Leadership styles and cultural values among managers and subordinates: A comparative study of four countries of the former Soviet Union, Germany, and the US

This cross-cultural study utilized the full range leadership framework developed by Bass and Avolio and Hofstede's model of culture, and compared leadership styles and cultural values of over 4,000 managerial and non-managerial employees in ten business organizations in Russia, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Germany, and the US. Regarding socio-cultural dimensions, the study found that, compared to Germany and the US, the four former USSR countries differed primarily by much lower levels of Power Distance, higher levels of Masculinity and much longer planning horizons. The results on leadership indicate that two dimensions - Contingent Reward and Inspirational Motivation - produced the highest scores in all four countries of the former USSR. Two less efficient leadership styles, Laissez-faire and Management by Exception, have received significantly higher scores in the four former USSR countries, than in the US and Germany. Finally, the study suggests that cross-cultural human resource development issues cannot be described in terms of simplified dichotomies between the East and West. For constructs measured in this study, significant differences were found not only between the two groups of countries but also between individual countries within these groups.