The Antecedents of Women Leadership in SMEs : The Malaysian Senior Female Managerial Perspective

Leadership emphasis on leader abilities, personality traits, influence of relationships, cognitive versus emotional orientation and individual versus collective interests (Deanne & Hartog, 2001).With the accelerate development of human civilization, women began playing indispensable leading roles in different social realm, particularly in business, society and political area. With women began playing increasing significant leading roles currently, it raised the influence of women’s leadership in organization. In this study, through the full research of female leaders and the influential factors of women leadership, by analysing the of female leaders and through the deep assessment of women leadership, it summarized the existing achievements made by female leaders, pointed out the common problem existed in women leadership as well, and found out the relationship between leadership effectiveness of female leaders and women leadership. In general, this study summed up the dimensions of leadership effectiveness of female leaders, then concluded how these dimensions influenced on female leaders in middle management level. This research will be conducted on the basis of women senior managers in SMEs in Kuala Lumpur.


Introduction
It is the basis of this entire research and it is the overall background of the study, this chapter includes such as background, problem statement, research objectives, research hypothesis and theoretical framework.For the research, it is important to create a research problem and putting it into a research context.For the study of women leadership, previous researches and studies have found that there are close relationship between the dimensions of leadership effectiveness and women leadership (Stark & Ely 2003).

Problem Statement
According to Mattis (2001) it shows the development of female leaders will have relative effect to the future development of women leadership.With the development of society, the knowledge and quality of female employees has greatly improved.Thus, the effectiveness of women leader has been increased at the same time.According to Pande and Ford (2011) it indicated that there were both positive and negative aspects in the attributes of female leaders.Researches also indicate that the attributes of female leaders will bring positive and negative influence to the leadership.Therefore, no matter what kinds of enterprises, they are trying their best to find out and understand the female leaders and the factors that affect their leadership.
Therefore, the problem to be addressed was what are the underlying factors associated with female leaders in senior management level that influence women leadership in SMEs, and it shows the imperative in this research.In shorts, women leadership is very important to the enterprises' further development, enterprises want to make it works more efficiently and further benefit the effectiveness of leadership.However, as noted by Tewfik (2011), there are problems and obstacles toward women's leadership that can be concluded as objectively business environment and social factors that influenced on women in leadership, such as the traditional concept to female, organization reject of female, lack of social support.In this study, the writer will main identify the subjective factors (dimensions of leadership effectiveness towards female senior managers) that influence on women's leadership; furthermore, this study will determine the most significant factors that affecting women's leadership in SMEs in Kuala Lumpur.

Research Objectives
Research objectives are the purposes and targets of the research project.The objectives are made logically.Firstly, the dimensions of leadership effectiveness will be identified and narrowed to the influential factors to women leadership.Then the effectiveness of each influential factor will be identified by the hypotheses testing and statistical analysis.Next the most influential factor that affects women's leadership will be found out.The three main objectives will lead the research to determine the most significant factors that influencing women's leadership in business performance.
 To clarify the dimensions of leadership effectiveness towards female senior managers in SMEs.
 To identify the effectiveness of each factor that affect women's leadership in senior management level of enterprises based on the previous research and further literatures.
 To determine and evaluate the most significant factors that affect women leadership.

Significance of the Research
This paper attempts to identify the influence of female senior managers on the leadership in the enterprise management.It mainly focused on the research of female senior managers in SMEs, and future researchers will benefit from providing empirical parameters of leadership theory.In addition, the research will promote the organization's compliance with gender equality in the legal principles and business practices; it helps organization to recognise that women leadership can bring more economic benefits for the enterprise.Furthermore, it is important for organization to build a harmonious and fair working environment in Malaysia.The study helps to make organization reconsider and adjust the management strategy, determine gender diversity in leadership and provide same opportunities for both gender leaders to identify their potential abilities in workplace.The study of women's leadership is to enrich and improve the leadership studies.Through the study of women leadership, it can enrich and enhance the management of organization development and promote the overall leadership progress of society.

Scope of the Research
The scope is to identify the factors that influence on the women leadership in senior management level of corporation.The scope is narrowed down only among female leaders in senior management level in nine SMEs.Besides, the narrow scope helps data collection and statistics analysis and they are the perfect representative for the research on women's leadership.200 female leaders will be randomly distributed questionnaires through online.Women leaders in senior management level and from totally nine SMEs in Kuala Lumpur will be prior represented by Sledgehammer Communications (2012), such as financial and accounting managers in Hong Leong Bank and Kuwait Finance House Berhad; cosmetics and healthcare services managers in Shahnaz Herbals and Slimming Sanctuary Sdn Bhd; hotel and hospitality manager in Royale Chulan Hotel; consumer service managers in Sunway Retail Group, Poney Company and PepsiCo and managers in Malaysian Insurance Institute.

Gender Roles and Leadership Research
The focus of this study is: whether the effectiveness of leadership behaviour exist differences based on the different characters of gender roles.One is defined as gender stereotypes forming by the prevailing socio-cultural expectations; the other is prejudice; it is common think that the masculine generally considered superior than femininity (Buddhapriya, 1999).
According to Heilman, Wallen, Fuchs, and Tamkins, (2004) male leaders believe that the success of the mid-level leadership has personality traits and attitudes more tend men; while women leaders thought that the success of the middle level leaders have the personality and attitude tend to the men and women both.Art (Buttell, 2010).

