Female Leadership and Workplace Climate

Using data from over 2,000 professionals in 24 large corporations in Türkiye, we explore the relationship between female leadership and the relational culture in the workplace. First, we document that although male and female leaders possess equal cognitive capacity, they diverge in socioemotional characteristics. Next, we show that the relational dynamics in the workplace are different under male and female leadership. Male employees form homophilic professional ties under male leadership, whereas we observe less gender-segregated networks under female leadership, where both males and females establish more links with their female colleagues. Female employees receive more support from their leaders and are less likely to quit under female leadership. However, female employees working under female leaders report worse workplace satisfaction and meritocracy. Delving into the mechanisms reveals that female employees depict a gloomier workplace climate in the absence of social support from their female leader. Overall, our findings highlight the influential role of social support from leaders and suggest that increasing supportive female presence in leadership positions may be an effective way to foster a more inclusive relational culture in the workplace. This paper was accepted by Marie-Claire Villeval, behavioral economics and decision analysis. Funding: This work was supported by the Max Planck Institute for Research on Collective Goods and Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (German Science Foundation) under Germany’s Excellence Strategy [Grant EXC 2126/1–390838866]. Supplemental Material: The online appendix and data files are available at https://doi.org/10.1287/mnsc.2024.05507 .