IMPACT OF GENDER DIFFERENCES IN PERCEPTION OF CREATIVE IDENTITIES OF ARTIST, CREATOR, MANAGER, ENTREPRENEUR AND LEADER ON SUSTAINABILITY

Because personal identity is a crucial component forming an individual, the perception of identity is a key feature in identity work. As a crucial component of the constant development of an individual, identity work influences the sustainability of groups and societies. Due to gender differences in many areas, the research on the impact of gender factors on the perception of creative individuals (like an artist, creator, entrepreneur, leader, and manager) may bring significant conclusions. Although gender factor is widely present in the literature, there is a gap about the impact of gender on the perception of creative individuals. A quantitative examination among the international society representatives (n = 160) was undertaken to fill this gap. The research displays that male and female perspectives of the perception of the creative identities are statistically similar. The hypotheses were confirmed using the chi-square test of independence (p < 0.001). The additional qualitative analysis reveals that females, in comparison to males, see the particular factors constituting each studied identity slightly more transparent and as more important: the artist’s identity by 1.73%, the creator’s identity by 0.98%, the entrepreneur’s identity by 2.23%, the leader’s identity by 2.11%, and the manager’s identity by 1.15%. The research results may be used to understand the gender differences of creative identities’ perception by maleor female-dominated groups, organizations, and societies. The consequences of the differences for management and entrepreneurship may be seen as minor from the general perspective. However, they may be essential in the efficiency of the cooperation: 1) There is no evidence that any gender should be limited or preferred about working with creative individuals; 2) There is a slight difference indicating female predispositions in the perception of creative identities; 3) Particular features of creative individuals are underrated or overrated by males and females and can determine particular decisions. The research conclusions should be seen as a novelty compared to results describing essential differences in many areas of human activities regarding gender.