Effectiveness of Leadership
The understanding of leader effectiveness will be different due to the different point of view of researchers.According to Bass, B. M (1990), leadership effectiveness is an organization in the implementation of its basic task able to obtain the success: the reach of organization's objectives is the standard to measure leadership performance.According to Hartog, and Koopman (2001) leadership effectiveness is the reach of subordinate's satisfaction and organizational performance.As mentioned by Gordon (2002) the objective assessment of organizational performance, the objective assessment of the subordinate's attitude to leaders, as well as organizational trust, job satisfaction are measure of leadership effectiveness factors.However, concluded by many researchers, those three main factors can be settled as measurement index: First, the impact results of leader behaviour activities to subordinates.For example: leader authority, organization performance, staff satisfaction, organization commitment, glass ceiling effect, organisation citizenship behaviours and organizational trust.Second, the achievement of organizational goal can be settled as measurement index.For example: earning rate, production and product pass rate.Third, the awareness of subordinate to leader can be settled as measurement index.For example: separation rate, worker absenteeism rates and subject indicators from questionnaires.
Through analysis of the literature on leadership effectiveness, combined with leadership performance indicators required in this research.In the study, the evaluation indicators of leadership performance will identify from the female leaders' point of view, discuss from four dimensions based on leadership effectiveness like: glass ceiling effect; job satisfaction; moral character and organisation citizenship behaviours.
According to Manning and Curtis (2003), leadership effectiveness is an overall target including the following aspects: 1) Effectiveness of decision-making performance.Decision-making is the primary function of leadership.The correctness decision will determine target direction of leadership activities and organizations activities.
2) Effectiveness of employment.Effectiveness of employment refers to the effectiveness of selecting and using people in the leadership activities.It not only related to the effect the goals to the organization, but also directly affects the organization's social value of its existence.
3) Effectiveness of Work.It is the efficiency that achieved by leaders with processing various affairs.Leaders' functional activities are mainly described as dealing and problem-solving, for example: organization and command, coordination and incentive.
4) Effectiveness of time.Time performance is a measure of a leader in management and usage of time.Leaders' time performance is related to the organization operation, so it is important to minimum time wasting.Besides, seize the opportunity and focus on the business effectiveness is also necessary for leaders.
5) Effectiveness of organisation's overall contribution.The effectiveness of organisation's overall contribution refers to the degree of realization the organisation objectives.Leadership effectiveness can not only reflect in the individual departments work, more importantly, is can reflected in the overall work and overall contribution.Thus, the realization of the overall objective is the most important criteria to measure the leadership effectiveness in organization.
Furthermore, to make female senior managers realize that the tendency of female advancement in organisation can increase the leadership effectiveness of female leaders.The more coincidence of female traits with senior leaders, the higher confidence of women in management role will be.It will develop the stronger motivation for women to advancement to top management level, and make higher effectiveness of women in higher management role rather than in senior management role.
A research on leadership effectiveness is the strategic approach to leadership development.The dimensions of leadership show a wide range of leadership characteristics and skills.The leadership dimensions can be the basis for leaders' assessment and evaluations in organization, the essential purpose is to provide perception and information to improve leadership effectiveness (Reeves, 2006).The analysis of leadership effectiveness is designed to increase the effectiveness of women in leadership roles.The dimensions are particularly important for leaders.Glass ceiling, job satisfaction, moral character and organisational citizenship behaviour are the typical dimensions for leadership.Besides, there are other eight dimensions approaches to determine the leadership style in organisation which are also important to the effective functioning of leaders in organisation.For example: Pioneering, Energizing, Affirming, Inclusive, Humble, Deliberate, Resolute and Commanding (Sugerman, 2011).In short, those four dimensions of leadership mentioned in this study are not only improving effectiveness of leadership, but also a suggestion that can identify the most influential factors to women's leadership.

Research Approach of Women Leadership
The effectiveness of leadership will help to determine the factors which influence on women leadership, for example, the effectiveness of leadership are including dimensions as below:

Glass Ceiling Effect
Glass Ceiling generated from 1986, it was first used in a study of "women in enterprise" by Hymowit & Schellhandt (1986) from The Wall Street Journal.At the beginning, in the mainstream of society in Europe and the United States, the immigrants especially Asians only act as low-level positions, or hard to promotion when achieve a relatively high positions, thus they cannot enter the core decision-making level.Like the glass ceiling, it can be seen while it is difficult to break through the obstacles.Now it more refer to obstacles that exist in the organizational structure of invisible but real, which can be the obstacle for women's advancement opportunities.More women break through the glass ceiling, but leadership roles elusive.
After a series of experiments, Eagly and Steffen (1986) has found that professional roles with hierarchical social structure has caused by the different gender roles.As stated by Van Vianen, A. E. M., & Fischer, A. H. (2002), organizational culture is developed and dominated by the male senior managers, thus reinforcing the existence of a glass ceiling.
The study found that the personal characteristics, the degree of role conflict, as well as the company's corporate culture affects women as corporate executives.According to Lemons (2003), it has used middle management women as objects and found the promotion barriers will affect career development, life satisfaction and job satisfaction, and the relationship between career job satisfactions.In short, the glass ceiling effect will not only affect women's career development, but also affect their work and life satisfaction, thus will also affect the work performance of women, and this is kind of a crisis for businesses.
About the impact of gender diversity in management on employee perception of the glass ceiling, according to Koneck (2006) through empirical analysis, the higher proportion of women in senior management are, the lower perception of glass ceiling are.As mentioned by Daft, R. L (2008), gender diversity management promoted fairness and female career barrier in empirical research, gender diversity management can make women feel more equitable for advancement.In other words, for women in workplace, the more proportion of women in management, the more promotion fair women will feel, and their perception of the glass ceiling is less obvious in workplace.
Malaysia is a diverse country with a more inclusive socio-cultural.Despite the women has been improved in the workplace, however, a larger proportion of women still suffer glass ceiling in workplace, only a small number of women can able to break through the taboo (Abdul, Syed, & Basir, 2011).While, other reasons are trying to explain this phenomenon, such as the old social system, socio-cultural, gender stereotypes and so on.
As reported by Murray (2010), today women still face a glass ceiling.In the survey of Institute of Leadership and Management (ILM), it finds 73% of female managers still feel there are barriers for advancement, while only 38% of men believed there is a glass ceiling in working place.The formation of the glass ceiling, there are two main factors.First is the gender stereotype.Women were considered to lack of management personality incompetent senior management positions; Second, organizational systems design.The reasons for the phenomenon of the glass ceiling, as reported by Snowdon (2011), the Ambition and Gender at Work report says women's management aspirations lag behind men's.The scholars have different opinions and broadly classified into two categories: nativism, that women are born docile, friendly, sharing temperament is not suitable of being a leader, women will be less in leadership skills and management; acquired theory, between family and career, women's choice is often biased towards the family, and women cannot devote more energy to work.Barriers for women to promotion, the reasons including: deep stereotypes, women's participation in decision-making management level is too risky, lack of career planning and appropriate position, women are excluded from male colleagues and male deliberately against female (Snowdon, 2011).

