For the Article provided :

For the Article provided : Post, C. (2015). When is female leadership an advantage? Coordination requirements, team cohesion, and team interaction norms. Journal of Organizational Behavior, 36 (8), 1153-1175. Follow the below instructions for the Detailed article review Please answer all questions in detail 1. Introduction (1 page) 1.1. General description of problem and area of research (context of study) 1.2. Specific research question(s) 1.3. What is this study supposed to add to the Body of Knowledge? 2. Summary of study. In this section use a descriptive tone, be concise using 1-3 sentences per item. You are welcome to use tables if needed. (3-6 pages). 2.1. Model (what predicts what, at the conceptual level) 2.1.1 Graphic version of model – if the authors don’t have one, please try to create it yourself) 2.2 Theory/ies used in the study. 2.2.1 Major hypothes(is)(es). Explain how they are formulated. 2.3. Methodological design 2.4. Variables’ definitions and measures. Validity and reliability of the scales. 2.5. Control factors/variables (if any) – implemented experimentally and/or statistically 2.6. Sample and population 2.7. Procedures – brief summary 2.8. Data analysis strategy 2.9. Claimed findings and contributions. Explain statistical tests used to test hypotheses and findings. (R square, p-value, mediation, moderation, etc.) 2.10. Your overall assessment of the of the quality of the research 3. Critique of study. This section is your informed commentary on each aspect of the study, and should be heavy on evaluation and assessment, with description kept to a minimum. Use the questions below only as the basis of your critique but customize them to your article’s evaluation. Some sections can be omitted if appropriate. Likewise, new sections can be added. (3-6 pages) 3.1. Is the relevancy of the study justified? 3.2. Is it clear why each theory was needed and how each theory was used? 3.2.1. How is the match of key study elements? 3.2.2. Research questions to theories, Research questions and theories to model, Model to hypotheses, Hypotheses to variables, variables to measures, Model to methodological design, Model to data analysis strategy 3.3. Critique utility and value of model 3.3.1. Clarity 3.3.2. Comprehensiveness and parsimony 3.3.3. Appropriateness of level(s) of analysis 3.4. Critique Population/sample(s). 3.4.1. Population from which sample (or census) is drawn 3.4.2. Type of sample 3.4.3. Is sampling procedure adequate? 3.4.4. Is sample appropriate to address research questions? 3.5. Operational definition and measurement 3.5.1. Clarity and specificity of operational definitions of constructs and variables 3.5.2. Appropriateness of level of measurement 3.5.3. Reliability of measures 3.5.4. Internal and external validity of measures 3.5.5. Construct validity of measures 3.6. Statistical analysis 3.6.1. Appropriateness of analytical procedures to model 3.6.2. Appropriateness of procedures to data 3.6.3. Appropriateness of test statistics and other reported indicators to data analysis 3.6.4. Correctness of interpretation of data analysis 4. Credibility, future value, and recommendations (1-2 pages) 4.1. Credibility of contribution 4.1.1. Who cares? 4.1.2. Implications for theory 4.1.3. Implications for practice 4.2. What might have been improved in present study to enhance its credibility and contribution? 4.2.1. Design, Measures, Analysis 5. Describe your chosen area of study (1-2 pages) 5.1. Define your topic of research interests. 5.2. What are the main (3-5) journals publishing this area of research? 5.3. Describe 2 to 3 main contributions from the literature in this area? (why are they relevant?) 5.4. What methodologies are mostly used in this area of research? 6. Future Research 6.1. What do you expect to be your area of research in your dissertation? 6.2. Why are you interested in this topic? 6.3. How do you plan to contribute to this area of study? 1. What are the dependent/independent/mediating/moderating variables in the study? Please explain. 2. What is a unit of analysis? 3. Does the theory that is presented in the article support the hypotheses? Answer this question for each hypothesis. 4. What are the researchers trying to do with the theory that underlies their research – to find support for that theory? To show how the theory can be proven wrong? To compare between two competing theories? To come up with their own theory? Or maybe something else? 5. Do the authors provide strong rationale for their hypotheses? (Make sure you examine that for each hypothesis). 6. Why is this study important and for whom? 7. How were the variables measured? 8. Are the measures that were used in the study reliable? What is the proof for that? a. Are the measures that were used in the study valid? What is the proof for that? b. What is the difference between validity and reliability of measures? Explain and provide examples. 