Table of Contents

Literature Review............................................................................................................................2
1.1

National culture and dimensions to compare/measure culture.........................................2

1.1.1

National culture defined............................................................................................2

1.1.2

Cross-cultural research..............................................................................................3

1.2

Leadership and leadership styles.......................................................................................6

1.2.1

What is leadership, Leadership perception................................................................6

1.2.2

Types of leadership....................................................................................................7

1.3

Relation between culture and leadership........................................................................10

1.3.1

Role of culture.........................................................................................................10

1.3.2

Linking culture and leadership................................................................................10

References......................................................................................................................................14

Literature Review
1.1

National culture and dimensions to compare/measure culture

Culture is part of our everyday life and very often differences in culture contribute to conflicts.
Small arguments to nationwide wars are harder to resolve and sometimes become worse because
of differences in culture. This chapter focuses on the research conducted on culture and cultural
dimensions. But what does culture actually mean? Because culture has a lot of different aspects,
it will be defined in the first paragraph of this chapter, after which in the second paragraph the
focus will be put on cross cultural research and cultural dimensions.
1.1.1

National culture defined

Culture is a very broad concept. To ensure that the right meaning of the term national culture is
used in this thesis, culture is first defined and the different meanings of the word culture are
shown. Hofstede is one of the most outstanding researchers in the field of culture. Hofstede
describes culture as follows:
Culture is the collective programming of the mind, which distinguishes the members of one
human group from another (Hofstede, 2004). Another researcher who conducted much of
research upon culture is House. House uses another definition of culture than Hofstede, he
defined culture for his GLOBE research program as;
Shared motives, values, beliefs, identities, and interpretations or meanings of significant events
that result from common experiences of members of collectives and are transmitted across age
generations (House, 2002) It is clear that the concept of culture can be described in different
ways however, the underlying thought of the definitions is however the same. All definitions of
the term culture basically share the following basic thought that culture can be described as; a
group of people sharing more or less similar beliefs, values, and traditions. This thesis talks
about national culture, being the culture of a specific nation. It should however be noted that
culture is not always bounded to national borders. Already within countries cultures can differ.
Even more extreme, sometimes national borders cut right through cultural groups. This is for
example the case in some African countries. Culture is a very broad term, however most
definitions of culture identify culture in some way as a shared set of values.
2

1.1.2

Cross-cultural research

Culture is a topic that has been researched over and over again. Sometimes in research culture
follows as a result from researching other things, Geert Hostede for instance started his research
at IBM to investigate, among others, employee satisfaction within the company but as a result he
came up with cultural dimensions (Noorderhaven, 2005). This paragraph focuses on analyzing
cross-cultural researches.
Geert Hostede: Five dimensions of work-related values
As mentioned earlier Geert Hofstede is one of the most outstanding and famous researchers in
the field of cross-cultural research. Hofstedes original study dates back to 1980. In that time
Hofstede was working for IBM and collected data of 116,000 IBM employees from more than 40
countries. Because the same company employed all respondents, a lot of factors could be
controlled for. All people had the same corporate culture with the same rules etc. The only thing
in which they differed was their national culture. The fact that all respondents were employed by
the same company is sometimes perceived as a negative aspect by other researchers. As a result
of the research Hofstede came up with the following five cultural dimensions.
Power distance: Power distance stands for the degree to which power is not distributed
fairly and equally among people and explains how people accept and expect this. In other
words, power distance stands for the degree of inequality from below (Hofstede, 2004).
Some countries have more power distance than others. For example power distance can
be explained as that in some countries employees always agree with their manager, no
matter if, what the manager says is right or wrong. In other countries it is accepted to
disagree with a manager.
Uncertainty Avoidance: Uncertainty avoidance explains the degree to which a culture
accepts uncertainty. It tells us if members of a certain culture feel either uncomfortable or
comfortable in unstructured situations (Hofstede, 2004). Unstructured situations are
situations different than usual. Cultures with a high degree of uncertainty avoidance try to
avoid unusual situations.
Individualism: Hofstedes third dimension measures if members of a culture are
individual. In a very individualistic culture the ties between individuals are loose and
people are expected to take care of themselves. The opposite culture is a collectivist
3

