28

Culture and Leadership in 25 Societies:
Integration, Conclusions, and Future
Directions

Felix C. Brodbeck
Aston University, Birmingham, England

Jagdeep S. Chhokar
Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad, India

Robert J. House
University of Pennsylvania, USA

The GLOBE (Global Leadership and Organizational Behavior Effectiveness) Research Program is a worldwide organization of some 170 scholars from about 60 nations who investigate the cross-cultural forces relevant to effective leadership and organizational practices. Approximately 17,300 middle managers from 950 organizations in 61 countries participated in the first two phases of the GLOBE program.

In his foreword to the previous volume of GLOBE studies (House et al., 2004), Harry Triandis calls GLOBE “the Manhattan Project of the study of the relationship of culture to conceptions of leadership” (p. xv). Others see it “as the most ambitious study of leadership” (Morrison, 2000) and “perhaps the most large-scale international management research project that has ever been undertaken” (Leung, Foreword, this volume, p. xiii). Not only has its unique magnitude and scope been acknowledged in management research, but so too have the contributions it has made to the field of applied social sciences. For these, GLOBE was awarded the Scot E. Meyers Award for Applied Research in the Workplace, 2005, from the U.S. American Society of Industrial and Organizational Psychology (SIOP).

GLOBE is a multiphase project. In the first two phases (Phase 3 is currently under way) quantitative instruments were developed and used to measure various aspects of the 61 countries studied. Emphasis was laid on the development of reliable and valid instruments for cross-cultural measurement and on the validation of a cross-level and cross-cultural theory of the relationships between culture, and societal, organizational, and leadership effectiveness. These two phases are described in the first GLOBE volume (House et al., 2004) in which a culture-general approach is taken by emphasizing quantitative methods and comparisons between industries, countries, and cultural clusters. The objective was to provide a description of the relative rankings of 61 countries with respect to reported leadership effectiveness, of societal cultural attributes, and their effect on organizational processes in the context of each of 61 countries.

During the first two phases of GLOBE there was also an emphasis on culture-specific approaches by using an array of qualitative methods with the aim to provide a rich ethnographic description of societal culture, organizational processes, and managerial leadership in the context of particular countries.

The present GLOBE volume is devoted to combining both the culture-general and the culture-specific approaches. It addresses the criticism of culture-general research, with high levels of abstraction and its neglect of subtle, but important local variations and nuances (Morris, Leung, Ames, & Lickel, 1999), by augmenting culture-general constructs and frameworks with the richness of culturally contingent concepts and findings (Yang, 2000). The collection of 25 country chapters presented here with their culture-specific findings and insights give the “culture general skeleton flesh and blood” as Kwok Leung has formulated it.

What is meant by this, we could not say better than he did in his foreword to our book: “Combining qualitative and quantitative results, and drawing on the extant cultural knowledge and indigenous research on leadership, each of the 25 country-specific chapters describes how leadership is conceptualized and enacted in its cultural milieu, and explores how emic dynamics are related to the etic constructs and frameworks derived from the GLOBE project. It is exactly this type of synergistic integration of culture-general and culture-specific knowledge that is able to address the respective deficiencies of pan-cultural and indigenous research.” No wonder, that Kwok Leung in the foreword to this volume asserts that GLOBE will “go down in the history of management research as a hallmark for diversity, inclusiveness, richness, and multilateralism.”

This second GLOBE book is a product of collective efforts of about 60 scholars from the 25 countries it includes. Most of them have also participated in the overall GLOBE project from its beginnings in the mid-1990s as Country Co-Investigators (CCIs). They thus have firsthand experience with the GLOBE data collection process and with the manifold discussions among GLOBE CCIs about how to best use the developed methods and concepts and about how to interpret the results found in Phases 1 and 2 of the GLOBE research program (House et al., 2004).

In preparing their country chapters, authors worked from a master template that is described in the introduction chapter of this book. The overall task was to link the quantitative and comparative results obtained during the GLOBE Phases 1 and 2 with the results from the country-specific data that the authors have gathered and analyzed themselves consisting of country-specific literature reviews, one-to-one interviews with managers, focus group interviews, media analyses, unobtrusive measures, and participant observation. The culture-specific qualitative research has been also directed toward triangulating the quantitative findings. Such triangulation can reveal corroboration of some of the quantitative findings and contradictions to these findings. Where contradictions were found the investigators were encouraged to dig further to yield meaningful interpretations. The overall purpose of the master template was to give guidance for making chapters similar in scope and structure, but also to provide for the freedom to explore and further investigate country-specific characteristics and findings about culture, organization, and leadership.

Each chapter draft has been reviewed several times. In a first round, two or three management and social science scholars reviewed each chapter draft. They originated from or had lived sufficiently long in the country described in the chapter they reviewed. This was done to increase the culture-specific reliability and validity of each chapter's content. In the second round of reviews, which was conducted by the editors of this book, chapter authors were supported in relating their culture-specific findings and interpretations to the culture-general GLOBE concepts and measures. This way, proper use of concepts and methods was ensured. Furthermore, the draft to this conclusion chapter has been sent out to all chapter authors for reviewing and their comments were taken into account. In some cases, the interpretations of findings required further discussions and the present collection of chapters reflects how these were resolved or were further developed into intriguing questions when resolution could not be achieved.

Each of the 25 country chapters discloses the unique aspects of the country and presents numerous insights about the society, organization, and leadership in the culture studied. The volume is filled with a wide variety of country-specific findings and interpretations. It offers answers for many country-specific questions of interest for those who live in the respective country, for those who intend to live and work there, and for those who want to know more about a country's societal and organizational culture and leadership.

We now turn to an integrative view to point out particularly interesting findings, to identify commonalities among culture-specific findings, and to discuss intriguing theoretical and methodological issues. We derive questions for future research and practical implications, from which researchers, students, and practitioners can benefit.

In the first part of this chapter, we address issues about societal culture. In the second part, we describe leadership and the link between culture and leadership from a between-country perspective and from multiple within-country perspectives.

1.  SOCIETAL CULTURE

For Project GLOBE culture is defined as, “shared motives, values, beliefs, identities, and interpretations or meanings of significant events that result from common experiences of members of collectives that are transmitted across generations” (House et al., 2004, p. 15). For the culture-general purposes of GLOBE, culture has been operationalized by the use of indicators reflecting cultural manifestations of the commonality (agreement) among members of collectives with respect to the psychological attributes described in the aforementioned definition of culture, and with respect to observed and reported practices of entities such as families, schools, work organizations, economic systems, legal systems, and political institutions. The objective is to compare a large sample of societies on dimensions of culture that are cross-culturally valid.

Results from such a culture-general approach can be also useful for a culture-specific analysis of societies by positioning societies within a sample of relevant others. For this, it is important that the definition of culture also addresses culture-specific aspects. As Triandis (2004) points out, GLOBE defines culture in accord with anthropologists’ definitions; for example, Redfield (1948) defines culture as “shared understandings made manifest in act and artifact”(p. vii). The GLOBE dimensions of cultural practices represent perceptions of acts or of “the way things are done in a culture,” and the GLOBE dimensions of cultural values are human made artifacts in the sense of judgments about “the way things should be done.” As part of GLOBE, culture was measured on the basis of both the cultural-practices and the cultural-values perspectives, which have not been investigated separately and simultaneously in previous cross-cultural research.

Cultural Practices and Cultural Values

The nine core cultural dimensions identified by GLOBE (Assertiveness, Future Orientation, Gender Egalitarianism, In-Group Collectivism, Humane Orientation, Institutional Collectivism, Uncertainty Avoidance, Performance Orientation, Power Distance) consist of items that incorporate the previously described entities and events (for definitions, see the introduction chapter of this book; for detailed coverage of each dimension, see House et al., 2004). Furthermore, they address two distinct kinds of cultural manifestations: modal practices and modal values.

Modal practices within a country are measured by the responses of middle managers to questionnaire items concerning “What is” or “What are” common behaviors, institutional practices, proscriptions, and prescriptions in their society (termed “As Is” dimensions). Modal values are measured by questionnaire items concerning judgments about “What should be” common behaviors, institutional practices, proscriptions and prescriptions (termed “Should Be” dimensions). Both sets of GLOBE measures have been validated (e.g., by establishing convergent and discriminant validity) on the country level of analysis with different sets of data from outside GLOBE (Gupta, De Luque, & House, 2004) and with societal-value data from prior cross-cultural studies (Hanges & Dickson, 2004; Hanges & Dickson, 2006).

There have been long discussions among GLOBE researchers about the meaning of disparities between societal cultural practices and values scores on the GLOBE dimensions within countries. Various views on this issue are presented in the country chapters of the present volume. We think that it is premature to seek closure to this debate and therefore present one hypothesis that aligns well with the empirical data from GLOBE. We termed it the deprivation hypothesis.

On an individual level of analysis (the level that the GLOBE measures tap to make inferences about societal and organizational culture) the disparity between perceptions of practices and value judgments can be interpreted as deprivation. That is, when respondents perceive practices as less or more dominant in their society or organization than they think they should be, or perceive them as inappropriate, there will be a disparity between their reports of practices and values. On a society or organizational level of analysis, their common perceptions of a disparity between practices and values imply the people's sympathy with respectively higher or lower levels of cultural values than practices. Empirical evidence for the deprivation hypothesis is presented in a later section of this chapter together with a discussion about how deprivation can result in cultural change and which factors and psychological processes are likely to be involved.

Culture Clusters

The authors of the country chapters also reflected on the relative positioning of their country's practices and values scores and they triangulated these results within the context of the qualitative results they obtained about their country's societal culture, organizations, and leadership. Furthermore, in many cases chapter authors compared their country's scores and further qualitative evidence to relevant other countries or to meaningful groups of countries. One particularly meaningful subset of reference countries are those that are positioned in the same cultural region or cluster of countries. For an example, in the chapter about Singapore, this society's scores are compared to the scores of other Confucian Asian countries (China, Hong Kong, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan). These have been identified by GLOBE to belong to the same cultural cluster as Singapore.

TABLE 28.1
The Ten GLOBE Cultural Clusters of 61 Countries

Note. Countries named in bold letters are covered by a chapter in this volume.

On the basis of the data on cultural practices and values from 61 countries, GLOBE has identified altogether 10 cultural clusters around the world (see Table 28.1) that correspond highly with previously published attempts to identify distinguishable cultural regions (Gupta & Hanges, 2004). Countries from the same cluster share characteristics such as geographic proximity and climate zone, mass migration and ethnic social capital, and religious and linguistic roots. For example, countries within the Germanic cluster (Germany–former East and West, Switzerland–German speaking, Austria, the Netherlands) share a geographic region (central Europe), are similar in climate, and have common linguistic, religious, and geopolitical roots in history. Each of the Germanic countries is covered by a chapter in this book and in each chapter (from a country-specific perspective) the respective underlying historical and cultural developments are reflected so that the reasons why they have highly similar profiles, and also where and why there are subtle differences on the GLOBE dimensions between these countries, become apparent. For another example, countries from the Anglo cluster (England, Ireland, United States, Canada–English speaking, New Zealand, Australia, South Africa–White sample) span across various continents with different climatic zones, however, colonization and mass migration formed the basis for common linguistic and religious roots and for similarity in ethnic social capital.

Although different levels of economic development can moderate cultural differences between countries, the characteristics of the societal cultural background shape the people's fundamental attitudes, beliefs, values, and behaviors to an extent that accounts for a large proportion of the prevailing differences between societies and cultural regions (Gupta et al., 2004).

We used the 10 cultural clusters identified by GLOBE to structure the presentation of country chapters in this book. This is meant to be helpful for the reader who wants to compare countries from the same and different cultural regions, for example, in order to identify subtle differences between countries of the same cluster or to identify interesting overlap between countries from different cultural clusters. This helps to understand cultural similarities and differences between countries and cultural regions better and to become aware of the impact the sometimes subtle differences in societal culture and leadership concepts can have on the effectiveness of cross-cultural encounters at work. We are convinced that the 10 clusters identified by GLOBE serve as a useful framework for managing complexities of multicultural operations.¹

In Figures A1 to A9 (see Appendix A) the 10 cultural clusters are used to group the 25 countries covered in this book (plus one further entry, because Germany is represented by two samples, one for former East and one for former West Germany) together with the remaining 35 GLOBE countries that are also covered in the wider GLOBE study. Figures A1 to A9 show the relative positioning of countries and country clusters with respect to the GLOBE dimensions of societal cultural practices (“As Is”) and values (“Should Be”). In the following subsections, we give examples of how country comparisons within and across cultural clusters, in combination with selected information from the country chapters in this book, can be a useful tool to improve our understanding of a country's societal culture and development.

Cluster-Typical and Boundary-Spanning Societies

Certain societies can be seen as more or less typical for a particular cultural cluster. Some societies’ characteristics are highly prototypical for the country cluster they are member of. For example, the United States and England are positioned well in the middle of the Anglo cluster for most of the nine GLOBE dimensions (see Figures in Appendix A1 to A9); the same holds true for Germany-West or Austria within the Germanic cluster or for Argentina and Colombia for the Latin America cluster. There are also countries that are positioned at the boundaries of culture clusters with respect to several GLOBE dimensions. For example, the Netherlands’, which is in the Germanic cluster, societal characteristics overlap with characteristics of societies from the Nordic European cluster, notably for Power Distance, In-Group Collectivism, Institutional Collectivism, and Gender Egalitarianism (see Figures A2, A3, A4, and A8). In some characteristics, the Netherlands also fits to the Anglo cluster, notably for Uncertainty Avoidance (see Figure A1). Gupta and Hanges (2004) present evidence that the Nordic and the Germanic cultural clusters overlap considerably, due to common cultural roots and geographical proximity.

Societies that are at the boundaries of cultural clusters may share several characteristics with countries from several cultural clusters also for reasons other than geographic proximity. For example, in the chapter about Singapore, GLOBE societal culture scores from countries that also belong to the cultural cluster of Confucian Asia (China, Hong Kong, Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan) are compared to the respective scores for Singapore. The profile of Singaporean GLOBE scores often align with the average profile of the Confucian Asia cluster, but also with the profiles of other countries (e.g., Japan) and country clusters (e.g., Anglo). Specifically, in Figure A1 it can be seen that Singapore scores about as high on Uncertainty Avoidance practices as other Nordic and Germanic countries. When comparing Singapore to the countries from the Confucian Asian cluster it can be seen in Figure A1 that Singapore's scores differ from the average profile in this cluster. Moreover, Singapore shows a marked downward trend from high practices to low values in Uncertainty Avoidance. Only Hong Kong shows the same downward trend, which, however, is much less in magnitude. All other countries from the Confucian Asian cluster show lower practices than values in Uncertainty Avoidance, indicating a different developmental trend for their societies. Other examples where Singapore deviates from its cultural cluster's profile are Assertiveness (Singapore's scores and trend resemble more the profile of the Anglo cluster; see Figure A7) and Gender Egalitarianism (scores and trend resemble more the profiles of the Anglo and the Nordic European cluster; see Figure A8). As has been discussed in the chapter about Singapore, these findings align with the results from the historical and ethnographic analyses. The authors conclude that Singapore blends Chinese, Malay, and English cultural elements as a result of colonialism (from the UK), emigration (from China and Malaysia), and openness to managerial and business practices from Western cultures (e.g., UK, United States) and also from modern Asian cultures (e.g., Japan).

From a practitioners’ point of view, establishing subsidiaries in boundary-spanning societies such as Singapore or the Netherlands can help multinational companies to gain easier access to the necessary cultural know-how and experiences before they establish subsidiaries in countries that belong to the same cultural cluster but are more foreign to them. For example, the GLOBE data indicate that from the perspective of a company based in the Anglo cluster, the countries from the Confucian Asian cluster should be approached via Singapore and countries from the Germanic or Nordic European clusters via the Netherlands.

Subcultures Within Societies

The question of whether the GLOBE sample represents the societies well enough has been raised by cross-cultural scholars (e.g., Triandis, 2004). What is meant is that subcultures in societies, especially of large and culturally heterogeneous countries (e.g. China, India, or the United States) may not be adequately represented by GLOBE because samples were not systematically drawn to cover different subcultures. This is true and future research needs to address this issue, especially for the larger countries just mentioned. However, some systematic sampling that accounts for the existence of subcultures was performed in several societies covered by GLOBE. The German sample systematically represents regions from former East Germany and former West Germany. These two regions were separated after World War II into two different nations each belonging to a different political and economical system. West Germany was embedded in the Western economic system and the NATO military alliance. East Germany was embedded in the communist economic system and the Warsaw Pact for about 40 years until Germany was reunited in 1990 (for details, see the German chapter). Switzerland is also represented with two samples: One sample was drawn from the German-speaking part, which is covered by the Swiss chapter in this volume. Another sample was drawn from the French-speaking part of Switzerland. Although not covered by a chapter in this book, its data contributed to the overall GLOBE results that are covered in the figures of this chapter (see Appendixes A and B).

