An Analysis of Leadership Styles Adopted by Women in Top Leaders Positions.

───────────────────────────────────────── An Analysis of Leadership Styles Adopted by Women in Top Leaders Positions. by Anna Mary MacLeod Student ID Number: 4336829 Year of Publication: 2019 Word Count: 14929 A Dissertation presented in part consideration for the degree of "Management MSc". University of Nottingham Business School. ───────────────────────────────────────── Abstract Women seem to struggle to obtain senior leadership roles within companies, particularly successful companies like those on the Fortune 500 list. Academic literature and the media have focused on this issue, aiming to understand why women fail to reach senior management levels. A range of theories and viewpoints are discussed in this paper, focusing on the discussion about whether women are able to lead and what leadership approach or style is most suitable to them. The aim of the dissertation is to understand which leadership approach women in senior leadership roles typically adopt. The dissertation uses interviews with women from the Forbes list of the most powerful businesswomen in the world to examine their leadership approach. It uses a thematic analysis, coding the interviews with predetermined codes to understand which leadership styles, Transformational or Transactional, are present within the women’s interviews. Results from the investigation suggest female leaders in the private business sector are more likely to adopt a more Transformational Leadership approach. However, it also finds women are most likely to use results to determine the success of their business, a key aspect of Transactional Leadership. The study also suggests that women’s leadership styles are not affected by their job history but may be affected by the industry they work in (e.g. the Technology Services industry and the Media industry)