Recent research on culturally-contingent leadership behaviors was conducted in 62 countries with 8,000 managers by 170 researchers who made up the GLOBE leadership research project, led by Robert House. Following is a small sample of their findings. Those leadership styles and behaviors that were found to be culturally contingent are; charismatic, team-oriented, self-protective, participative, humane, and autonomous. The charismatic leader as in this research is someone who is, for example, a visionary, an inspiration to subordinates, and performance- oriented. Although charisma was ranked as important to leaders everywhere, those countries where it seemed to be most important were Israel, the Philippines, Canada, Australia, and the United States, for example. The managers in those countries where team orientation was regarded as very important for leaders were in Greece, Brazil, Turkey, and Argentina, although the ratings were all quite high and close together. The self-protective dimension describes a leader who is self-centered, conflictual and status conscious. Not surprisingly, the ratings were generally lower than the previous two dimensions mentioned although managers in some countries - for example, Albania, Egypt, Indonesia, and Taiwan - thought those attributes of leaders were fairly important to facilitate leadership (scores more than 4.0 on a 1 - 7 point scale). The lowest scores were found in the Nordic countries. The participative leader was deemed to be most important (out of the 62 countries researched) in Austria, Brazil, and Canada, while those countries in which those behaviors were deemed the least important compared with the others were Russia, Mexico, and Taiwan. An autonomous leader is, as expected, an individualist, so countries that ranked participation as important tended to rank autonomy in leadership as relatively unimportant. Humane leaders are compassionate to their employees. Most ratings on that dimension were fairly high, with the highest being South Africa (white sample), India, the Philippines, and Malaysia. The lower scores were from Finland, western Germany, Italy, Russia, and Morocco.
Clearly, this path-breaking research can be very helpful to managers going abroad to enable them to develop a culturally-appropriate profile of requisite leadership skills and to exercise them accordingly.
Expectations about managerial authority versus participation were also among the managerial behaviors and philosophies studied by Laurent, a French researched In a study conducted in nine Western European countries, the United States, Indonesia, and Japan, he concluded that national origin significantly affects the perception of what is effective management.6 For example, Americans and Germans subscribe more to participation than do Italians and Japanese; Indonesians are more comfortable with a strict autocratic structure. Managers in Sweden, the Netherlands, the United States, Denmark, and Great Britain believe that employees should participate in problem solving rather than simply be “fed” all the answers by managers, compared with managers in those countries on the higher end of this scale, such as Italy, Indonesia, and Japan. Laurent's findings about Japan, however, seem to contradict common knowledge about Japan's very participative decision-making culture. In fact, research by Hampers-Turner and Trompenaars places Japan as second highest, after Sweden, in the extent to which leaders delegate authority.68 Findings regarding the other countries are similar, as shown in Exhibit 10-7. However, participative leadership should not mean a lack of initiative or responsibility.
Other classic studies indicate cross-cultural differences in the expectations of leadership behavior. Haired, Giselle, and Porter surveyed over three thousand managers in 14 countries. They found that, although managers around the world consistently favored delegation and participation, those managers also had a low appreciation of the capacity and willingness of subordinates to take an active role in the management process.
In addition, several studies of individual countries or areas conclude that a participative leadership style is frequently inappropriate. Managers in Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand, and the Plulippines were found to prefer autocratic leadership, whereas those in Singapore and Hong Kong are less autocratic. Similarly, the Turks have been found to prefer authoritarian leadership, as do the Thais.
In the Middle East, in particular, there is little delegation. A successful company must have strong managers who make all the decisions and who go unquestioned; much emphasis is placed on the use of power through social contacts and family influence, and the chain of command must be rigidly followed. A comparison of these and other management dimensions between Middle Eastern and Western managers is shown in Exhibit 10-8.
These stereotypical extremes of Middle Eastern and Western leadership styles were exemplified at the highest level by President George Bush and President
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