In Figures A1 to A9, one can see that on most GLOBE dimensions, East and West Germany score highly similar. Overall, the data support the view that both parts of Germany are very close to each other culturally and are centrally positioned within the Germanic cultural cluster. Only subtle differences exist between these regions, some of which point toward the legacy of the “iron curtain” that separated the Eastern communist from the Western capitalist systems. In contrast, the cultural practices and values in French-versus German-speaking Switzerland differ so much that the respective subcultures were positioned in different cultural clusters. French-speaking Switzerland shares more characteristics with countries from the Latin European cluster than with countries from the Germanic clusters— the opposite is true for German-speaking Switzerland.

Thus, GLOBE not only presents evidence for subcultures within countries to exist, its results also underline the fact that subcultures within the same country may be positioned in different cultural clusters with considerable differences in their societal cultural profile. Furthermore, all chapter authors took great care in specifying the cultural group from which they selected the respondents. For example, in the chapter about England it is described clearly that its content is representative of the English, but not necessarily of the Welsh, the Scottish, or the Northern Irish within the United Kingdom. The major cultural divides within countries are also acknowledged in each chapter.

Different “Species” of Collectivistic Societies

The constructs of collectivism and individualism have attained the status of paradigm in cross-cultural psychology (Segall & Kagitçibasi, 1997). In the last 25 years, more than 1,400 articles and numerous books have been published on these dimensions (for a review, see Gelfand, Bhawuk, Nishii, & Bechthod, 2004). Triandis (1994) pointed out that collectivistic and individualistic cultures, on the one hand, can be specified by some common defining attributes, but on the other hand, they differ on additional culturally specific elements of the constructs. He therefore suggested that the construct should be polythetically defined as in other sciences, for example, in zoology: The defining features of the category “bird” are wings and feathers, but distinguishing between different species of birds requires consideration of some further combinations of attributes (e.g., yellow beak, carnivorous). Analogously, for distinguishing between the cultures of societies, the simple dichotomy of collectivism versus individualism is not sufficient. Further theoretical and empirical refinement is necessary.

GLOBE established the distinction between In-Group Collectivism and Institutional Collectivism. In-Group Collectivism is the degree to which individuals express pride, loyalty, and cohesiveness in their organizations, families, circle of close friends, or other such small groups. Institutional Collectivism is the degree to which institutional practices encourage and reward collective distribution of resources and collective action. The latter scale measures an aspect of collectivism that differs from those published in the literature. Gelfand et al. (2004) note that “Institutional Collectivism seems to be part of a cultural syndrome wherein such cultures are future focused and performance oriented yet [they] seek to accomplish such orientations through practices that emphasize being concerned about others, and not being assertive or power domineering” (p. 476). More detailed descriptions of these two dimensions and manifold empirical data about the scales’ interrelations with established measures of collectivism are given in Gelfand et al.

For the purposes of this chapter, we focus on the culturally specific descriptions made in the country chapters in order to reflect the variety of meanings the culture-general GLOBE constructs imply when seen from a within-country perspective. Furthermore, by taking multiple GLOBE dimensions into account, we explore “further combinations of attributes” that are helpful in distinguishing between different “species” of collectivistic societies.

From inspection of Figures A3 and A4 it can be seen that the GLOBE societies and country clusters differ substantially in their positioning on In-Group Collectivism and Institutional Collectivism practices and values. Let us first take a bird's-eye view by looking at the country clusters.

For In-Group Collectivism (Figure A3) the Nordic, Anglo, and Germanic countries (which are typically seen as individualistic societies) and the Latin European countries display medium levels in cultural practices (exceptions are Portugal, Spain, and Ireland with somewhat higher levels). The countries in these clusters aspire for significantly higher levels of In-Group Collectivism values (“Should Be”). The countries from the Latin America cluster show high practices (“As Is”) scores and all but one aspire to even higher levels in respective values (“Should Be”). In contrast, the countries from the remaining clusters (Eastern Europe, Middle East, Confucian Asia, Southern Asia, Sub-Sahara Africa), most of which are positioned on high levels of In-Group Collectivism practices, show high variance in how the In-Group Collectivism values deviate from the respective practices. Note that the range of values scores overlaps strongly with the range of practices scores (see Figure A3). This variance calls for closer inspection of individual countries.

Before we do this, let us take another bird's-eye view on Institutional Collectivism (Figure A4), which shows a picture different from the aforementioned. Most country clusters display medium levels on Institutional Collectivism practices while aspiring for higher levels in values. One exception is the Nordic Europe cluster, where Institutional Collectivism practices are seen to be rather high and the desired values are positioned much lower. A similar trend, but less in magnitude and more around the midpoint, is apparent for the Anglo cluster. Interestingly, the countries from the Confucian and Southern Asian clusters, which traditionally are seen as prototypes of collectivistic societies, score only medium on Institutional Collectivism practices (with only one exception in the Confucian Asia cluster), and the countries of the Confucian Asian cluster display a pattern of sometimes higher and sometimes lower levels of value scores (see Figure A4).

We now explore culturally specific “combinations of attributes” for some selected societies— China, India, Turkey, and Sweden—in order to distinguish between different “species” of collectivistic societies.

China. Positioned in the Confucian Asia cluster, China is traditionally seen as a typical example for a collectivistic society. The disparity between high levels of In-Group Collectivism (Figure A3) and only medium levels of Institutional Collectivism (Figure A4) finds an explanation in what the chapter authors write about the kind of collectivism that is endorsed in the Chinese culture. Chinese people live within networks of guanxi (relationships or ties) and are very careful with renqing (emotional reactions to other people) and mianzi (face). Moreover, they prefer governance by ethics (li zhi) over governance by law (fa zhi). The reliance on people rather than on law naturally promotes the practice of guanxi, because the social context of individuals (rather than institutional authority) defines what is permissible in a given context. This explains why In-Group Collectivism is more strongly endorsed in China than Institutional Collectivism. Thus, the two GLOBE dimensions help us to represent a specific “combination of attributes” that identifies the specific nature of China's collectivism in more detail.

There is another interesting “combination of attributes” to explore. Within the Confucian Asia cluster, China shows the strongest downward trend from high levels of In-Group Collectivism to medium levels of respective values (the disparity is even stronger than for Hong Kong; China starts at a considerably higher practice level than Hong Kong does). The chapter authors argue that this is the result of the dramatic changes taking place in China, especially within the business context. China's collectivistic orientation is being challenged by the import of Western-style management principles and market economy–oriented values. The chapter authors speak of “a growing spirit of ‘Chinese-style’ individualism” and give examples of respective developments in the Chinese society in their chapter.

India. The In-Group Collectivism scores reported for India (Southern Asia cluster) are similar to the scores reported for China. As is described in the chapter about India, its form of collectivism is primarily based on the family, which continues to be one of the basic units of Indian society. This explains, in a somewhat different way from the case of China, why the In-Group Collectivism score for India is higher than its Institutional Collectivism score. Furthermore, India's downward trend from high In-Group Collectivism practices to medium values is about as strong as for China. This trend provides an explanation that is similar to the reasons given for China: For India the focus on materialism is said to cause an increase in individualism in society, particularly among the managerial class, which experiences competition every day at work.

Turkey. Turkey (Middle East cluster) is also positioned in the high bands of In-Group Collectivism practices. It ranks fifth highest on practices in the total GLOBE sample. Its respective In-Group Collectivism cultural values score is very much on the same level as the respective cultural-practices score. Thus, there seems to be no societal cultural reflection of an influx of materialistic and individualistic practices and values into the Turkish society. For Turkey (similar to India) the family stands at the center of life in society, which is also endorsed by the Turkish interpretations of the Islam religion, and people have a high trust of family members (note that most organizations in Turkey are family owned). Furthermore, ties between people in Turkey are also established by belonging to the same region (i.e., born and raised with family roots there), and more generally, the people have a strong commitment to their relationships in social networks (similar to China). All this together explains Turkey's higher levels of In-Group Collectivism practices as compared to Institutional Collectivism practices.

Aside from no apparent differences between high levels of In-Group Collectivism (which sets Turkey's collectivism apart from China's and India's) there is a strong upward difference towards Institutional Collectivism, from medium levels of cultural practices to high levels in the respective cultural values. The chapter authors explain the medium level of Institutional Collectivism practice by the marked distrust of the Turkish people in institutions and “others” within and outside their society (apart from family and regional bonds), which they trace to the long history of multiple invasions of the region. Despite considerably higher Institutional Collectivism values than practices (which may indicate developments toward more state control over collective goods and individual risks), Turkey's other cultural characteristics do not align with the cultural syndrome related to high Institutional Collectivism that was described previously (cf. Gelfand et al., 2004). In contrast, the levels of Power Distance (Figure A2) and Assertiveness (Figure A7) are comparatively high and the levels of Future Orientation (see Figure A5) and Performance Orientation (Figure A6) are comparatively low. Overall these results for Turkey suggest that the Turkish blend of collectivism continues to be mainly based on In-Group Collectivism (pride, loyalty, and cohesiveness within organizations, families, circles of close friends, and other small groups). An actual cultural change toward higher levels of Institutional Collectivism practices (institutional practices that encourage and reward collective distribution of resources and collective action) appears difficult to achieve.

Sweden. It seems to be a paradoxical finding, but Sweden's traditionally individualistic society (it scores second lowest on In-Group Collectivism cultural practices; see Figure A3) displays the highest score of all GLOBE countries for Institutional Collectivism cultural practices (see Figure A4). As the chapter authors point out, in Sweden individual independence and strength is stressed, which is expressed as a tendency to be left alone or the desire “not to be beholden to anyone.” The word ensamhet (solitude) has a positive connotation. It suggests inner peace, independence, and personal strength. Swedish children are encouraged to become independent from their family at an early stage. The character Pippi Longstocking (Pippi Långstrump), created by the Swedish author Astrid Lindgren, symbolizes the “mature” Swedish child. Being able to take care of oneself, independent of a family, as Pippi always does, is regarded as something positive. The family context as a basis for life-long social bonding does not seem to play a significant role in Swedish society.

That Sweden is a prototypical “species” of the cultural syndrome of Institutional Collectivism is apparent in its comparatively low practices scores for Power Distance (Figure A2) and Assertiveness (Figure A7), and its high levels of Future Orientation (see Figure A5). Furthermore, it is apparent in some peculiarities of the Swedish society. According to the chapter authors’ descriptions, a very high proportion (87%) of employees are unionized compared to 34% in the UK, 24% in Japan, and 9% in France, Sweden's tax rates are extremely high compared to other countries and taxation is used to enable state and local governments to assume extensive responsibility for many collective services such as education, the labor market, industrial policies, care of the sick and elderly, pensions and other types of social insurance, and environmental protection. The Swedish enjoy unique collective rights, for example, the Right of Public Access (Allemansrátten; “Every Man's Right”), which makes the individual landowner's interests subordinate to collective interests by granting every individual the right to access other people's property (to pick wildflowers, mushrooms, berries; to bathe in and travel by boat on other people's water). All these indicate clearly that collective goods in Sweden, and the people's access to them, are well protected and maintained by their institutions.

We concur with the Swedish chapter authors who develop a plausible explanation, on the basis of their within-country analyses, for the contradiction between the GLOBE results and Hofstede's (1980) assertion that Sweden is clearly an individualistic culture. Hofstede did not distinguish between In-Group Collectivism (what Hofstede's Individualism-Collectivism dimension mainly measures)² and the form of Collectivism which is based on a whole society. The distinction between In-Group and Institutional Collectivism is obviously important for better specification of the Swedish type of collectivism. And it appears helpful for characterizing “individualistic” societies, which rank highly on the Institutionalized Collectivism dimension (further examples are Norway, Denmark, or New Zealand), as well as for distinguishing between the different blends of “collectivism” shown in societies such as China, India, and Turkey.

For distinguishing between the cultures of societies and for characterizing cultures from a culture-specific perspective, the simple dichotomy of collectivism versus individualism is not sufficient. On the one hand, the previously described findings provide a further theoretical and empirical refinement of concepts for cross-cultural measurement as was suggested by

Triandis (1994). On the other hand, the findings serve as an example for how results from culture-specific (within-country) and culture-general (between-country) analyses can corroborate into new insights.

Implications for the Evolution of Culture

One major question in cross-cultural research is, “how do different cultures evolve?” Numerous cross-cultural scholars have posited that cultural species or syndromes develop as adaptations to the ecological context (e.g., Berry, Poortinga, Segall, & Dasen, 1992; for alternative views, see Cohen, 2001). Existing cultures can thus be seen as viable solutions to a certain set of problems in their history that derive from the respective ecological context within which they have developed. For an example, Barry, Bacon, and Child (1959) illustrated in a classic study that cultural individualism, which supports self-reliance and freedom, is crucial for the survival in hunting-and-gathering ecologies, whereas in agricultural ecologies, societal collectivism, which endorses conformity and obedience, is crucial for survival. And as societies move toward industrialization, Triandis (1994) further argued, there is a shift toward an emphasis on individualism.

From principles of biological evolution, however, we know that shifts “backward” in the developmental history are extremely unlikely. Similarly, sustained survival of a culture is less about solving yesterday's problems than about solving today's problems and those in the future. Thus, it is important for societies to recognize the relevant ecological factors of the present and anticipate those in the future in order to adapt to them successfully.

Considering the preceding discussion, the GLOBE findings about the cultural syndrome around Institutional Collectivism can help us to better understand different “species” of collectivism and how they are developing. For example, societies like Sweden, which show high levels of Institutional Collectivism, seem to have found a formula for combining the fulfillment of individualized needs with collective economic prosperity and social welfare. Interestingly, in Sweden at the end of the 20th century, the In-Group Collectivism seems much more desirable than the Institutional Collectivism the Swedish society had managed creating, whereas in China, a clear trend toward more individualism in general is apparent. In-Group Collectivism and Institutional Collectivism are both desired to be less important in China. It appears that the Chinese culture responds to its problems of industrialization by a trend toward individualism whereas the Swedish society seems to adapt to a postindustrialization environment by a trend toward In-Group collectivism. Note that from a western point of view, the Chinese societal cultural development may be seen as a “backward trend,” however, viewed from China's perspective with its long history of collectivism and its shorter history of communism, it is not.

Summary

In the first part of this chapter we have described how the GLOBE practices and values measures of societal culture, in combination with qualitative and ethnographic descriptions of individual societies, can help to improve our understanding about what the similarities and differences in societal cultures actually mean, about how they come to be, and how we can identify societal changes that are likely to happen in the future.

Obviously, a much more detailed account of each of the culture-specific issues mentioned earlier, and many more, are discussed in the individual country chapters presented in this volume. It is neither possible nor necessary to include all of them here.

In the next part, we combine the GLOBE findings about societal culture and leadership from a culture-general perspective with the findings from the culture-specific analyses about culture and leadership undertaken in each of the 25 country chapters of this book.

2.  LEADERSHIP ACROSS AND WITHIN CULTURES

For GLOBE the focus is on organizational leadership—not leadership in general or leadership in other domains, such as political, military, or religious leadership. GLOBE defines organizational leadership as “the ability of an individual to influence, motivate, and enable others to contribute toward the effectiveness and success of the organizations of which they are members” (House & Javidan, 2004, p. 15).

Because one of the major research questions of GLOBE is to estimate the extent to which societal and organizational culture influence the cognitions people hold about the nature of effective leadership, the concept of implicit leadership theory (ILT; Lord & Maher, 1991) is used. ILT focuses on individual-level differences in cognitions about which leadership attributes such as personal characteristics, attitudes, and behaviors contribute to or impede effective leadership. Such leadership prototypes (also referred to as schemas, cognitive categories, or mental models in the social-psychological literature) are assumed to affect the extent that an individual accepts and responds to others as leaders (Lord & Maher, 1991).

Culturally Endorsed Implicit Leadership Theory (CLT)

GLOBE extended ILT to a culture-level theory that explains how culture influences leadership by focusing on cognitions about effective leaders that are shared by members of an organization or society. On the basis of the GLOBE data, Hanges and Dickson (2004) provide convincing evidence for agreement in the people's cognitions about leadership within cultural groups, which validates the aggregation of individual ratings to the organizational and societal level of analysis. Dorfman, Hanges, and Brodbeck (2004) refer to the shared cultural-level analogue of individual ILT as culturally endorsed implicit leadership theory (CLT) and describe universal as well as culture-contingent dimensions of CLTs and how these are endorsed within the GLOBE countries and cultural clusters.

In the current volume, a further step forward is taken by combining the culture-specific and culture-general analyses about leadership prototypes in order to describe particular “species” and “combinations of attributes” of leadership prototypes that are endorsed in the 25 societies covered in this book.

