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Female Leadership in Software Projects—A Preliminary Result on Leadership Style and Project Context Factors

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Towards a Synergistic Combination of Research and Practice in Software Engineering

Part of the book series: Studies in Computational Intelligence ((SCI,volume 733))

Abstract

Women have been shown to be effective leaders in many team-based situations. However, it is also well-recognized that women are underrepresented in engineering and technology areas, which leads to wasted efforts and a lack of diversity in professional organizations. Although studies about gender and leadership are rich, research focusing on engineering-specific activities, are scarce. To react on this gap, we explored the experience of female leaders of software development projects and possible context factors that influence leadership effectiveness. The study was conducted as a longitudinal multiple case study. Data was collected from survey, interviews, observation and project reports. In this work, we reported some preliminary findings related to leadership style, team perception on leadership and team-task context factors. We found a strong correlation between perceived team leadership and task management. We also observed a potential association between human-oriented leading approach in low customer involvement scenarios and task-oriented leading approach in high customer involvement situations.

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Acknowledgements

We would like to express our appreciation for Katja Abrahamsson, Francesco Valerio Gianni, Simone Mora, and Juhani Risku for participating in data collection.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Computer and Information Science, Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Trondheim, Norway

    Anh Nguyen-Duc, Soudabeh Khodambashi, Jon Atle Gulla, John Krogstie & Pekka Abrahamsson

  2. Department of Business Administration and Computer Science, University College of Southeast Norway, Notodden, Norway

    Anh Nguyen-Duc

  3. Faculty of Information Technology, University of Jyväskylä, Jyväskylä, Finland

    Pekka Abrahamsson

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  1. Anh Nguyen-Duc
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Correspondence to Anh Nguyen-Duc .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Faculty of Cybernetics, Institute of Computer and Information Systems, Military University of Technology , Warsaw, Poland

    Piotr Kosiuczenko

  2. Wroclaw University of Science and Technology, Wrocław, Poland

    Lech Madeyski

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Nguyen-Duc, A., Khodambashi, S., Gulla, J.A., Krogstie, J., Abrahamsson, P. (2018). Female Leadership in Software Projects—A Preliminary Result on Leadership Style and Project Context Factors. In: Kosiuczenko, P., Madeyski, L. (eds) Towards a Synergistic Combination of Research and Practice in Software Engineering. Studies in Computational Intelligence, vol 733. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-65208-5_11

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-65208-5_11

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-319-65207-8

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-319-65208-5

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