Culture specific and cross-culturally generalizable implicit leadership theories: Are attributes of charismatic/transformational leadership universally endorsed?1
Section snippets
Leadership and perception: implicit leadership theories
Leadership exists in all societies and is essential to the functioning of organizations within societies (Wren, 1995). Because individuals have their own ideas about the nature of leaders and leadership, they develop ideosyncratic theories of leadership. As such, an individual's implicit leadership theory refers to beliefs held about how leaders behave in general and what is expected of them (Eden & Leviatan, 1975). Using an information processing perspective, implicit theories are cognitive
Leadership perceptions across cultures
The way in which the social environment is interpreted is strongly influenced by the cultural background of the perceiver. This implies that the attributes that are seen as characteristic or prototypical for leaders may also strongly vary in different cultures. Hunt, Boal, and Sorensen (1990) propose that societal culture has an important impact on the development of super-ordinate category prototypes and implicit leadership theories. They hold that values and ideologies act as a determinant of
Studying leadership in different cultures
Yukl (1998) points out that most of the research on leadership during the past half century was conducted in the United States, Canada, and Western Europe. Hofstede (1993)(p.81) states: “In a Global perspective, US management theories contain a number of idiosyncrasies not necessarily shared by management elsewhere. Three such idiosyncrasies are mentioned: A stress on market processes, a stress on the individual, and a focus on managers rather than workers.” Similarly, House (1995) notes that
Leadership prototypes across cultures
Relatively few studies have focused explicitly on culture-based differences in leadership prototypes or implicit theories of leadership. Since implicit leadership theory, with its core construct of “leadership prototypes,” has been found useful in understanding leader behavior in the United States, there seems no reason why this would not also be found in other countries. Bryman (1987), for instance, found strong support for the operation of implicit theories of leadership in Great Britain.
Lord
Charismatic leadership and societal culture
Is charisma universally endorsed? One proposition is that differences in national culture could influence the emergence and effectiveness of charismatic leaders. Managerial practices and motivational techniques that are legitimate and acceptable in one culture (or time period) may not be in another. Bass (1990a)(p. 196) states: “Charismatics appear in societies with traditions of support for them and expectations about their emergence.” This seems to imply charismatic leadership might easily
The culture specific–etic dilemma
Cross-cultural researchers make a distinction between culture-specific and cross-culturally generalizable or universal aspects of behavior. Pike (1967) used the terms emic and etic in analogy with phonetics (general aspects of vocal sounds and sound production in languages) and phonemics (sounds used in a particular language). Berry (1969) transferred Pike's distinction to cross-cultural psychology, using the term “etic” analyses of human behavior for those that focus on universals. Thus, etic
Types of universals: simple versus variform
The discussion of culture specific and cross-culturally generalizable elements could also be phrased in terms of different types of universals. A first type of universal that has been identified is the simple universal, referring to a phenomenon that is constant throughout the world. In terms of statistical inference, such simple universals focus on the mean level of a variable and the extent to which that mean doesn't vary across cultures (e.g., Bass 1997, Hanges et al. 1997). However, the
Cultural influences on leadership: project globe
The idea for a global research program concerned with leadership and organizational practices was conceived in the summer of 1991 by Robert House and GLOBE was funded in October 19932. Since then, GLOBE has evolved into a multi-phase, multi-method research
Sample
Sampling is a problematic issue in cross-cultural studies. As has been noted in cross-cultural research, using national borders as cultural boundaries may not be appropriate in countries that have large subcultures. In large, multi-cultural countries such as India, the U.S. and China it is not even clear which sample would be most representative. Nevertheless, the samples from all countries need to be relatively homogeneous within countries. In this study, for multi-culture countries, whenever
Leadership Dimensions
Table 4 presents the descriptive statistics of the global leadership (i.e., second order) dimensions. The country means on the charismatic/transformational, team oriented, and participative leadership dimension range from 4.51 to 6.46 on a 7 point scale, indicating a general belief that these dimensions are prototypical of outstanding leadership in all cultures. Country means on these six second order leadership factors and sample sizes are shown in Table 5.
Universally Endorsed Attributes
To be seen as universally endorsed,
Enacting charismatic/transformational leadership: examples from the globe study
The results presented above show that several attributes associated with charismatic/transformational leadership are universally seen as contributing to outstanding leadership. A common preference for this type of leadership does not preclude differences in the observed ratings of actual leader behavior. In other words, a shared preference for transformational/ charismatic leadership does not mean transformational/charismatic attributes will be enacted in exactly the same manner across cultures
Top-management versus lower hierarchical levels
The second issue that will be discussed in some more depth concerns the issue of how CLTs may vary according to managerial level. As stated previously, when middle managers rate characteristics for effective leadership they are most likely thinking of top management. However, `the perceptual processes that operate with respect to leaders are very likely to involve quite different considerations at upper versus lower hierarchical levels' (Lord & Maher, 1991, p.97). As demands, tasks and
Discussion
The combined results of the major GLOBE study and the follow-up study demonstrate that several attributes reflecting charismatic/transformational leadership are universally endorsed as contributing to outstanding leadership. These include motive arouser, foresight, encouraging, communicative, trustworthy, dynamic, positive, confidence builder, and motivational. Several other charismatic attributes are perceived as culturally contingent. These include enthusiastic, risk taking, ambitious,
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The first five authors participated in the statistical analyses and the writing of this monograph. The Senior Research Associates provided general research support to the Principal Investigator and the GLOBE Coordinating Team, assisted country representatives in translation and back-translations of instruments and in data collection, and assisted in the coordination of the GLOBE data collection. The remaining authors represented their cultures as Country Co-Investigators, made suggestions concerning the design and execution of the GLOBE program, collected the data on which this monograph is based, and provided interpretations of research findings in their respective cultures.