All literature used in this research has tested the hypothesis which gender variables are included. However, there is a little literature which aids with the research in determining the role of gender towards employee performance and work attitude. Since gender nature could possibly define an action of a particular supervisor, in verbal and non-verbal behavior, and explain how employees receive that medium towards different genders.
Teven’s research (2007) examined the impact of biological sex of supervisors on the employees’ job satisfaction by using three-way multivariate analyses of variance with 408 employees of the age between 21-73 years old in US with a wide range of organization.
The research reviewed the assumption that female and male supervisors create a differ appearance by nature as women supervisors would be more supportive and moralistic, while men supervisors would be more challenging and assertive. Harper and Hirokawa (1988) also confirmed that the strategies to force employees to comply with obligations are not the same in men and women supervisors; women bosses are more rational and empathetic, whereas men bosses are more based on rules and punishment.
At the same time, perception of employees are possibly contrast based on sex. Female employees are more concerned about interpersonal matters than men, which the relationship of employer and employees linked to the attitude of employees at this point (Krantz, 1989). Nevertheless, the result of Teven’s research (2007) has shown against some of the previous assumption since no multivariate interaction effects found for sex and the subordinate outcomes of satisfaction.
Another result provided that the perception of employees on supervisor’s credibility were greater for prosocial power than the antisocial power used. This finding could answer his research question that supervisor’ biological sex does not relevant to the perception of their employees about supervisor’ credibility, but the leadership style of supervisors does (Teven, 2007).
Another literature also expands the finding a bit more about the role of gender. Smith et al. (1998) portrays gender variables in a clearer aspect. This research questioned the influence of gender in the job satisfaction of employees in small business.
It collected data from 702 full-time employees from 56 small firms in the Southeastern Metropolitan area by using surveys and analysing the data by ANOVA and regression model. The research of Smith et al. (1998) helps us develop understanding on how interpersonal attractiveness is linked to gender and work attitude. Also, Maccoby (1990) reported that Interpersonal attraction could stem from frequent interaction, mutual interest, and also the instinct.
Hence, people in the same-sex has a sense to perceive things more similar and has more possibility to make the parallel agreement, this constructs similar attitude and convince people that the same gender would prefer to work together (Maccoby, 1990; Newcomb, 1956). Furthermore, Smith et al. (1998) underlined the existence of gender-congruence in the workplace which means that female employees are more satisfied to work with female employers and also the same scenario in males.
To be more specific, the result of Smith’s research shows that the structure of the firm differs toward business owner’s gender. Female employees might find it more uncomfortable than male employees to work with male supervisor due to his gender nature, masculine style (Miller-Loessi, 1992). The productivity from the same-sex group also show better result than from the opposite-sex group (Bullard & Cook,1975).
After all, even though Smith’ result (1998) shows that gender-congruence has significantly impact on job satisfaction, other pieces of literature have expressed that there are very minimal, if any, 7 directly impact from biological sex on subordinate perceptions. The analysis examined many factors;
such as age of supervisors and employees which show the positive correlation with job satisfaction, but in small effect (Smith et al., 1998). Hence, the effect of gender on work performance might not have been thoroughly explored provided that there are some points in the literature which can be improved for the future research.
Leadership Style Influence to Subordinates
As supervision attributes could link with the gender of supervisor, the nature of gender plays an important role in determining the effectiveness of supervisor on employee productivity (Gruneberg, 1984).
The literature of Grissom et al. (2012) illustrated the influence of employer’s gender on employee’s job satisfaction and turnover rate, additionally, they also find if there is any impact of gender-congruence between employer-employee relationships.
This study collected data from approximately 34,000 teachers from the available data in Schools and Staffing Survey (SASS) and Teacher Follow-up Survey (TFS) during the academic year of 2003-2004 by using multiple regression methods. The research finds that the gender congruence of employer-employee relationship is statistically significant at the .10 level, which means that the staff are more satisfied to work with companion in the same sex.
In addition, according to Grissom et al. (2012), the gender of a manager has a correlation with management stereotypes which are perceived by employees, it could be separated into men’s and women’s management style. Also, the decision-making process by the leader is to some extent determined by sex since feminine style would adopt democratic functioning and support cooperative decision among employees, while masculine style would take more risks and make directive decisions (Eagly and Johnson 1990; Riger, 1993).
