TO DELEGATE OR NOT TO DELEGATE: GENDER DIFFERENCES IN AFFECTIVE ASSOCIATIONS AND BEHAVIORAL RESPONSES TO DELEGATION

摘要

Effectively delegating work to others is considered critical to managerial success, as itfrees up managers’ time and develops subordinates’ skills. We propose that femaleleaders are less likely than male leaders to capitalize on these benefits of delegating.Although delegation has communal (e.g., relational) and agentic (e.g., assertive) properties, we argue that female leaders, as compared to male leaders, find it more difficult todelegate tasks due to gender-role incongruence. In five studies, we draw upon social roleand backlash theories to show that women imbue delegation with more agentic traits,have more negative associations with delegating, and feel greater guilt about delegatingthan men. These associations result in women delegating less than men and, when theydo delegate, having lower-quality interactions with subordinates. We further show thatreframing delegation as communal attenuates womens negative associations with delegation. These findings reveal that even when a given behavior has both agentic andcommunal elements, perceptions of agency can undermine women’s engagement inthem. However, emphasizing the communal nature of seemingly agentic acts may encourage women's engagement in such critical leadership behaviors. These findings havetheoretical and practical implications for research on gender differences and leadershipbehavior in the workplace.