culture. In a collectivist culture people are integrated into groups (Hofstede, 2004). The
group could be seen as more important than the individual. An example of a very
individualistic culture is the U.S. culture, a very collective culture is the Chinese.
Masculinity: The dimension of masculinity vs. femininity describes how emotional roles
between the two sexes are distributed. In general it is believed that womens values differ
less among different cultures than mens values do (Hofstede, 2004). Mens values are for
example being very assertive and competitive. Womens values are for example modest
and caring. In feminine countries, women have the same caring values as the men. In
masculine countries women show some of the masculine values but not so much, this
creates a gap between the values of the two sexes (Hofstede, 2004).
Long-term orientation: This fifth dimension was added by Hofstede at a later level. It
measures the degree to which people are long-term oriented. This means if people are
living towards the future, or more thinking about today and the present (Noorderhaven,
2005).
Although Hofstedes first intention of the research was not culture, it is now viewed upon as one
of the leading cultural researches and his cultural dimensions are used worldwide. One could
argue that the research lacks validity because it was only conducted among IBM employees. As
mentioned before this can also be seen as a positive aspect of the research since a lot of external
factors are controlled for because of this.
Robert House: GLOBE
GLOBE stands for Global Leadership and Organizational Behavior Effectiveness. It is a research
focusing on culture and leadership, which was conducted by Robert House. The GLOBE project
took samples from 61 countries. The research examines national cultures in nine different
dimensions and links them to leadership behavior.
Performance orientation: This dimension describes the degree to which people are rewarded and
encouraged by an organization for performance improvement and excellence.
Future orientation: This dimension measures if and to what extent people are living towards the
future and are actively involved in future-oriented behaviors such as planning and saving.

Assertiveness: The dimension of assertiveness measures if people are assertive. Another aspect of
assertiveness includes aggression.
Power distance: House uses the same definition for power distance as Hofstede being, the degree
to which members of society accept and expect unequally distributed power.
Humane orientation: This measures the degree to which individuals are kind to others. Kind
behavior can be seen as fair, friendly, generous etc. Social collectivism: This dimension reflects
to the degree of encouraging and rewarding collective distribution of resources within
organizations. In-group collectivism: The dimension of in-group collectivism describes how
individuals express pride, loyalty etc in their organizations and families. Uncertainty avoidance:
House uses the same dimension for uncertainty avoidance as Hofstede does.
Gender egalitarianism: The last dimension that House uses describes the degree to which gender
role differences and discrimination play a role in cultures and organizations (House, 2002).
House already links culture to leadership, therefore his dimensions are specifically tailored to
research the effect of culture upon leadership. Because of the great relevance of this research it
will come back in chapter four.

1.2

Leadership and leadership styles

Leadership is an important aspect in ones life. From the day on one is born other people
determine what she is expected to do and what she is supposed not to do. Throughout life people
get to deal with different leaders telling them what to do, including parents, teachers and
managers. One can ask if a leader in one situation is also a leader in another situation. Since
every person is unique, different leaders are likely to lead people in different ways. When talking
about leadership most research focuses on the relation between a leader and his follower. This
chapter will answer the question how people perceive leadership, it will focus on the leaderfollower relation and on different leadership styles. The first part of this chapter focuses on
definitions and the perception of leadership. The second part focuses on describing four
approaches to analyze leadership. The third part will focus on different leadership styles and
explain the differences.
1.2.1

What is leadership, Leadership perception

Leadership has many forms and can be perceived in different ways, Hogan, Curphy, and Hogan
for instance, perceive leadership as when a person leads others, but state that it is important that
one does not dominate but persuade (1994). According to Gerstner and Day, it is important that
the followers perceive a leader as a role model for the group (1994). This means that the leader
should not only have the capabilities to lead the group, but should also be an example of the how
the group should behave. Furthermore Gernster and Day state that followers try to match the
leader to a prototype in their memory (1994). The followers do already have an idea of how the
leader of the group should be like and they try to match the target to that idea. Hogan et al.
discuss that the tasks of a leader differ in terms of specificity. According to them the broadest list
contains 14 categories of leader behavior which are; networking, planning and organizing,
recognizing, problem solving, managing conflicts, clarifying, informing, motivating, consulting,
supporting, team building, monitoring, developing and mentoring, delegating, and last rewarding
(1994). This means that a leader has a very wide variety of tasks and therefore the leader should
have a lot of traits. Leadership is as the name states, about leading other persons who are often
called followers. A leader should be a role model for the group he leads, this is important since
followers match the leader to a target person in their memory. As the leader is a role model for
the group he should have the aspects of a representative person of the whole group.
6

