Interpersonal leadership across cultures: a historical exposé and a research agenda

Abstract

Culture has a profound impact on interpersonal leadership, which refers to an everyday type of leadership involving leader interaction with subordinates. Typical interpersonal leadership actions include empowering, providing support and development, directing, following-up and giving feedback, as well as communicating and encouraging collaboration in teamwork. In early comparative leadership studies, variation in leadership behavior across countries was assumed to be due to cultural differences. This assumption was later empirically supported by cross-cultural leadership research. As leadership behaviors in multi-country studies did not demonstrate similar associative patterns regarding interpersonal leadership in different countries, the use of mainstream single-country derived leadership meta-categories was invalidated. New reliable, robust and culturally endorsed interpersonal leadership dimensions were developed and measured in large-scale, multi-country studies. These emerged from different perspectives: that of leader-centeredness measuring ideal leadership prototypes, and that of employee-centeredness, where subordinate preferences for interpersonal leadership are essential to granting the leader the “License to Lead.” Deliberations on fundamental issues in studying interpersonal leadership across national borders in combination with contemporary trends, such as distance leadership, global virtual teams and intersectionality, led to the formulation of research implications and a research agenda for a better understanding of interpersonal leadership in the future.

Keywords:

• Comparative leadership
• cross-cultural leadership
• cultural dimensions
• ideal leadership prototypes
• interpersonal leadership

Leadership continues to fascinate us, especially leadership by visionary leaders who move mountains with thousands of followers, or those at the forefront of solving world enigmas, tackling social challenges or “wicked problems,” as well as offering support and solutions in times of global crises. But there is also the less-recognized and less-spoken-of “everyday” leadership, where someone is responsible for organizing activities and leading others to make them happen. Early examples of such “interpersonal leadership” relationships could be that of parent and child, or teacher and pupil, and as adults at work we, for example, find ourselves in manager and subordinate, or team leader and team member relationships (Zander 1997). Interpersonal leadership is all around us, almost wherever we choose to look, at places of work, education, or even in recreation. Think of your yoga teacher this morning—did everybody in the room follow the instructor’s lead? And as to your global project team at work, did the team members carry out the activities that you as a team leader had assigned them? Most probably the answer to those two questions is yes, or at least, yes as much as possible given participant competence and capacity (and flexibility!).

Interpersonal leadership typically involves communication and tasking others with work, empowering and participating in decision-making, follow-up and giving feedback, providing support, development and taking an interest in others’ careers, as well as encouraging collaboration with colleagues and teamwork (Zander 1997). Such everyday actions and interactions are precisely what Alvesson and Sveningsson (2003) thought worthy of further study, after having heard middle and senior managers’ “…accounts of their work in ways that are more in line with the mundane than with the grandiose and heroic leadership talk found, not only in business press and among top-management but also in the more academic literature” (1437). Although we can think of interpersonal leadership as a taken-for-granted everyday element of working life, this does not necessarily make it mundane in the sense of being uninteresting. On the contrary, it suggests that detailed examination is warranted to more fully understand the basic fabric of human endeavor. After all, interpersonal leadership is vital for coordination and collaboration of activities toward a common goal, and, as such, has been and still is fundamental to human survival and society (Koski, Xie, and Olson 2015; Pietraszewski 2020; Zander 1997). Moreover, as enthusiastically noted by George Bradt, a senior contributor to Forbes (2020), interpersonal leadership is about leading other people, and the challenge is how to enable and empower them to do their absolute best to realize a shared purpose and reach those common goals.

Despite coordination and collaboration’s erstwhile existence and criticality to human action, interpersonal leadership does not take on the same guise from one country to another. Available literature provides ample empirical evidence of multi-country variation, linked to cultural explanations. The overall ambition in this article is to further our understanding of interpersonal leadership across cultures, and—after a discussion of past and contemporary research conducted in multiple-country studies—set a research agenda of where future research should be headed.

I commence by briefly introducing what can be perceived as the conceptual background of interpersonal leadership in mainstream single-country studies, and by explaining why this conceptualization cannot simply be used untouched in multi-country studies. In a historical exposé of multiple-country leadership research, homing in on the type of leader-follower (superior-subordinate, team leader-team member) interaction and actions typical for interpersonal leadership, I also identify empirical roots to interpersonal leadership. The first batch of studies that I review compares and contrasts leadership across countries. These studies hypothesize (but do not test) that the identified differences could be explained by cultural variation. The second batch of cross-cultural leadership studies that I review examine whether differences across countries are indeed linked to national culture. From there I move to two sets of leadership measures, comparable across countries and culturally endorsed from the outset, in the forms of ideal leadership prototypes (House et al. 2004) and interpersonal leadership (Zander 1997). In the discussion, the viability of cross-cultural leadership research is addressed, and an agenda outlined for a way forward for future research on interpersonal leadership, before wrapping up the article with concluding reflections.

