Abstract:
In South Africa there is an underrepresentation of females in senior leadership
positions. This is partly due to perceptions of incongruence between females and
leadership. Along with this, the levels of work engagement amongst employees
working in South Africa are extremely low. Both challenges result in negative and
costly consequences. Therefore, the aim of this research is to identify the influence
that female leaders have on work engagement, focussing on agentic and communal
leadership styles, to contribute to the discourse of both challenges.
A quantitative methodology was employed to collect the data. The Utrecht Work
Engagement scale was used to capture the respondent’s work engagement levels,
and the Agency-Communion-Inventory scale to capture the employees’ perceptions
of their managers’ leadership style. The relationships between the variables were
analysed through multiple regression analysis.
Females exhibiting a communal style and those exhibiting an agentic style both
influenced work engagement. The agentic style influenced vigour, dedication and
absorption, whereas the communal style influenced only vigour and dedication, but
had a far stronger association with them. These results encourage management to
promote females, with both agentic and communal leadership styles, into senior
positions allowing organisations to benefit from higher female representation,
including improved work engagement.
