The Relationship Between Role Salience, Work-Family Conflict, and Women’s Managerial Leadership Practices

OBJECTIVE
This study addressed how role salience and work-family conflict relate to leadership practices for women managers.

METHODOLOGY
The sample (N = 197) was comprised of single and married women, ages 22-55, with and without dependent children living at home, holding middle or upper management positions within various for-profit organizations. Respondents completed The Salience Inventory (Super & Nevill, 1986), the Work-Family Conflict Scale (Kelloway, Gottlief & Barham, 1999), and the Leadership Practices Inventory. Internal reliability coefficients for the LPI in this study were .83 for Modeling, .89 Inspiring, .88 Challenging, .81 Enabling, and .91 for Encouraging.

KEY FINDINGS
There were no significant differences in the leadership practices of women managers with role salience for work, or home/family, or both work and family. Women managers identified as having work-interfering- with-family conflict did not significantly engage in more leadership practices than those identified as having family-interfering-with-work conflict. No significant differences were found between the leadership practices of women managers with or without dependent children (which “provides empirical support that contradicts the stereotypical belief that mothers are less capable than nonmothers relative to engaging in leadership practices” -- p. 112).

As years in the work force increased so did women managers’ use of all five of the leadership practices. The greater the support provided by employers for family needs, the more respondents engaged in the leadership practices of Modeling, Inspiring, and Encouraging.