A historical exposé of interpersonal leadership research

Interpersonal leadership, with its presence in our everyday life and importance for, simply put, getting things done with the help of others, is not commonly referred to as such.¹ This is surprising, as an interaction between leader and follower, superior and subordinate, team leader and team member is fundamental to collaboration and coordination of human action. On-line searching for “interpersonal leadership” as a distinct concept will not result in many hits.

One of the few exceptions, apart from publications based on my own work (see, e.g., Zander 1997; Zander 2002; Zander 2005; Zander and Romani 2004), is an article by Lamm, Carter, and Lamm (2016), who set out to integrate earlier literature when theorizing about interpersonal leadership. Drawing on comprehensive works by Bass and Bass (2008), Fleishman et al. (1991), and Yukl, Gordon, and Tabe (2002), Lamm, Carter, and Lamm (2016) list leadership behaviors that they classify as interpersonal leadership: delegating, empowering and promoting collective decision-making; recognizing, supporting and developing others; understanding, caring and consideration of others; facilitating and encouraging teamwork; and communication and information dissemination.² Most of the behaviors identified by Lamm, Carter, and Lamm (2016) fall into what has earlier been seen as typical for “people- and relationship-oriented” leadership, whereas more “task-oriented” leadership behaviors would include: directing and supervising work, requiring that subordinates follow rules and procedures, follow-up and providing negative feedback (such as criticizing poor work), but could also entail having a goal-orientated focus.

People-oriented and task-oriented leadership are two well-recognized categorizations strongly rooted in research based on single-country studies (mostly mainstream research in the USA). Other conceptualizations, under other labels (e.g., task- vs. relation-oriented leadership, initiating structure vs. consideration, production-centered vs. people-centered, or directive vs. supportive) largely correspond in definition and content with the people- and task-orientation dichotomy. Yukl, Gordon, and Tabe (2002) empirically examined, analyzed and integrated half a century of leadership behavior research on what makes a leader effective. Relations-oriented and task-oriented leadership were in Yukl, Gordon, and Tabe's (2002) hierarchical taxonomy of leadership behavior joined by “change-oriented leadership,” which essentially built on transformational and charismatic leadership.³

Turning to more recent integrative reviews, we still find these three leadership categories; relation-oriented, task-oriented and change-oriented (Bormann, Rowold, and Bormann 2016; Inceoglu et al. 2018; Kaluza et al. 2020),⁴ and they remain strongly linked to leadership effectiveness (Yukl 2012; Yukl et al. 2019). But, after a prolific increase in the number of leadership categorizations during the 2000s and the 2010s, scholars were worried about conceptual redundancy, that there would be a lack of discriminant validity. The concern that new constructs⁵ were too similar to existing ones, as in the case of transformational and charismatic leadership (included in the change-oriented leadership category), were theoretically argued and statistically demonstrated to be too close to participatory, empowering and supportive types of leadership behavior (Bormann and Rowold 2018; Van Knippenberg and Sitkin 2013).

Today, relations-oriented and task-oriented behaviors still remain conceptually and empirically distinct categories of leadership, each consisting of a set of separate leadership behaviors. However, these categories have predominantly been derived, surveyed and validated in single-country studies. Although almost the same bifurcation has emerged over and over again in single-country studies, leadership behaviors may, however, not be perceived in a similar associative manner from one country to another. This inhibits configuration into the relations-oriented and task-oriented constructs when carrying out multi-country studies.

Throughout this article, and for the sake of simplicity, I use the term “leadership behaviors” although it is rare that actual behavior is studied. Instead, it is leadership beliefs, attitudes, ideals, expectations, as well as perceived and preferred leadership behavior that have been in focus. In the historical review that follows, I examine and identify empirical roots by querying which types of behaviors of interpersonal leadership have been found to vary across countries in the extant literature. I begin with the description of multi-country comparative leadership studies carried out from the 1960s to the mid-1990s, and then proceed with the description of cross-cultural research from mid-1990s and onwards. In the review, I concentrate on articles that are based on multi-country studies. To properly account for differences in national cultures that have the potential to yield convincing results it is important to include many more than two countries (Bond and Smith 2018), as argued by Smith, Peterson, and Schwartz (2002, 189): “culture-level studies must include an adequately representative range of currently existing nations.”

In Banai’s (2010) review of Jean Boddewyn’s contribution to comparative management he accounts for three fundamental questions raised by Boddewyn (1965) when carrying out comparative management studies: (1) compared to what?, (2) compared in relation to what?, and (3) compared for what?. The comparative leadership review below focuses on studies that are comparative across countries, identifying variables that compare different aspects of interpersonal leadership, with the purpose of figuring out whether they can be used in multi-country studies and whether they vary across countries.