9. Is it a cross-sectional or a longitudinal study? What is the difference between the two? 10. How were the hypotheses tested? Was the method appropriate? 11. Were all the hypotheses supported in the study? If not, explain how the authors explain the reason for that – be very specific in your answer. 12. For the supported hypotheses, how significant are the results? (Explain statistical values such as p value or R square). 13. What are the main findings of the study? 14. What are the study’s limitations? And why are these considered as limitations? 15. What are the study’s implications to business? And why are these considered as limitations? 16. In retrospective - How could that study be improved? 17. Does the study contribute anything to our knowledge about the workplace and ways to improve people’s work experience? How? 18. In the exam, you will be asked questions about the interpretation of the results – for example, you will have to explain the results, meaning and interpretation of the tables and figures. 19. How do you plan to expand this research study? When is female leadership an advantage? Coordination requirements, team cohesion, and team interaction norms CORINNE POST* Lehigh University College of Business and Economics Bethlehem, PA, U.S.A. Summary This study seeks to understand to what extent and in what contexts women leaders may be advantageous for teams. More specifically, this study examines how team leader gender relates to team cohesion, cooperative learning, and participative communication. Furthermore, the study argues that advantages derived from female leadership may be contingent on teams’ coordination requirements. I propose that as teams’ coordination requirements increase (i.e., with functional diversity, size, and geographic dispersion), teams with women leaders report more cohesion and more cooperative and participative interaction norms than those with men leaders. I aggregated survey responses from the members of 82 teams in 29 organizations at the team level. Findings from hierarchical linear modeling analyses suggest that female leadership is more positively associated with cohesion on larger and more functionally diverse teams and more positively associated with cooperative learning and participative communication on larger and geographically dispersed teams. These results call for more research on boundary conditions on the relationship between leader gender and team outcomes, on the role of relational leadership on complex and diverse teams and, ultimately, on the potential mediating role of cohesion and team interaction norms on the relationship between leader gender and team performance. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Keywords: gender; teams; leadership; cohesion; interaction norms; cooperative learning; participative communication; functional diversity; size; geographic dispersion In a network economy that increasingly emphasizes the importance of relational skills, shared responsibilities, coaching, and the nurturing and development of others (Adler, 2001; Fondas, 1997; Kanter & Zolner, 1986), the debate over the existence of a female advantage in leadership has drawn considerable attention both in academic circles (Eagly & Carli, 2003; Rosette & Tost, 2010; Vecchio, 2003) and in the business press (Conlin, 2003; Gerzema & D’Antonio, 2013; Heffernan, 2002; Klotz, 2011; LaVine, 2014; Sharpe, 2000). The argument that there is a female leadership advantage posits that because women, compared with men, tend to be more relational, more likely to emphasize teamwork and collaboration over self-interest, and more participative in their leadership (Eagly & Johannesen-Schmidt, 2001; Eagly, Johannesen-Schmidt, & van Engen, 2003), female leaders are more effective than male leaders (Grant, 1988; Rosener, 1990). Yet, evidence for a female advantage in leadership is decidedly mixed (Butterfield & Grinnell, 1999; Eagly, 2007; Paustian-Underdahl, Walker, & Woehr, 2014). This study seeks to understand to what extent and in what contexts female leadership may be advantageous. One explanation for the mixed evidence may be that the extent to which leader gender influences team outcomes depends on the characteristics of the teams being led. For example, teams may benefit more from relational leadership as their coordination requirements increase (Burke et al., 2006). In addition, the mixed results for the female leadership advantage may reflect variation in the control leaders have on team performance relative to other, more proximal outcomes, such as team cohesion and team interaction norms. Leader characteristics (e.g., gender) are likely to *Correspondence to: Corinne Post, College of Business and Economics, 621 Taylor Street, Bethlehem, PA 18015, U.S.A. E-mail: cgp208@lehigh. edu Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Received 09 January 2014 Revised 04 May 2015, Accepted 08 May 2015 Journal of Organizational Behavior, J. Organiz. Behav. 