Job Satisfaction
According to the earliest research on job satisfaction began in the 1930s by Hoppock (Hoppock, 1935Kornhauser & Sharp, 1932;Roethlisberger & Dickson, 1939), he believes that job satisfaction is the satisfied feeling to the environment from two aspects: psychological and physiological, and they also the reactions of the workers to work scenarios.
Some studies focus on the relationship between employee satisfaction and employee turnover.Several studies have investigated the relationship between employee satisfaction and customer satisfaction especially in service-oriented enterprise.Spector (1997) starting from the social environment and the psychological motivation of the employee, think that the social and technological environment, self-realization, recognition are the main influential factors of job satisfaction.
Foreign scholars have conducted a lot of research on the main factors of affecting job satisfaction.Hoppock thought that there are factors may affect job satisfaction include: Fatigue, monotonous work, working conditions, and leading style.He is more from the point view of job content, working conditions and material properties to determine the impact of employee job satisfaction factors.Besides, there are relationships between employee job satisfaction and employee production, employee job satisfaction will affect employee productivity (Saari & Judge, 2004).As noted by Eikelenboom (2005), who has conducted the study of 200 employees from the joint venture, there are seven main factors affect employee job satisfaction, personal factors, leadership factors, work characteristics, working conditions, wages and benefits, salary, the colleagues relationship.From the salaries and benefits to the opportunity for promotion, gender diversity of employee job satisfaction, it including the four categories of factors: the work, the company, individual employees and the environment (Tu, 2006).

The Influence of Female Leader Management to Employee Job Satisfaction
As noted by Wharton and Baron (1991), they have discussed the influence of cancelling occupational discrimination to male.They found that compared with those in a working environment, no matter it mainly consist of men or women, men will show a significantly lower job satisfaction and lower self-esteem as well as significantly higher work depression in both gender working environment.In other words, to increase gender diversity in the work environment which means increase the proportion of female employees will reduce job satisfaction of male employee.But whether it will result in the same consequences on the increasing of the proportion of women in management, foreign scholars have not studied yet.
However, some researchers have stated that there is no insignificant relationship between leadership principles and employee job satisfaction (Mehrotra, 2005).In his study, he found that there were obvious differences in leadership on the basis of managers' different demographic characteristics; and also, the study found that there were obvious differences in job satisfaction due to different demographic profiles of employees.This finding was against to the study by Naseen in 1986, who found that there is a positive relationship between leadership style and job satisfaction.
Vroom thought that job satisfaction is the individuals satisfied with the status of their jobs and the value orientation of the job role in 1964.Smith Kendall and Hulin in 1969 pointed out that job satisfaction is a pleasurable feeling when individual assessment of their work and the work experience; Locke agree with the view of Smith; in 1972, Price has defined job satisfaction as: in an organization, the members who have the positive emotional orientation to their role, that mean employees feel satisfaction; otherwise they dissatisfied with their job (Tu, 2006).It will also lead a negative attitude towards work.From those it can be found that organization can monitor the operational status by investigate job satisfaction of employees, and it will help to discovery and ruled out the problem in time.Through job satisfaction survey to understand the idea of female staff and identify lack of management, thereby arousing the enthusiasm of the staff and improving the organization management (Aziri, 2011).

Moral Character
The moral quality refers to women leaders with the basic moral and personality traits, including moral qualities and personal conduct.The first factors affect the leadership is outstanding personal qualities.In the modern enterprise management, managers and managed objects have equal legal status, relations between the two sides are equal and cooperative, two-way choice as well (Weber, 1998).However, due to the differences of the division of labour, there exist status of manage and be managed.Thus managers must have good moral character, through outstanding moral characters influencing managed objects, making managers proactive and efforts up from the thinking and actions (Emrich, 1999).
Moral leadership, according to Chmiel (2001), leader are not only the commander for group and organization activities, while also accepting a subordinate moral examine and psychological evaluation, it is the guide and demonstrators for subordinate concepts and behaviour.In recent years, some Western well-known enterprises such as Enron, Arthur Andersen, WorldCom, ClobalCrossings, Adelphia and other companies have bankrupt or serious declined due to the leaders moral problem, it has aroused the concern of Western scholars on the ethical considerations of business leaders, and put forward the concept of corporate moral leadership (Friedman, 2001).
As mentioned by Ciulla, J. B (2004), integrity moral character is the only absolute condition that leader should have.Leadership is a moral charm.The basis of the influence comes from the moral qualities of the leader.
Ethics is considered as the heart of leadership.Famous management researcher Peter Drucker once said: "If the leader lack integrity moral, then, no matter how much he is knowledgeable, talented, accomplished, it can also cause significant losses (Ciulla, 2004).
The Italian Jewish economist Pareto develops a famous Lorenz curve, combined with corporate management that: 20% leaders create 80% performance for the company, 5% of the middle-high level direct impact on the 51% of their income (Daft, 2008).For example, assume that the chief leaders of the company or the middle-high level in company have moral characters; the company will be ruined soon.This is a complex problem, in fact, the root of the problem is the moral characters of the business leaders.
Strong group thought is important for leadership.Public benefit heart and self-interest heart is a pair of opposite concepts, people are aware of the meaning of self-interest and many people are affected by this (Mele, 2011).However, as a manager, she has to have strong group thought and can use public benefit ideological as the standard for measure management behaviour.Only by this she is capable to consider, balance and concern all parties interests, get the more endorsement and support and thereby greatly enhancing the leadership effectiveness.

Women Are More Moral Than Men
Good moral character is the most important and core competitiveness for female leadership.Leaders with excellent moral character always broke out the positive power from the heart.In other words, good moral can promote leadership development constantly forward.Speak of moral leadership, it should first have the loyalty, dedication, honesty, thrift and sense of responsibility; they care about subordinate, care about customer and care about the development of the organization; they treat work motivated, enthusiastic, hard-working and have team spirit as well; they are proactive and have an attitude of gratitude with to help the organization in the development, production and management (Scott, 2008).
A plenty of studies demonstrate that men have lower moral standards than women.For example, men are more likely to minimize the consequences of improper handling moral compared than women (May, 2012).When men must use strategy or scheme to prove or defend their masculinity, they are willing to compromise with moral standards.A number of researches shows, men usually set lower moral standards than women.Besides, as reported by May (2012), men's moral judgments are inconstant and usually choosing to maximize their own advantage first especially in some negotiation process; when necessary for personal gain, moral misconducts were acceptable.In opposite, women made moral judgments consistently and followed by standard almost in all perspectives; according to Furness (2012), even when the moral choice has obvious conflicts of personal interest, it turns out that women still insist on maintain their moral standards.