From the evidence, it could point out that stereotypes of these beliefs are influenced by gender differences. Yet, the conclusion of which gender-related management style, feminine and masculine, is the best for employee performance is still unclear since some of the works give contradicting results about the real impact of the leadership style. For instance, the result of Grissom et al. (2012) and of Gallup (2010) finds that people prefer male manager over female, while other researchers found that people feel more positive with female managers (Eagly and Johnson 1990; Riger 1993)
To clarify, the research of Afolabi, Obude, Okediji, and Ezeh (2009) tackled the matter directly in determining the role of gender toward leadership styles and employee performance. This study attempts to test hypotheses regarding the difference performance between men and women on gender-related management styles.
A 2-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) method was used to analyse the data from questionnaires which was collected from 147 participants with the age of 25 and above from the bottling company. The result from the statistics of Afolabi et al. ‘s research (2009) shows that no matter what the gender of supervisor, subordinates in Democratic style perform better than subordinates in Autocratic leadership style.
To illustrate, Afolabi et al.’ s research (2009) supports the hypothesis of the best performance leadership style, but failed to confirm the direct impact of gender on productivity and responsibility in job. The literature of Teven (2007) also support that supervisor with social character are received positive reaction from employees more than anti-social supervisor, with the finding of no significant effect of sex.
Hence, this result is very useful for the study to create a better understanding about the unique impact of leadership styles through the lens of gender difference and continue focusing on how the performance of subordinates are impacted by the style of leadership.
The research of Kotey& Sheridan (2001) explored the practising in human resource management of men and women managers in small business whether it tends to be informal as the assumption in other previous research. In this research, Independent sample t-test and Chi-square were used to examine the variables of two sample, men and women, and report in the format of human resource management functions with 1400 questionnaires were sent out to full-time employees in small businesses on the Sunshine Coast, Queensland (Kotey& Sheridan, 2001).
The results indicated similarities in many aspects of human resource management of men and women managers which show that gender has minimal effect in the basic function of human resource management operations; for instance, 83 percent of all owner in small business use ‘interview’ as a basic of selection for employees, 67.3 percent of the owners provided induction training for staff, and 79 percent of employers appraised the performance of their employees (Kotey& Sheridan, 2001).
Nonetheless, there are some interesting outcomes which reported that in the private small business whose character of workplace are informal, flexible roles and non-strict to the documentations, the practice of document operations in the business is different between men owner-manager and women owner-manager.
To elaborate, male managers are more concerned with document matters and tend to rely on work performance records of employees, whereas female managers would rely more on practical reports and get involved personally to the employee training and they would see their staff as companions (Kotey& Sheridan, 2001). For this finding, the literature of Kotey& Sheridan (2001) helps confirm that the role of workplace factors that have an impact differently on the leader behavior of male and female managers.
For this reason, it is interesting to find out whether the structure of the company can also directly/indirectly affect the performance of workers as well. Also, it supports the research of Grissom et al. (2012) which mentioned above that women supervisors tend to be more empathetic than men managers do.
Next, the subsection of the research of Wohlers, Hall, and London (1993) examined the factor of organizational differences which could possibly lead to bias in employee’s rating on their manager. The results found that the average profile agreement in government organizations are 36 percent which is lower than other organizations which the average profile agreement are 41 percent. For this result, it is contrary to its hypothesis which assumes that the agreement in government organization should be higher than the agreement in business companies due to the clarity in expectation of role.
However, the outcome from Wohlers, Hall, and London’s research (1993) reaffirm the role of organization’s structure on the worker attitude and ensure that gender of supervisor has an effect on the employees perception differently toward type of organizations.
The different types of organization usually have a different mission and vision to pursue, so this leads managers to have different managerial roles among the organizations and employees might have different perceptions toward style of management from particular gender due to the type of organization they employed (Lynn, 1981; Perry & Kraemer, 1983). The result in the Wohlers et al. (1993) shows that productivity of
Gender Influence Toward Workplace Characteristic
The characteristics of the workplace is the variable that broad and relates to several literature in many aspects depending on how the authors want to define the scope of it. 9 employees in the government type are lower than the other organizations because the relationship between supervisor and subordinate is not so intense and the kind of work is more separable.
Another literature has also studied the productivity of different genders with similar scope of workplace environment. Smith et al. (1998) has assessed the relationship between job satisfaction of employees in different gender and workplace characteristics which are age of firm, size of firm, and type of organization. However, the result of Smith et al.’s (1998) thesis shows that job satisfaction of men and women in big firms do not vary as the result in small firms, but the rate of job satisfaction in small firms is above the average job satisfaction in both men and women. For this reason, these research have confirmed our study to take the workplace characteristics into account when studying the effect of workers productivity.