1.2.2

Types of leadership

There are many different opinions and conclusions about leadership style because of the different
ways to look at leadership. In this part the most used leadership styles will be discussed.
According to Bernard Bass there are basically two types of leaders, there is the transactional
leader and there is the transformational leader (1997). As an extension and part of the GLOBE
project Dorfman et al. (2004) came up with six different leadership styles. In the next paragraphs
the focus will be on discussing the approaches.
Transactional leadership (Bass, 1990)
The transactional leader obtains cooperation by establishing exchanges with followers. For a
transactional leader it is important to monitor the relationship between the leader and the
follower, it is called transactional because it focuses on the transaction between the leader and
the follower (Bass, 1997; Judge & Bono, 2000). One could think of rewards and punishments
given to the group by the leader. Bass describes transactional leadership according to the
following characteristics.
Contingent reward: A transactional leader rewards for effort. He/she promises rewards
for good performance, and recognizes accomplishments.
Management by exception (active): A transactional leader watches and searches for
followers that do not follow the rules and standards and takes action against this, in other
words punishment.
Passive management by exception: A transactional leader who is managing by exception
in the passive way is only intervening if the standards set by the leader or organization
are not met. In contradiction to the active managing leader, the passive one is not
searching for different behavior.
Laissez-Faire: This French saying means to let people do their own things without
interfering too much. A transactional manager does this by avoiding important decision
making and delegating responsibility to followers (Bass, 1990).
A transactional leader focuses on the outcomes of the group. He or she is not so much concerned
with the personal feelings and personal development of the subordinate. The way a transactional
leader tries to make the group achieve the goals he or the organization has set is largely
depending on rewards and punishments. People who are not behaving according to the groups
7

standards can be punished. A transactional leader can be actively searching for people deviating
from standards. He or she can also be passively managing, in this case intervention is only
needed when standards are not met.
Transformational Leadership (Bass, 1990)
The transformational leader reaches his goals by getting followers to identify with a vision that
reaches further than their own interest, he tries to transform the followers and get them to the
next stage (Bass, 1997; Judge & Bono, 2000). This leadership approach is sometimes called
charismatic leadership. Bass calls this kind of leadership, Superior leadership performance he
states that this is done be expanding the interest of followers and generating awareness and
acceptance of the purposes and mission of the group (1990). A transformational leader focuses
on the following aspects:
Charisma: Charisma in transformational leadership means providing followers with vision and a
sense of the groups mission, the leader gains respect, pride, and trust by his followers. Charisma
is one of the most important aspects in transformational leadership, and as stated earlier
transformational leadership is sometimes referred to as charismatic leadership.
Inspiration: A transformational leader communicates high expectations to his subordinates. In
order to focus efforts the leader uses symbols, furthermore he expresses important purposes in
simple ways.
Intellectual stimulation: A central aspect within transformational leadership is, stimulating
followers to think rational and solve problems carefully. Furthermore intelligence is promoted.
Individualized consideration: A transformational leader gives his subordinates personal attention
and treats each person individually. Besides giving personal attention the leader also coaches and
advises followers on an individual level (Bass, 1990).
To conclude, transformational leadership can be divided into different forms; idealized influence
meaning that a leader is a charismatic role model to his followers. Inspirational motivation refers
to making a clear and appealing vision for the followers. Intellectual stimulation is when the
leader stimulates the followers to be creative and challenge the standards. Individual

consideration involves the process of supporting the individual needs of the followers (Judge &
Bono, 2000).

