Communication and Country Clusters : A Study of Language and Leadership Preferences

Abstract

This area of leadership-related communication is underresearched from the employees' perspective. In earlier research, leadership similarities across groups of countries generated a country cluster taxonomy argued to be based on country commonalities such as language similarities. The assumption is that employees in countries with similar languages will display similar preferences regarding leadership. This study examines whether these clusters can predict employees' interpersonal leadership communication preferences. Using a database of 15,000 employees in 16 countries across four country clusters, the analysis reveals that the country cluster taxonomy can be used to predict leadership preferences regarding empowering, coaching, and supervising, but not regarding general and personal communication, review of achievement, and positive feedback in the form of making people proud. Instead, six re-configured interpersonal communication clusters are presented. The results challenge an unreflected use of country clusters in international management and specifically indicate that language similarities do not imply similar communication preferences.