36, 1153–1175 (2015) Published online 24 June 2015 in Wiley Online Library (wileyonlinelibrary.com) DOI: 10.1002/job.2031 Research Article explain more variation in proximal team outcomes (e.g., team climate and interaction norms) than in distal outcomes (e.g., team performance and innovation). This study contributes to the debate on the female advantage in leadership in two novel and important ways. First, it seeks to understand in what contexts female leadership may be an advantage by identifying coordination requirements as contextual factors that create situations in which women leaders may be more successful than men. Consideration of context is central to better understand manifestations of gender differences in leadership outcomes (Butterfield & Grinnell, 1999; Liden & Antonakis, 2009; Vecchio, 2003). Role congruity studies (Eagly & Karau, 2002), for example, have documented that leader gender interacts with the gender typing of leaders’ roles to influence subjective evaluations of leadership (Eagly, Karau, & Makhijani, 1995; Rosette & Tost, 2010; Vecchio, 2002). This study differs from the work on role-congruity by identifying team coordination requirements (rather than gender role and leadership role congruity) as a contextual factor that may exacerbate leader gender differences in team outcomes. Drawing on the concept of coordination requirements, I propose that as teams become more functionally diverse, larger or when they are geographically dispersed, teams led by women will report more cohesion and more cooperative and participative interaction norms than those led by men. This happens, I argue, because teams with higher coordination requirements (i.e., teams that are more functionally diverse, larger, and geographically dispersed) may require a more relational approach from their leaders, and a relational approach to leadership is more readily available and accessible to women than to men. As a second contribution, this study extends the present debate on leader gender and team outcomes by examining how team leader gender may relate to team cohesion and to team interaction norms. Previous team- level studies considering gender differences in leadership have primarily focused on team-level performance outcomes or evaluations of leader performance. This study differs from those studies by focusing on the quality of the relationship between individuals and their team (e.g., cohesion) and on team interaction norms (i.e., cooperative learning and participative communication). I chose this focus because leaders may have a greater impact on proximal outcomes such as these than on team performance, which is more distally related to team leadership. Further, by relying on members’ evaluation of team cohesion and team interaction norms rather than on members’ evaluations of team leaders, this study may be able to mitigate the risk of gender biases that, as others have documented, may influence leader evaluations (Elsesser & Lever, 2011; Heilman, Wallen, Fuchs, & Tamkins, 2004). While performance evaluations of leaders are an important consideration in research on gender and leadership effectiveness, an examination of leader gender effects on team cohesion and team interaction norms is sorely missing from this body of research. This is the case despite evidence that leadership influences both the quality of the relationship between individuals and their team (Burke, Fiore, & Salas, 2003; Zaccaro, Rittman, & Marks, 2002) and team norms (Lott & Lott, 1965; Taggar & Ellis, 2007), which is legitimate, socially shared standards of appropriate behavior (Birenbaum & Sagarin, 1976) that influence how members of a team “perceive and interact with one another, approach decisions, and solve problems” (Chatman & Flynn, 2001: 956). This study focuses on team cohesion, cooperative learning, and participative communication as outcomes of team leader gender because these outcomes are indicative of the quality of the relationship between individuals and their team and of other-centered, cooperative team norms that emphasize cooperation, shared objectives, and mutual interests among members (Chatman & Flynn, 2001) and because research suggests that relational individuals (e.g., women) show more concern for others and for the collective. Theoretical background The expectation that female leaders will foster more cohesion, cooperative learning, and participative communication than male leaders rests on the argument that female leaders are more likely to have a relational self-construal than male leaders—that is, a conception of themselves as relatively interdependent, relational, and interconnected (Cross & Madson, 1997; Markus & Kitayama, 1991)—which, research finds, fosters team cohesion and communal interaction norms such as cooperative learning and participative communication. 1154 C. POST Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. J. Organiz. Behav. 