Introduction
Personal identity, being one of the basic foundations establishing an individual, is not an accessible area for researchers, primarily focusing on the managerial side of the problem and its organizational consequences. However, due to the strictly psychological characteristics of the research area (identity), management scientists, being weaker equipped in tools than psychologists, try to discover rules that can help include different identities in management practice. This philosophy was the initial point for this research.
Although external factors, like the social and intellectual background, primary material wealth, or just luck, affect the destiny of each person, it is the identity being the steering power behind the personal and professional lifecycle of an individual. The previous research in the area of artist's, creator's, entrepreneur's, leader's, and manager's identities found that even the persons who possess talent, personal characteristics, and well established professional position in the above areas, have problems with the definition of who an artist is, who a creative person is, who a manager is, who a leader is, or who an entrepreneur is. These blurred "definitions" of the particular identities led to separate the complex identities of artists-managers (Szostak & Sułkowski, 2020a, 2021b, 2020b and artists-entrepreneurs (Szostak & Sułkowski, 2021a). Besides, while separating the creativity factor among these groups of individuals, it can be found that even the individuals with highly developed abilities allowing to describe their characteristics have many problems with the distinction between the creative and noncreative artist/manager/entrepreneur/leader.
Since one of the most fundamental variables in social research is gender, researchers look commonly for differences on this ground due to the common occurrence of this factor. The above considerations led to the comparison of the perception of the creative identities of an artist, creator, entrepreneur, leader, and manager by male and female representatives of the society may reveal additional conclusions to the issue of investigated identities, especially in the context of sustainability. As a result, the following two research hypotheses were established: H1) There are gender differences in perception of the artist's, creator's, entrepreneur's, leader's, and manager's identities. H2) Gender differences in perception of the artist's, creator's, entrepreneur's identity, leader's identity, and manager's identity are different, referring to each of the above identities.
Initially, secondary research in the form of reviewing literature and data was handled. The literature review approach is based on a qualitative selection of the literature taken from the following databases: EBSCO, Google Scholar, JSTOR, Mendeley, and Scopus. The methodological approach to the literature review based on an interdisciplinary and multi-paradigm tactic taking into account the publications from the areas of arts and aesthetics (artist's identity), creativity (creative person's identity), management (manager's identity), entrepreneurship (entrepreneur's identity), leadership (leader's identity), and psychology (gender differences in perception). The literature review was run using the NVivo Pro software. Secondly, quantitative research was conducted.
As we see from the above, identity seems to be a multidimensional issue. Its perception is not straightforward nor undisputable; the dissimilarities, both in the fields of identity and perception, lead to the assumption that the problem may be fogged. Researchers in the area of management explored this problem on example of particular groups: designers (Kunrath et al., 2020), managers (Erat et al., 2020;Hallier, 2004), actors (Walter, 2015), nations (Grigoryan & Kotova, 2018), mixed-race individuals (Tendayi Viki & Williams, 2014), children (Yazar & Arifoglu, 2012), students (Naderi et al., 2009), creative people (Vincent & Kouchaki, 2016). Fascinating insight into the problem consists of sources of inspiration and motifs of undertaking creative activities (Szostak, 2018).
Investigators emphasize that perception has its boundaries prompting the perception process, e.g., perceptive capabilities of individuals (Wimschneider & Brem, 2019), conditions of the perception itself (Schielke, 2020), or cultural aspects affecting the manner of perception (Saavedra Llamas & Grijalba de la Calle, 2020). In this situation, due to the complication of the problem, it is primarily unachievable to get a straightforward response to how a specific identity is perceived. However, trying to catalog how researchers handled the challenge of perception of a specific identity, we can suppose that: 1) They limit the issue of the research from general, widely defined identity into a particular type of identity, e.g., the identity of nurse manager responsibilities (Baker et al., 2012), identity if project manager (Lutas et al., 2020); 2) They judiciously chose the group perceiving the particular identity, e.g., teachers (Kasmaienezhadfard et al., 2015), designers (Kunrath et al., 2020), nurses (Kiran et al., 2019;Raso et al., 2020), purchasers of specific goods or services (Horn & Salvendy, 2009), undergraduate business students (Kohail et al., 2016); or 3) They examine the problem in contrast of two investigation units, e.g., artists and nonartists (Bhattacharya & Petsche, 2002).
The distinction in the perception of particular identity due to gender differences is present in the literature in the broad spectrum (Casey, 2021;Hancock et al., 2020). The gender lens was qualitatively analyzed mainly based on the identities of particular figures, e.g., two Swedish artists, Fredrik Ekelund and Rodrigo Bernal (Lindholm, 2015), diaries of Mary Seton Watts (Rose, 2017), actor's identity as a manager (Walter, 2015). It can be said that mainly the 19th-century arts are deeply analyzed areas in the contexts of perception and gender. Considering the current art world and current artists, it can be found research on gender differences in perception of, e.g., graffiti works and their creators (Chinangure & Mapaire, 2019) or punk musicians (Garrigós, 2017). The more general approach to artist's identity through gender lens reveals conclusions about differences in career-decision making and self-management by artists (Bennett & Hennekam, 2018;Hennekam & Bennett, 2016), differences in perception of paintings as the way of consideration of the effective communication (Abodunrin, 2017), differences in identification of the cultural attitudes by art beholders in the auction context (Adams et al., 2017), inequality in artistic careers based on gender and artist archetypes (Miller, 2016), differences in music perception (Shakespeare et al., 2020;Szostak, 2020b).

ENTREPRENEURSHIP AND SUSTAINABILITY ISSUES
ISSN 2345-0282 (online) http://jssidoi.org/jesi/ 2021 Volume 9 Number 2 (December) http://doi.org/10.9770/jesi.2021.9.2(1) 13 Due to the uneasy task of defining a creator's identity, the gender lens was rarely analyzed in the context of the creator's identity. It can be said that literature, in general, mixes the areas of arts and creativity. Despite these limitations, researchers focused on the gender differences in the area of the sense of success and well-being of a creator (Lebuda & Csikszentmihalyi, 2020). analysis of particular cases of creative identities working and/or living together and catalyzing their creativity (Thomas, 2019).
Although gender factor is present in the mentioned literature, we will not find any information about the impact of gender on the perception of creative individuals. Therefore, approaching this issue from the social capital theory and underlining the importance of creative individuals for the sustainable development of groups, organizations, and societies, a gap in the literature can be defined.

