Leadership, Personal Values, and Cultural ContextIntroductionAre leaders different from their followers? This deceptively simple question has been the source of much debate over more than a century and is still incompletely resolved. One of the earliest and most influential theories, Carslyle's (1841) great man theory of leadership, argues that great leaders are vastly different in views and attributes from the general population.
Over time this view was challenged and some began to view leadership as more of a democratic expression of historical processes (Keegan, 1987, Spencer, 1896; Yukul, 2006). After an influential paper by Stogdill (1948) in the late 1940s, the search for essential, durable differences between leaders and followers fell into disrepute.
Recently leadership studies have become interested in leader-follower differences again (Zaccaro, 2007), so debate around this basic question has taken yet another turn.
Question of differences
If the question of differences between leaders and their colleagues has been incompletely resolved in general, the question, "are leaders and their followers different in different countries and cultures" has as yet received little empirical attention.Considerable evidence exists that there are both similarities and differences across countries in the kinds of behaviors sought for in ideal leaders, but actual empirical studies of differences between leaders and followers are, to our knowledge, rare or nonexistent. In this paper, we undertake a modest empirical study of this question among business professionals in Chinese Asia, Brazil, and the United States.
NoteBy employing a methodology and instruments different from former studies, we conclude that there are indeed substantial differences between professionals who occupy formal leadership positions and their peers. Moreover, we discover that those who occupy formal supervisory roles belong to a small minority in all three cultural settings.
Theoretical Background and Study ContributionTrait theoryPersonality theoryBehavioral theoriesTransactional leadership behaviorsThe contingency approachTrait theory which grew out of the great man approach mentioned above is based on the idea that leaders possess certain attributes or traits which permit them to attract, secure and control followers.
A long period of research and theorizing running from the mid-1800s through the first half of the 1900s developed this idea. The trait approach passed out of favor from the 1950s for most of the rest of the century.
However, after the year 2000, trait theories have made a comeback, especially because of the success and comparative stability of the big five theories and measures of personality.
Personality theory, which was quite dispersed for most of the 20th century, gained a degree of consensus around the traits of agreeableness, conscientiousness, openness to experience, extroversion, and neuroticism (Digman, 1990) and subsequent studies of the relationship between the big five and different leadership facets have flourished.
Primarily using these five measures, credible research has indicated that stable psychological traits and demographic variables such as gender share a modest but consistent association with the occupation of formal leadership positions in organizations
Behavioral theories of leadership arose in response to the predominance of trait theories and argued that people of great personal and psychological diversity have successfully played leadership roles, but these diverse people have exhibited common sets of actual behaviors (A. D. S. Sant'Anna et al., 2010; Yukul, 2006).
The dominant behaviors in the classic behavioral studies were an emphasis on task and an emphasis on relationship, present in varying mixtures. More recently, however, two new and more complex behaviors have become fashionable in research.
Recently, transactional and transformational leadership behaviors are the most frequently studied, with charismatic leader behaviors also receiving considerable attention.
Transactional leadership behaviors focus on negotiating compliance behaviors with subordinates using incentives and punishments.
At its base, transactional leadership elicits rationally oriented behaviors, using the logic of economic exchange. Transformational leader behaviors are more emotionally, ideologically and identity charged.
They contain four thrusts: idealized influence, inspirational motivation, intellectual stimulus, and individualized consideration (Bass, 1985; Seltzer & Bass, 1990). A large body of research has surfaced in recent years, especially around transformational leader behaviors.
The contingency approach to leadership tends to integrate one or both of the trait and behavioral streams.
The basic argument behind contingency theories is that the setting within which leadership is practiced mediates or determines the impacts of different traits or behaviors.
The dominant contingency theories developed during the second half of the 20th century used task versus relationship leader behaviors as their major inputs. Hersey, Blanchard, and Johnson's (1996), Fiedler's (1964) contingency theories were the major works.
National Culture as a Leadership ContingencyFrom the early 1990s up to the present, Robert house and a group of over 100 collaborators worldwide have undertaken an ambitious and extensive effort to catalog preferred leader behaviors worldwide (See Ashkanasy & Roberts, 2010; Grachev & Bobina, 2006; House, Javidan, Hanges, Dorfman, 2002; Javidan & Carl, 2005; Muczyk & Holt, 2008 for just a few representative publications).
The GLOBE studies, spanning 61 countries and including 17,000 respondents, indicate that there is a core of desired and undesired leader behaviors that varies minimally by nation, in addition to a loose set of behaviors that vary substantially from one culture to another.