How Leadership Prototypes Link to the Cultural Context

The GLOBE hypotheses about relationships between societal culture and leadership CLTs are derived on several grounds. Culture (on societal and organizational levels) can be seen to define a set of acceptable and unacceptable behaviors and values. Through socialization and acculturation, on the one hand, individuals develop a set of expectations about what constitutes effective leadership (leadership prototypes), and on the other hand, individuals learn to conform to respective cultural norms when they act as leaders themselves. Over time, certain individuals become particularly skilled at acceptable behaviors; for example, successful managers are particularly well socialized and acculturated. On the basis of predictions from ILT, those individuals who display leadership attributes that are more in line with the culturally accepted CLTs have a higher likelihood to be accepted and responded to as a leader by followers of the same cultural group. Thus, from the perspective of cross-cultural transitions, successful adaptation to a particular cultural environment can be dysfunctional when managers are placed in a different cultural environment (e.g., via expatriation) within which the culturally endorsed leadership concepts are different from those endorsed in their home culture.

Leadership Effectiveness in Cultural Context

Our culturally endorsed theory of leadership predicts that leader behaviors that are accepted and effective within a collective are the attributes and behaviors that most clearly fit within the parameters of the cultural forces surrounding the leader (House, Wright, & Aditya, 1997). However, it is arguable whether leaders need to fully match their behaviors and values to cultural expectations to be effective. Leader behavior that deviates slightly from dominant cultural values can encourage innovation and performance improvement. Thus, nontraditional and unexpected leadership attributes, especially when they are in line with espoused values that indicate developmental trends within a society or organization (i.e. “Zeitgeist” for culture change), can also have higher acceptance and stronger positive response on part of the followers. These propositions are in line with Hollander's social exchange theory (1958, 1980), which suggests that innovation from leaders is not only accepted but expected.

It is also possible that certain leadership attributes are universally accepted and considered effective worldwide, regardless of the specific cultural values espoused in a particular collective.

With these theoretical considerations in mind, the GLOBE researchers operationalized and empirically explored CLT prototypes in the way described in the following subsection, which has been used in all 25 country chapters presented in this book.

Measurement of CLTs

For the culture-general purposes of GLOBE, leadership prototypes have been operationalized by the use of indicators reflecting individual ILTs. The GLOBE respondents were instructed to think of people in their organization or industry who are exceptionally skilled at motivating, influencing, or enabling them, others, or groups to contribute to the success of the organization or task. Managers responded to 112 questionnaire items, each containing behaviors or characteristics that describe leaders with a short definition for clarifying what is meant (e.g., Item 2–16: Trustworthy—Deserves trust, can be believed and relied upon to keep his/her word) and rated them on a 7-point Likert-type scale (1 = greatly inhibits; 2 = somewhat inhibits; 3 = slightly inhibits a person from being an outstanding leader; 4 = has no impact; 5 = contributes slightly; 6 = contributes somewhat; 7 = contributes greatly to a person being an outstanding leader).

Hanges and Dickson (2004, 2006) describe how these 112 leadership attributes were statistically grouped into 21 first-order factors (termed primary leadership dimensions) and consolidated into 6 second-order factors referred to as global leadership dimensions. Justification for the term global is based on the use of several techniques that provide evidence that the final composition of factor attributes are comparable across all GLOBE countries:

1. In order to avoid ethnocentrism in item selection, GLOBE colleagues from around the world participated to generate the original item pool of about 735 attributes.
2. In order to assure common understanding of items and reliability in dimensional categorization, Q-sorting was undertaken involving colleagues from around the world.
3. In order to make sure that item wordings and meanings are not distorted or culturally unacceptable, independent translation and back-translation was performed and item reports were written for each country, indicating potential difficulties—for example, in Germany, the word Leader could not be directly translated into “Führer” because of the negative connotation of this word since the Holocaust.
4. Only those items that “survived” the aforementioned procedures were used in the GLOBE questionnaire.
5. Based on two independent country samples, multilevel exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses were undertaken to derive leadership dimensions that differentiate between the GLOBE societal cultures regarding attributes that are perceived by more than 17,000 managers from about 950 organizations in 61 societies to influence effective leadership.

The resulting global CLT leadership dimensions are labeled and defined as follows (see also Table 28.2):

1. Charismatic/Value Based leadership: reflects the ability to inspire, to motivate, and to expect high performance outcomes from others based on firmly held core values. It includes six subscales labeled visionary, inspirational, self-sacrificial, integrity, decisive, and performance oriented.
2. Team Oriented leadership: reflects effective team building and implementation of a common purpose or goal among team members. It includes five subscales labeled team collaborative, team integrator, diplomatic, malevolent (reverse scored), and administratively competent.
3. Participative leadership: reflects the degree to which managers involve others in making and implementing decisions. It includes two subscales labeled autocratic (reverse scored) and participative.
4. Humane Oriented leadership: reflects supportive and considerate leadership but also includes compassion and generosity. It includes two subscales labeled humane orientation and modesty.
5. Autonomous leadership: refers to independent and individualistic leadership. This is a newly defined leadership dimension that has not previously appeared in the literature. It includes a single subscale labeled autonomous.
6. Self-Protective leadership: focuses on ensuring the safety and security of the individual. This leadership dimension includes five subscales labeled self-centered, status-conscious, conflict inducer, face saving, and procedural.

The six global leadership dimensions are summary indices of the characteristics, skills, and abilities culturally perceived to contribute to, or inhibit effective leadership.

Universal Dimensions of Leadership

The GLOBE team hypothesized and empirically demonstrated that members of different cultures share a common frame of reference regarding effective leadership (House et al., 2004). Dorfman et al. (2004) determined the extent to which specific leadership attributes and behaviors are universally endorsed as contributing to effective leadership, in contrast to those that are culturally contingent. Most leadership attributes from the Charismatic/Value Based and Team Oriented leadership dimensions were universally seen as positive. We first take a bird'seye view on how the 25 societies described in this volume are distributed on these two universal dimensions of leadership.

TABLE 28.2
GLOBE Leadership Dimensions, Scales, and Items

Global Dimensions First-Order Factors	Questionnaire Items (Definitions omitted)
Charismatic/Value Based
Visionary	Visionary, foresight, anticipatory, prepared, intellectually stimulating, future oriented, plans ahead, inspirational.
Inspirational	Enthusiastic, positive, encouraging, morale booster, motive arouser, confidence builder, dynamic, motivational.
Self-Sacrificial	Risk taker, self-sacrificial, convincing.
Integrity	Honest, sincere, just, trustworthy.
Decisive	Willful, decisive, logical, intuitive.
Performance Oriented	Improvement, excellence, and performance oriented.
Team Oriented
Team Collaborative	Group oriented, collaborative, loyal, consultative, mediator, fraternal.
Team Integrator	Clear, integrator, subdued, informed, communicative, coordinator, team builder.
Diplomatic	Diplomatic, worldly, win/win problem solver, effective bargainer.
Malevolent (reversed)	Irritable, vindictive, egoistic, noncooperative, cynical, hostile, dishonest, nondependable, intelligent.
Administrative competent	Orderly, administratively skilled, organized, good administrator.
Participative
Autocratic (reversed)	Autocratic, dictatorial, bossy, elitist, ruler, domineering.
Participative	Nonindividual, egalitarian, nonmicromanager, delegating.
Humane Orientation
Humane Orientation	Generous, compassionate.
Modesty	Modest, self-effacing, patient.
Autonomous	Individualistic, independent, autonomous, unique.
Self-Protective
Self-Centered	Self-interested, nonparticipative, loner, asocial.
Status-Conscious	Status-conscious, class-conscious.
Conflict Inducer	Intragroup competitor, secretive, normative.
Face Saving	Indirect, avoids negatives, evasive.
Procedural	Ritualistic, formal, habitual, cautious, procedural.

Charismatic/Value Based Leadership. In Figure B1 (see Appendix B), the country scores for Charismatic/Value Based leadership are plotted and grouped according to the 10 GLOBE country clusters. It can be seen that with very few exceptions, the country scores range between 5.5 and 6.5 on the 7-point scale and the median is 5.9. From the overall distribution (even the outlier scores are above the mid-point of the scale) it is evident that Charismatic/Value Based leadership is positively endorsed in all GLOBE countries and cultural clusters.

Figure B1 (Appendix B) also shows statistically derived “bands” (gray shaded) of country scores (Hanges, Dickson, & Sipe, 2004). The scores of countries within the same band are statistically not significantly different from each other. For example, applying the banding procedure to the country distribution for Charismatic/Value Based leadership shows that France is an outlier (due to response bias; see Hanges, 2004). Furthermore, it can be seen that Singapore (Confucian Asian cluster) is positioned in a higher band of Charismatic/Value Based leadership than the other Confucian Asian cluster countries, and it is positioned in the same band as most of the countries in the Nordic and German clusters.

Team Oriented Leadership. Figure B2 depicts the results for Team Oriented leadership, which was identified to be the second universally endorsed leadership dimension. This time, and again with very few exceptions, the country scores range between 5.5 and 6.3 (median = 5.8), which speaks for a generally positive endorsement of Team Oriented leadership in all GLOBE countries and country clusters. Overall, the country scores for Team Oriented leadership are slightly lower than for Charismatic/Value Based leadership. However, the least variability among culture clusters was found for the Team Oriented and not for the Charismatic/Value Based leadership dimension (Dorfman et al., 2004), although the range of the latter dimension is likely subject to restriction of range due to the scores being nearer to the end of the scale. Thus, Team Orientation seems to be a leadership principle that very much unites managers’ culturally endorsed cognitions about the nature of effective leadership in societies and cultural clusters around the world.

Links Between Culture and Leadership

Despite the culture-general evidence for the universal endorsement of most of the Charismatic/Value Based and Team Oriented leadership items (Dorfman et al., 2004), applying the banding procedure described previously shows that there are significant differences between societies and cultural clusters in how strongly each of these leadership dimensions is endorsed. Furthermore, based on the total sample of countries, GLOBE has presented empirical evidence according to which there are significant links between these leadership dimensions and societal cultural and organizational cultural dimensions (Dorfman et al., 2004, Table 21.10, p. 699 ff).

As hypothesized by GLOBE researchers, regression analyses revealed that the most important predictor of the Charismatic/Value Based leadership dimension is the Performance Orientation cultural dimension. Societies and organizations that value excellence, superior performance, performance improvement, and innovation will likely seek leaders who exemplify Charismatic/Value-Based qualities. Team Oriented leadership was best predicted by cultural values of In-Group Collectivism and Humane Orientation and was negatively related to Assertiveness cultural values and practices. Unexpectedly, a positive relationship between Team Oriented leadership and Uncertainty Avoidance emerged. The more a society or organization values the reduction of uncertainty, the more team orientation is reported to contribute to effective leadership.

The remaining four leadership dimensions introduced earlier are all culturally contingent. There is high variability between country scores and sometimes even obvious disagreement between managers from different cultures about whether the respective leadership characteristics inhibit or contribute to outstanding leadership. In the next section, we therefore summarize the findings for Participative, Autonomous, Humane, and Self-Protective leadership (see Figures B3 to B6). It can be seen that different “species” of leadership prototypes emerged for each leadership dimension depending on which societies and cultural clusters were examined. Together with the previously described evidence, this also leaves the possibility that there exist different “species” or “combinations of attributes” for Charismatic/Value Based and Team Oriented leadership prototypes. These are explored in the section after the next.

Culturally Endorsed Dimensions of Leadership

According to the scatter plots in Figures B3 to B6, the medians of the four remaining leadership dimensions are positioned considerably lower than the medians for the aforementioned two universal leadership dimensions. Furthermore, the distributions of country scores show considerable variation among countries and country clusters for the culturally contingent leadership dimensions. This means that they are particularly sensitive to societal cultural differences, and thus can add significantly to our understanding of the peculiarities of leadership prototypes endorsed in particular societies.

For each dimension, we describe the distributional characteristics of country scores across cultural clusters and we highlight country-specific data and interpretations provided within the country chapters in order to enrich our understanding about the leadership prototypes endorsed in particular societies. This is done separately for each leadership dimension, so that we can also develop a better understanding about how GLOBE dimension are contextualized within particular societies and what the respective manifestations are.

Participative Leadership. Participative leadership (median = 5.3, range: 4.5–6.1) is reported to contribute to outstanding leadership for all societies and culture clusters studied. However, considerable variation exists among countries and clusters (see Figure B3). From GLOBE's culture-general analyses, we know that Participative leadership positively relates to societal and organizational cultural values of Humane Orientation, Performance Orientation, and Gender Egalitarianism, and negatively to Uncertainty Avoidance (Dorfman et al., 2004). From inspection of Figure B3, it can be seen that the Nordic Europe, Germanic Europe, and most of the Anglo countries as well as some individual countries, notably France, Argentina, and Greece, are particularly attuned to Participative leadership. Most of the countries from Latin Europe, Latin America, Eastern Europe, Middle East, Confucian Asia, Southern Asia, and Sub-Saharan African clusters only slightly endorse this leadership dimension positively.

Interestingly, several countries that score particularly high on participative leadership are from different cultural clusters: Finland (Nordic), France (Latin European), Austria, Switzerland and West Germany (Germanic), United States (Anglo), Argentina (Latin American), and Greece (East European). From the respective country chapters, it emerged that different “species” of Participative leadership are endorsed in these societies.

In the Finnish and the Argentine chapters, Participative leadership is mentioned only a few times. Managers from Finland are portrayed to lead not by giving orders, but by motivating, setting an example to subordinates, and allowing for participation in decision making, which aligns with Finland's low scores on Assertiveness societal cultural practices and values. In Argentina, it is the nonparticipative leadership style the authors focus on, which is described as most suspicious of being “in the service of [a leader's] own greed.” Whereas in Finland, Participative leadership is seen as one of several leadership characteristics that positively define effective leadership, which is in opposition to directive leadership, in Argentina, the authors solely focus attributes of non participative leadership as strongly rejected by managers.

In the French chapter, participation is among the most often used and cited terms to describe leadership. Principles of participation seem to be much more important for leadership in France and for the French societal culture in general than in most other countries. On the one hand, Participative leadership serves as a counterpart to a narcissistic leadership style apparent among French managers (Lebel, 1985). This leadership style appears to trace back to the pre-Revolutionary period in France (before 1789) where elegance, grandeur, elitist, and aristocratic values were endorsed. On the other hand, Participative leadership is described to help maintain the “one person, one vote” principle (rooted in the principle of egalitarianism in France's post-Revolutionary period) and to oppose the principle of weighting people's votes on the basis of accumulated power and capital (which apparently stems from the pre-Revolutionary period). The French chapter authors conclude that French managers seem to not espouse a consistent principle of participation, but to consistently reject nonparticipative leadership behavior.

In contrast, in Austria, as well as in German-speaking Switzerland and in Germany, participation is described to be a well-established societal cultural practice, represented in legal principles such as the social partnership model. This is also mirrored in the cultures of Austrian organizations, represented through the legal principles of codetermination, which is also endorsed in Germany. Thus, rather than being used as an “opposing” principle (e.g., against directive, autocratic, or elitist leadership), for Austrian and other Germanic societies, participation and Participative leadership are positively defined cultural practices and values manifest in various societal and organizational institutions.

Additional empirical evidence from behavioral field experiments (along the lines of the Vroom & Yetton model of participation) presented by Reber, Jago, Aucr-Rizzi, and Szabo (2000) positions Austria as significantly higher in participative decision making at work (similar to Germany and Switzerland; Brodbeck et al., 2000; Szabo, Reber, Weibler, Brodbeck, & Wunderer, 2001) than Finland, France, the Czech Republic, Poland, Turkey, and the United States. Furthermore, Austrian as well as German managers are portrayed to use participation to bring more information and different perspectives to bear on the task. Even more interesting, the Austrian managers respond to and resolve conflict among subordinates by becoming more participative. In contrast, managers in France, Finland, the United States, Poland, and the Czech Republic tend to display more autocratic leadership behaviors when conflict occurs.

The U.S. chapter authors portray Participative leadership to be not part of the traditionally U.S. American prototype of a “heroic” leader. However, it seems to be on the rise. On the one hand, the U.S.-based leadership literature diagnoses a need for Participative leadership in accord with a need for process-oriented, collaborative, systemic, and “global” leadership. On the other hand, on the basis of the quantitative and qualitative GLOBE findings, the chapter authors conclude that Participative leadership is positively connoted and associated with treating others as equals, being highly informal, tapping into the inner passions of the people, and being not preoccupied with oneself. In the United States, the nature of Participative leadership is described as being part of a set of personal characteristics. Outstanding contemporary leaders should have Participative leadership as well as Charismatic and Humane Oriented characteristics.