1.3

Relation between culture and leadership

The focus of this thesis is to see, if there is a relation between national culture and leadership. In
chapter two, the concept of culture was studied and described as The collective programming of
the mind, which distinguishes the members of one human group from another (Hofstede, 2004).
It is interesting to see whether this programming of the mind, which is called culture, influences
us as human beings in the way we lead others. The two dominant leadership styles are the two
styles defined by Bass being, transformational and transactional leadership (1990), besides these
two leadership styles Dorfman et al (2004) came up with six different leadership styles. This
chapter examines if there is a relevant link between one or more of these styles and national
culture? Is the way of leading partially being determined by national culture? The first part of
this chapter will describe the role of culture in leadership. The second part will focus on research
conducted that links culture to leadership.
1.3.1

Role of culture

A managers national culture plays an important role in the success of multinational corporations,
because of the influence of cultural values upon leadership (Byrne & Bradley, 2007). However,
Kelley, Whatley, & Worthly argue that it is very hard to see what impact culture has on
managerial behavior (1987). They say that the hard part is to determine to what extent culture
actually impacts an individuals behavior with respect to the work place. An argument for this is
that individuals are forced to adapt to comply with the industrial standard (Kelley et al., 1987).
On the other hand leadership is a cultural phenomenon linked to the values and customs of a
group, therefore differences in leader prototypes will not be random (Gernster & Day, 1994). To
measure culture, cultural dimensions such as Hofstedes and Houses can be used, these
dimensions can then be used to match leadership aspects in searching a relation between national
culture and leadership. According to almost all researchers there is some link between national
culture and leadership, but to what extend is this link reaching?
1.3.2

Linking culture and leadership

In this paragraph a more detailed description of the role of culture will be given with the use of
conducted research studying the link of culture and leadership. A lot of researches have analyzed
the link between culture and leadership.
10

Robert House and his associates have been researching the effects of leadership in the GLOBE
project. The sample was taken from different managers with cultural backgrounds of 61
countries with a total of 17,000 respondents. House et al. linked Houses nine dimensions to
specific leadership statements (2002). With the help of questionnaires it was tested whether the
statements linked to the cultural dimensions were right. The researchers came up with the
following conclusions in their framework in the GLOBE project; cultural values affect what
leaders do. The original leaders of the firm or founders are most likely to use leader behavior,
which is common in their own culture (House et al. 2002). The founders of the organization
influence the behavior of subordinate leaders etc. by using selective management selection
criteria. According to House et al. the attributes and behaviors of leaders are in part a reflection
of the organizational practices, which are in their turn a reflection of societal cultures (2002).
Dorfman, Hanges, & Brodbeck linked the results of the outcomes of the surveys in the GLOBE
project to the six leadership styles by Dorfman et al. (2004) described in chapter three of this
thesis. They found out that the six leadership styles had different links with the dimensions of
House et al. (2002). A leadership style can have both negatively and positively related
dimensions, it can best be seen as that a certain leadership style will be preferred by a culture
with a high value of the positive dimensions and low levels of negatively related dimensions
(Dorfman et al, 2004). For example autonomous leadership will be preferred by cultures scoring
high on performance orientation and low on institutional collectivism. By linking the cultural
dimensions to leadership styles, a direct link between the two concepts is shown since the type of
culture determines which leadership styles will be preferred.
Den Hartog, House, Hanges, & Ruiz-Quintanilla in their turn processed the GLOBE research
even further, they linked cultural attributes to transformational leadership and searched for a
relation between the two. They found out that transformational leadership aspects are the same
around the world (1999). This means that transformational leadership is perceived of the same
effectiveness and meaning in most places. They do however say that it is very likely that
transformational leadership is more effective in collectivist cultures than individual cultures
(Hartog, Den et al. 1999). This is because a transactional leader focuses on the group as a whole
and the well being of others in the group, instead of just focusing on the results, just as in