Organisational Citizenship Behaviour
Barnard in 1938 he believed that "the organisation is a combination of cooperative efforts, regardless of any organisation," willingness to cooperate between members is essential.Katz in 1966 thought that if an organisation wants to ensure effective operation and high performance, organisational citizenship behaviour is essential for organisation.According to Schneider and Smith (2004), Organ, Podsakoff and MacKenzie in 1983 have proposed a concept of "organisational citizenship behaviour" based on the study.After classification of organisational citizenship behaviour, Smith in 1983 pointed out that the organisational citizenship behaviour including "helping behaviour" and "usually compliant behaviour.In that year, Bateman and Organ propose the concept of organisational citizenship behaviour based on previous studies.Organisational citizenship behaviour is a spontaneous, although not formal but real need, and can effective improve overall organisational behaviour.He has officially defined organisational citizenship behaviour as: it has not been clearly affirmed in salary system of organisation while the sum of the operating behaviour could conducive to the organisation (Schneider & Smith, 2004).Organisational citizenship behaviour includes the initiative to work to help my colleagues, to express their views and to participate in group activities, promote corporate image, self-study, participate in social welfare activities, enterprise resource savings to keep the workplace clean, maintain harmony (Farh, Zhong, & Organ, 2004).

Significance of the Study
According to Podsakoff and Mackenzie (2000) it has reviewed literature of organisational citizenship behaviour.They pointed out, academia mainly research the importance of employees organisational citizenship behaviour from the following two aspects: the influence of employees organisational citizenship behaviour managers in assessing employee job performance and employee remuneration as well as job promotion; the influence of employees organisational citizenship behaviour on business efficiency and performance.Organ, Podsakoff, and Mackenzie (2006) pointed out the importance of employees organisational citizenship behaviour as below: it can improve the working efficiency of colleague and management; it allows managers more effective use of various resources; it help to enhance team spirit, team members or managers do not have to spend a lot of time and effort to resolve conflicts between employees; it contributes to coordinate the team work between the team members; it helps to enhance the enterprise's ability; it helps to attract and retain good employees; It improves stability of business performance; it can improve the ability of enterprises to adapt to environmental changes (Organ, Podsakoff, & Mackenzie, 2006).
Many scholars believe that the employees from service enterprises their organisational citizenship behaviour will affect customer perception of service quality.The American academics Elizabeth point out, employees organisational citizenship behaviour consistently matches the behaviour of employees services which discussed by service management scholars; Korean scholars Hee and American scholars Jaebeom thought that, the organisational citizenship behaviour of service personnel will directly affect customer perception of service quality; Spanish scholars Carmen on the empirical findings of bank indicates that staff organisational citizenship behaviour will directly affect customer perception of service quality and customer satisfaction (Bronwynne, 2007).

Antecedent Variables of Organisational Citizenship Behaviour
There are many concepts about antecedent variables of organisational citizenship behaviour, it mainly reflected in the two aspects as individual's attitude and motivation, for example: job satisfaction, organisational justice, organisational commitment, leadership support, career satisfaction and organisational trust (Podsakoff & Mackenzie, 2000).The most research results indicate that job satisfaction, organisational justice and organisational commitment are positively correlated with organisational citizenship behaviour.The variables results by most scholars of organisational citizenship behaviour study mainly focus on organisational performance, and prove that there is a positive correlation between organisational citizenship behaviour and organisational performance.
Summarized scholar researches, about antecedent variables of organisational citizenship behaviour, according to Organ, Podsakoff, and MacKenzie (2006) there are four main aspects: First, personal qualities.From the definition of organisational citizenship behaviour, it is a spontaneous, the role of outside and non-reward system directly expressly recognized organisational behaviour, and study influential variables more biased individual characteristics in the study.About the research of personal qualities, it including a sense of fairness, job satisfaction, organisational commitment is considered to be the important motivation of organisational citizenship behaviour.In addition, there are correlation between personal ability and organisational citizenship behaviour as well as personality differences and organisational citizenship behaviour (Mester, 2003).Such as job title, education, independent and psychological contract.Second aspect is task qualities.The results found that the task feedback, task routine and tasks internal satisfaction has the significant correlation with organisational citizenship behaviour.Third aspect is organisational characteristics.Organisations with different characteristics have differences inspire and influence organisational citizenship behaviour.The study found that there is a significant correlation between organisational citizenship behaviour and organisational characteristics such as organisational perception, organizational culture and team psychological safety characteristics (Tayyab, 2005).
Next is Leadership qualities.The influence of different leadership behaviour to organisational citizenship behaviour is significant.The study found that there are very significant correlation between leadership with subordinates exchange activities and organisational citizenship behaviour, and this relationship can adjust by subordinates exchange conscious (Joseph & Winston, 2005).In addition, the high-performance expectation and the support of the leadership behaviour also have correlation between organisational citizenship behaviour, and all these need further research.Organ combined "peripheral performance" concept and put forward: although organisational citizenship behaviour cannot provide effective help for performance, but it provide continual improvement for the formal, informal group environment in organisation, and facilitate organisation performance (Organ, Podsakoff, & MacKenzie, 2006).

The Influence of Female Leader Management to Organisational Citizenship Behaviour
According to Organ, Podsakoff, & Mackenzie (2006), gender is the very important factor to determine organisational citizenship behaviour.Scholars are starting to carry out related research later, and it turns out that organisational citizenship behaviour showed significant differences in gender and women compared to men will showed more organisational citizenship behaviour.
www.ccsenThe primary data collection will be collected from distributing questionnaires.The questionnaires will be stratifying structured, the design will be terse and concise and all will be close-ended questions; respondents will be willing to fulfil questionnaires in an easy way: by ticking certain choices.Questionnaires will be email to relevant female managers and can be completed within ten minutes.However, the answer can be less accuracy due to lack of direct communication and observation with the respondents.

