Impact of Managerial Power on Persuasive Strategy Selection by Female and Male Managers

Abstract

This article compares and contrasts the persuasive communication of male and female middle managers, focusing on the mediating influence of a manager's power on his or her selection of anticipated compliance-gaining message strategies. It directly addresses the question of whether differences in the reported persuasive communication of male and female managers are best accounted for by their gender or by the relative amount of power they possess in the organization. A hypothetical compliance-gaining situation was presented to 25 male and 35 female managers with differing amounts of managerial power. Written responses to the situation were coded in terms of four general persuasive strategies—reward, punishment, altruism, or rationale. The study found that when the relative amount of power a manager possesses is controlled for, male and female managers do not display markedly different persuasive strategies. In general, high-power male and female managers say they would frequently resort to the use of a punishment-based strategy to gain the compliance of their subordinate, whereas low-power male and female managers report that they tend to rely more often on altruism- or rationale-based strategies to accomplish the same objective.