The Impact of National Culture on Leadership: a Case of Servant Leadership
In their conclusion of their chapter on leadership and cultural variation. Dorfman, Hanges and Brodbeck (2004, p. 711) re-iterated the pervasive question asked in the cross-cultural management literature, “Does culture influence leadership, and, if so, why and how?” The answer was partly given in Dorfman and House’s (2004) review of extant work on leadership, namely, that there is still no definitive answer since the evaluative interpretations of leadership still vary across cultures. Furthermore, Dorfman et al. (2004, p. 709) emphatically rejected the convergence hypothesis by suggesting that modernization may in fact contribute to societies “striving to preserve their cultural heritage” (Also see Blyton, 2001). Notwithstanding the Global Leadership and Organizational Behaviour Effectiveness (GLOBE; House, Hanges, Javidan, Dorfman & Gupta, 2004) project’s exemplary approach of creating a cultural-level theory of leadership, which indicated that culture does influence leadership in a number of dimensions, we are still left with a number of open questions regarding the why and how of variations that was found among cultures concerning leadership behaviors and perceptions of what contributes as an effective leader. This study extends the GLOBE study of 62 societies (House et al., 2004) in that we adopt implicit leadership theory (e.g., Lord, Foti & Phillips, 1982) to acknowledge the fact that the concept of leadership can encapsulate a diverse range of meanings and from different points of reference. We investigate an emerging leadership construct (SL) across two societal cultures to accomplish three main objectives. The first is to explore whether SL is practiced in Australia and Indonesia. Second, if it is practiced, then to what degree does culture influence SL in Australia and Indonesia. Finally, this paper will provide ideas and theoretical discussions concerning “why and how” evaluative interpretations of leadership still vary across cultures as posed by