Quantitative and Qualitative Research
Quantitative research usually use the form of the data, make stringent requirements on research rigor, objectivity, value neutrality in order to get an objective fact.Quantitative analysis is the analysis of quantitative characteristics, the relationship of number and the changes of number.Its function is to reveal and describe the interaction and the development trend of the research phenomenon (Woods, 2006).
Qualitative research is an exploratory research method.The purpose is to determine the problem and provide a deeper understanding and awareness, use qualitative analysis to define the problem or find a way of handling problems (Berkwits & Inui, 1998).
Based on this project's situation, quantitative research would be more suitable to collect the necessary data from the actual related activities; according to quantitative research concept, by establishing assumptions and determine a causal relationship of variables, and then using some of these variables tested tools for measurement and analysis, in order to test hypotheses and consistency of findings, and verify the most influential factors of women leadership in Malaysia.

Pilot Test
Based on Morgan, Krueger, and King (1998) the reliable and goodness of the data are also rely on the measurements, the pretest will be undertaken in order to make respondent understanding of question meaning; make sure response categories are appropriate and questions are clarity; make sure instructions are adequate and data capture are effective.The aim of the pilot test is to identify question design and make effective operational procedures tested as well as assurance more meaningful and accurate data.
There were 20 people which including my lecturers and my classmates in APU participated in the pilot survey, 16 of them participated in the survey and all of them returned feedback to me about the survey.It was extremely helpful for the writer completing the survey for this dissertation.

Sampling Techniques
The stratified random sampling method will be used to determine the sample size of this research.There are differences and variability between layers of questions.Systematic random sampling method will be used to select the questionnaires respondents in different corporations, and it can be more accurate to getting data by female leaders from different corporations.The propose of this survey is not only shows the relationship between the attributes of leader effectiveness and women's leadership, but also determine the most influential factors that affect women leadership in corporations.The stratified random sampling method is not only represent the quantity of respondent, but also represent the critical viewpoint for the study.It will be the representative of the general considering and perception toward women leadership among female managers in Malaysia.

Questionnaire Design
Questionnaire will be settled based on the four variables: glass ceiling effect, job satisfaction, moral character and organisational citizenship behaviour as well as the dependent variable: women's leadership.The questionnaire research will be conducted and the quantitative data which include frequencies, means and standard deviations are necessary for this primary research.The questionnaire research will be conducted in SMEs that located in Kuala Lumpur.There are total 24 questions included and all close questions, respondents can make choice among alternatives within 10 minutes.

Rationale of Survey Questions
Simple quantitative analysis is to make some simple analysis to the questionnaire results, such as the use of percentage, mean frequency analysis.There will be two sections included in the questionnaire.Section 1 will be the demographic questions of female leaders, such as age, education level and working years.Section 2 is going to identify the relationship between dimensions of leadership effectiveness and women's leadership.Each attributes will be settled with questions in section 2. All the measurements will be based on the Five Points scale method in section 2. Section 3 is going to identify the most influential factor of women's leadership.The questionnaires will be designed as below: Simple answer tick "√"; They are demographic questions for target female leaders.The questions help to gather demographic data and can be used to correlate responds among different groups of participants.Respondents can chose answer by tick "√" the answer.

Section Two:
Table 2. Items of glass ceiling effect 1. Male staff have much more chances and faster speed for promotion 2. Women are more difficult to develop their career 3. Gender is the barrier to promotion 4. I believe glass ceiling effect will have an negative influence on women leadership Glass ceiling effect were mentioned and adapted by Burke and Mattis (2007).The questions are based on the cognitive evaluation towards gender promotion decisions in working environment, such as 'male staff has faster speed of promotion'.The form of scoring uses five points.The viewpoint by Scott (2008) will be adapted and used to measure the Moral character in this research.The measurements mainly show whether the moral characters influence the leadership.The form of scoring uses five points.
Table 5. Items of organisational citizenship behaviour 1.I am willing to help subordinates to solve work problems 2. I am willing to offer advice and suggestions to improve the status of the company 3.I will take the initiative to help company pull through when company get into difficulty 4. I may make use of the company resources and use my position to gain personal benefit 5.I think organisational citizenship behaviour is an important factor influencing women leadership According to Vondey, M (2006), organisational citizenship behaviour was proposed and related to women leadership.The organisational citizenship behaviour acts as one of the dependent variable.Therefore, questions were settled based on organisational citizenship behaviour which will reflect the measurement of leader effectiveness of female.There are five questions such as 'willing to help subordinates to solve work problems'.
The form of scoring uses five points.

Analysis of Findings
SPSS statistical tool will be used to collect and analyse the primary data.Followed analyses and testing will be conducted with the findings: 1).Descriptive analysis is used to determine the frequency distribution of the four dimensions of leader effectiveness; 2) Chi-square test will be used to identify relationship between independent variables and dependent variables.3).In order to find out whether there will be relationship between independent variables, Correlation coefficient can be used to test the relationship between independent variables (Shannon, 2000).
The data analysis will be shown in frequency tables, graphs or charts.The finding will clearly show criteria evaluation of how leadership effectiveness affecting women leadership and find out the most significant factor that affect the women leadership in SMEs in Malaysia.

Reliability of Data
For the questionnaire, the total 24 questions have been distributed to 200 participants and only 100 effective questionnaires will be selected, the reliability of data will reflect the consistency and stability of questionnaire.
Cronbach's Alpha method can be used to test the data, which is a reliability coefficient.Cronbach's Alpha is usually ranged from 0 to 1; the closer figure is to 1, the higher consistency, reliability and validity of the data.
The following table will show the result of Cronbach's Alpha by using SPSS. www.ccsen

 Four Dimensions
The four factors were calculated respectively in order to find out the mean and standard deviation.The following descriptive table shows the means; standard deviations and missing value of each factor.Education level In the 100 questionnaires, it obviously shows that there is no respondent under degree level, which indicates that female senior managers usually have a well-developed academic background in Kuala Lumpur.There are 70% of all the respondents are under the bachelor's degree.24% of them are in the level of master's degree.Besides, there are 6% of female leaders have gotten PhD.The result shows that the academic backgrounds of female leaders are improved.Most female senior managers in Malaysia have considerable knowledge and qualifications compare to the past.