36, 1153–1175 (2015) DOI: 10.1002/job A large body of work points to stereotypical differences in the self-construal of men and women (for a review, see Cross & Madson, 1997; Eagly & Wood, 1999; Eagly, Wood, & Diekman, 2000) that are also discernible among organizational leaders and managers (e.g., Cavallo & Brienza, 2006; Eagly et al., 2003; Mandell & Pherwani, 2003; van Emmerik, Gardner, Wendt, & Fischer, 2010; Zenger & Folkman, 2012): on average, women’s selfconstrual appears to be more relational or interdependent and men’s self-construal more independent (Gabriel & Gardner, 1999). This may explain why, compared with men, women display more empathy toward others (Cundiff & Komarraju, 2008; Dimberg & Lundquist, 1990; Eagly, 2009; Feingold, 1994; Fukushima & Hiraki, 2006); are more concerned with establishing, maintaining, or repairing close personal relationships with others (Eagly & Johnson, 1990); are less likely to seek to dominate others in resolving conflicts (Holt & DeVore, 2005); and are more supportive in their communication with others (Aries, 1996; Tannen, 1990) as they inquire, listen carefully, and create “space for others to express themselves” (White, Mcmillen, & Baker, 2001: 41). Empirical evidence about managers also supports the suggestion that female leaders are, on average, more relational than male leaders in their self-construal (e.g., Mandell & Pherwani, 2003; Zenger & Folkman, 2012): female managers exhibit more emotional and social competence (Cavallo & Brienza, 2006; Groves, 2005; Taylor & Hood, 2011); show more affiliative concerns and behaviors toward others (van Emmerik et al., 2010), including subordinates (Eagly et al., 2003; Luxen, 2005); are more inclusive and participative (Adams & Funk, 2012; Eagly & Johnson, 1990; McInerney-Lacombe, Bilimoria, & Salipante, 2008); and are more likely to approach decisionmaking cooperatively when competing interests are at stake (Bart & McQueen, 2013). Female leaders, relational self-construal, cohesion, cooperative learning, and participative communication I argue that female leaders are more likely than their male counterparts to facilitate team cohesion, cooperative learning, and participative communication. Women are more likely than their male counterparts to construe themselves as relational. In addition, relational activities facilitate team members’ convergence around team community and norms of collective orientation (Fletcher, 1998), such as cohesion, cooperative learning, and participative communication. Leaders’ centrality on teams provides them with greater influence and control over others (Lockwood, Jordan, & Kunda, 2002). Because self-construal regulates affect, motivation, and cognition in powerful ways (Markus & Kitayama, 1991), it stands to reason that leaders’ self-construal influences members’ behaviors in ways that shape the quality of the relationship between team members and the team (e.g., cohesion) and team interaction norms (e.g., cooperative learning and participative communication.) Because women leaders, more so than men leaders, construe themselves as relational, I argue that teams led by women are likely to report more team cohesion than those led by men. Cohesion, here, describes “the process(es) keeping members of a small group or larger social entity (…) together and united in varying degrees” (Dion, 2000: 7). Cross and Madson (1997) suggest that individuals with a relational self-construal derive positive feelings from the development and maintenance of close relationships. By extension, it stands to reason that leaders with more of a relational self-construal (i.e., women leaders) will seek to establish frequent, positive interactions with team members and infuse their bonds with affective concern. The quality of these relationships, in turn, is likely to positively influence members’ attitudes, including their desire to stay in the team, identification, and satisfaction with the team, which are central aspects of cohesion. Relational leaders, because of their focus on relationships among team members, may also bring about positive affect and energy (Carmeli, Ben-Hador, Waldman, & Rupp, 2009), which may enhance members’ positive affect toward the collective, thereby further enhancing cohesion. Taken together, this suggests that leaders’ relational self-construal may enhance team cohesion. Cohesion is a multi-dimensional construct that includes both task and social dimensions (Carron, Widmeyer, & Brawley, 1985; Griffith, 1988; Zaccaro, 1991). This study theorizes that relational differences among leaders affect team cohesion and interaction norms. Therefore, it focuses on the social (rather than task) dimension of cohesion. In addition, this study is concerned with team members’ perception of team cohesion (rather than with an objective measure of WHEN IS FEMALE LEADERSHIP AN ADVANTAGE? 1155 Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. J. Organiz. Behav. 