For the Greeks, who are portrayed by the country chapter author as natural participators and compulsive egalitarians, the management is characterized to a large extent by formal relationships, which, however, are usually not approved of and are often questioned by the people. What is meant by contemporary Participative leadership in Greece seems to focus mainly around certain communication behaviors, which the chapter authors describe as “listening to suggestions and inviting comments from employees.”

In summary, from the described multiple country-specific accounts of Participative leadership, we can derive at least four different “species” that describe how Participative leadership manifests itself and is rooted in different societal cultural practices and values: (a) as an opposition to nonparticipative, autocratic, or directive leadership (e.g., Finland, Argentina, France); (b) as a legal principle to organize interactions at work between labor and capital (or management) manifest in societal and organizational cultural practices and values (e.g., Austria and other Germanic countries); (c) as a set of personal characteristics in modern North American leadership conduct that surface, for example, in treating others as equals, being informal and not preoccupied with oneself (e.g., United States); and (d) as a set of communication behaviors like listening and inviting suggestions from others that aligns with societal cultural resentment against formal rules and a preference for open exchange (e.g., Greece).

From a purely culture-general perspective, these different “species” of Participative leadership would not have surfaced because all described societies score in the same high band of the GLOBE scale of Participative leadership (see Figure B3).

Humane Oriented Leadership. Humane Oriented leadership (median = 4.9, range: 3.8–5.8; see Figure B4) was reported among cultures and clusters to contribute to effective leadership in varying degrees or to have no impact. From GLOBE culture-general analyses (Dorfman et al., 2004), we know that the most important predictor of Humane Oriented leadership are Humane Orientation societal and organizational cultural values such as concern, sensitivity, friendship, tolerance, and support for others. According to Figure B4, higher scores are found for the Anglo, Confucian Asian, Southern Asian, and Sub-Saharan Africa clusters. Lower scores are reported for most of the Nordic, Germanic, and Latin European countries. France as an outlier is positioned below the midpoint of the scale. The scores reported for countries from the Middle East and East European clusters vary considerably on this dimension. Again, different “species” of Humane Oriented leadership emerged from the further information presented in country chapters.

In the chapter about Ireland, which is one of the prototypical representatives of the Anglo cultural cluster, the authors diagnose a match between comparatively high levels on Humane Oriented leadership (explained on the basis of societal values for nonassertiveness and indirectness in interpersonal communication) and Humane Orientation societal cultural practices (explained by strong Christian and Catholic heritage and the small size of the country) in their society. These translate into the expectation that Irish leaders should behave in a humane, modest way and not flaunt their authority. In the other countries from the Anglo cluster, a pattern similar to the Irish is found (although levels of societal cultural Humane Orientation practices are somewhat lower) in that Humane Oriented leadership focuses mainly around issues of interpersonal behavior.

For the United States, Humane Orientation societal cultural values and practices translates into friendly, open, and generous interpersonal behavior, compassionate in times of crisis, which is mirrored by the quantitative and qualitative findings for Humane Oriented leadership indicating that leaders should appreciate and respect the inherent humanity and dignity of the people they work with, communicate with a wide range of different people, and actively encourage them to express their different points of view, beliefs, and values. For Australia, an enigma is presented, in that the media analysis suggests on the one side, in line with the quantitative GLOBE results about high Humane Oriented leadership, that leaders are expected to show modesty, equanimity, egalitarianism, and a lack of pomposity. This is also in line with low–Power Distance societal cultural practices—the lowest among all Anglo countries. On the other side, media analysis also suggests that Australian leaders can become more aggressive and face-saving in confrontational and crisis situations. In New Zealand, an egalitarian approach is seen to be an important part of Humane Oriented leadership, but coupled with clear and direct communication. Finally, for South Africa–White sample, which is also part of the Anglo cluster, the high GLOBE score on Humane Oriented leadership is supported by similar results from media analysis. However, South Africa seems to differ from other countries of the Anglo cluster by showing very low levels of Humane Orientation societal cultural practices (see Figure A9), which compare to the low levels shown by Germanic countries, including the Netherlands, which had colonial influence on South Africa's population in the past.

In Confucian Asian countries, such as China and Singapore, the strong endorsement of Humane Orientated leadership has somewhat different behavioral consequences and it is based on different societal cultural roots than in Anglo countries. In China, where Humane Orientation societal cultural practices are comparatively high, being a humane leader means to align with Confucian principles of moderation and human-heartedness, which is closely related to ren (being benevolent, kind). Thus, people in general and leaders in particular are expected to be kind to others and to maintain a harmonious environment with a strong sense of renqing (i.e., implicit set of rules that involves reciprocation in the form of money, goods, information, status, service, and affection). China's high score on Humane Orientated leadership is also supported by results from interview and media analyses.

For Singapore, the chapter authors diagnose low Humane Orientation societal cultural practices, which they see as a consequence of the high degree of control on individual behaviors and many rules adopted from British colonization (e.g., punishment with a cane) that remain unchanged until today. The high scores on Humane Orientated leadership are seen as a consequence of Confucian principles. However, the Confucian principles for leadership endorsed in Singapore seem to be contextualized within Institutional Collectivism practices (e.g., Singapore managers are more willing to make self-sacrifice for their society) in addition to In-Group Collectivism cultural practices, as is the case for China, where leaders are expected to behave according to the principle that organizational members are seen as “family” members and treated accordingly.

For India, both scores, for Humane Orientation societal cultural practices and for Humane Oriented leadership, are positioned very high among the GLOBE countries. As put forward by the Indian chapter author, ample proof can be cited for the most striking feature of ancient India's civilization being its humanity. For just one example from India's recent history, the traditional doctrine of ahimsa, nonviolence and noninjury to humans as well as animals, was used effectively by Gandhi in the Indian struggle for independence from British rule. India's humanity is primarily rooted in family bonds (high In-Group Collectivism), but is contemporarily challenged by a considerable influx of Western-style individualism. For leaders, the expectation with respect to Humane Orientated leadership is to repose faith and confidence in followers, give them freedom, and take personal care of their well-being. The latter seems to match to some extent with Confucian principles endorsed in China, however, it is rooted in a different philosophical tradition in India. Finally, and different from the course taken by Singapore, which has maintained principles of human conduct from British colonization, in India, traditional humane principles in society and contemporary leadership prototypes seem to be more strongly aligned with each other.

From these multiple culture-specific accounts of how differently humane orientation is rooted and manifests itself in different societies, we can again derive several different “species” of Humane Oriented leadership: (a) as a set of values and behaviors that espouse equanimity, egalitarianism, and not flaunting one's own status as a leader (evident in several Anglo countries); (b) as friendly, open, and generous interpersonal conduct; in times of crisis direct and clear (in New Zealand), compassionate (in the United States) or aggressive (in Australia); (c) as a Confucian principle of moderation and maintaining harmonious social relationships (China, partly in Singapore); or (d) as a traditional principle of humanity reposing faith and confidence in followers, giving them freedom, and taking personal care of their well-being (India).

How does it come about that in some societies Humane Oriented leadership is reported to be more or less unrelated to outstanding leadership? This is the case in Finland, Germany, Russia, and France from the chapters included in this book (see Figure B4).

For Finland, despite the fact that according to the Finnish Tourist Board (see chap. 4, this volume), foreigners find Finnish people friendly and ready to help, despite a medium to high score on Humane Orientation cultural practices (encouraging fairness, altruism, caring and kindness to others), and despite a low score on Assertiveness societal cultural practices, Humane Oriented leadership is perceived to not relate to effective leadership in Finland. Inspection of the results from interviews and media analysis reveals that the humane principles of leadership endorsed in Finland are somewhat different from what is measured by the respective GLOBE leadership scale. Among the top-ranked attributes of outstanding leaders in Finland are “developing others” (i.e., the leader involves subordinates and helps develop their self-esteem), “being sensitive” (i.e., leaders show their feelings), and a “good listener” (i.e., leaders know and notice their subordinates needs). Compared to these leadership attributes, which obviously promote Humane Orientation at work, the leadership attributes measured by the GLOBE Humane Oriented leadership scale (i.e., being generous, compassionate, modest, self-effacing, and patient; see Table 28.2) tap aspects that only partially overlap with the behaviors described for Finland. The Humane Oriented leadership attributes measured by GLOBE match particularly well with the forms of friendly, open, and generous interpersonal conduct, which is endorsed in countries from the Anglo cluster.

Further evidence from Germany, Russia, and France strengthens the case for different cultural “species” of Humane Orientated leadership. In Germany, the reason why Humane Oriented leadership is reported as only marginally related to effective leadership is different from Finland. For Germany, the chapter authors argue that the low levels of Humane Orientation societal cultural practices and values are in line with the high Assertiveness cultural practices endorsed in Germany. This consists of getting the task done, minimizing errors, and achieving high-quality standards being more important at work than being friendly, generous, modest, and patient. Furthermore, the authors describe that the German approach in Humane Orientation cultural practices is manifest in institutionalized societal caring for people, rather than in interpersonal relations between people. Driven by a strong tendency to avoid uncertainty in people's lives, very elaborate and costly social systems have been developed by the state in order to take care of people and to reduce risks to individuals. Here the underlying societal cultural values are mirrored by how the relationships between employees and leaders are organized. As was pointed out earlier, the labor–capital relations in several countries of the Germanic cluster are based on principles of codetermination and participation, which are institutionalized by law in society and in organizations, which is also the case for Germany. Accordingly, it appears that leadership in Germany is more institutionalized, and thus also more depersonalized, than in many other countries. This leaves less room for Humane Oriented leadership with respect to interpersonal behavior (as it was measured by GLOBE) to impact on perceived leadership effectiveness.

In Russia, Humane Orientation and modesty in leadership conduct are reported to be neutral to perceptions of outstanding leadership. This corresponds also to the findings from media analyses, according to which an outstanding Russian leader should have a good image, linked to success, competencies, and social and professional recognition. These serve to facilitate the ability to attract people, settle disputes, bring about change in organizations, and control the situation. Russian leaders also are reported to display strong action orientation such as being nonhesitant, a real fighter, hard-working, restless, enduring, and self-sacrificial. Characteristics of interpersonal relationships at work between leaders and followers or peers are rarely mentioned in the chapter about Russia. There seem to be neither societal cultural norms nor leadership principles that prescribe kindness, compassion, being generous, modest, or patient in interpersonal behavior at work. Humane Oriented leadership is portrayed to be irrelevant to the concept of effective leadership in Russia.

For France, the chapter authors report, that Humane Oriented leadership is perceived to actually inhibit outstanding leadership because it can affect a leader's credibility. The authors’ explanation of how this comes about is in brief: (a) In France managers have a low tolerance for mistakes at work, and thus are likely to come across as task oriented rather than people oriented (similar to German managers); (b) the focus is on events that materialize and the role of the leader as the main actor is downplayed in favor of a “whole systems” view; and (c) leaders are key actors in public and as such are expected to be rational, intellectual, objective, and concerned about the “whole system” rather than concerned about individuals. Being more concerned about individuals can result in suspicions about their credibility. The French also diagnose that a leader's “neutrality” is an important culture-specific trait. Leaders are expected to be very well educated, operate discreetly, and be strong in serving their company and country. The French view of an outstanding leader as being “objective,” “neutral,” and concerned about the “whole system” shares some characteristics with the institutionalized and depersonalized leadership concept held in Germany.

In summary, we have identified two reasons why Humane Oriented leadership is perceived to be unrelated or even an inhibitor to outstanding leadership in certain societies: (a) Characteristics other then the ones measured by GLOBE seem more relevant for humane orientation (as in Finland); and (b) a preference for depersonalized and institutionalized forms of leadership prevails in a society, which make certain characteristics of Humane Orientated leadership (at least those interpersonal facets that were measured by GLOBE) appear as obsolete to the responding managers (e.g., Russia, Germany) or even as dysfunctional (e.g., France).

Autonomous Leadership. For Autonomous leadership (median = 3.9, range: 2.3–4.7) the highest variation among cultures and culture clusters is apparent (see Figure A5). The GLOBE culture-general analysis (Dorfman et al., 2004) demonstrates that Autonomous leadership is negatively related to Institutional Collectivism values at both societal and organizational levels of analysis.

Between societies and culture clusters, there exists a marked disparity about whether Autonomous leadership inhibits or contributes to effective leadership. Some individual countries from different cultural clusters are positioned more clearly in the range where Autonomous leadership is perceived to contribute to effective leadership (e.g., Austria, Argentina, Russia, Hong Kong), whereas other countries (e.g., the Netherlands, Colombia) or several countries that are part of the same cultural cluster (e.g., Spain, Portugal, France from the Latin European cluster) are positioned below the midpoint of the scale where Autonomous leadership is perceived to inhibit effective leadership.

A comparison of two cultural clusters, the Germanic and the Anglo clusters, which are particularly distinct from each other on the Autonomous leadership dimension (see Figure B5), can shed some light on why there is disparity about the role of Autonomous leadership being perceived as a contributor or inhibitor to effective leadership: In most country chapters of the Germanic cluster, Autonomous leadership is explicitly discussed in relation to effective leadership behavior, whereas in the chapters about Anglo countries autonomy is mainly seen as a societal cultural value or an individual right and seldom referred to as a leadership attribute relevant for effective leadership.

In the chapter about Germany East and West, autonomy on both the leader's and the followers’ sides is reported to have positive implications for effective leadership, because it relates to principles of participation by which autonomous and technically competent leaders and followers negotiate their contributions to performing the tasks at hand to the highest possible standards. The latter is also addressed in the Austrian chapter, although not directly referred to as “Autonomous leadership,” but rather as “long leash” leadership, which means giving the employees space to come up with their own ideas and solutions, and thus, to actively participate at work. As for Germany, the Austrian “long leash” blend of Autonomous leadership seems to also tie into principles of participation (see earlier discussion on Participative leadership).

The German-speaking Swiss are reported to generally respect autonomy and freedom in their society. From within-country factor analysis, the authors infer that leaders who display Autonomous leadership characteristics may be seen as “bossy.” This can explain why leaders from the neighbor Germany, when they are working in Switzerland, are sometimes perceived as “too bossy.” Due to their cultural background, leaders from Germany tend to be less subtle in displaying Autonomous leadership behaviors (this is discussed in more detail in the German chapter). Furthermore, on reinspection of the factor analytical results presented in the Swiss chapter, we found that autonomous leadership is also positively related to what they term the “Great Leader,” who is described as inspirational, decisive, and performance oriented (among other attributes). This is in line with the culture-general findings for Switzerland, showing that in relation to other countries (see Figure B5), the Swiss managers seem to tolerate autonomous leadership to at least some degree, although not as strongly as managers from Germany and other Germanic countries do.

For the Netherlands, which displays the lowest scores on Autonomous leadership among all Germanic countries (below the scale's midpoint and significantly lower than the other Germanic countries; see Figure B5), the chapter authors report that although a high degree of individual autonomy with an emphasis on self-reliance is positively endorsed in the Dutch society, Autonomous leadership is perceived to relate strongly to the negatively connoted attributes of self-centeredness and autocratic leadership that are part of the Self-Protective leadership dimension discussed later. The findings for the Netherlands align more with what is described about Humane Oriented leadership for Anglo countries; namely, leaders should not flaunt their authority and should behave in an egalitarian way. This is in contrast to the other Germanic manifestations of Autonomous leadership.

Similar to what is described for the Netherlands, the U.S. chapter authors note that the high individualism in society does not automatically translate into a preference for Autonomous leadership. And for New Zealand, Autonomous leadership is described to relate to negatively perceived self-promoting leadership, which includes elements of self-centered and directive leadership (which are part of Self-Protective leadership, discussed later).

The finding that Autonomous leadership is rejected in the Netherlands for reasons similar to those in the United States and other Anglo countries provides further evidence for the Netherlands to be seen as a “boundary-spanning” society between the Anglo and Germanic cultural clusters.

In summary, depending on how Autonomous leadership is connoted and manifested within a society, there seems to be something to gain and something to lose with respect to leadership effectiveness. In Germanic cultures (except for the Netherlands) where the task-oriented aspects of autonomy at work are important, Autonomous leadership is seen as a promoter of independent thought and action that is likely to result in high performance quality. In Anglo cultures and the Netherlands, people-oriented aspects of autonomy are more generally endorsed, Autonomous leadership is more likely to be seen as an inhibitor to effective leadership due to an overlap with self-centered, autocratic, and directive leadership attributes.

An addendum for France needs to be made with respect to the concept of autonomy. It seems to be embedded in the same societal cultural practices and values with the same negative consequences as was described for Humane Oriented leadership. In France, Autonomous leadership is reported to be an inhibitor of effective leadership. Leaders are expected to adjust to the constraints imposed by the government, the social milieu, and regional peculiarities. If they are seen to act autonomously, as individuals or loners, who try to achieve the goals on their own with low Participation, they appear to work against the “whole system,” and thus are subject to suspicions, thereby losing credibility.

