Leadership styles and career paths of selected women in higher education administration and corporate administration

This study was made to determine if there were similarities or differences in the leadership styles and career paths of women in educational administration and women in corporate management; The populations of this study consisted of 50 women in higher education administration selected from the 1988 edition of the Higher Education Directory and 50 women in corporate administration from the 1988 Standard and Poor\u27s Register of Corporations, Directors and Executives. Women, in both areas, listed as presidents, vice-presidents, directors, deans, managers, chancellors, CEOs or other corresponding titles, were selected; The instruments used to gather data in this study were the Leadership Opinion Questionnaire designed to give scores on two leadership dimensions--Consideration (human relations) and Structure (task orientation; and a Biographical/Career Path Questionnaire, developed by the investigator, designed to gather information about personal characteristics and career paths; Executive women in business scored higher on both dimensions--Consideration and Structure--than the women in higher education. The educators reported more earned degrees, marriages of longer duration, fewer children and more parents with professional/managerial backgrounds than did the corporate executives who reported a higher percentage of parental influence on their career aspirations, more children per capita and marriages of shorter duration. Both groups agreed that experience, professional expertise and leadership ability had gained them their current managerial positions and that male chauvinism, male stereotyping of women and their early socialization were among the most important barriers that women faced in their attempts to obtain senior managerial posts; The following recommendations were offered: (1) an assessment of leadership styles needs to be correlated with an assessment of effectiveness; (2) similar research needs to be done with younger women to determine if the differences that exist in this study are consistent; (3) research is needed to determine the number of women who were interested in becoming administrators, but who did not succeed; (4) further research is needed to compare women in four-year institutions with women in community college administration; and (5) in-depth studies of women executives in specific industries/businesses to determine if the results are consistent with those in this study