11

collective cultures. Besides collectivism vs. individualism also other dimensions can be linked to
transformational leadership, for example the dimension of uncertainty avoidance.
Innovation and taking risk are aspects that transformational leaders seek, in high uncertainty
avoidant cultures these aspects are very unlikely, therefore a transformational leader is better able
to seek these aspects in low uncertainty avoidance cultures (Hartog, Den et al. 1999).
To conclude, House and associates examined 61 countries and their respective cultures and
linked the nine cultural dimensions of Robert House to specific leadership statements. House et
al. showed in their research that cultural values indeed do influence leader behavior and
leadership. Besides influencing leadership, national culture also influences organizational culture
(House et al. 2002). Dorfman et al. showed that a leadership style is closely related to the nine
cultural dimensions of House et al (2002), a leadership style can be either positively or
negatively related to a cultural dimension (Dorfman et al, 2004). Den Hartog et al. showed that
several aspects are globally perceived as important in transformational leadership. They also
showed that aspects of transformational leadership can be linked to cultural dimensions, in this
way they show that transformational leadership is more likely to occur in one culture than in
another, transformational leadership will for example be better in collectivist and low uncertainty
avoidant cultures (Hartog, Den et al. 1999).
Leadership and Hofstedes cultural dimensions
Gernster and Day conducted a research named Cross-cultural comparison of leadership
perceptions. This research is of much smaller scale than the GLOBE project of House et al. but
nevertheless interesting to include because it looks at leadership from a different angle. The main
concern of this research was finding out whether cultural aspects influence leadership
perceptions. The research compared leadership prototypes of 142 management students from
eight different countries. To identify the cultural aspects within the attributes of the different
subjects, Gernster and Day used the five work related forces by Geert Hofstede;
Power distance, Individualism/Collectivism, Uncertainty Avoidance, Masculinity/Femininity,
and Long-term Orientation. Gernster and Day say that leadership is a cultural phenomenon that
is inextricably linked to the values of a group of people (1994). The 142 subjects in the research
were all students at a university in the United States of America, but had different ethnic
12

backgrounds. The average time of the international students to have lived in the US was 2.5
years, so these students were not American. The subjects were given a questionnaire with 59
questions with attributes relevant to leadership, some examples of these attributes are; Intelligent,
decisive, educated, authoritarian, open minded, strict etc. The outcome of the questionnaires was
analyzed and matched to the national culture of the respondents, which in its turn was matched to
the five dimensions of culture by Hofstede. The results of the study show that there are reliable
differences in leadership perception and leadership among the subjects. The subjects came up
with different traits that are important in leadership. These results have implications on
international management since one must first be perceived a manager before taking on the role
and influencing others. It is therefore highly unlikely that followers will allow someone they do
not perceive as a manager, to have power over them (Gernster & Day, 1994; Hartog, Den et al,
1999).
Another study linking the cultural dimensions of Hofstede to leadership is one conducted by
Jung & Avolio, in this research the focus is on linking the dimension of collectivism vs.
individualism to transformational leadership, besides this dimension they also take in
consideration other dimensions. Transformational leadership was linked to collective cultures
because of the same findings of Den Hartog et al (1999) that is, collectivists care more about a
shared vision and group goals than individuals (Jung & Avolio, 1999). Since people in
individualist cultures are expected more to satisfy personal needs and individual goals they are
more linked to transactional leadership (Jung & Avolio, 1999). Jung and Avolio tested these
findings about individualism vs. collectivism by taking two extremes. Americans (individualistic
culture) and Chinese (Collectivist culture) were tested in transactional and transformational
leadership settings. The results were that the Americans indeed performed better and came up
with more ideas in the transactional leadership setting. It must however be noted that the ideas
generated by the Americans in the transactional setting were short-term oriented. They also
found that Americans with a transformational leader were more focused on the long-term goals.
For the Chinese, Jung and Avolio found that they performed superior in the transformational
leadership setting (1999).

13

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transformational and transactional leadership using the Multifactor Leadership Questionnaire.
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Bass, B.M., (1997) Does the Transactional- Transformational Leadership Paradigm Transcend
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Individual Differences, 13(6), 653-665
Dorfman, P.W., Hanges, P.J., & Brodbeck, F.C. (2004). Leadership and Cultural Variation: The
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Leadership, and Organizations; the GLOBE study of 62 societies. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage
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Gerstner, C.R., & Day, D.V., (1994). Cross-cultural comparison of leadership prototypes.
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leadership theories across the globe: An introduction to project GLOBE. Journal of world
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Judge, T.A., & Bono, J.E., (2000). Five-Factor Model of Personality and Transformational
Leadership. Journal of Applied Psychology, 85(5), 751-765.
Jung, D.I., & Avolio, B.J. (1999). Effects of leadership style and followers cultural orientation
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