| The purpose of this quantitative study was to explore the effect leadership style had on the promotion of middle management women in the healthcare industry, as well as, to investigate the roles of education, age and ethnicity in the determination of leadership styles (transactional, transformational, or laissez-faire).;The study involved two independent samples, middle and upper management females. The 172 participants were all employed in the healthcare field, worked in organizations with greater than 100 employees, were between the ages of 18 and 65, had at least five years of work experience, and held a job with a classification of middle or upper management.;The Multifactor Leadership Questionnaire Form 5X (MLQ FORM 5X) survey (Bass & Avolio, 2004) was utilized to determine the participants' leadership style. Additional demographic questions were included in the questionnaire to gather data about the participants' education, ethnicity and age.;Comparative analysis completed for the two groups of female leaders (middle and upper management) revealed that upper management females used all but one of the leadership styles available to a greater degree than their middle management counterparts. The findings indicated upper management women in the healthcare industry used a situational approach (Hersey & Blanchard, 1977) to leading.;Further recommendations to enhance the research findings included conducting additional studies that extend to women in other states, using a longitudinal approach, using a different leadership survey tool such as the LPI, and surveying only men in the healthcare industry to provide a comparison for this study.;Keywords: Transactional, Transformational, Laissez-faire, MLQ FORM 5X, Situational approach, LPI. |
