Leadership: Leaders, Followers, Environments

Limits on universals and the effects of culture

Considerable work remains to answer a central question regarding leadership across cultures: Do leaders and followers act differently in different nations, and if so, how? Are George Bush and Barack Obama different as leaders from Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, Hu Jintao, and Nicolas Sarkozy, and if so, how? But there are other questions as well.¹⁰⁴ How does the leadership process differ from culture to culture or region to region, for example, from China and Japan (Confucian societies, in the terminology of Hofstede and the GLOBE project) to Argentina and Republic of Congo? What kinds of leadership behaviors and characteristics are useful where?

Some scholars argue that dispositional traits, such as those measured by the Big Five, are largely unaffected by social or cultural influences. They cite studies suggesting that traits are genetically determined to a significant degree and not influenced by environmental elements.¹⁰⁵ In other words, an extrovert is an extrovert. Though this may be true, human behavior—the outward expression of a trait—involves the interaction of both the person and the environment.¹⁰⁶ Humans develop “autobiographical” identities and adapt those narratives about themselves and adjust their lives to their situations and environments. Their culture provides the basis for those adaptations and the behavioral expression of their traits. An extrovert from Hong Kong appears different from an extrovert from Argentina. ...