Cultural Influences on Leadership and Organizations

CULTURAL INFLUENCES ON LEADERSHIP AND ORGANIZATIONS:

PROJECT GLOBE

Robert J. House, Paul J. Hanges, S. Antonio Ruiz-Quintanilla, Peter W. Dorfman, Mansour Javidan, Marcus Dickson, and About 170 GLOBE Country Co-Investigators to be listed by name and institution

Running Head: Project GLOBE

Robert J. House

The Wharton School of Management

University of Pennsylvania

Paul J. Hanges

Department of Psychology

University of Maryland

S. Antonio Ruiz-Quintanilla

New York School of Industrial Labor Relations

Cornell University

Peter W. Dorfman

Department of Management

New Mexico State University

Mansour Javidan

Faculty of Management

Policy and Environmental Area

University of Calgary

Marcus Dickson

Department of Psychology

Wayne State University

Vipin Gupta

Faculty of Business Administration

Fordham University

Add list of 170 authors and their institutions here.

* The authors are indebted to Markus Hauser, University of Zurich, for his thoughtful comments and suggestions relevant to this monograph.

ABSTRACT

GLOBE is both a research program and a social entity. The GLOBE social entity is a network of 170 social scientists and management scholars from 61 cultures throughout the world, working in a coordinated long-term effort to examine the interrelationships between societal culture, organizational culture and practices, and organizational leadership. The meta-goal of the Global Leadership and Organizational Effectiveness (GLOBE) Research Program is to develop an empirically based theory to describe, understand, and predict the impact of cultural variables on leadership and organizational processes and the effectiveness of these processes.

This monograph presents a description of the GLOBE research program and some initial empirical findings resulting from GLOBE research. A central question in this part of the research concerns the extent to which specific leadership attributes and behaviors are universally endorsed as contributing to effective leadership and the extent to which the endorsement of leader attributes and behaviors is culturally contingent.

We identified six global leadership dimensions of culturally endorsed implicit theories of leadership (CLTs). Preliminary evidence indicates that these dimensions are significantly correlated with isomorphic dimensions of societal and organizational culture. These findings are consistent with the hypothesis that selected cultural differences strongly influence important ways in which people think about leaders and norms concerning the status, influence, and privileges granted to leaders.

The hypothesis that charismatic/value-based leadership would be universally endorsed is strongly supported. Team-oriented leadership is strongly correlated with charismatic/value-based leadership, and also universally endorsed. Humane and participative leadership dimensions are nearly universally endorsed. The endorsement of the remaining global leadership dimensions -- self-protective and autonomous leadership vary by culture.

We identified 21 specific leader attributes and behaviors that are universally viewed as contributing to leadership effectiveness. Eleven of the specific leader characteristics composing the global charismatic/value-based leadership dimension were among these 21 attributes. Eight specific leader characteristics were universally viewed as impediments to leader effectiveness. We also identified 35 specific leader characteristics that are viewed as contributors in some cultures and impediments in other cultures. We present these, as well as other findings, in more detail in this monograph.

A particular strength of the GLOBE research design is the combination of quantitative and qualitative data. Elimination of common method and common source variance is also a strength of the design strategy. Future directions, research strategies, and anticipated contributions are presented in anticipation of continued GLOBE efforts.

INTRODUCTION

To what extent is leadership culturally contingent? The Global Leadership and Organizational Behavior Effectiveness Research Program (GLOBE), as well as a substantial amount of other empirical research (House, Wright, & Aditya, 1997), has demonstrated that what is expected of leaders, what leaders may and may not do, and the status and influence bestowed on leaders vary considerably as a result of the cultural forces in the countries or regions in which the leaders function. For instance, Americans, Arabs, Asians, English, Eastern Europeans, French, Germans, Latin Americans, and Russians tend to glorify the concept of leadership and consider it reasonable to discuss leadership in the context of both the political and the organizational arenas. People of the Netherlands and Scandinavia often have distinctly different views of leadership. Consider the following statements taken from interviews with managers from various countries:

Americans appreciate two kinds of leaders. They seek empowerment from leaders who grant autonomy and delegate authority to subordinates. They also respect the bold, forceful, confident, and risk-taking leader, as personified by John Wayne.

The Dutch place emphasis on egalitarianism and are skeptical about the value of leadership. Terms like leader and manager carry a stigma. If a father is employed as a manager, Dutch children will not admit it to their schoolmates.

Arabs worship their leaders--as long as they are in power!

Iranians seek power and strength in their leaders.

Malaysians expect their leaders to behave in a manner

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