Leadership Style and Career Success of Women Leaders in Nonprofit Organizations

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to examine the correlation between the leadership styles and the career success of women in nonprofit organizations. The Multifactor Leadership Questionnaire served as the instrument to identify transformation, transactional, and passive leadership styles. The development of a career success index through summing the coded values of data regarding job satisfaction, work-life balance, tenure in the nonprofit industry, tenure in current position, and compensation level facilitated correlational analysis with leadership style. The Gulf Coast region of the United States was the geographic region for the study. The results indicated a significant and positive correlation between the transformational and transactional leadership styles and the career success index, p = 0.024 for Pearson's Product Moment; p = 0.038 for Spearman's rho, and p = 0.012 for Pearson's Product Moment; p = 0.022 for Spearman's rho, respectively. No significant relationship existed between passive leadership style and the career success index, with p = 0.81 for Pearson's Product Moment and p = 0.983 for Spearman's rho. Keywords: Women in leadership, leadership style, career success of women, nonprofit leadership