36, 1153–1175 (2015) DOI: 10.1002/job cohesion). Hence, this study relies on Bollen and Hoyle’s (1990) conceptualization of cohesion as “an individual’s sense of belonging to a particular group and his or her feelings of morale associated with membership in the group” (p. 482). Because women leaders, more so than men leaders, construe themselves as relational, I theorize that teams led by women are also likely to report more cooperative learning than those led by men. Cooperative learning refers to team norms that stress members’ interdependence in knowledge creation and reciprocity in learning (Janz & Prasarnphanich, 2003; Johnson, Johnson, & Anderson, 1983). Leaders with more of a relational self-construal (e.g., women leaders) may be especially likely and motivated to emphasize cooperative learning. This reasoning stems from evidence that individuals with a relational self-construal tend to pay careful attention to how information is embedded in relationships (Cross & Madson, 1997). They tend to think of their outcomes as intertwined with those of the group (Cross & Madson, 1997). When individuals construe themselves as interdependent, they are more motivated to promote group-relevant goals (e.g., Bond & Hwang, 1986) and are more likely to display cooperative behaviors (Wagner, 1995). This study draws on Janz and Prasarnphanich’s (2003) conceptualization of cooperative learning as composed of positive outcome interdependence (i.e., team members’ perceptions that they cannot be successful unless every other team member is also successful) and promotive interactions (i.e., the extent to which members educate and encourage each other to accomplish tasks and promote one another’s success). Finally, because women leaders, more so than men leaders, construe themselves as relational, I anticipate that teams led by women are likely to report more participative communication than those led by men. Participative communication refers to communication norms characterized by high levels of transparency, mindfulness, participation, and input (Jassawalla & Sashittal, 2006). Transparency indicates awareness and openness that come from the intense exchange of information (Nambisan, 2002), while participation and input represent the extent to which team members exercise their voice (Carson, Tesluk, & Marrone, 2007). My contention—that leaders with more of a relational self-construal (e.g., women leaders) are likely to promote participative communication—is informed by research linking individuals’ and leaders’ relational self-construal with various aspects of participative communication. For example, Kim, Hunter, Miyahara, Horvath, Bresnahan and Yoon (1996) show that individuals with a relational self-construal seek to avoid hurting hearers’ feelings. Relational individuals’ concern with how one’s communications may affect the feelings of others promotes mindfulness in conversations and attention to and solicitation of others’ viewpoints. In another study, Cross, Bacon and Morris (2000) find that individuals with a relational selfconstrual are more inclined to consider the needs and wishes of others when they make decisions. And, in a series of experiments, Brewer and Gardner (1996) demonstrate that individuals primed with relational schemas perceive ambiguous attitude statements as more similar to their own attitudes and behave more inclusively. Others have theorized that leaders with a relational self-construal more easily relate to and trust their followers (Brower, Schoorman, & Tan, 2000). Taken together, this suggests that leaders with a stronger relational self-construal are likely to stimulate participative communication, for example, requesting and valuing others’ opinions and ideas and promoting information sharing with and among team members. In summary, because female leaders are more likely to be relational than male leaders and because relational leaders tend to bring about team cohesion, cooperative learning, and participative communication, one would, therefore, expect teams led by women to report more cohesion, cooperative learning, and participative communication than those led by men. The female leadership advantage in context: team coordination requirements When managing teams of employees, coordination is critically important. Yet, some teams require more coordination than the others (Espinosa, Slaughter, Kraut, & Herbsleb, 2007). Three characteristics of teams represent high team coordination requirements: functional diversity, size, and geographic dispersion. Functional diversity requires high coordination because the more dissimilar members are in terms of their functional backgrounds, the more likely members are to interpret problems and data differently, to lack a common understanding of appropriate responses 1156 C. POST Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. J. Organiz. Behav. 