Other Empirical Evidences Which Influence Productivity of Employees
Since the gender of the worker is not the only factor that covers every aspect of productivity. It is necessary to make up understanding about the impact of variables around the employee, to be able to maximize the productivity to its optimal. Apart from the gender influence, there are several factors which could possibly determine the productivity of the white-collar such as workplace environment, social cohesion, technology, and etc.; thereupon, several relevant literatures are chosen to examine their findings.
Starting with the research of Clements-Croome (2003), they study the relationship between indoor work environment and white-collar productivity by taking an environmental survey, self-assessment in productivity, in several offices and using multiple regression and correlation analysis to examine the data collected. Thus, the outcome from this literature showed that performance of office workers would lessen if their workplace are crowded, thermal problem at workstation, or they have a sick building syndrome (SBS) symptoms (Clements-Croome, 2003). The further explanation in this study illustrated that the adverse effect in productivity could primarily stem from two sections: job dissatisfaction such as job stress, chaos workspace and unsatisfactory environmental problems such as thermal problems (Clements-Croome, 2003). In consequence, there are lots of useful details in this literature to be further utilized in our research, since Clements-Croome’s research has thoroughly defined the role of the construction environment toward performance of office staff in various aspects.
Moreover, the study of Wyon (1996) is certain to support the hypothesis of Clements-Croome’s research. Wyon’s research (1996) cited that construction design of the workplace affects productivity of employees. The research reviewed that the office productivity in summer is greater than winter by 16 percent; yet, there is not found a significant effect on this measure.
Nonetheless, Wyon’s study (1996) mentioned about the survey of North American study of 94 government offices (EPA, 1989) to support their hypothesis about workplace design and productivity; the survey found that 69 percent of poor indoor air quality lessens productivity. Additionally, the literature of Wyon (1996) also came up with the cost-benefit analysis which weight the benefit of enhancing workplace environment and the cost of improvement; the estimated leverage of such cost and benefit found that the annual benefits, the increase in productivity, is approximately be 12.4 US dollar per m2.
On the whole, both literature, Clements-Croome (2003) and Wyon (1996), highlight the significant impact of construction design of workspace to performance of workers in the company in many aspects of the environment; these studies recommend us to see productivity clearer through 10 the lens of the workplace environment. Thus, the construction design could possibly be considered with the hope of greater understanding in the present study.
Next, according to the research of Greene (1989), group acceptance is the key indicator to improve productivity. The research tried to examine the stereotype that the more cohesive in a group would produce more productivity, the data collected from 54 groups in a nine-month study and it were measured by split-half reliability coefficients. Hence, the outcome of the research helps support their hypothesis which cohesiveness could enhance productivity of group members, but only when group drive is ‘high’; in addition, they also found that nine-month duration is appropriate for such study design (Greene, 1989).
This study shed light on the importance in social cohesiveness for productivity which such factors should be considered in the further study as well. In this regard, the context of group drive, which Greene (1989) described as motivation and arousal level among members in the workplace, is an interesting point that could be useful for our research to help us explain more about the reason behind the scenario of employee productivity.
Another literature of Revenaugh & Philippakis (2006) claimed that information technology could facilitate white-collar to be more productive. The research discussed the correlation between investment in new technology systems and office productivity and conducted the sample study to explore trends and effects of installing new workstations.
Revenaugh & Philippakis (2006) collected 968 observations for the week and examined the data by using common measure and statistical tests as appropriate to the analysis. The result clarified that supervisory roles are enhanced after having new technology systems, and the impact of technology information is greater in the service company.
Therefore, this research could help us reflect the existence of technology factors toward white-collar performance and conceptualise the direction of hypothesis. However, the literature of Revenaugh & Philippakis (2006) still leave some loopholes in part of data analysis, since they didn’t analyze the meaning of results gathered from their experiment as much as possible.
Fortunately, Grover, Teng, Segars& Fiedler (1998) has clearly examined the impact of information technology toward productivity of the organization and the business process changing due to the evolving of information technology at the modern workplace. Grover et al. ‘s research (1998) attempts to develop the gap of other research by specifically scoping to study the information technology in the mediate term after implementation and also choosing the set of technologies they studied.
Interestingly, this study defined productivity in the alternative view; that is the ‘perceived productivity’ from the senior in the company (Grover et al., 1998). Even though such perceived productivity might not indicate the market success of the company, Grover et al.(1998) claims that senior IT is the person who always makes the decision about IT efficiency. Moreover, the study uses a rating-scale method to measure both perceived process change in the company and productivity enhancement (Grover et al., 1998).
