Research pick: Relationships for managerial success go beyond demographics - "Diversity at work: how relational demography and influence tactics impact the effectiveness of leaders"

Strong relationships between managers and their staff matter more than gender or ethnicity in effective management.

Research in the International Journal of Behavioural Accounting and Finance, reveals the crucial role played by the relationship between managers and their staff. It suggests that while ethnicity and gender might affect those relationships, they do not necessarily impact the ability of managers to inspire employees in terms of cooperation and compliance. However, gender and ethnicity may well affect how those relationships form and progress in the first place. The researchers highlight the interplay between diversity, influence tactics, and leader effectiveness with and organization and how these affect the organisations desired outcomes.

Thomas D’Angelo of Pace University in New York, New York, Marco Lam, Heidi Dent, and Julia Goldsmith of Western Carolina University in Cullowee, North Carolina, USA and Martin Kissler of the Fachhochschule Dortmund in Germany, using an experimental design that focused on how the combination of relational demography and influence tactics influences the effectiveness of leaders. Specifically, they tested in their experiment how well a manager could be in persuading subordinates to create so-called “budgetary slack”, something that would be in contravention of any legitimate company’s policies and working practices. The participants were presented with manipulated photographs of superiors, that changed gender and ethnicity in the images.

The study revealed that neither gender nor ethnicity on their own directly influenced managerial effectiveness. Instead, the quality of the superior-subordinate relationship emerged as the crucial factor determining subordinates’ willingness to comply with their superiors’ requests, even when they were aware that their compliance would violate company policy. The findings suggests that relationship strength is a much greater motivator of action, surpassing any influence of the demographic characteristics of those involved.

“When it comes to getting things done, our results show that relationships matter,” the team writes. “This is especially true for tasks outside the scope of day-to-day operations or that require subordinates to take actions that might run counter to their ethical or moral beliefs.” In other words, the relationships that managers forge with their subordinates is critical to ensuring commitment to specific tasks.

These insight have implications for how organisations might handle and encourage the requisite relationships between their managers and employees. By cultivating positive relationships and implementing effective influence tactics, organisations can encourage their leaders to, in turn, encourage greater commitment in their employees.

D’Angelo, T., Lam, M., Dent, H., Kissler, M. and Goldsmith, J. (2023) ‘Diversity at work: how relational demography and influence tactics impact the effectiveness of leaders’, Int. J. Behavioural Accounting and Finance, Vol. 7, No. 1, pp.24–40.