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Title Attribution and Influence Perception of Success Among Male and Female Managers: A Perspective of Pakistani Private Sector Organizations

Author(s) Shazia Akhtar

Abstract This study investigated whether people’s attribution for success and failure do reflect identifiable dimensions and whether or not these were compatible with those proposed by Weiner (1985, 2004) mainly internal and external locus of control. Moreover, it also looked at the perceived influence used by managers, mainly rationality, ingratiation and exchange maneuvers. It was hypothesized that success will be attributed more to internal factors like ability etc; whereas failure will be attributed to external factors like luck etc. The gender of the managers was believed to influence the attributions made, with males’ success and females’ failure attributed to internal causes. For influence perceptions, it was hypothesized that success will be attributed to the usage of ingratiation and exchange maneuvers as well as rationality maneuvers. As for the gender of the managers, it was hypothesized that males’ success will be assigned to the more frequent usage of rationality maneuvers, whereas the success of female managers will be assigned to the more frequent usage of ingratiation and exchange maneuvers. The design of the study was experimental and four hundred employees from the private sector organizations of Pakistan participated in this investigation. The overall design of this study was a 2 (managers: most successful/least successful) X 2 (manager’s sex: male/female) X 2 (participants sex: male/female) between-subjects factorial. This means that this was a 2x2x2 factorial design because three independent variables were examined: the managers’ success, the managers’ gender and the subjects’ gender all with two categories each. Data was gathered with the help of a self-report questionnaire with closed questions that included scaled items. MANOVA and ANOVA techniques were performed to test the hypotheses. The results revealed only partial acceptance of the hypotheses proposed. As predicted, success by a male was assigned to skill (internal), whereas the lack of career success in a female was attributed to lack of skill (internal). For influence perceptions, male’s success was assigned to the more frequent use of rationality maneuvers compared to the other managers. The gender of the participants was not significant in the evaluations of the manager. Moreover limitations, future research, directions, and implications for organizations were also discussed.

Type Thesis/Dissertation PhD

Faculty Management Sciences

Department Management Sciences

Language English

Publication Date 2010-01-01

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