When do women receive managerial support? The effects of gender congruence and the manager-employee relationship

Abstract

This article examines the impact of manager-employee gender similarity on supportive leadership behaviours by public managers. Following prior research, we hypothesize that women with female managers are likely to report more leadership support than women with male managers and that this relationship will be moderated by the quality of the manager-employee relationship. Analysing multi-source survey data collected from a state agency, we find support for the gender-similarity effect. We also find a positive relationship between manager-employee relationship quality and supportive leadership behaviour. However, we do not find any support for the hypothesized moderation effect of the manager-employee relationship quality.