Self-Protective Leadership. For Self-Protective leadership (median = 3.5: range: 2.5–4.7), which is mainly perceived as an inhibitor or neutral to effective leadership, there is also considerable variation among cultures and culture clusters. From GLOBE's culture-general analysis (Dorfman et al., 2004) we know that Self-Protective leadership positively relates to Power Distance and Uncertainty Avoidance societal and organizational cultural values. In Figure B6 a clear trend is visible: For Nordic, Germanic, Anglo, and Latin European cultural clusters, Self-Protective leadership is reported to be a clear inhibitor of effective leadership (note their ascending scores). In contrast, for Latin American, East European, Middle East, Confucian Asia, Southern Asia, and Sub-Saharan African clusters, higher scores are shown, most of which are in the region of “no impact” or even “slightly contributing” to effective leadership.

Not very much other than rejection for Self-Protective leadership is diagnosed for all Nordic, Germanic, Anglo, and several Latin European societies. Throughout the respective chapters, it is reported to inhibit outstanding leadership and to relate to a variety of other maladaptive leadership attributes such as high power orientation.

For Turkey, the chapter authors report Self-Protective leadership to impede effective leadership, but it also links with the status consciousness, which is positively connoted in Turkey. For Russia, Self-Protective leadership is reported to overall impede effective leadership, though it is linked to the concepts of status consciousness and conflict-inducing behaviors, which are both positively connoted in Russia.

For Mexico, where the country score for Self-Protective leadership comes very close to the “no impact” midpoint of the scale, the chapter authors report positively connoted paternalistic attitudes combined with dominance orientation (Assertiveness) and a tendency to accept high levels of Power Distance, which all nurture acceptance of or at least negligence toward Self-Protective leadership. It is therefore not surprising that for Mexico some positive endorsement of Self-Protective leadership is manifest for two attributes, status consciousness and procedural, which are seen to slightly contribute to effective leadership.

With the exception of Singapore, in Middle East, Confucian Asian, Southern Asian, and Sub-Saharan African countries, the scores for Self-Protective leadership cross the scale's midpoint toward contributing to effective leadership. Unfortunately, none of the countries that are positioned well above the midpoint of the scale provided a country chapter for this volume. So we can't learn more from these countries about how concepts of Self-Protective leadership link positively to societal culture practices, values, and leadership effectiveness.

However, from the chapters assembled in this volume we can learn more about what Self-Protective leadership means within their respective cultural contexts when we delineate the dimension into its scales; face saving on the one side, with attributes such as indirect, avoids negatives, and evasive (see Table 28.2), and hierarchic or paternalistic leadership on the other side, manifest in status-conscious, conflict-inducing, or procedural leadership behaviors and attributes such as status and class consciousness, intragroup competitor, secretive, normative, ritualistic, formal, habitual, cautious, and procedural (see Table 28.2).

Face-Saving Leadership. Other researchers have speculated that the relative tolerance for Self-Protective leadership in Asian cultures may be due to the concept of face saving to reflect group-protective rather than self-protective motives, and therefore would be viewed more positively in these more collectivistic societies (e.g., Dorfman et al., 2004). Proponents of the “face saving” hypothesis claim that even lying is acceptable in collectivist cultures when it serves the purpose of saving face (e.g., Triandis & Bhawuk, 1997).

We think that how face saving is connoted in relation to leadership within societies is a matter of what is prescribed by the societal cultural practices and values for answering the question of whose “face” is to be primarily protected by leaders, their own, the face of other individuals, or the face of a whole group or collective. It is plausible to assume that in collectivistic societies, it is the face of the group or collective that should be primarily protected, but not at the neglect of group members as individuals.

In a first step, we investigated the assumption that face-saving leadership is viewed more positively in collectivistic as compared to individualistic societies on the basis of culture-specific descriptions from selected country chapters in this book. For China, the Self-Protective leadership score is slightly below the midpoint of the scale and the chapter authors conclude that it has no impact on effective leadership. From closer inspection, it is evident that face-saving leadership behavior is seen as neutral or inhibiting effective leadership in China. Interestingly, a stronger tolerance for Self-Protective leadership is manifest in the positive endorsement of status consciousness and conflict-inducing behaviors, which speaks to hierarchical or paternalistic concepts of leadership rather than to face-saving leadership. The Indian chapter author underlines the fact that “face saving” is among the five lowest ranking subscales within India, perceived to inhibit effective leadership. He explains the relatively high rank on “face-saving” leadership (Rank 9) India holds among all GLOBE countries on the basis of its importance for social sensitivity and contextualizing one's thoughts and practices within relevant social contexts. Interestingly, similar to China, status-conscious, conflict-inducing, and procedural leadership are more positively endorsed (all above the scale midpoint) than face-saving leadership, which also speaks for a stronger endorsement of hierarchical or paternalistic leadership than for face-saving leadership in India. In Singapore, face-saving behavior is negatively endorsed and Self-Protective leadership scores significantly lower than in other Confucian Asian countries. The chapter authors argue that this is likely to be a consequence of Western (individualistic) cultural influences.

In the second step, we undertook a more systematic review of all GLOBE countries with the following results: First, with the exception of Albania (4.63), Taiwan (4.53), and Iran (4.03), in all GLOBE countries face-saving leadership behaviors are negatively connoted. Second, from correlation analyses of cultural practices a pattern emerged that supports the view that face-saving leadership correlates positively with In-Group Collectivism (r = .60, p < .01, N = 61). No particular distinction emerged for Asian cultures compared to other cultures with an In-Group collectivistic profile, such as Latin America, Eastern Europe, or the Middle East.

The societal cultural divide between individualistic and collectivistic societies is apparent for face-saving leadership, is restricted in its relevance, in that it predicts the degree to which face-saving leadership behavior is seen as neutral or rejected within societies. The divide does not predict the degree to which face-saving leadership is accepted or rejected. Second, the divide extends across all In-Group Collectivistic societies, no matter whether they are from Asian clusters or not. This speaks against the assumption that face-saving behaviors are particularly important for being perceived as an effective leader in collectivistic societies or in Asian countries in particular. It rather seems to not promote or to nurture effective leadership in nearly all Globe countries.

Hierarchic-Paternalistic Leadership. Another dimension that divides collectivistic and individualistic cultures seems more important to effective leadership. We termed it Hierarchic-Paternalistic Leadership, which taps the components of Self-Protective leadership that do not directly connote face-saving behavior. To the extent that Self-Protective leadership reflects status-conscious, conflict-inducing, or procedural behaviors (see Table 28.2) it is perceived positively in In-Group collectivistic societies and negatively in individualistic societies. In order to underpin these observations with broader empirical data, we undertook a systematic post hoc review of all chapters on the respective subscales with the following findings: Status consciousness, conflict inducer, and procedural behaviors are mostly positively endorsed in countries from Eastern Europe (including East Germany!), Middle East, Confucian Asia (excluding Singapore!), Southern Asia, and Sub-Saharan Africa. In contrast, the same leadership behaviors are perceived to inhibit outstanding leadership in countries from the Nordic European, Germanic (excluding East Germany!) and Anglo (including Singapore!) clusters. For Latin America and Latin Europe, results are mixed with a trend toward positive endorsement. The divide translates into correlations between In-Group Collectivism practices and the leadership subscales-status conscious (r = .60, p < .01, N = 61), conflict-inducing (r = .62, p < .01, N = 61), and procedural behaviors (r = .65, p < .01, N = 61).

For these hierarchic-paternalistic leadership attributes, the cultural divide is similar in magnitude to the cultural divide reported for face-saving leadership. However, the theoretically important difference is that it cuts across the respective scale's midpoints, which partitions societies in which the respective leadership behaviors are perceived as either inhibiting or contributing to outstanding leadership. Thus, it is of particular relevance to the leadership context.

In summary, we conclude that along the In-Group Collectivism–Individualism dimension there are two different cultural divides, one for “face saving” and another one for “hierarchicpaternalistic” leadership. They differ in that face-saving leadership is perceived as neutral or inhibiting outstanding leadership among nearly all GLOBE countries, whereas hierarchic-paternalistic leadership is perceived as either contributing to effective leadership in In-Group Collectivistic societies or inhibiting effective leadership in individualistic societies.³

Cultural Variations in CLT Profiles

From GLOBE, the answer to the common question that permeates the cross-cultural management literature, “does culture influence leadership?” is a clear “Yes.” The GLOBE findings indicate that although there are commonalities across societies, culture influences leadership in a number of ways. As was described earlier, not only do societies and cultural clusters vary considerably on the CLT dimensions of Humane Oriented, Participative, Autonomous, and Self-Protective leadership, they also show a variety of culture-specific leadership concepts by which particular “species” of CLT dimensions become manifest.

Dorfman et al. (2004) note that the findings about the GLOBE leadership dimensions present an enigma; they highlight commonalities among cultures by illustrating their universal endorsement of some leadership attributes and global CLT leadership dimensions while simultaneously highlighting meaningful differences indicated in the findings of cultural specificity for certain leadership attributes and CLT dimensions.

It appears that herein the cultural-general approach described in the first GLOBE book (House et al., 2004) has reached a limit that calls for culture-specific analyses of multiple countries and cultural clusters. Therefore, in the current GLOBE volume, both approaches were combined.

In earlier parts of this chapter, we have discussed culture-specific in combination with culture-general findings about societal cultural practices and values and about the four culturally contingent leadership dimensions. Understandably, we can't discuss (or even just acknowledge) all culture-specific findings that are presented in the individual country chapters. They can give you a much more detailed account of culture-specific leadership phenomena accompanied by ample and rich examples.

For the readers’ convenience, we have undertaken a systematic review of all chapters resulting in summary descriptions of country-specific CLT profiles, which we combined with qualitative findings about leadership reported in the respective chapters (see Table 28.3).

In Table 28.3, also a closer look can be taken at how the “universal” Charismatic/Value Based and Team Oriented leadership dimensions combine with the other four CLT dimensions within each of the 25 societies. We summarized the most prominent country-specific “combinations of attributes” of CLT prototypes (see Figures B1 to B6), grouped them according to the 10 cultural clusters identified by GLOBE, and highlight the differences and commonalities of countries from the same cluster and what distinguishes the latter from other clusters. Our assessments are underpinned by culture-specific examples of leadership attributes, which featured prominently within the country chapters.

The descriptions of CLT profiles of the countries and country clusters in Table 28.3 are necessarily incomplete. The purpose of the summary descriptions was not to substitute the country chapters; instead the purpose was to highlight culture-specific aspects of CLT profiles by demonstrating the extent to which the perception and enactment of leadership is culture bound and can vary between cultures within and between cultural clusters.

From the descriptions in Table 28.3 and from the country scores depicted in Figures B1 to B6, it is apparent that the leadership data reported for France and for countries from the Middle East cluster are most distinct from the rest of the GLOBE countries. We therefore explore potential reasons for these findings and their implications for the study of cross-cultural leadership.

A Note About the French CLT Profile. The French chapter authors provide some back ground information that is helpful to interpret their county's CLT profile summarized in

TABLE 28.3
Summary Descriptions of CLTs for the 10 GLOBE Country Clusters and the 25 Countries Covered in the Present Volume

Table 28.3. The state and regional governments in France are intimately related to how business is done, as are other factors such as type of industry or a firm's size (e.g., human relations are particularly important in smaller, family-based firms). For leaders it is thus essential to adapt to the peculiarities in the regional, economical, and social milieus in which they operate. If these factors are indeed more strongly shaping the business and leadership culture in France than in most other GLOBE countries, as is argued by the French chapter authors, it is highly relevant for our discussion of “species” of French leadership prototypes.

When leadership cultures differ strongly due to governmental, industry, regional, and social factors, flexible modification of leadership styles and techniques for handling management–employee relations are required, especially when managers are likely to transfer from one milieu to another several times during their career. This may be the reason for why the French leadership prototype is the most different from all GLOBE countries. The many rule systems and social milieus to which French leaders need to adapt may require a whole variety of different leadership styles and attributes. When these are statistically aggregated to the country level of analysis, the resulting country score may to some extent represent an “artificial” statistical aggregate of many heterogeneous mental representations of leadership, rather than a shared concept of leadership about which there is sufficient consensus across the whole society to warrant the use of statistical aggregation techniques (for a detailed discussion of how culture analysis can account for such phenomena, see Atran, Medin, & Ross, 2005).⁴

A Note About the CLT Profiles in the Middle East Cluster. Dorfman et al. (2004) diagnose a number of striking differences between the Middle East cluster and the other GLOBE country clusters. They also note that almost all Middle East CLT dimension scores rank at the low end of the continuum when compared to other country clusters, with the exception of Self-Protective leadership where scores are relatively high. Thus, the possibility of response biases affecting the findings has to be taken into account (Hanges, 2004). However, only two of the five Middle East countries were identified as having strong response biases on GLOBE scales (75% for Morocco, 44% for Qatar; Hanges, 2004, p. 749).

One could speculate that in countries of the Middle East and Arab world less leadership is required from their leaders as compared to other countries, but this seems unlikely. Alternatively, as is described in the Turkish chapter and for Middle East countries (Bakacsi, Sandor, Andras, & Victor, 2002), leaders may be predominantly perceived within the social context they are part of (i.e., in relation to others) rather than as an individual with a particular set of attributes, which relates to In-Group collectivistic values. Another explanation is that some of the critical leadership attributes for this cluster were not part of the GLOBE attribute list (a similar point was made for the French country chapter). In a separate study, after having established confirmatory factor analytical evidence that the six GLOBE CLT dimensions hold up in this region, Dastmalchian, Javidan, and Alam (2001) identified additional leadership attributes that point to a culture-unique traditional leadership profile (i.e., familial, humble, faithful, self-protective, and considerate leadership). These leadership attributes underline the notion that the pervasive influence of the Islamic religion is a key to understanding the Middle East or Arab world. For a more in-depth discussion of societal culture and leadership in the Middle East/Arab regions, see Kabasakal and Bodur (2002). Further examples of leadership attributes not measured as part of GLOBE, which emerged in other countries as well, are discussed later in this section.

Further Issues

Some further issues emerged from the combined culture-specific and culture-general assessment of culture and leadership in the country chapters.

Mixed Leadership Types. Leadership prototypes are seldom found in purity. For example, for Germany, it is reported that some attributes of the disliked oppressive leader (loner, asocial) resemble attributes of the more positively perceived autonomous leader (independent, unique). Due to the overlap with Autonomous leadership, oppressive leadership behavior may be tolerated to some extent. In social reality, there is always uncertainty, incomplete information, and ambiguity, which allow substantial latitude for the formation of impressions about people in general and leaders in particular. Therefore, there can be variance in individual perception of leaders. For example, Autonomous leadership can also lead to an unjustified perception of leader weakness or lack of knowledge concerning the work of the followers when it is misperceived as an oppressive leadership style. Similar examples can be cited for all possible combinations of CLT dimensions.

Boundary-Spanning Societies and Subcultures in Leadership. In the first part of this chapter, so-called “boundary-spanning” societies were identified, which combine societal cultural practices and values from two or more cultural clusters, for example, the Netherlands (Anglo, German, and Nordic) and Singapore (Anglo, Confucian Asian, and Southern Asian). On the basis of their Leadership CLT dimensions, these countries emerged again as boundary spanners, in that the leadership CLTs found comprise a respective mix of characteristics. Similarly, the same subcultures of one country that were distinguishable on the basis of societal cultural practices and values emerged again as distinct from each other on the basis of their CLTs. Examples are French-versus German-speaking Switzerland, and East versus West Germany. East and West Germany are overall very similar in societal culture. However they differ considerably on Power Distance societal practices, which are higher in East Germany. In the same way, they differ on Self-Protective leadership, which is related to Power Distance across all GLOBE countries.

These findings can be taken as a further support of the overall proposition made by GLOBE that culture shapes leadership perceptions.

Leaders as Managers and in Other Roles

In several country chapters, the issue of whether there is a difference between leaders and managers, and which characteristics distinguish between the two, has been described as a result of qualitative analyses, such as interviews and focus group discussions. In all those chapters, a difference between leaders and managers is reported to have emerged. The overall gist across all chapters is that leaders try to do the right thing, are good with people, and are change agents. Managers try to do things right, are good with tasks, and keep the system running. Still, there is ample cultural variation in what the specific attributes, connotations, and prescriptions for leaders are.

For China, it was pointed out that generally their leaders are also Party members and are expected to enact their leadership role in accordance with the political prescriptions. For example, the leaders who participated in the focus group interviews conducted in China were all Party members, some of them in leading positions. A similar point was made for leaders in the former East Germany before its reunification with West Germany in 1990. In East Germany before 1990, leading positions were preferably given to Party members and it was expected that they educate and develop followers according to the doctrines of the Socialist Party.

