cultural influences on leadership

‘ What are the differences of managers’ leadership styles between the Western and Non-Western cultures ?’

Masculinity (MAS): refers to the distribution of roles and values between the genders. The women in feminine countries have the same modest, caring values as the men; in the masculine countries they are somewhat assertive and competitive, but not as much as the men, so that these countries show a gap between men 's values and women 's values. Uncertainty Avoidance Index (UAI): a society 's tolerance for uncertainty and ambiguity.

Nordic countries exhibit low masculinity, with Sweden and Norway scoring 5 and 8 respectively. Again, Anglo countries, Japan, and European countries such as Switzerland, Austria and Hungary have high masculinity scores.

The masculinity versus femininity dimension does not biologically compare differences between men and women, but focuses on “gender roles”. Masculinity stands for achievement, assertiveness, competition, recognition, challenge, domination, power, toughness and alike. While femininity stands for tenderness, cooperation, security, relationships and care for the living environment. An individual could for instance be both masculine and feminine at the same time, while the culture in a country is either predominantly masculine or predominantly feminine because the majority of the population is either being more masculine or more feminine (Hofstede, Hofstede & Minkov, 2010).

Geert Hofstede developed the widely applied Hofstede’s cultural dimensions, which mainly focuses on how different countries with different cultural backgrounds handle different anthropological problems that occur in cross-cultural communication (Hofstede 1980). The first five Hofstede’s dimensions will be discussed in following paragraphs. It should be clear that there is no good and bad between two elements in each dimension since every culture has its unique features and ways to function.

This is the degree in which all the tough qualities such as assertiveness and success competition and performance are associated with men in the society. The association of such roles with men as opposed to the soft characteristics such as warm personal relationships softness as well as tenderness is connected with women in the society (Geert-hofstede.com, 2016). Since women roles and men roles differ in different countries, it is definite that this is one of the aspects or dimensions that define the cultural complexity of the different societies. This element measures the concern with possessive values of advancing career goals, salary and respectability as it usually reflects the vanity of masculinity. Masculinity represents quantity while

Uncertainty Avoidance Index (UAI) deals with a society's tolerance for uncertainty and ambiguity; it ultimately refers to man's search for Truth. It indicates to what extent a culture programs its members to feel either uncomfortable or comfortable in unstructured situations. Unstructured situations are novel, unknown, surprising, different from usual. Uncertainty avoiding cultures try to minimize

Leadership is a process of influencing subordinates. Leadership behaviors differ in different cultures. As a result, leaders of international organizations should be aware of cultural differences. With so many organizations operating in a multinational environment today, it is easy to assume that the increasing connection among countries, and the globalization of corporations, would result in cultural differences disappearing or diminishing. Scholars and practitioners have identified transformational leadership and organizational culture as important factors that influence the development of the learning organization. Yet, few studies have empirically examined the impact of cultural differences on leadership. This article is a summary of the study of leadership in different cultures. The globalization of many organizations and the increasing interdependence of nations make the understanding of culture and its influence on leadership increasingly important.

The result from the comparison suggests the similarity of two countries reside on Masculinity versus feminity. Both scored high above 60 (see Appendix A for statistics), China and the U.S are the country both favor masculinity, or males dominate matters

Geert Hofstede is a Dutch social psychologist. When he was an IBM employee between 1967 and1973, he developed a theory that helped form a framework for cross-cultural communication. This theory was known as Hofstede’s Cultural Dimensions Theory. It describes the effects of a society’s culture on the values of its members and how these values relate to behavior using a structure derived from factor analysis.

Hofstede’s cultural dimensions theory is a framework for cross cultural communication which describes the effects of a society’s culture. Greet Hofstede came up with six basic issues that society needs in order to organise itself these are called dimensions of culture.Each of them has been expressed on a scale that runs roughly from 0 to 100.The six dimension model of national culture are given below

My underlying cultural assumptions about leadership is the Servant Leadership is the most effective source of leadership (Plueddeman, 2012, p. 121). Egocentric individualism leadership leads to unnecessary problems because they lead for personal and selfish gain (Plueddeman, 2012, p. 121). Ultimately, “Jesus described bad shepherds as those who abandon the sheep when the wolf comes, because they care nothing for the sheep” (Plueddeman, 2012, p. 121). Thus, it is quite apparent that many shepherds appear to not be “good leaders because they primarily care for themselves” (Plueddeman, 2012, p. 121-122). Furthermore, I consider family-centric leadership to be a highly valued underlying cultural assumption about leadership because these leaders are “willing to sacrifice their own lives for the sake of their relatives” (Plueddeman, 2012, p. 122). Thus, “the self becomes intertwined with others” and follows a leadership style that is “caring, sacrificial and paternalistic” (Plueddeman, 2012, p. 122).

What if I told you culture has a bigger role in your life than you think? Well according to Gerard Hendrik Hofstede, a Dutch social psychologist, culture is an enormous factor when it comes to analyzing a society’s values and behavior. Hofstede traveled all over the globe and interviewed several employees on their values and with that he developed an immense database that analyzed the ways cultures differ from one another. Hofstede’s culture dimensions theory consists of six dimensions: power distance index, individualism vs. collectivism, uncertainty avoidance index, masculinity vs. femininity, long-term orientation vs. short-term orientation, and indulgence vs. restraint. Culture is more than one’s heritage; culture determines and justifies a society’s behavior and values.

Hofstede’s cultural dimensions theory is a framework for cross cultural communication which describes the effects of a society’s culture. Greet Hofstede came up with six basic issues that society needs in order to organise itself these are called dimensions of culture.Each of them has been expressed on a scale that runs roughly from 0 to 100.The six dimension model of national culture are given below

Hofstede defines culture as the ‘collective programming of the mind’ which distinguishes the members of one group or category of people from another (Rees & Edwards, 2011). There are five dimensions proposes by Hofstede which are power distance, uncertainty avoidance,