Gender and Role in Conflict Management: Female and Male Managers as Third Parties

Abstract:     
This paper proposes and tests hypotheses drawn from the literature on gender, leadership, and conflict management about the outcomes facilitated by men and women in third party roles in dispute resolution. Results show that when managerial women occupy third party roles in which they lack authority over disputants, they facilitate very different outcomes than men in these roles, or men and women in third party roles with authority. The behavioral data suggest they do so by eschewing the agentic behavior displayed by others taking these third party roles.

Number of Pages in PDF File: 34

working papers series