The evidently stable factors which favor effective leadership behaviors are integrity, foresight, encouragement, and communication. Negative attributes that impede leadership are self-protection, noncooperation, and autocracy.Attributes that vary by culture are individualism, status consciousness, and risk-taking. Although the contingent factors vary broadly, individualism and risk-taking seem to be more acceptable in Anglo and Nordic countries, while status consciousness is more prominent in other regions.
GLOBE studiesThe GLOBE studies are of great interest and are groundbreaking in many ways. However, precisely because of their attempts to collect massive amounts of data, they have excluded a number of important analytical and empirical issues that are easier to address in a smaller study.
A secondary but closely related concern is the degree to which the clusters of personal values held by professionals in these countries are similar to one another in size and configuration. These concerns are important conceptually and in practical terms, because the degree to which ecologies of personal values vary across cultural settings is likely to impact the degree to which organizational and managerial practices can be successfully implemented without adaptation as one moves from one country to another.
There are three important enhancements in our data set which permit us to approach this research agenda in a manner that goes beyond what is found in the GLOBE studies.We focus on personal rather than collective values.We study the relationship between personal values and formal leadership positions across societies.We study variance within personal values across societies using cluster analysis.
Justification for Current StudyBelow we expand on the three contributions outlined above. Consistent with their emphasis on national culture, the GLOBE studies and the Hofstede (1980) studies which preceded them asked questionnaire respondents general questions about what is desirable or valuable. Hence questions were phrased in general terms likeA leader should command respect, or Subordinates should not challenge their boss.
These types of questions are useful for identifying societal values or desired leader behaviors. However, they do not identify what the individuals in the sample value personally. Because leaders by role and personality often stand out from those around them, it is of considerable importance to study the relationship between leadership incumbency and individuals' values. In this sense, our work extends the current resurgence in trait theory to the cross-cultural study of leadership.
At the same timeour emphasis on individuals' values rather than dimensions of their personality (which are known to vary more by genetics and less by culture than do personal values - see Roccas, Sagiv, Schwartz, & Knafo, 2002) permit us to examine personal dimensions which are more likely to vary across nations
Methodology Sample and InstrumentIt is important that we approach research questions differently from the bulk of cross-cultural and leadership studies, and for this reason, our methodology is also different.
Most studies to date have sought to identify differences in mean levels of attitudes, values, or practices from one cultural setting to another. The statistical models associated with this approach are typically analysis of variance, linear regression, or some variant thereof.
These techniques seek to measure the overall levels of a variable in one setting in contrast to another while controlling for the amount of dispersion or variance in samples.
Personal Value Profile (PVP)The Personal Value Profile (PVP) is part of a suite of three instruments using the same variables to measure personal values, perceived organizational values, and desired organizational values. (In this research only responses to questions about personal values are reported.) Like the classic leadership studies, the PVP instrument contains a Task or Work Quadrant, and a Relations or Concern for Persons quadrant, each with four sub-dimensions. The work quadrant contains sub-dimensions regarding Hard Work, Time, Finish Task, and Quality.
The Relations Quadrant contains affect, empathy,sociability or group orientation, and loyalty. Two other quadrants, control and thought are less dependent on traditional American management thought and were informed by an extensive survey of anthropological and sociological literature (see Nelson, 1997, 2011; Nelson & Gopalan, 2003; Nelson & Loureiro, 1996 for more theoretical detail). Within each of these four general domains, four subthemes are proposed that frequently are in states of tension with one another, similar to the general dimensions of work, relations, control, and thought
QuadrantsThe four sub-dimensions of the work quadrant are effort (hard work), time (deadlines, speed), complete task, and quality. As an example of tensions between sub-dimensions, Time and Finishing Task are frequently seen as detrimental to quality (haste makes waste).
The relations quadrant contains affect, empathy, sociability, and loyalty. These dimensions perhaps coexist more peacefully than other quadrants, but it is still common to find negative correlations between sociability, affect, and loyalty, for instance.
The Control Quadrant contains dominance, status, politics, and leadership.The Thought Quadrant contains abstraction, planning, exposition, and flexibility. These too contain contradictions that are rendered especially clear by the ipsative nature of the instrument.
Analytical Strategy
We cluster our results in order to get an idea of the distribution of configurations of personal values in the particular organizational context and then consider the distribution of managerial roles between the clusters.
This provides an idea of the social landscape within which leadership is being exercised and of the relative distribution of value orientations both within a given nationality as well as across national settings. It also permits a graphic, standardized comparison of differences between subgroups. Thus, we use four clusters per cultural region. Although this choice is somewhat arbitrary, it is best maintained across the three sampled environments for comparative purposes.