Leadership styles of entrepreneurial women in eastern China: Characteristics and differences

• Chengyan Li

  Shanghai Normal University

• Lili Bao

  Case Western Reserve University

• Qiang Jiang

  Fudan University

A number of studies have recently been conducted on entrepreneurship of women. In one study the researchers found that gender had an impact on entrepreneurial activity (Mueller & Conway Dat-On, 2008) and the characteristics of entrepreneurial women per se became the focus of research. In our empirical research we explored the characteristics of, and differences among, the leadership style of a sample of 225 entrepreneurial women from Zhejiang Province and Shanghai in eastern China. We found that the majority of these women adopted an achievement-oriented style of leadership, that is, a style consisting of high initiating structure and high consideration. We found differences in the consideration leadership style of the women according to the type of enterprise in which they were working; in addition there were differences in both initiating structure and consideration leadership styles of the women entrepreneurs according to the length of time that the enterprise in which the women were working had been established.

1. Chengyan Li, Shanghai Normal University
   Department of Human Resource Management
2. Lili Bao, Case Western Reserve University
   Department of Operations Research
3. Qiang Jiang, Fudan University
   Department of Psychology

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