Years of holding managerial position
According to the descriptive analysis, it shows that most of the respondents are held senior managerial position within 6-10 years, and it has a high percentage of respondents that is 80%.There are 13% of female leaders have more than 10 years working experience, and only 7% of female leaders held senior managerial position within 3-5 years.The different year of work experience can reflect that it will take a long time for women becoming senior managers.The promotion for women in enterprises still exist difficulties and obstacles in Malaysia.

Type of enterprise
In this question, the results indicate that female leaders are more existed in consumer service companies.29% of all respondents are from retail group.Female senior managers from bank take 22% of all respondents.There are 20% of female leaders from cosmetic/healthcare service industry as well as 20% of female leaders from Hotel.There are 9% from insurance company which are the smallest group of all respondents.The analysis proved that female leaders are more suited in certain occupations such as: consumer service managers; accountants and financial managers; cosmetic and health services managers and social community service managers (Toegel, 2010).

Geographic
Female senior managers in SMEs are the target female leaders in this study.From the analysis of target market segmentation, those female senior managers are mainly distributed between 40-49 years old, which the age of having a stable family, children begin to be independent.The burden on family has been lightened, thus they have the energy and time to organize the work and stretches their ability.Women employees in this age also accumulated several years of work experience and management capabilities.Therefore, the majority of senior women leaders are distributed at this stage, and this stage also can better reflect the superiority of women's leadership.

Four Variables
In order to determine the further relationship between the independent variables and the dependent variables, Chi-square tests are introduced to the hypothesis test.There are differences between each factor towards to women's leadership.From the results, except job satisfaction, other three dimensions of leadership effectiveness have significant influence on women's leadership.In other word, the effectiveness of women's leadership will present significant difference along different dimensions.
Glass ceiling effect has an influence on women's leadership.The attitude of cultural and social thought that there are occupational segregation between male and female in workplace.Most women in senior management positions have met the glass ceiling to career advancement now or before.Major respondents felt barriers still existed for women's advancement and unfair competition environment among organisations.Therefore, compared to male leaders, female leaders are considered more difficult and stressful at work.On the other hand, job satisfaction are identified has no influence on women's leadership.For example, glass ceiling effect will always exist whether women satisfied their work or not.There is no relationship or logically connection between job satisfaction and women's leadership.As long as women in the management positions, they will insist their moral standard regardless of satisfaction with job.
Moral characters and organisational citizenship behaviour have positive and significant influence on women's leadership.Based on the analysis of hypothesis test, majority female senior managers show strong moral standard and organisational citizenship behaviour at work.This study provides further evidence that moral characters and organisational citizenship behaviour does have a positive influence on women's leadership.For example, strong moral standard and organisational citizenship behaviour will bring an effective women leadership, while worse moral standard and organisational citizenship behaviour will lead an inefficient women leadership.
Moral character is the basic foundation of improving leadership authority.The influence of the leader's character, personality and style will also infect and guide the subordinates.The influence of leader's character factors will be different.If the leader with high moral character, subordinates will be more trust, dependency and reverence, and those feeling will transform into the conscious action and strength, enabling them to make unremitting efforts to struggle in order to achieve work goals.The finding implicates that companies may want to hire or promote people who has similar moral and values to the companies; skills can be taught, but core beliefs and values may not (Vondey, 2010).Instead of focusing on the qualified skills for a job, organisation should focus more on how well the moral character and organisational citizenship behaviour the leaders fits with.
From the analysis of research on women's leadership, when women leaders' glass ceiling feelings are weak, there will be high effectiveness of women leadership; when women leaders have great moral characters and good organisational citizenship behaviour, the leadership effectiveness of women will be high.Female leaders with low glass ceiling effect will more motive their career advancement.In conclusion, the results are consistent with previous research on literature review, and the influenced factors for women leadership which have been identified can refer to objectives of study.
In order to determine the relationship among independent variables, it can be referred to correlation analysis.The correlation analysis indicates that that there is a weak correlation relationship between moral character and organisational citizenship behaviour.For the others results of correlation, there are no relationships between others independent variables each other.In small medium enterprises, moral character shows positive relevance with organisational citizenship behaviour compared with job satisfaction of female senior managers.Female senior managers with more outstanding moral character will bring relative better organisational citizenship behaviour.In Malaysia's small medium enterprises, the personality traits of good senior managers are honestly, integrity, fairness and loyalty.Rather than only considered the wellbeing of themselves, those with good moral character are willing to helping others and providing benefits to public which are coincident with some common traits of organisational citizenship behaviour.The common traits in organizational citizenship behaviour include maintain friendship with employees and keeps the spirits, active involvement in social company activities and have common value to the rules and culture of company.Good female senior managers who practices organisational citizenship behaviour will typically become a strong team player in order to benefit to the company.

The Most Influential Factor
This part is going to find out female leaders' perception in the study of women leadership.The following part will descript the frequency for different ranking which the respondents were asked to rank the four variables from most important to least important.The table bellows shows the frequency of this question: The result indicates that most female senior managers considered that moral character are the most important factor which can effectively affect women leadership as well.According to Grace, N (2012), moral character is the virtues and ethics of people.Especially in small-medium enterprises, good moral character is essential for employee particularly for those in management positions, leaders with good moral character in the workplace can bring growth of the company.From the analysis, it has identified that women are too moral to succeed in business (Kaputa, 2009).A number of women considered that moral are the inevitable factor for a successful leadership in work.

Summaries of Finding
There has been significant difference between women leaders from different age, education level, years of managerial experience and types of enterprises.Different demographic background of women leaders will cause different influence degree to women's leadership.Glass ceiling effect, job satisfaction, moral characters and organisational citizenship behaviour are the four important dimensions of leadership effectiveness.The effectiveness of leadership is the important indicators of women's leadership.Women leadership can be affected by glass ceiling effect, moral characters and organisational citizenship behaviour, among them moral characters are the main influential factor of women's leadership; glass ceiling effect and organisational citizenship behaviour still have significant influence on women's leadership, however, job satisfaction of women leaders have seldom relationship on women's leadership.

Recommendations
Based on the above findings, the writer has put forward the following suggestions and hope to be able to help the female business leaders for their management practices.