Research objective and methodology
The following research questions should be formulated to tackle the literature gap problem: RQ1) Does gender influence the creative identities perception? RQ2) Which creative identities are perceived similarly and which differ depending on gender? RQ3) Is it possible to formulate any conclusions about gender differences in the perception of creative individuals and investigate potential consequences for management, entrepreneurship, and sustainability?
The tool for quantitative research in the form of a questionnaire was established based on the approach of Stefan Nowak (2007), containing the dimensions of the studied phenomenon and then selecting indicators that allow describing the studied phenomenon. The initial methodological idea assumed constructing separate sets of indicators for each of the analyzed dimensions. Sets of indicators for individual dimensions began to be developed based on the literature on the subject in the field of: artistry (Bayrakci et al., 2009;McHugh, 2015;Szostak, 2020;Walter, 2015;Wilson & Brown, 2012;Woodward & Funk, 2010), creativity (Dufour et al., 2020;Gangi, 2018;Lehmann & Gaskins, 2019;Leso et al., 2017;Szostak & Sułkowski, 2020;Taleghani, 2012;Zhou et al., 2008), managerial issues (Baker et al., 2012;Bulei et al., 2014;Elstad & Jansson, 2020;Hallier, 2004;Hatch et al., 2006;Hracs, 2015;Lähdesmäki, 2012;López-Fernández et al., 2018;Lutas et al., 2020), leadership (Adler, 2006;Alvesson & Blom, 2015;Carroll & Levy, 2008;Jankurová et al., 2017;Lord & Brown, 2001;Nikolski, 2015;Postuła & Majczyk, 2018;Raso et al., 2020;Stuke, 2013;Woodward & Funk, 2010), and entrepreneurship (Bureau & Zander, 2014;Cardon et al., 2009;Clarke & Holt, 2019;Damásio & Bicacro, 2017;Davidsson, 2006;Enhuber, 2014;Lewis et al., 2016;Postuła & Majczyk, 2018;Toscher, 2019Toscher, , 2020. However, the analysis of individual groups of indicators showed that, in principle, each of the indicators selected for individual dimensions might be used to describe each of the examined dimensions. Following this assumption, a single list of 50 of the same indicators was compiled and applied to all five examined dimensions. Thanks to this, the obtained results may be compared to the same indicators for other dimensions. The survey was ultimately split into four segments. In the first segment, a list of questions (each question related to one indicator) was divided into thematic units referring to each analyzed dimension: artistry, creativity, entrepreneurship, leadership, and managerial issues. All questions were closed, and a five-point Likert scale was formed to answer: definitely not, rather not, hard to say, rather yes, and definitely yes. In the second segment of the investigation, questions were asked about the relationship of each of the analyzed dimensions to the other dimensions. In the third segment, the respondents described their identity concerning each of the dimensions. Finally, the fourth segment included questions categorizing the respondents, i.e., gender, age, education, their assessment of their own identity (as an artist, creator, entrepreneur, leader, and/or manager).
The nonparametric chi-square test of independence dedicated to small samples that do not have a normal distribution was used to verify the hypotheses. The pairs of the observed values were compared with pairs of the expected values for each hypothesis. The p-value of the tests was < 0.001. Data analysis was executed using IBM SPSS and MS Excel. Due to the small size of the sample, complex statistics were not conducted. Therefore, this article exhibits only a number of the conclusions from the entire investigation (Szostak, 2021). The survey entitled "Perception of creativity, artistry, entrepreneurship, leadership and managerial abilities" lasted 34 days, i.e., from 20th December 2020 to 23rd January 2021. Two identical questionnaires, one in English and the other in Polish, were distributed via direct contact (sending requests to participate in the survey to friends of people) and using indirect public tools (social networks, collective messages to various types of communities); The estimation of the number of people asked to take part in the study is of approximately 2-3 thousand. Eight hundred seventy-nine people were interested in taking part in the survey, which we judge by clicking on the link leading to the survey. The actual participation in the study, consisting of filling in the questionnaire, was attended by 160 people, i.e., 18.2% of people interested in taking part in the research. The average time spent filling in the questionnaire was 32 minutes and 23 seconds, and the average age of the respondent was 38 years. Among the respondents: women constituted 42.5% and men 57.5%see Figure 1; people with higher education (bachelor, master, engineer) 64.57%, people with doctoral, postdoctoral, or professor degrees 18.90%, people with secondary education 15.75%see Figure 2. The respondents came from 28 countries; however, because the distribution of this feature was very diverse, we divided the sample into possibly equivalent crops in this respect, i.e., 74% developed countries and 26% developing countries (United Nations, 2021); European countries 71.7%, and non-European countries 28.3%; Poland 49.6% and other countries 50.4%; post-communist countries 63.8% and countries with no experience of communism 36.2%.

