The influence of female agentic and communal leadership on work engagement

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.