Gender Differences in the Perceptions of Leadership and Power-Influence

Lee, Chiew Ying (2019) Gender Differences in the Perceptions of Leadership and Power-Influence. Final Year Project (Bachelor), Tunku Abdul Rahman University College.

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Abstract

This paper will look into the gender differences toward the perceptions of leadership and power influence in public relations industry. This study consisted of an interview with 8 public relations practitioners with different year of experience in public relations industry. The purposive sampling technique is apply in this paper in order to fulfill the topic. The objectives of this paper was to firstly study how male and female public relations practitioners perceived themselves and each other as leader, their perceptions toward transactional, transformation and situational leadership style as well as the most effective leadership style in public relations industry. This paper also aim to study about how male and female public relations practitioners make meaning of the power and which they think is the most valuable power of source for them. There are few significant results from this this paper, first of all, most of the public relations leaders regardless of gender have claimed that they perceived themselves have playing a mentor role in public relations. Second, situational leadership style seen like the most effective leadership style to be apply in public relations industry as according to the public relations respondents. Besides that, male and female public relations have defined power as the ability of the public relations practitioners to influence others. Last but not least, among reporting relationship, professional experience, personal relationship and participate in CEO’s network, male and female public relations practitioners have different perceptions on how those power sources bring them power. Different individual valued different power sources as the most valuable power sources.