Results and discussion
Discussing each research hypothesis separately, from the statistical point of view, it can be said that: Although the primary hypotheses were statistically verified negatively, the analysis of the detailed characteristics of the research identities referring to gender reveals interesting results.

Artist's Identity
Based on the research, there are the following gender differences in the perception of the artist's identity. The ten features of an artist seen as more important to females than to males are (in decreasing gradation order): individualism, sensitivity to Truth, justice, ability to set goals, interpersonal skills (communicativeness, reading emotions, sensitivity to others), innovation, sensitivity to Good, courage, efficiency and self-confidence (the mean of these ten differences is 4.56%). The ten features of an artist seen as more important to males than to females are (in increasing gradation order): resistance to fails and failures, improving quality through repetition, being guided by faith and spirituality, focusing on financial profit, being guided by emotions, disorder, mess, chaos, randomness in action, focusing on creating added (non-financial) value, a tendency to plan, ability to focus on details, and an inner sense of control (the mean of these ten differences is 0.95%). (see Figure 3 and Figure 4).

Creator's Identity
The following gender differences in the perception of the creator's identity can be described. The ten features of a creator seen as more important to females than to males are (in decreasing gradation order): individualism, charisma, justice, self-confidence, sensitivity to Truth, ability to set goals, passion in action, observation, interpersonal skills (communicativeness, reading emotions, sensitivity to others), respect for tradition and history (the mean of these ten differences is 3.45%). The ten features of a creator seen as more important to males than to females are (in increasing gradation order): focusing on creating added (non-financial) value, inner sense of control, tendency to control, being guided by emotions, ability to focus on details, connecting contradictions, care, improving quality through repetition, focusing on financial profit, disorder, mess, chaos, and randomness in action (the mean of these ten differences is 1.86%) (see Figure 5 and Figure 6).

Entrepreneur's Identity
The following gender differences in the perception of the entrepreneur's identity may be revealed. The ten features of an entrepreneur seen as more important to females than to males are (in decreasing gradation order): justice, sensitivity to Truth, honesty, respect for tradition and history, conservatism, sensitivity to Good, perfectionism, sensitivity to Beauty, ability to synthesize and draw conclusions, leadership as an autotelic (in itself) value (the mean of these ten differences is 5.34%). Only four features of an entrepreneur are seen as more important to males than to females; they are (in increasing gradation order): ambition, innovation, a tendency to risk, and charisma (the mean of these four differences is 0.88%). Justice was described as the most differently perceived feature among all (8.43%) researched features of all creative identities. Adding the following illustrated features, i.e., sensitivity to Truth and honesty, it can be concluded that men are more cynic than women in undertaking entrepreneurial activities (see Figure 7 and Figure 8).

Leader's Identity
The following gender differences in the perception of the leader's identity can be found. The ten features of a leader seen as more important to females than to males are (in decreasing gradation order): leadership as an autotelic (in itself) value, originality, passion in action, sensitivity to Good, sensitivity to Truth, justice, visualization skills and imagination, connecting contradictions, innovation, and perfectionism (the mean of these ten differences is 4.75%). There are only six features of a leader seen as more important to males than to females; they are (in increasing gradation order): being guided by intuition, care, being guided by faith and spirituality, disorder (mess, chaos, randomness) in action, improving quality through repetition, and being guided by emotions (the mean of these six differences is 0.95%) (Figure 9 and Figure 10).