Recommendation for Managerial Level
This study has determined the existence of a glass ceiling.There are obstacles for women promotion in organizations.This is contrary to the goal of maximizing organization and social interests.In order to optimize the allocation of resources and make full use of the competency of staff, enterprises should try to break the glass ceiling as soon as possible; pave the way for female employees and avoid gender stereotypes that may caused loss to enterprises.
1) To promote the appropriate proportion of female managers and a higher proportion of female executives.
This study provides the basis for the proportion of men and women in management.An appropriately increase the proportion of female in management and the senior management team, will help to break down the "glass ceiling effect" in order to fully use women's human resources.Besides, the senior management team of gender diversity will benefit organisational citizenship behaviours.Therefore, enterprises should ensure gender balance in management and a higher proportion of female executives as far as possible.
2) Bring the gender awareness into the company's strategic development decision.It is necessary for managerial level to consider the different physiological conditions and psychological characteristics between men and women; consider the different type of family responsibilities and conceptions; give special attention and dedicated support for women in the company, and those will help to achieve a win-win strategy for the development of women and enterprises.
3) To create a company culture that is conducive to women's development.In company, management level should publicize examples of outstanding female entrepreneurs, spread the spirit of those women, and encourage innovation, competition, and hard work, in order to promote the success and development of women's leadership.

Recommendation for Women Leaders
Women leaders need constantly enhance their leadership from their own point of view.No matter from the theory of leadership traits or leader competency model, based on Bilimoria and Piderit (2007), women leaders need develop or enhance leadership from the following aspects of culture: 1) Focus on the improvement of their quality, enhance leadership competency The survey shows that there has been a big leap for women in leadership positions in the aspects of knowledge, qualifications compare to the past.Women leaders in this new era are urgent to improve their overall quality.In terms of skills, knowledge, physical fitness, professional ethics, cultural accomplishment, psychological quality, women leaders must continue to learn and grow.Women leaders need to have more unique qualities such as the indomitable will and a healthy attitude.
2) Use unique female advantage with flexible management to enhance leadership Compared to Female leaders, male leaders have more potential for the implementation of flexible management.Due to women born relatively weak, women are rational and emotional.Compared to the leadership style of men, women leaders are more care about subordinates, more sensitive, and women are more inclined to adopt democratic leadership.Besides, women leaders more encourage participation, and willing to share power and information to subordinates.Furthermore, women are more compassionate and tolerant, willing to put ourselves in others' shoes.Female role of mother will make them full of unique love and patience, and has some credibility and representative power as well.
3) Identification of corporate value, encourage to break the irrational system Share corporate values.If them find a system and corporate values do not match, they need to have the courage to break the irrational system.Many researchers also believe that women leaders lack of courage to challenge existing systems and policies.It is also reflects that women leaders need improve and upgrade their leadership.

Recommendation for Enterprise Level
The enterprise is a unique environment for the survival and development of women leaders.Leadership situations is one of the three elements of leadership.Therefore, to create a good business environment is the first thing to enhance women's leadership.Only good and harmonious business environment can improve the conditions and basis of women leaders, and only by this, women will have the opportunity to be senior leader, and continue to enhance the leadership in the senior management position.
For the enterprise level, the most important is to design more equitable scientific measurement tools for the assessment of promotion, in order to ensure the enthusiasm and stability of the staff, and improve productivity and organizational performance; provide help and support to female employees and give full play to the abilities and strengths of each member of the organization, improve organizational effectiveness.According to Harzing and Pinnington (2011), there are four aspects for Enterprise Level: 1) Establish a good employment selection mechanism Complete leadership talent selection mechanism is the first step for an enterprise to attract outstanding leadership talent.In the selection, enterprise should be regardless of gender, regardless of prejudice and discrimination against women and insist the "capable ability" fair selection mechanism.Enterprise should have equal treatment to women leaders and male leaders and this is the way of motiving women leaders.Besides, incentives will become a driving force to promote the advancement of women leaders.Therefore, with gratitude to enterprises, women leaders will do their best to benefit enterprise.

2) Enhance the training of women leaders
Enterprises should increase training opportunities in order to fundamentally upgrade skills of women leaders and promote their capabilities, which will lead to the enhancement of leadership of women leaders.What's more, pay attention to perfecting the talents training mechanism.
3) Build the corporate culture that is conducive to enhancing the women leadership Corporate culture provides the orientation of business value.If employers and employees treat female leaders equitable and show welcoming attitude rather than exclusive attitude to female leaders, enterprises more pay attention to the abilities rather than gander in the employment selection, there will be further development for women leaders.
4) Establish a scientific and rational leadership measurement criteria and pay mechanism Conduct evaluation to women's leadership; make a reasonable analysis to the evaluation results and timely feedback to the women leaders in order to maintain what has been achieved.Therefore, enterprises must develop standard with moderate and impartiality.Besides, enterprise requires women leader strict follow the standard, and uses certain standard to measure whether the standards suit for women leaders.In addition, a timely reminder and correction are required for women leaders to constantly improve their leadership and improve the standard when deviation happened in work.

Recommendation for Social Environment Level
Women embarked on the job of leader, engaged in senior-level leadership activities are considered inseparable with social progress, this is the sign of .socialconstant development and progression.The impact of the social context to a person is huge, the social awareness, customs and habits will be deep affect a person's growth.As mentioned by Connor, K (2010), there are three ways to promote women leadership from social environment level: 1) Society needs change concept, eliminate prejudice against women Despite the increased proportion of women leaders in the contemporary era, due to affect by the traditional and backward old ethical and moral concepts, the inveteracy prejudices of female leaders are not eliminate, people still double about female leadership behaviour and female leadership skills.In real life, people still show more praise and encourage to male leaders with high-quality and pioneering spirit, social tend to provide them with more opportunities and resources.However, for the women who have a vision and risk-taking women, society often demand perfection and difficult to tolerance, they more tend to use the traditional "woman" standard to treat them.

2) Pay attention to the personnel training of female leaders
This will be first expressed in terms of social education.Social education is flexible and diversity, it can better reflect the democratic nature of education.The developed countries are equipped with all types of schools, subjects and courses from basic education, each year will provide society with a large number of management talents.Therefore, society could establish a variety of adult education schools, EMBA courses in order to help leader especially female leaders to continuously improve their leadership.
3) Give favorable support to women leaders by their family If women more focus on career, she will less care family for sure.Women's emotional factors are higher than men.However it is difficult to balance between family and career.Family and career are indispensable for women leaders.Therefore, to enhance the leadership of women leaders, the primary thing is to make their family members understand and support them.Thus, when there come encountered problems or huge pressure, family members can share those problems and encourage, support them as well.Women leaders will have greater incentive to solve the problem and remove obstacle, finally they can make a difference in their leader position.

