Mr. Right and Ms. Wrong: Impact of Manager’s Gender and Organization Performance on Leadership Attribution

Abstract

In an experiment with 211 students, we studied the impact of gender and performance outcomes on leadership attributions. We found that gender moderates the impact of performance outcomes on leadership attributions. When managers in a hypothetical case were male, participants were more likely to attribute organizational success to them and failure to other causes. However, when managers in a hypothetical case were female, participants were more likely to attribute organizational failure to them and success to other causes.