36, 1153–1175 (2015) DOI: 10.1002/job and behaviors, and to draw on dissimilar skills and knowledge. In addition, functional diversity is likely to create strains that impede the development of cohesion (Forbes & Milliken, 1999; Keller, 2001). In particular, members may categorize each other according to their functional representation (Hogg & Terry, 2000; Tajfel, 1981) and develop more interpersonal attraction to individuals representing similar functions while keeping more distance from, and sometimes competing with, individuals from other organizational functions (Byrne, 1971), for example by engaging in self-serving behaviors (Chatman & Flynn, 2001). Team size and team member geographic dispersion also require high levels of coordination for team tasks (Espinosa et al., 2007), because, on teams with these characteristics, it is “difficult for members to communicate and coordinate with each other and effectively manage their mutual dependencies” (Espinosa et al., 2007: 613). As teams get larger and when they are geographically dispersed, members also find it increasingly difficult to understand and trust each other. For example, in a study of top management teams, Amason and Sapienza (1997) show that as team size increases, members feel less joint responsibility and shared goals. In documenting the challenges of eliciting trust on geographically dispersed teams, Jarvenpaa and Leidner (1999) further suggest that even when swift trust emerges on teams, it is fragile and fleeting. I propose that on more functionally diverse teams, larger teams, and on geographically dispersed teams—all of which require considerable coordination—women leaders are more likely than men to foster cohesion, cooperative learning, and participative communication. Without relational leadership, teams with higher coordination requirements may find it difficult to succeed in their efforts (Fletcher & Kaeufer, 2002). Collaboration mechanisms, for example, enable functionally diverse teams to access the knowledge embedded among members of the team (Montoya, Massey, & Lockwood, 2011). Relational leaders may be well positioned to help teams become more aware of the unique assets each team member brings to the group and of the interdependence among these assets. Additionally, relational leaders are likely to develop team collaboration mechanisms. By creating trust with and among team members, relational leaders are also better at eliciting a sense of responsibility and eagerness toward learning from and developing the team (Carmeli et al., 2009; Fletcher & Kaeufer, 2002). In the following discussion, I elaborate on the reasons why women leaders, who are more likely to have a relational self- construal, are also more likely than men leaders to be successful at fostering cohesion, cooperative learning, and participative communication on teams that are more functionally diverse, larger in size, and geographically dispersed. As functional diversity increases, teams’ likelihood of achieving communal team outcomes, such as cohesion, cooperative learning, and participative communication, may be especially contingent on team leaders’ gender, because female leaders, on average, are likely to have more of a relational self-construal, and therefore more of a relational approach to leadership. The relational approach, in placing value on the outcomes embedded in the connection among members, seems particularly beneficial when members represent a variety of functions because it motivates team members to overcome functional social categorization, biases, and stereotyping (Hornsey & Hogg, 2000; Sherif, 1958). Further, teams that develop a relational closeness seem to be able to mitigate the otherwise negative effect of conflict on other-oriented, communal group behaviors (Rispens, Greer, Jehn, & Thatcher, 2011). Leaders’ demonstrations of empathy, caring values, and affective concern for others may improve the ability of functionally diverse teams to develop cohesion and other-oriented team norms (Druskat & Pescosolido, 2006; Kirkman, Li, & Porter, 2014). For example, in a study of team-level citizenship behaviors in the automotive industry, Pearce and Herbik (2004) found that when leaders encouraged teamwork, members were significantly more likely to engage in behaviors that were supportive of the team, such as mindfulness and altruism. Finally, cultivating team members’ ability for perspective taking may help foster higher quality team relationships between team members and the team and more cooperative and participative interaction norms on functionally diverse teams. Indeed, perspective taking has been shown to lower inter-personal aggression (Richardson, Green, & Lago, 1998) and to encourage cooperation and collaboration (Williams, Parker, & Turner, 2007). Furthermore, in a study examining the relative influence of participative and directive leadership on team processes, Somech (2006) found that, in functionally diverse teams, participative (but not directive) leadership was associated with collective reflection. In short, teams facing coordination requirements presented by functional diversity may respond better to relational leadership, which is a characteristic of female leaders more so than of male leaders. Therefore, as illustrated in Figure 1, I expect that, as teams’ functional diversity increases, female leaders will be more successful than their