Manager's Identity
The following gender differences in the perception of the manager's identity may be described. First, the ten features of a manager seen as more important to females than to males are (in decreasing gradation order): independence, sensitivity to Beauty, perfectionism, sensitivity to Good, sensitivity to Truth, passion in action, courage, originality, leadership as an autotelic (in itself) value, and conservatism (the mean of these ten differences is 3.53%). Second, the ten features of a manager seen as more important to males than to females are (in increasing gradation order): interpersonal skills (communicativeness, reading emotions, sensitivity to others), efficiency, charisma, improving quality through repetition, tendency to control, pragmatism (practicality), patience and persistence in achieving goals, care, a tendency to plan, and focusing on financial profit (the mean of these ten differences is 0.68%) (see Figure 11 and Figure 12).  The qualitative gender differences between the perception of the creative identities of artist, creator, entrepreneur, leader, and manager show that females see the particular factors constituting each studied identity more clearly and as more critical in comparison to males: the artist's identity by 1.73%, the creator's identity by 0.98%, the entrepreneur's identity by 2.23%, the leader's identity by 2.11%, and the manager's identity by 1.15%. The synthetic visualization of means of perception of all features about the artist's, creator's, entrepreneur's, leader's, and manager's identity in gender perspective shows Figure 13.

Conclusions
The following issues raised in the research questions may be determined. RQ1: From the statistical perspective, gender does not influence the creative identities' (of an artist, creator, entrepreneur, leader, manager) perception.
Although, qualitative analysis of certain factors constituting creative identities reveals that the differences may reach approximately 8-9% maximally. RQ2: The identity of a creator (a difference of 0.98%) and a manager (1.15%) are perceived similarly depending on gender. The largest, but still very modest (less than 2.5%), differences in perception refer to an entrepreneur (2.23) and a leader (2.11%). RQ3: Depends on dominant features among a group of people -e.g., sensitivity to justice in case of entrepreneur's identity or approach to individualism in case of artist's and creator's identitythe gender structure of the group may influence the quality of cooperation and the effects of interaction. The consequences of these individual differences for management and entrepreneurship may be seen as minor from the general perspective. However, in the case of individual situations, they may play an essential role in the efficiency of the cooperation. In the context of sustainability, the research may be concluded in three directions. Firstly, there is no evidence that any gender should be limited or preferred about working with creative individuals. Secondly, there is a slight difference indicating female predispositions in the perception of these identities. Thirdly, the above qualitative analysis shows that particular features are underrated or overrated by males and females and can determine particular decisions. All these conclusions should be kept in mind while focusing on creating patterns and environments for the sustainable development of groups, organizations, and societies. The research conclusions should be seen as a novelty compared to results describing essential differences in many areas of human activities regarding gender.
Among the limitations of the research, we should underline the following elements: 1) The research was run during the first deep phase of the COVID-19 pandemic that could influence respondents' views and opinions; 2) The research sample (n = 160) was relatively small in comparison to the analyzed problem; 3) Synthetic conclusions can be not widely representative due to complexity of the research problem; 4) Because more than 90% of respondents possess at least higher degree of educationthese people are statistically better equipped with knowledge and perception tools than less educated individuals -our conclusions should not be extended on the whole society.
The results of the research may be helpful for: 1) Creative individuals (artists, creators, entrepreneurs, leaders, managers) for a) better understanding the different layers of their personality with underlining the issue of complex identity and gender differences, b) comparison of own identity with the general perception of a particular role about gender differences; 2) Researchers wanting to investigate the similarities and differences between identity and its perception in area of artistry, creativity, entrepreneurship, leadership, and organizing in reference do gender distinction; 3) Managers to understand the gender differences in the perception of the investigated identities by male-or female-dominated groups, organizations, and societies; 4) Leaders of sustainable development in practical choice of methods of work with gender diversified groups.
Potential research questions for future qualitative research or the hypothesis for further quantitative research may be: 1) Self-perception of identity may vary from the perception of the identity depending on the gender structure of the group or the society; 2) Self-perception of identity is similar to the perception of the identity by a particular group or society if the gender structure is similar.