Disseminating Corporate Identity Through Leadership: Unraveling the Gendered Discourse of Capitalism.

Leaders spend countless hours creating written instruments, such as letters, e-mails, and reports. However, as important as writing is to leadership communication, there is a paucity of research in the area, particularly in relation to gender differences. The purpose of this study is to investigate if differences exist between the prose of male and female leaders. Data were collected via a survey in which respondents were asked to assign gender to the introductory sections of the CEO's annual letter to shareholders, noting the rationale for such selections. The results show that the writing style of both female and male CEOs is gender ambiguous. Business leaders have adopted elements of "traditional" gendered attributes to create an institutionalized form of gender indistinct writing. Yet, given that gender is both performative and culturally constructed, this study calls for future research on how readers affirm the gender of leaders, not only through what is presented, but by placing written discourse into a larger matrix of thought and experience. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]