1974) as a conceptual basis to support the development of a new instrument that examines androgynous decision-making in organizational teams. In three studies, my aims are to develop/refine a new instrument to measure team androgyny, provide evidence of convergent/divergent validity with other measures, and demonstrate the utility of my team androgyny instrument by showing its ability to predict outcomes related to risk propensity, ethical responsibility, and objective team performance. Additionally, I examine the interplay of sex composition and team gender on performance. Study 1 was exploratory and included a literature review, consultation with subject matter experts, a pilot study and main study to refine the item pool and test the factor structure of team androgyny. In Study 2, using the refined instrument, the items factored onto the two hypothesized subscales (i.e., masculinity and femininity) and demonstrated convergent/divergent validity. At the aggregated level, as hypothesized, team masculinity predicted risk propensity, and team femininity predicted ethical responsibility. Team androgyny was unrelated to team performance; However, masculine teams had the highest performance via team grades. Study 3 used an experimental design to replicate/confirm previous results. Team sex composition (i.e., male) and team masculinity negatively related to performance, no other main effects emerged. This dissertation provides support for my team androgyny instrument and demonstrates that team sex and gender impacts performance, but how depends on the task.