The juxtaposition of agentic and communal behaviours of women leaders

Abstract

There have been significant strides made in the representation of women in the workplace globally and within South Africa, however the representation of women at senior management levels remains a concern. Role congruency theory posits that women in senior management are unfavourably judged owing to the incongruence between the communal role of women versus the agentic role of a leader. Academic literature on role congruency theory has predominantly focused on the barriers to female advancement into leadership roles. Furthermore, these studies have predominantly focused on Western societies. Thus, there is a gap in the literature in terms of exploring the behaviours that aid women leaders in their career advancement in a non-Western society, namely South Africa. Owing to the exploratory nature of this research, a qualitative narrative inquiry methodology was used. The sample is made up of 18 women leaders currently at a senior management level in a diverse set of industries and roles. Each female leader was interviewed to explore which agentic, communal, and blending of the two behaviours they used to advance to senior management. The results show that women predominantly lead with communal behaviours, however there were a few who lead with agentic behaviours. The five most commonly occurring behaviours in order were competence (agentic), empathy (communal), connection (communal), assertiveness (agentic) and care (communal). In addition, all leaders in the sample utilised a combination of agentic and communal behaviours made up as follows: balance between communal and agentic; flex between communal and agentic; communal to agentic; and agentic to communal. Critical to their career advancement were a combination of organisational and individual enablers. This research found that female leaders are indeed blending communion and agency to advance their careers. They do still articulate the gendered expectations exists; however, these are overcome with the use of organisational and individual enablers.