Thai subordinates' perceptions of sex, socio-communicative style, and verbal aggressiveness on supervisor's credibility

Abstract

Thai statistic indicates that there are fewer women pursuing leadership roles than men. The percentage of female workers in the director level is much lower than that of male workers in all sizes of establishment. This gender segregation triggered this study to explore any significant difference in subordinates’ perceptions between sexes, socio-communicative styles, and verbal aggressiveness of their supervisor’s credibility. The mixed-approach of multivariate analysis of variance (2 x 4 x 2 MANOVA) and interviewing were employed to test the research questions at the significant level of .05. There were three independent variables (sex, sociocommunicative style, and verbal aggressiveness) and three dependent variables of credibility (expertise, trustworthiness, and goodwill). The instruments employed to answer the research questions were Assertiveness-Responsiveness Measure, Verbal Aggressiveness Scale, and Source Credibility Scale. Participants were Thai subordinates who worked in the retailing and consumer products industry, which was the predominant business category in Thailand. Findings from 410 participants in the questionnaire survey from randomly selected 11 retailing and consumer products companies indicate that there is no significant difference between male and female supervisors’ credibility from their subordinates’ perceptions. However, subordinates demonstrate significant difference in perceptions toward their supervisors’ socio-communicative styles (noncompetent, submissive, aggressive, or competent) and verbal aggressiveness (verbally aggressive or non-verbally aggressive). When combining the sex variable with sociocommunicative style, the result shows no significant difference in supervisor’s credibility. Similarly, there is no interaction effect between sex and verbal aggressiveness in terms of supervisor’s credibility from subordinates’ perceptions. When considering answers from the interviews, different opinions with respect to sex of supervisor are found. Although working with male and female supervisor does not yield significant difference in terms of the credibility, the approach of working with different sex could become the issue due to the different nature of masculine and feminine traits. In terms of socio-communicative style and verbal aggressiveness, most interviewees prefer to work with competent and non-verbally aggressive supervisor. As a result, the recommended character of highly credible supervisor should conform to competent style which combines both assertiveness (masculinity) and responsiveness (femininity) characteristics. Verbal aggressiveness should also be tempered with politeness in order to fit with the feminine nature of Thai culture.