Conclusion
From the selection of subjects and completion the entire dissertation, from little understanding to deep understanding about the subject of women's leadership, the writer's perspective has become more rational and scientific.Based on consult a plenty of literature, the writer has learned the achievements of women's leadership by different scholars and learned the theory of leadership.Combined with own accumulated knowledge and used empirical analysis method, the writer eventually identified the influential factors of women's leadership and has completed the writing of the dissertation.
On the basis of literatures review, from an elaborate on women leadership theory; effectiveness of leadership and four dimensions of leadership effectiveness, these theoretical knowledge play a direct role to the analysis and conclusion to the study later.Combined with the actual situation of the female leaders in SMEs in Malaysia; through the survey analysis on female senior managers about the dimensions of leadership effectiveness in Malaysia SMEs, it can be concluded that leadership development for women in the great historical opportunity still exists obvious difficulties, and moral characters which as one dimension of leadership effectiveness are the most influential factor to women leadership.The status of women's leadership in Malaysia enterprises also reflects that women leaders have made great progress on the academic knowledge, women leaders has made great progress on leadership, and women leaders deviation to the recognizes of leadership will also influence the leadership.After the analysis the relationship between dimensions of leadership effectiveness and women leadership and the relationship among four dimensions of leadership effectiveness, through analysis the factor of women leadership and survey from female senior managers, the most influential factors of female leadership has been found.Therefore, the recommendation of improving the effectiveness of women leadership has been put forward.The recommendations are mainly proposed from four aspects such as management level, women leader themselves, enterprise level and social environment level.
In conclusion, the majority of senior women leaders are middle aged women with a stable family and grown up children.Usually they have light family burden and have enough energy and time to organize the work, stretches their managerial ability; plus accumulated several years of working experience and management capabilities.It can better reflect the superiority of women's leadership.The effectiveness of leadership is the important indicators of women's leadership.There has been diversity between women leaders from different age, education level, years of managerial experience and types of enterprises.Women with different demographic background will show different in leadership.Glass ceiling effect, job satisfaction, moral characters and organisational citizenship behaviour are the four important dimensions of leadership effectiveness.Women leadership can be affected by glass ceiling effect, moral characters and organisational citizenship behaviour, moral characters are the main influential factor of women's leadership.However, according to research analysis, job satisfaction shows seldom relationship on women's leadership.
Generally speaking, women leaders in senior management level still take small proportion compared to men.Compared to state-owned enterprises or large enterprises, women's leadership has considered more successful in small and medium-sized enterprises (Teoh & Chong, 2008).In addition, these four dimensions are only the typical dimensions of leadership effectiveness that related to women leadership.According to the previous researches and studies, there are many other factors that relate to women's leadership, such as women leaders' turnover intention, organisational and social perception to women.
With the progress of society, women begins play more and more important role in all fields of society, especially in the enterprises.With more advancement of women leaders, it is urgent for women leaders to strengthen their professional skills and working abilities, improve their moral standards and values, to adapt to the changing and challenging leadership environment, and make a greater contribution to enterprises.
Figure 2 sh independe primary re 3.1 Resear Hypothese research o independe H1: The g H2: The j H3: The m leadership H4: The o factor on wThis table variable.In Figure 3. Coefficient (Cronb Figure 5.
a stable and happy family and life.

table variable
The target group will be female senior executive from different SMEs in Kuala Lumpur.The female leaders can be stratified and based on the demographic profile such as age; education background; marriage status and working years and enterprise.Due to the diversification of corporations, female leaders are come from different working environment.The target female managers can be from different department.The results of survey will be more comprehensive that target group with different age, department and working experience in corporations.The target female managers are including financial and accounting managers; human resource managers; medical and health services managers; hotel and hospitality managers and social community service managers.The questionnaires will be distributed to total 200 female senior managers including: 20 managers from Hong Leong Bank and 20 managers from Kuwait Finance House Berhad; 20 managers in Poney Company and 30 managers in PepsiCo; 30 managers in Shahnaz Herbals and 20 managers in Slimming Sanctuary Sdn Bhd; 20 managers in Royale Chulan Hotel; 20 managers in Sunway Retail Group and 20 managers in Malaysian Insurance Institute.The primary sample size is total 200 female leaders in senior management level from nine different SMEs in Kuala Lumpur.Yet, only 100 effective questionnaires will be chosen and conducted an accurate statistics analysis in chapter 4.

Table 3 .
Items of job satisfaction1.I satisfied with the current job 2. I think I am rewarded equally as men on managerial positions 3. I think job satisfaction will have no influence on women leadership The questions referred toPitts et al. (2006), to measure the Job satisfaction by female leaders.There are only two questions 'satisfied with the job or not'.The form of scoring uses five points.The higher point means participants are more satisfied with the job.

Table 4 .
Items of moral character1.I have a strong sense of group honour 2. I have a strong sense of responsibility and I do everything seriously at work 3.I can be very patient to listen and accept different opinions 4. For the issue of work, I always prior to benefit company 5.I think moral character will be the most influential factor for women leadership

Table 15 .
Descriptive analysis of difference on glass ceiling effect

Table 16 .
Descriptive analysis of difference on job satisfaction

Table 17 .
Descriptive analysis of difference on moral character

Table 18 .
Descriptive analysis of difference on organisational citizenship behaviour

Table 26
Those nine SMEs in Kuala Lumpur are including Hong Leong Bank; Kuwait Finance House Berhad; Poney Company; PepsiCo; Shahnaz Herbals; Slimming Sanctuary Sdn Bhd; Royale Chulan Hotel; Sunway Retail Group and Malaysian Insurance Institute.According to preview study, those nine are the typical small and medium enterprises which have most female leaders compared to other SMEs in Kuala Lumpur, and those can represent the majority of women leadership in Malaysia.

Table 28 .
Result of ranking the most influential factor of women leadership