From these observations it appears that, over and above societal cultural factors, the characteristics of the leadership CLTs also depend on the roles within which organizational leadership is usually practiced within a society.

Leadership Attributes That Emerged Within Country Chapters. As described earlier, all effort was undertaken to ensure that the array of leadership attributes sampled as part of the GLOBE study is as broad as possible and derives from the sample of countries studied (cf. House et al., 2004). We did not expect to have captured them all and we are pleased with the fact that many leadership attributes and themes emerged from the country chapters that were not in the plans of GLOBE.

On the basis of within-country factor and cluster analyses of the GLOBE item pool and from the qualitative studies, some unexpected leadership attributes and themes emerged.

In Germany and New Zealand, technical skills, in the sense of mastering the nonmanagerial components of a particular job, emerged as an attribute of effective leadership. In France and Germany, being well educated, in the sense of a broad knowledge base and good abstraction skills, was identified as an important leadership attribute. A good sense of humor was perceived to be important for being an effective leader, for example, in China and Hong Kong. In the Finnish chapter, clear, in the sense of being explicit about rules, values, and policies in the company, and being sensitive, that is, the leaders show their feelings, were pointed out as important leadership characteristics.

More leadership attributes that were not anticipated by GLOBE researchers in Phases 1 and 2 can be found in the country chapters, often as part of a discussion about the societal cultural context in which they are embedded.

Summary

CLT profiles based on the combination of the six GLOBE leadership dimensions are useful for portraying commonalities and differences in leadership perceptions across a variety of countries and culture clusters. However, the CLT profiles do not tell us the whole story. In several instances, we identified a variety of “species” that represent different culture-specific connotations and enactments of Humane Oriented, Participative, Autonomous and Self-Protective leadership. We also identified certain “combinations of attributes” manifest in the overall CLT profile, which help us to better understand the different culture-specific connotations and enactments of Charismatic/Value Based and Team Oriented leadership in each country. Finally, several leadership themes and attributes emerged not reported in the first GLOBE volume (House et al., 2004).

Overall, these findings demonstrate the importance of doing both quantitative and qualitative research with respect to the study of cultures and leadership. They also suggest that we should expect considerable variability in how managerial leadership is perceived, understood, and enacted in different societies.

We find it remarkable how similar, for example, Austria, Germany, and Switzerland score on the CLT dimensions when viewed from a culture-general perspective. But when analyzed in more depth from a culture-specific perspective, differences emerge in how leadership is embedded within different systems of cultural practices and values, how leadership is thus perceived differently, and which different prescriptions for the enactment of leadership follow from that. Still, when the CLT profile of the Germanic cluster is compared to other countries or cultural clusters, the commonalities are clearly visible and they make the Germanic cultural region distinct from other cultural regions and countries. Analogously this holds true for each of the other cultural clusters and groups of countries analyzed.

We realize that not only is there considerable variability among cultural regions and societies, there is also variability among subcultures and individuals within each society. However, given that countries as well as country clusters vary significantly in leadership CLTs, this implies that differences among individuals within cultures do not overwhelm country and cluster differences and that we are justified in thinking of societies and clusters as viable entities that reveal interesting leadership CLTs across the world.

3.  LIMITATIONS AND DIRECTIONS FOR FUTURE RESEARCH

The GLOBE researchers have made some deliberate decisions that set clear limitations on the samples and methods used within each country.

For good reasons (see House et al., 2004) only leadership in organizations was studied, and only middle managers were sampled from only two to three identical industries per country. Clearly this does not constitute a fully representative sample, though it does help considerably in comparisons across countries. Across these three industries, GLOBE results for societal culture and leadership (Dorfman et al., 2004; Gupta et al., 2004; Hanges et al., 2004; House et al., 2004) and even for organizational culture (Brodbeck, Hanges, Dickson, Gupta, & Dorfman, 2004) are very consistent, although there are considerable differences in technology, environment, methods of management, and government control. As a consequence, it is likely that our findings concerning culturally generalizable CLT dimensions are truly generalizable across a much wider array of industries. On the basis of these data, construct validation on the country level of analysis was established by triangulating all GLOBE scales with a whole variety of external data sources. The results increase our confidence in the GLOBE scales to provide us with a good basis to start with (House et al., 2004).

The limitations of the GLOBE study that focus on the quantitative culture-general part of the GLOBE project have been discussed elsewhere (House et al., 2004). Here we focus on those limitations that result from or directly affect the combined culture-general and culture-specific approach taken in this volume.

In order to combine the two approaches, CCIs from all 61 countries from the original GLOBE sample were asked to conduct an array of qualitative data analyses within their country by nonobtrusive measurement of observable cultural indicators. The individual country chapters included in this volume account for a little less than half of these countries. Of the 10 major regions of the world that were identified in Phase 2 of GLOBE, 7 are represented in this volume by at least two countries and two further clusters are represented by one country. However, not all country chapters conducted the full set of qualitative analyses specified for reasons unique to their own environment and access to relevant data.

Another limitation may be seen in the argument that the CCIs who research their own culture have a bias-potential that is perhaps best captured in the saying “fish will be the last to discover water.” This, however, is offset by the benefit of the multiple standard instruments and methods used in GLOBE Phase 2 (House et al., 2004) that helped to establish objectivity. Furthermore, working from a within-country perspective permits a deeper interpretation of the quantitative and qualitative findings. For being able to sensibly interpret culture-specific data, firsthand knowledge and experience with the cultural context is necessary and helpful.

For an example, the Dutch chapter authors notice that some culture-specific features of their culture are hard to describe so that people from different cultural context would know what it means. The Dutch word gezelligheid is a very common term in the Netherlands, which can be defined as a cozy, pleasant, rather “intimate” social climate within a group. But if you have not experienced it, it is difficult to understand what it really means. Our German coeditor, however, felt that he we have an idea of what it meant, because in Germany, the term Geselligkeit refers to a similar social phenomenon (note that the Dutch and the German words are very similar to each other). Still we doubt whether the Dutch authors would agree if we were to imply that the Dutch and the German terms mean exactly the same. Moreover, we even doubt that there would be complete agreement among a group of Dutch people that gezelligheid means exactly the same to each one of them. The point we are trying to make is that for creating agreement about what is meant by a term or concept, we need to make abstractions, which means to subtract idiosyncrasies of individual understanding (when agreement about a term between individuals needs to be established) or to subtract idiosyncrasies of a particular societal cultural understanding (when agreement about a term between societies needs to be established). This abstraction–concretion dilemma is at the very heart of combining culture-general with culture-specific research.

With the double strategy taken by GLOBE, the quantitative culture-general approach resulting in validated measures (House et al., 2004) combined with the qualitative culture-specific approach taken by 25 GLOBE countries, we hope we have contributed to the cross-cultural study of leadership, in the form of developing meaningful abstract concepts about societal culture and leadership for comparing societies, in combination with the multiethnic study of leadership, in the form of meaningful idiosyncratic concepts within societies that relate to the aforementioned in a comprehensible way.

Perceived Leadership and Its Effects “In Situ”

By focusing on CLTs, GLOBE has implicitly reaffirmed the critical role of “leadership in the eye of the beholders.” From theory and empirical research about ILTs, we know that perceived effective leadership is likely to fit the implicit leadership concepts held by followers. And leadership is most effective when the fit between attributes of a leader and the followers’ leadership concepts is high. Followers are more motivated and committed when their leadership expectations are met and misunderstandings and reluctance against influence attempts are less likely (cf. Lord & Maher, 1991).

Accordingly, GLOBE researchers predict that the societal cultural distance is relevant for the leadership concepts endorsed in societies, and differences in CLT profiles matter for leadership effectiveness across cultural boundaries. The higher the fit the more effective cross-cultural leadership attempts would be. This proposition is currently being tested on an organizational level of analysis as part of GLOBE Phase 3. Further research is needed at the individual level of analysis, for example, by experimentally investigating the hypothesized link between the degree of fit between culturally endorsed leadership concepts and the behavioral consequences on part of followers, peers, and superiors of target leaders.

A related point was made in the country chapter on Austria, where it is argued that the particular work context “in situ” within which leadership takes place should also be taken into account. This was done by Smith et al. (2002) in which middle managers from 47 countries reported how they handled eight specific situations at work. Results from a subsample of the GLOBE study have been shown to strongly relate to earlier findings reported by Smith (1997; cf. Brodbeck et al., 2000). Thus, there seems to be not only an occasion for further research but also a common basis from which to work.

Considering Cultural Change

In several country chapters, the point was made that due to dramatic changes during the sampling of the GLOBE data, some distortions of the findings are likely. Argentina, for example, underwent a deep economic crisis during the mid-1990s. This may have affected the managers’ responses to the cultural practices and cultural values. Respondents may have shifted their values toward more value idealization. They also may have changed their leadership perceptions such that they found true Charismatic/Value Based leadership unlikely to exist in their society. Observations like these cast doubt on the stability of the GLOBE findings for countries that underwent considerable change during the data-gathering phase. However, there is considerable corroboration between the Phase 2 quantitative findings and the findings reported in this book.

Some precautions against the described problem were taken. For example, the quantitative GLOBE data were linked to historical, economical, and cultural developments described within each country chapter, and for the across-countries analyses, external data sources, which cover a time span of up to 50 years, were used to triangulate the GLOBE scales. These precautions, however, do not fully solve the problems a changing environment imposes on the analysis of culture and leadership prototypes.

Another way of going about the problems imposed by environmental changes is by focusing on the particular cultural and leadership dimensions where skepticism is permissible within a particular society. The Portuguese chapter authors, for example, express skepticism about the viability of the high endorsement of Team Oriented and Participative leadership. This is due to the 1996 political environment in which the Portuguese were striving for a drastic change from an autocratic orientation toward more dialogue and team spirit at work. The authors see the high endorsement of the Charismatic/Value Based and Team Oriented leadership concepts to be more temporary rather than a valid cultural pattern.

Similar discussions, each resulting in different conclusions depending on the country-specific circumstances, are described for New Zealand, where data collection took place following one of the most significant periods of economic and social restructuring, for Germany with respect to various pos-reunification consequences (after 1990), for Hong Kong's high future orientation, which is seen as a consequence of the “handing over” to China in 1996, for Spain with respect to the 40 years of Franco dictatorship, or for Austria, in which a change of the political landscape was diagnosed during the time of data sampling (for details, see the respective chapters).

We also believe that cultural changes occur slowly over long periods of time in the range of 50 or more years. For example, East Germany was found in Phase 2 of GLOBE to be more similar to West Germany than to other Soviet-dominated countries, despite the fact that East Germans lived under communist doctrines for about 40 years since the end of World War II.

There is no question about GLOBE currently being a basically cross-sectional study, for which the problems of controlling the impact of context factors, changing conditions, and establishing empirical evidence for making causal inferences remain valid. Future research should therefore investigate the relationships between societal and organizational culture and leadership effectiveness longitudinally. The methods developed and the insights reported in the previous volume (House et al., 2004) and in the current volume provide a basis from which to start.

The Convergence Hypothesis. One particularly intriguing proposition in the cross-cultural management literature is that modern industrialization and globalization will lead to worldwide cultural convergence so that effective and ineffective global management practices will inevitably surface (convergence hypothesis; cf. Dorfman et al., 2004). In some of our chapters, an influx of Western societal cultural values and leadership approaches in other cultural regions have been diagnosed, for example, in China, India, and Singapore, which seem to support the aforementioned proposition, if one is prepared to accept convergence toward Western values as a global trend. However, in other societies, this has not been the case, although political developments may make us expect it. For example, Turkey has been and will continue to negotiate with the European Community to become a full member. According to the GLOBE data, however, no marked influx of Western societal cultural values and leadership concepts into the Turkish society are currently apparent.

The United States is described to even move away from the Charismatic/Value Based “heroic” leadership prototype, which from a Western point of view appears as a likely focus for global convergence. The U.S. chapter authors diagnose a shift toward more Participative leadership, which is currently endorsed in Nordic and Germanic countries, as well as in France, Argentina, and Greece. Thus, change in leadership prototypes around the world seems to happen. However, it appears to go in various directions rather then to converge into one focus.

Overall, the GLOBE results present us with an enigma. On the one side, they speak to the universal endorsement of certain leadership characteristics (Charismatic/Value Based and Team Oriented leadership). On the other side, GLOBE provides equally strong evidence for the existence of culture-specific “species” or “combinations of attributes” of leadership concepts held within individual countries and cultural regions. Thus, it remains to be seen, via longitudinal studies, whether there is cultural convergence or divergence apparent in the modern world.

Based on the notion that the values and beliefs of people in various societies are fundamentally stable in nature, put forward by historians and social psychologists (e.g. Inkeles, 1981; Smith & Bond, 1993), the more leadership prototypes are shown to be culturally endorsed, the less likely they are to converge worldwide. Thus, with an eye on the possibility of future GLOBE phases with a longitudinal design, the convergence hypothesis can be reformulated into the following questions: “Which leadership dimensions are likely to converge and which are not?” and “Which dimensions converge more quickly than others?” We think that the universal and culturally contingent leadership dimensions identified by GLOBE provide us with a useful tool for answering these questions. Dimensions that change very slowly might be referred to as core leadership dimensions. And those dimensions that change more rapidly might be referred to as peripheral leadership dimensions. For any particular society, knowledge of both is necessary for a comprehensive understanding of that culture and the leadership practiced within it.

The Deprivation Hypothesis. Earlier in this chapter, the deprivation hypothesis was introduced as an explanation for disparities between societal cultural practices and values scores. The disparity is based on respondents who perceive societal cultural practices as less or more dominant in their society or organization than they think they should be, or perceive them as inappropriate. On a society or organizational level of analysis, the respondents’ common perceptions of a disparity between practices and values imply their sympathy with respectively higher or lower levels of cultural values than practices.

The deprivation hypothesis receives support from the GLOBE data. Whereas the standard cross-cultural literature assumed that societal cultural practices and values are positively correlated on the country level of analysis (Triandis, 2004), the GLOBE data show that they are mostly negatively related. For seven out of the nine GLOBE dimensions, the country-level practices dimensions are significantly negatively correlated with their values counterparts: Uncertainty Avoidance (r =–.62, p <.05), Institutional Collectivism (r =–.61, p <. 05), Power Distance (r =–.43, p <.05), Future Orientation (r =–.38, p <.05), Humane Orientation (r =–.32, p <.05), Performance Orientation (r =–.28, p <.05), and Assertiveness (r =–.26, p <.05). The two exceptions are In-Group Collectivism (r =+.21, p <.10) and Gender Egalitarianism (r =+.32, p <.05). It appears that higher scores on practices dimensions are mostly associated with lower scores on respective values dimensions and vice versa.⁵

The deprivation hypothesis does not suffice to explain or predict actual cultural change because the behavioral consequences of deprivation are not specified. Cognitive dissonance theory (Festinger, 1957) can assist us in deriving assumptions about the likelihood of actual cultural change. On an individual level, disparity between perceptions of practices and values can be seen as evidence of cognitive dissonance in the respondents’ minds (i.e., two or more cognitions about a target oppose each other). Cognitive dissonance creates a tension that needs to be resolved, which according to Festinger (1957) results in a drive toward establishing consonance among related cognitions. Cognitive consonance can be achieved by two distinct processes:

First, cognitive consonance can be brought about by actual behavior change, which is intended to result in an alignment of the current practices (“As Is”) with the desired values (“Should Be”) into future practices. However, most people (often correctly) assume that change in individual behavior is unlikely to result in culture change. So they don't even try. However, if changes in cultural practices in the desired direction appear (likely) to happen for most people in a society, actual changes in individual behavior are more likely. We think that an important factor that improves the deprivation hypothesis's predictive power for cultural change is whether people believe that cultural change is possible or is already ongoing (“Zeitgeist”). Under these conditions people are more likely to respond positively to changes toward the cultural values they desire by respective behavior changes.

Second, cognitive consonance can also be established by changing the relevant cognitions without changing behavior. That is, the differences in perceptions of “what is” and “what should be” on an individual level may represent the result of previous attempts to reduce cognitive dissonance without (expected) behavior change. A restructuring of individual cognitions about the culture one lives in is particularly likely when changes in the cultural practices in the desired direction seem unlikely or impossible to happen from the perspectives of most of the respondents.

