Woman Leader, Woman Employee and Ethical Organizational Culture in High and Low Gender Gap Index Contexts

Considering widely reported differences among countries in terms of innovation development levels, achievements in such fields as gender equality, organizational responsibility and other alike implementations (especially comparing American, African and European, North-/South-/East-European, Post-soviet/-socialist countries), the paper focuses on women’s (and men’s) status in modern organizations. More specifically, the paper concentrates on perceptions of women leaders and organizational climate in the organizations working in such societies as Finland (Northern country) and Lithuania (East European post-soviet country).

Quantitative data were collected by a web-based survey in Finland (2011) and Lithuania (2013, still under process). In this study, indicators of 2 scales are in the focus of empirical analysis: the Corporate Ethical Virtues scale of 58 items comprising eight dimensions of organizational virtues: clarity, congruency of supervisor, congruency of management, feasibility, supportability, transparency, discussability and sanctionability; the leadership practices scale of 7 items, depicting interrelations between a supervisor and a subordinate.  Striving to ensure reliable comparability, one public Finnish (N=477) and one public Lithuanian (n=76 at the moment) organizations were selected for comparison.

Results of preliminary statistical analysis demonstrate that the respondents’ average evaluation of male leadership practices is higher than female leadership among Lithuanian respondents, but lower among Finns; also gender differences in the evaluations of corporate ethical virtues and effects of leader’s gender on the evaluations of CEV are almost absent among Lithuanian respondents, but rather obvious among Finnish ones. The findings not only indicate effects of gender equality developments in countries with a high and low gender gap index (respectively, Lithuania and  Finland), but also shed some light on interrelations between such phenomena as gender and leadership, gender perceptions of the ethical dimension of organizational culture, etc. in a comparative perspective. The analysis will be repeated at the end of 2013 after data collection process will be finished in Lithuania.