Transformational leadership: an examination of cross-cultural differences and similarities

Abstract

<p>Success in the global marketplace depends on a manager's ability to provide leadership. Exceptional success depends on sustaining extraordinary performance. Just how do effective leaders generate such performance? Are there universal behaviours which are consistent around the world? Are there subtle differences of emphasis which vary across different country or corporate cultures? With these questions before us, we polled 1 45 senior executives in two major divisions of a global petroleum company and from its major subsidiaries around the world. They were asked to describe examples of exceptional organizational performance and to identify the key leadership behaviours which they saw as explaining or accounting for the extraordinary outcomes. Content analysis of their coded responses led to a few leadership behaviours identified as key to the instances of exceptional performance. The major finding of this research study was that the main dimensions of leadership for extraordinary performance are universal. Only a few variations in emphasis existed among six different regions of the world: America, Far East, Latin America, Southern Europe, Northern Europe and the Commonwealth. As expected, there were also some clear leadership differences, long established in the folklore of the company, associated with different corporate cultures in the two major divisions.</p>