For example, let us assume that the societal cultural practices of high Uncertainty Avoidance in a culture are perceived to be rather high but the people do not like certain implications that come with these high levels of Uncertainty Avoidance (e.g., people dislike the restrictions and limitations imposed on them by high–Uncertainty Avoidance practices). If respective changes in the cultural practices seem unlikely to happen from the people's point of view, the behavioral routes for reducing cognitive dissonance by alignment of cultural practices with values appear blocked. As a consequence, people change their cognitions in order to reduce cognitive dissonance; more specifically, the perceptions of negatively connoted cultural practices are exaggerated (in this example, toward higher levels of Uncertainty Avoidance practices), because this makes them more consonant with the negative connotations people hold about them (i.e., current levels appear “too high”), and the judgments about cultural values are exaggerated to the opposite end of where the practices are seen, because this makes them more consonant with the people's negative connotations about the current cultural practices. Both processes taken together augment the difference between the perception of cultural-practices and -values scores. Thus, when marked differences between cultural-practices and -values scores are evident, this can also be taken as an indicator of practical skepticism (i.e., exaggerated negative perceptions of “what is”) paired with value idealism (i.e., exaggerated positive perceptions of “what should be”).

The two explanations of what the disparity between practices and values scores indicate for the development of societal or organizational culture do not necessarily contradict each other. The people's readiness for change toward the desired values, on the one side, and the people's sympathy for the desired values paired with skepticism about real change, on the other side, at least point in the same direction, namely toward the level of the desired values. Whether the espoused values in a society will be enacted in the future depends on whether the people feel that the change in the desired direction is realistic or not.

In the GLOBE program, we have not yet measured the extent to which people perceive change toward desired values to be realistic in their society. Thus, the predictive power of the described theory needs to be tested in future research. However, judgments about whether future change in certain cultural aspects in a society (or organization) is likely or not can be derived from the culture-specific evidence discussed in country chapters.

For an example, in several countries people show considerable disparity between their responses to comparatively high practices and comparatively low values levels of Uncertainty Avoidance (e.g., Sweden, Germany, Switzerland–German speaking, and Singapore).

Based on the qualitative findings about their respective country, the chapter authors give different answers to the question of whether future change is likely or not. In Sweden, Uncertainty Avoidance practices are rated lower than Uncertainty Avoidance values. This may suggest a movement toward the reduction of Uncertainty Avoidance practices. The same disparity is reported by the German respondents. However, the authors of the German chapter are more skeptical about their society's future development in that respect. They argue that high Uncertainty Avoidance is so deeply rooted in German society and history (e.g., via people's beliefs, institutional and organizational practices, economic and legal systems) that it is rather difficult to change. For Singapore, which scores highest among Asian societies for Uncertainty Avoidance cultural practices, well within the region of the high levels of Nordic and Germanic societies, the authors make the point that current governmental policy is actively encouraging people to overcome their “fear of failure” by supporting them to learn successful entrepreneurship at home and abroad, which in the authors’ view makes true change of the society toward less Uncertainty Avoidance more likely.

For another example, again with Singapore, we can ask the question of whether the high Humane Oriented leadership score (see Figure B4) can be taken as an indicator of a Confucianism-based force that drives the disparity between very low Humane Orientation cultural practices and very high respective values in Singapore (see Figure A9) toward more Humane Orientation cultural practices in the future. The answer is: It depends on how the current cultural trends are interpreted by most of the people in Singapore. The disparity between Humane Orientation cultural practices and values may well be the expression of practical skepticism, because the people believe that the strict governmental regime is unlikely to change with respect to Humane Orientation, paired with high value idealism, because people overly adore Confucian principles of humane conduct and project them into their concepts of effective leadership. A similar example can be derived from the situation in South Africa: It shows the highest score of Humane Oriented leadership among all Anglo countries and the lowest score on Humane Oriented cultural practices. Again, this may reflect a practical skepticism paired with value idealism, which expresses the people's hope in their business leaders to create a better and more humane society (see the very high scores on Humane Oriented leadership for South Africa in Figure B4).

The GLOBE data from quantitative and qualitative analyses show in the instances, where disparities between cultural practices and desired values were found, that cultural values rather than cultural practices more strongly predicted what is perceived to be effective leadership. For a similar point, see Dorfman et al. (2004). In the case of disparity between cultural practices and values, it seems that the leaders are valued for representing the desired societal cultural values, perhaps in compensation for the low emphasis placed on the respective cultural practices. This seems to express the people's hope that their leaders can help to implement desired cultural change.

Cultural Diversity Within Societies

Culture not only changes in time, it also disperses geographically via emigration and multicultural coexistence. We have described previously, that one shortcoming of GLOBE is that cultural subgroups within countries were not systematically taken into account. And despite the great care taken by chapter authors for describing the dominant culture and various subcultures in their society, some limitations still remain.

For example, as is noted in the English chapter, in Britain a mixture of different cultures coexists in different ways, (a) as geographically bound societal entities, for example, Scotland, Wales, and England, and (b) as ethnic cultures that overlay the English, Scottish, or Welsh cultures, for example, Jewish, Quaker, Islamic, and other religious-based cultures, and Chinese, African, Indian, and Pakistani and other ethnic-based cultures. Not only in the United Kingdom, but also in many other countries such as Singapore, United States, Mexico, Turkey, or Germany, the influx of populations from other parts of the world has created a diversity of subcultures. Their values more or less fuse with those of the dominant culture and create nuances in business style and practice. These nuances are not represented within the GLOBE data. Instead, a perhaps naive approach was taken, such that the dominant culture within each country was measured. However, this shortcoming in the GLOBE database does not need to remain a permanent one. We see no particular difficulties in using the measures and methods presented in this and the previous GLOBE volume for a more fine-grained study of the various subcultures within different countries.

Measuring Leadership in Various Subgroups and Contexts

The middle managers who participated in the GLOBE study are a particular subgroup in society that may have different views than other groups from the same society have. For example, in Austria and Ireland, it was tested with the GLOBE scales whether managers and students from the same society converge in their views more strongly than Irish and Austrian students on the one side, and Irish and Austrian managers, on the other side (Keating, Martin, & Szabo, 2002). Although several differences between the groups were identified—obviously they differ in age or work experience—the cultural practices and values of both groups differentiated the two cultures significantly. This is only one study and it is based on only two countries and two subgroups within each. Further studies are necessary to validate the GLOBE country-level findings in this respect on the basis of different and more representative samples of respondents and countries.

There is also a great deal to learn about gender differences across cultures. On the basis of the GLOBE sample, Emrich, Denmark, and den Hartog (2004) demonstrated statistically significant, but not substantial, gender differences for four of the six leadership dimensions (the variances accounted for are very low; they range from 0.2% to 0.9%). Female managers rated Charismatic/Value Based, Participative, and Team Oriented leadership higher as contributing to effective leadership than the male managers did, who in return rated Self-Protective leadership as more inhibiting to effective leadership than female managers did.

Furthermore, gender differences were more apparent in certain cultures than in others. For example, gender differences on Team Oriented leadership were much smaller in the United States than in Hong Kong. Further empirical evidence shows that male and female managers rate CLT dimensions more similarly the more Gender Egalitarian their societies is reported to be (see the dissertation from Paris, 2003, which gives a more complete exploration of gender differences in the GLOBE sample).

There are further issues with respect to subgroup effects. For some countries although the distribution of gender was noted to be representative for the respective country and industries, the resulting numbers as part of the country sample drawn seem rather low with respect to considerations of statistical power. For example, in Spain, 12% from a total of N = 173 participants were female, which sums up to about only 20 respondents from the female managerial population in Spain.

Other issues related to subgroups of respondents are more conceptual in nature. The GLOBE sample relies on middle managers as informants. Thus, it does not represent the perceptions of nonmanagerial staff. If one agrees that leadership is “in the eye of the beholder,” which is a central focus of the CLTs measured by GLOBE, then more research is necessary to also learn about the values, beliefs, and expectations of those who are not in leadership positions.

In order to get a more balanced view across the various job levels in organizations with leadership functions, it is necessary to also include lower and higher levels of management. Some chapter authors took the managerial level explicitly into account. For example, in Portugal, the expectations about leadership behavior were shown to vary depending on which managerial level (top, middle, lower) is concerned. The U.S. chapter authors suggest that their finding of a relatively high endorsement of Participative leadership may be due to the choice of middle managers as respondents, whose particular role as managers “in the middle” of their organizational environment necessitates that they be participative and sensitive to others’ needs. Thus, not only the results for the United States may differ to some extent when other managerial levels are investigated. Again, we think the GLOBE scales provide the tools to test this and related propositions.

In the chapter about Turkey, it is noted that few or none of the responding managers worked in small or publicly owned organizations, which is in line with the characteristics of most of the organizations in the overall GLOBE sample. However, for Turkey it may have distorted the picture to some extent, because most of their organizations are family-owned small businesses.

The effects the three industries measured (telecommunication service providers, food processing, and financial service providers) may have were explicitly taken into account by GLOBE. In most chapters where results were compared across industries, no marked differences were found. This is in line with the GLOBE results reported by Brodbeck et al. (2004) according to which industry main effects on organizational culture are low (Eta² range from .00 to.11) when compared to the much higher effects of societal culture (Eta² range from .21 to .47). However, Brodbeck et al. also report interaction effects of medium magnitude (Eta² range from .06 to .42), indicating that there can be marked differences in organizational culture between industries within particular societies, depending on which legislation or economic dynamics are in effect for individual industries and not for others. Against the background of these findings, the issue of not having sampled industries that are of particular importance for an individual country, such as in Finland, the paper and metal industries, is noteworthy.

Two issues are of particular relevance to further developing the concept of leadership that has been used by GLOBE.

The U.S. chapter authors argue that the research methodology of the GLOBE leadership questionnaire invited an a priori definition of leadership as something that an individual does. Indeed, as was described previously, their chapter displays a preference for a trait-based bias of leadership as well as an influence model of leadership, potentially preventing other perhaps more collective notions of leadership to emerge. We think that the GLOBE leadership concept and the methods used may have been somewhat biased in favor of a trait-based and personalized understanding of the leadership process. However, it appears from several country chapters that the bias did not affect the understanding and descriptions of culture-specific leadership concepts that differ from a trait-based understanding. In many country reports, leadership is described to reside more within organizations or institutions rather than in an individual, such as in France or Germany, or in a person with a collective Self, which makes her an intimate part of a group or collective, such as in China or India, or the person as a leader is downplayed and not seen as something special, such as in the Netherlands, Finland, or Switzerland.

The authors of the chapter on Spain make the point that the way the GLOBE research was carried out may have led to the expression of overly enthusiastic views about charismatic leaders that contrasts the skepticism history would suggest. “Throughout history, charismatic political leaders in Europe and Mediterranean countries have been a source of initially stable governments, which later promoted a long series of bloody, criminal, or belligerent actions. It has been the case, in this century, of Bin Laden, Franco, Gadafi, Hassan II, Hitler, Milosevic, Mussolini, Stalin, and Yeltsin. Each of these leaderships combined visionary as well as inspirational perspectives” (adopted from the Spanish chapter). The authors continue by saying that “the historical reality should at least temper the enthusiasm of some foreign observers who highlight the short-term advantages of charismatic leadership without paying to much attention to the disastrous long-term consequences.”

Questions for Future Research

From the results and limitations described in the preceding sections, many questions for future research can be derived. We close this section by summarizing some of them that seem particularly pertinent and compelling.

The GLOBE data generated to date do not allow stringent predictions about actual leadership behavior in organizations and cross-cultural situations. This requires further in situ investigations of how particular cultural backgrounds influence leadership behavior and effectiveness within and across cultural boundaries. The latter would translate into the following research question: If the CLT profiles of the hosting cultures are not enacted by the leader or expatriate, will the leader be less accepted, less effective? In accord with this question, it is worth investigating whether and to what extent the behaviors of existing leaders typically reflect the leadership profiles endorsed in their home culture.

Also, not very much is known about the psychological, social-psychological, and sociological mechanisms by which leadership prototypes, and their respective behavioral consequences are linked to societal cultural and organizational cultural practices and values. In that respect, the previously described theory that uses principles of cognitive dissonance theory to predict how differences between perceived practices and values translate into change on the individual, the organizational, and the societal level, deserves some attention.

More focused on the leadership process are the two further questions raised by House, Wright and Aditya (1997): Does leader behavior that deviates slightly from dominant cultural practices and/or values encourage innovation and performance improvement—as such behaviors are nontraditional and unexpected? Are leader behaviors that may be universally accepted also more effective, within and across cultural contexts?

The limited scope of GLOBE with respect to cultural subgroups within societies, but also with respect to the degree of variability within societies, or the density or looseness of cultural prescriptions, may be turned into research questions like these: Are CLT leadership dimensions more rigidly set for homogeneous societies, such as Japan, than for culturally diverse societies, such as the United States? (Dorfman, 2004; Dorfman et al., 2004).

Furthermore, with increasing globalization it is likely that leadership prototypes derive from experiences made in more than one culture? Would cross-cultural experience be reflected in “blended” leadership prototypes? How can these be measured? Are culturally endorsed blends of leadership prototypes also reflected in respective leadership behaviors? Would these be more effective in respective cross-cultural leadership contexts?

Another direction for future research is the assessment of the magnitude and speed with which perceptions of cultural practices and values, including managerial and leadership practices, change and the degree to which between-country differences remain stable or vary over time, which requires longitudinal approaches. Such admittedly very time-intensive and costly projects could help us to answer many important questions, like the validity of the culture convergence hypotheses. Such projects could also help to estimate the accuracy of cross-cultural data more generally, for example, with respect to the question of whether and how quickly the data become outdated or obsolete. In that respect, an interesting point was made in the country chapter from Singapore: After portraying Singapore as a society that can change rapidly, the question was raised of whether investigating culture as a dependent variable could be helpful to identify the relative importance of culture shaping factors in societies, such as technological change, modernization, or governmental policy.

4.  PRACTICAL IMPLICATIONS

Multinational and domestic organizations are becoming more and more culturally diverse, as is their customer base, which tends to spread around the whole world. Alongside these effects of globalization, there is a growing need for managers in organizations who can effectively work in different cultural environments and in multicultural settings (Dorfman et al., 2004). It is known that organizations that proactively take part in the globalization process increase the number of their expatriate managerial staff throughout the world (Cullen, 2002).

More generally, worldwide immigration during the past century up to today has resulted in hundreds of millions of people with different cultural background who work and live in close regional proximity. This trend is particularly apparent in the metropolitan regions in which soon 50% of the world population will be living and working. Another sphere where different cultures encounter is the Internet (World Wide Web), which provides for an environment of its own, within which people from anywhere in the world can interact and work together anytime.

Despite the increase of multicultural diversity in many people's immediate social environment and in a fast-growing virtual environment, it is unlikely that the major societal cultures in the world converge into an amalgam of a global cultural standard. Some authors perceive it to be more likely that cultural differences among societies will be exacerbated as they adapt to modernization while simultaneously striving to preserve their cultural heritage and social identity (cf. Dorfman et al., 2004). As has been described previously, the GLOBE findings (House et al., 2004) and other cross-cultural studies (e.g. Smith, 1997, Smith et al., 2002) suggest that the fundamentally stable nature of the values and beliefs of people in different cultural regions is likely to remain stable. If the multicultural world doesn't change into a monocultural one, it is time for us to change and to become more aware of the cultural backgrounds of people different from us.

This volume of 25 country chapters provides the basis for developing a comprehensive understanding of the cultural practices, values, and behaviors that are associated with effective leadership in a variety of societies from all major cultural regions in the world. This should be of interest not only to managers who want to develop their awareness of the critical aspects of effective leadership in different cultures, but also to everyone who is interested in developing a better understanding of the different cultural backgrounds that shape the way other people feel, think, and act at work and in other contexts.

Before we discuss how the GLOBE results can be used to inform managers and everyone about cultural practices and values that are more or less foreign to them, two general notes about interpersonal and cross-cultural encounter need to be made:

First, anyone who works with others—from a different culture or not—should try to gain a deeper understanding of the other person's implicit and explicit theories about working together, leadership, and followership, and of his or her own respective concepts. By reflecting on both, the similarities and differences come into focus and can be reflected on.

Second, as was lucidly described in the U.S. chapter of this volume, one should “continuously and repeatedly assess, hypothesize, and act (AHA principle) when entering and working in a new cultural environment. As Germanic cultures tend to say, ‘the devil is in the detail’ (in the United States, it is said at times that ‘God is in the detail’). Whatever the case may be, things are not always what they appear to be and often seemingly clear similarities in expected leader behaviors may lead to the greatest misunderstandings and/or conflicts.”

In each of the 25 country chapters, many examples and rich descriptions are given about how the working relationships and leadership processes in organizations are shaped by the cultural practices and values. Most chapters devote a whole section to recommendations about what foreign and domestic managers should keep in mind when acting as a leader in the respective societal contexts. Apart from the solid empirical data these descriptions and recommendations are based on, additional credibility derives from the fact that the chapters were written by GLOBE CCIs who grew up or have spent a considerable amount of time working and living in the country they write about.

