A comparative study of perceptions of leadership behavior

Abstract

The Leader Performance Survey (LPS) and the Leader Opinion Questionnaire (LOQ) were used in a comparative study using 188 international students at the university level, representing diverse ethnographic backgrounds, to evaluate the relationship between culture and leadership behavior. The comparative procedures were two-fold. First a cross-national or cross-cultural comparison between participants was carried out and second, a comparison was made between the two instruments used. Participants were grouped into five ethnographic regions, namely, Africa, South America, Insular Pacific, Circum-Mediterranean, and East Eurasia. While the LPS dealt with descriptive aspects of leadership behavior, the LOQ studied the prescriptive aspects of leadership behavior in terms of how the leader should behave in a given situation. The LPS provided one-hundred forty three leader performance or behavior specimens of which one hundred and eight described effective leader behavior and thirty-four described ineffective leader behavior. The LOQ provided forty items of which twenty measured the consideration dimension of leadership and twenty measured the structure dimension. The findings of the study showed that culture defined in terms of ethnographic region is not related to individuals' perceptions of ineffective leader behaviors. Culture is related to individuals' perceptions of effective leader behaviors. However, further investigation showed the influence of culture defined in terms of ethnographic region was due to the influence of other factors such as age and work experience..