FEMALE AMBIDEXTROUS LEADERSHIP
FEMALE AMBIDEXTROUS LEADERSHIP

Summary/Abstract: Gender in the context of ambidextrous leadership, a leadership style that is highly relevant in today’s business environment (Kafetzopoulos, 2022), is extremely understudied to date. There is almost no research differentiating between male and female ambidextrous leaders (for one exception, see Zuraik et al., 2020). This study is the first to thoroughly investigate female leaders’ experiences as ambidextrous leaders. It qualitatively explores how women view their identity as female leaders against the backdrop of traditional gender and leader stereotypes and the extent to which they engage in opening and closing leader behaviors. 12 female leaders from high technology industries were interviewed. Interviews were semi–structured and analyzed through template analysis. Most importantly, it became apparent that most women described their leader identity through a mixture of both agentic and communal attributes, with a tendency to focus on the agentic pole. Also, most women described their leader behaviors as a mixture of both opening and closing leader behaviors, with the emphasis more on opening leader ones.

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