At first glance, some of the examples and recommendations given may appear somewhat strange or incomprehensible to the reader. This is actually the best starting point to ask the important “Why” questions and to discover more about the underlying “logic” a culture works from. Note that we seem to intuitively use the logic of the culture we grew up with, similar to how we learned our primary language. However, remember how many “Why” questions children ask once they know the primitive basics. Asking them and trying to answer them, for example, by using the AHA principle, is an effective way to develop your understanding of a culture—be it your own or a different one.

The culture-general results from GLOBE provide empirically well-grounded information about any combination of target countries from the 61 societies studied. A set of cross-culturally validated measurement tools is also provided: altogether nine dimensions, each for cultural practices and cultural values, each for societal cultures and organizational cultures, plus six global leadership dimensions, which consist of 21 subdimensions and altogether 112 item descriptions, carefully defined in their meaning. These results and tools can be used to develop the content of cross-cultural training and coaching exercises, as well as diagnostic tools and training exercises that mimic situations of cultural overlap.

Cultural overlap is known to evoke critical situations, where ambiguities and inconsistencies prevail to each of the parties involved. This is likely to result in dysfunctional work behavior. Critical situations emerge when members of different cultures interact, because they hold different reference frames and approach the situation with their own culture-specific perspective. The GLOBE data can be used to identify those dimensions that most likely contribute to the emergence of critical situations between parties from certain target cultures and to develop training situations accordingly.

In addition to that, the findings from the culture-specific analyses in each chapter help to specify, for example, which concept and which ambiguous signal or misunderstanding should be addressed when developing cross-cultural training and coaching situations and how to tailor them to leader–follower relationships involving delegation, consultation, and normal, everyday decision making. Each chapter provides rich and valuable information regarding effective leadership actions that match or mismatch cultural norms.

When cultures differ in their practices and values, expatriates’ preparation and adjustment is generally necessary. It is more difficult, and thus takes more time, effort, and preparation, to adjust to another culture if the cultural differences are large and manifold because it implies that a higher amount of cognitive and behavioral restructuring is necessary. The combination of culture-general and culture-specific reflections in each country chapter, and the integrated summaries and overviews described in this chapter, can inform senior management and international HR staff about the critical issue of how much prior training, coaching, and actual experience in a particular host country is necessary to ensure effective leadership.

Furthermore, the comparative analysis of societal culture practices and values, graphically displayed in Figures A1 to A9 (Appendix A), informs about the direction and the likelihood of cultural change in particular countries and regions.

The positioning of individual countries within cultural clusters can also help to identify to what extent and in which respects a target country can be seen as a typical or an atypical representative of the cultural region it is a member of, in terms of cultural values and practices (see Figures A1 to A9) and in terms of leadership profiles (see Figures B1 to B6). Furthermore, several boundary-spanning societies, which share cultural elements or elements of leadership prototypes with two or more cultural clusters, have been identified. They may serve as cultural transition points through which a whole cultural region can be more safely explored.

One final note on the conventional wisdom that cultural distance is dysfunctional and often leads to failure of cross-border collaboration, joint ventures, or mergers. We think cultural distance is not dysfunctional per se. It rather should be seen as an opportunity to discover cultural practices elsewhere, which can be helpful to solve problems at home and vice versa. It has to be acknowledged, though, that it is difficult to understand how foreign practices function without knowing more about the context within which they operate. In the multiple within-country perspective of the country chapters, the attempt is to display each culture's “logic” of functioning and the deeper meaning of what the abstract GLOBE concepts mean once they are embedded within the respective cultures. The country chapter authors undertook great efforts to carefully explain what the meanings behind the abstract GLOBE concepts within their society are, how the cultural practices and values have developed throughout history, how they relate to effective leadership, and what future developments are likely to occur. We are therefore convinced that the content of this volume facilitates the discovery of cultural and leadership practices in other cultures that may be helpful to solve problems at home and elsewhere.

REFERENCES

Ashkanasy, N. M., Trevor-Roberts, E., & Earnshaw, L. (2002). The Anglo cluster: Legacy of the British Empire. Journal of World Business, 37, 28–39.

Atran, S., Medin, D. L., & Ross, N. O. (2005). The cultural mind: Environmental decision making and cultural modeling within and across populations. Psychological Review, 112, 744–776.

Bakacsi, G., Sandor, T., Andras, K., & Victor, I. (2002). Eastern European cluster: Tradition and transition. Journal of World Business, 37, 69–80.

Barry, H., III, Bacon, M. K., & Child, I. L. (1959). A cross-cultural survey of sex differences in socialization. Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, 55, 327–332.

Berry, J. W., Poortinga, Y. H., Segall, M. H., & Dasen, P. R. (1992). Cross-cultural psychology: Research and applications. New York: Cambridge University Press.

Berry, J. W., Segall, M. H., & Kagitçibasi, C. (1997). Handbook of cross-cultural psychology. Needham, MA: Allyn & Bacon.

Brodbeck, F. C., Frese, M., & 40 coauthors (2000). Cultural variation of leadership prototypes across 22 European countries. Journal of Occupational and Organizational Psychology, 73, 1–29.

Brodbeck, F. C., Hanges, P. J., Dickson., M. W., Gupta, V., & Dorfman, P. W. (2004). Comparative influence of industry and societal culture on organizational cultural practices. In R. J. House, P. J. Hanges, M. Javidan, P. Dorfman, & V. Gupta (Eds.), Leadership, culture, and organizations: The GLOBE study of 62 societies (pp. 654–668). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

Cohen, D. (2001). Cultural variation: Considerations and implications. Psychological Bulletin, 127, 451–471.

Cullen, J. B. (2002). Multinational management: A strategic approach (2nd ed.). Cincinnati, OH: South-Western Thomson Learning.

Dastmalchian, A., Javidan, M., & Alam, K. (2001). Effective leadership and culture in Iran: An empirical study. Applied Psychology: An International Review, 50(4), 532–551.

Dorfman, P. (2004). International and cross-cultural leadership research. In B. J. Punnett & O. Shenkar (Eds.), Handbook for international research (2nd ed, pp. 265–355). Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.

Dorfman, P. W., Hanges, P. J., & Brodbeck, F. C. (2004). Leadership and cultural variation: The identification of culturally endorsed leadership profiles. In R. J. House, P. J. Hanges, M. Javidan, P. Dorfman, & V. Gupta (Eds.), Leadership, culture, and organizations: The GLOBE study of 62 societies (pp. 669–720). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

Emrich, C. G., Denmark, F. L., & den Hartog, D. N. (2004). Cross cultural differences in Gender Egalitarianism: Implications for societies, organizations and leaders. In R. J. House, P. J. Hanges, M. Javidan, P. Dorfman, & V. Gupta (Eds.), Leadership, culture, and organizations: The GLOBE study of 62 societies (pp. 343–394). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

Festinger, L. (1957). A theory of cognitive dissonance. New York: Harper & Row.

Gelfand, M. J., Bhawuk, D. P. S., Nishii, L. H., & Bechthold, D. J. (2004). Individualism Collectivism. In R. J. House, P. J. Hanges, M. Javidan, P. Dorfman, & V. Gupta (Eds.), Leadership, culture, and organizations: The GLOBE study of 62 societies (pp. 437–512). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

Gupta, V., De Luque, M. S., & House, R. J. (2004). Multisource construct validity of GLOBE scales. In R. J. House, P. J. Hanges, M. Javidan, P. Dorfman, & V. Gupta (Eds.), Leadership, culture, and organizations: The GLOBE study of 62 societies (pp. 152–177). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

Gupta, V., & Hanges, P. J. (2004). Regional and climate clustering of societal cultures. In R. J. House, P. J. Hanges, M. Javidan, P. Dorfman, & V. Gupta (Eds.), Leadership, culture, and organizations: The GLOBE study of 62 societies (pp. 178–218). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

Hanges, P. J. (2004). Appendix B: Response bias correction procedure used in GLOBE. In R. J. House, P. J. Hanges, M. Javidan, P. Dorfman, & V. Gupta (Eds.), Leadership, culture, and organizations: The GLOBE study of 62 societies (pp. 737–752). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

Hanges, P. J., & Dickson, M. W. (2004). The development and validation of the GLOBE culture and leadership scales. In R. J. House, P. J. Hanges, M. Javidan, P. Dorfman, & V. Gupta (Eds.), Leadership, culture, and organizations: The GLOBE study of 62 societies (pp. 122–151). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

Hanges, P. J., & Dickson, M. W. (2006). Agitation over aggregation: Clarifying the development of and the nature of the GLOBE scales. Leadership Quarterly, 17, 522–536.

Hanges, P. J., Dickson, M. W., & Sipe, M. T. (2004). Rationale for GLOBE statistical analyses: Societal rankings and test of hypotheses. In R. J. House, P. J. Hanges, M. Javidan, P. Dorfman, & V. Gupta (Eds.), Leadership, culture, and organizations: The GLOBE study of 62 societies (pp. 219–234). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

Hofstede, G. (1980). Cultures’ consequences: International differences in work-related values. London: Sage.

Hollander, E. P. (1958). Conformity, status, and idiosyncrasy credit. Psychological Review, 65, 117–127.

Hollander, E. P. (1980). Leadership and social exchange processes. In K. J. Gergen, M.S. Greenberg, & R. H. Willis (Eds.), Social exchange: Advances in theory and research (pp. 343–354). New York: Plenum.

House, R. J., Hanges, P. J., Javidan, M., Dorfman, P. W., Gupta, V., & Globe Associates. (2004). Culture, leadership, and organizations: The GLOBE study of 62 societies. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

House, R. J., & Javidan, M. (2004). Overview of GLOBE. In R. J. House, P. J. Hanges, M. Javidan, P. Dorfman, & V. Gupta (Eds.), Leadership, culture, and organizations: The GLOBE study of 62 societies (pp. 9–28). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

House, R. J., Wright, N. S., & Aditya, R. N. (1997). Cross-cultural research on organizational leadership: A critical analysis and a proposed theory. In P. C. Earley & M. Erez (Eds.), New perspectives in international industrial/organizational psychology (pp. 535–625). San Francisco: New Lexington Press.

Inkeles, A. (1981). Convergence and divergence in industrial societies. In M. O. Attir, B. Holzner, & Z. Suda (Eds.), Directions of change: Modernization theory, research and realities (pp. 3–38). Boulder, CO: Westview.

Jesuino, J. C. (2002) Latin Europe cluster: From south to north. Journal of World Business, 37, 81–89.

Kabasakal, H., & Bodur, M. (2002). Arabic cluster: A bridge between East and West. Journal of World Business, 37, 40–54.

Keating, M. A., Martin, G. S., & Szabo, E. (2002). Do managers and students share the same perceptions of societal culture? International Journal of Intercultural Relations, 26(6), 633–652.

Lebel, P. (1985). Le triangle du management [The management triangle]. Paris: Editions d'Organization.

Lord, R. G., & Maher, K. J. (1991). Leadership and information processing: Linking perceptions and performance (Vol. 1). Cambridge, MA: Unwin Hyman.

Meindl, J. R., Ehrlich, S. B., & Dukerich, J. M. (1985). The romance of leadership. Administrative Science Quarterly, 30, 78–102.

Morris, M. W., Leung, K., Ames, D., & Lickel, B. (1999). Incorporating perspectives from inside and outside: Synergy between emic and etic research on culture and justice. Academy of Management Review, 24, 781–796.

Morrison, A. J. (2000). Developing a global leadership model. Human Resource Management Journal, 39(2&3), 117–158.

Paris, L. (2003). The effect of gender and culture on implicit leadership theories: A cross-cultural study. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, New Mexico State University, Las Cruces.

Reber, G., Jago, A. G., Auer-Rizzi, W., & Szabo, E. (2000). Führungsstile in sieben Lándern Europas— Ein interkultureller Vergleich [Leadership styles in seven European countries—A cross-cultural comparison]. In E. Regnet & L. M. Hofmann (Eds.), Personalmanagement in Europa (pp. 154–173). Góttingen, Germany: Verlag für Angewandte Psychologie.

Redfield, R. (1948). Introduction. In B. Malinowski, Magic, science and religion (pp. ii–viii). Boston: Beacon Press.

Segall, M. H., & Kagitçibasi, C. (1997). Introduction. In J. W. Berry, M. H. Segall, & K. Kagiçibasi (Eds.), Handbook of cross-cultural psychology (pp. xxv–xxxv). Needham, MA: Allyn & Bacon.

Smith, P. B. (1997). Leadership in Europe: Euro-management or the footprint of history? European Journal of Work and Organizational Psychology, 6, 375–386.

Smith, P. B., & Bond, M. H. (1993). Social psychology across cultures: Analysis and perspectives. London: Harvester Wheatsheaf.

Smith, P. B., Peterson, M. F., Schwartz, S. H., & 43 other coauthors (2002). Cultural values, sources of guidance and their relevance to managerial behavior: A 47 nation study. Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology, 33(2), 188–208.

Szabo, E., Brodbeck, F. C., den Hartog, D., Reber, G., Weibler, J., & Wunderer, R. (2002). The Germanic Europe cluster: Where employees have a voice. Journal of World Business, 37(1), 55–68.

Szabo, E., Reber, G., Weibler, J., Brodbeck, F., & Wunderer, R. (2001). Values and behavior orientation in leadership studies: Reflections based on findings in three German-speaking countries. Leadership Quarterly, 12(2), 219–244.

Triandis, H. C. (1994). Culture and social behavior. New York: McGraw-Hill.

Triandis, H. C. (2004). Foreword. In R. J. House, P. J. Hanges, M. Javidan, P. Dorfman, & V. Gupta (Eds.), Leadership, culture, and organizations: The GLOBE study of 62 societies (pp. xv–xix). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

Triandis, H. C., & Bhawuk, D. P. S. (1997). Culture theory and the meaning of relatedness. In

P. C. Earley & M. Erez (Eds.), New perspectives in international/organizational psychology (pp. 13–52). New York: New Lexington Free Press.

Weibler, J., Brodbeck, F. C., Szabo, E., Reber, G., Wunderer, R., & Moosmann, O. (2000). Führung in kulturverwandten Regionen: Gemeinsamkeiten und Unterschiede bei Führungsidealen in Deutschland, Österreich und der Schweiz [Leadership in culturally related regions: Communalities and differences of leadership concepts in Germany, Austria and Switzerland]. Die Betriebswirtschaft (DBW), 60, 588–606.

Yang, K. S. (2000). Mono-cultural and cross-cultural indigenous approaches: The royal road to the development of a balanced global psychology. Asian Journal of Social Psychology, 4, 241–263.

_______________

¹ Note that some aspects of culture and leadership in the 10 cultural clusters are also described in various chapters in the book edited by House et al. (2004). A special Issue of the Journal of World Business (Vol. 37, 2002) is devoted to describing culture and leadership in 6 of the 10 GLOBE cultural clusters (Germanic Europe, Anglo, Latin Europe, Eastern Europe, Middle East, and Southern Asia).

² As was shown by Gelfand et al. (2004), based on between-country analyses, Hofstede's Individualism scale corresponds mainly with GLOBE's In-Group Collectivism practices scale (r = -.83, p < .05), and it is nearly unrelated to the Institutional Collectivism practices scale (r = .15, ns).

³ Participative leadership, which is perceived to contribute slightly or more to outstanding leadership among all GLOBE countries, can be seen as the opposite end to both face-saving and hierarchic-paternalistic leadership. On the country level, it correlates highly negatively with face-saving leadership (r = –.74, p < .01, N = 61), and with each of the elements of “hierarchic-paternalistic” leadership: status-conscious (r = –.46, p < .01, N = 61), conflict inducing (r = –.73, p < .01, N = 61), and procedural leadership (r = –.59, p < .01, N = 61).

⁴ Our considerations gain credibility in the light of two further findings for France. First, for the exception of Participative Leadership, all other country scores for France are at the lower end of the CLT scales. Second, when accounting for cultural response bias (Hanges, 2004, p. 749) it was found that 72% of the French GLOBE scales scores were biased and thus identified as outliers. This is the second-highest outlier rate among the 61 GLOBE countries (Morocco ranks first with 78%).

⁵ For some cultural dimensions, virtually all cultures studied by GLOBE desire less (Power Distance, Figure A2 in Appendix A) or more (Future Orientation, Figure A5; Performance Orientation, see Figure A6) than they have now. For these dimensions, the negative-country level correlations between practices and respective values are based on a specific distributional pattern. Those countries who have lower scores on worldwide positively connoted dimensions (Performance Orientation, Future Orientation) desire more of an increase than those who have higher scores, and those countries who have higher scores on a worldwide negatively connoted dimension (Power Distance) desire more of a decrease than those who have lower scores. Thus, the negative correlations for these dimensions do not imply that countries who are high on, for example, Performance Orientation want to be less performance oriented or countries who are low on Power Distance do want to have more. On other dimensions this may be the case.