Perceptions of the Leadership Practices of Male and Female Field Directors at a Pharmaceutical Company – Are There Differences?

OBJECTIVE
The purpose of this dissertation was to examine the leadership practices of Field Directors at a pharmaceutical company.

METHODOLOGY
All 15 Medical Affairs Field Directors at a pharmaceutical company completed the Leadership Practices Inventory and 103 of the Medical Liaisons who reported to them (response rate = 79%) completed the LPI-Observer. The typical Field Director was male (60%) and, on average, 48 years old. They typical Medical Liaison was female (56%) and, on average, 46 years of age. Internal reliability (Cronbach alpha) in this study for Field Directors were .68 for Model, .81 for Inspire, .86 for Challenge, .71 for Enable, and .83 for Encourage. Internal reliability (Cronbach alpha) for Medical Liaisons was .80 for Model, .91 for Inspire, .86 for Challenge, .88 for Enable, and .90 for Encourage.

KEY FINDINGS
The most frequently reported leadership practice by Field Directors was Enable, followed by Model and Encourage, and then Inspire and Challenge; which was the same rank order as reported from the perspective of their direct reports. There were no statistically significant differences between the average scores on the five leadership practices between leaders and their direct reports. Comparisons between the Field Directors and the Kouzes-Posner normative database found that the former rated themselves significantly higher on Model and Enable, but not Inspire, Challenge, and Encourage. No statistical differences for any of the five leadership practices were found on the basis of age or gender for direct reports (Medical Liaisons). However, Medical Liaisons who reported to female Field Directors gave significantly higher frequency scores on Model, Inspire, Challenge, and Encourage than did those Medical Liaisons who reported to male Field Directors. The author concludes:

Transformational leadership, particularly the model developed by Kouzes and Posner (1995), is useful for evaluating and developing leaders whose purpose is to challenge their constituents to achieve extraordinary success aligned with the organizations they serve. More than any other time in history, inspirational, empowering and visionary leaders are needed to guide their followers to achieve not only their own goals, but to achieve the mission of their organizations. By developing the four factors of transformational leadership developed by Bass (1999) and learning the five exemplary practices identified Kouzes and Posner (1995) the leaders of today can be prepared to positively the impact the constituents and the communities they serve for a better tomorrow (p. 102).