Multi-country comparative leadership

Studies carried out in the 1960s and 1970s assumed a bi-polar view of leadership with autocratic-directive practices as one end-pole, and democratic-participative management at the opposite end and were carried out in five to 14 countries in the Americas, Asia, Europe and the Middle East (Al-Jafary and Hollingsworth 1983; Bass et al. 1979; Haire, Ghiselli, and Porter 1966; Redding and Casey 1976). Leadership differences across countries or groups of countries were reported in all studies. To measure bi-polar leadership, tasks such as the use of authority, direction, influence, participation in decision-making, rewards, and sanctions were examined in these studies. A methodological weakness when using these measures of bi-polar leadership styles is that respondents scored highly on preferences for a participatory leadership style on some questions and on preferences for autocratic leadership style on others, but not fully adhering to one type or the other across countries.

Toward the end of the 1970s and into the mid-1980s, employee democracy and participation was suddenly the center of attention among scholars and practitioners alike. Employee participation in decision-making, the decision-making methods that managers use, and the degrees of industrial democracy in terms of employee influence systems were topics of interest in several multi-country comparative studies (Bottger, Hallein, and Yetton 1985; Heller and Wilpert 1981; IDE 1976, 1979; Sadler and Hofstede 1976; Schaupp 1978). Moving away from bi-polar leadership studies, scholars developed scales to depict a directive to participative continuum of decision-making. These scales typically span from “the leader alone makes the decision and tells the subordinates” via “the leader explains the decision to subordinates” and “the leader consults subordinates prior to decision-making” to that the decision is made “jointly or in consensus with subordinates.” A few studies (Heller and Wilpert 1981; IDE 1976, Industrial Democracy in Europe International Research Group (IDE) 1979 studies) added a fifth alternative to the scale, namely that the decision is “delegated to the subordinates,” while Bottger, Hallein, and Yetton (1985) added group-based decision-making alternatives to the scale. All of these studies reported differences across the four to 12 countries included in the surveys. Respondents were sampled in Argentina and Brazil in South America, the Australia-Pacific region, Europe, and North America, as well as in India, Israel, and Japan. The degree of participation in decision-making varied with the type of issue to be resolved. Long-term strategic decisions, for instance, included less participation from subordinates than decision-making directly related to their own work. Research had moved from the earlier bi-polar view to a more nuanced description of participation levels along a continuum. By using more detailed response alternatives, a clearer picture emerged of how participation policies, practices and preferences varied across countries.

The work by Likert (1961, 1967), originally developed in the United States and aimed at identifying country level “management systems” that influence leadership practices, was also put to use in multi-country research. To identify which of the four Likert systems: (1) exploitative authoritative, (2) benevolent authoritative, (3) consultative, and (4) participative⁶ characterizes a country, scores from a set of statements on leadership, decision-making, goal-setting, motivation and communication were added together. For example, Al-Jafary and Hollingsworth (1983) identified a management system for the Arabian Gulf region (based on responses from four countries) and compared it to that identified for the United States. One problem with using Likert’s four management systems was that countries with significantly different scores across statements still ended up having the same “system.” These studies suffer from similar methodological difficulties as the early bi-polar studies. However, an example provided by Pavett and Morris (1995) demonstrates how the Likert’s four authoritative-participation systems measures can be used to make meaningful comparisons due to the research design selected by the authors. The degree of employee participation could be compared across five countries due to fact that the factory plants were owned by the same multinational company. Pavett and Morris (1995) found that the degree of participation displayed vast differences across the Italian, Mexican, Spanish, American, and English plants, despite being set up and managed in the same way by their US owner.

Tannenbaum et al. (1974), with a follow-up project headed by Tannenbaum and Rozgonyi (1986), embarked on a unique research design to investigate participation in decision-making. Tannenbaum et al. (1974) studied organizations in five countries that had explicitly declared to have management systems based on different degrees of participation in decision-making. The study was carried out from a subordinate perspective, and questions were asked about both actual and ideal levels of participation as well as authority and influence over people and activities. As hypothesized they identified that the Kibbutz in Israel and the Yugoslav plants were more participative than the plants in the USA and Austria, while the Italian plants were the least participative. However, the findings also demonstrated that even in organizations identified as highly participative, authority and influence was hierarchically distributed. Another unexpected finding was that participation in the form of inviting in employees’ ideas and suggestions was present in firms without systematic participatory practices, but not so in firms that actually had employee participation systems in place.

In sum, my review of comparative multi-country studies of leadership between the 1960s and mid-1990s (see Table 1), results in three critical observations. First, that there were difficulties in using leadership constructs derived in single-country studies in other countries, for example, the bipolar autocratic-directive versus democratic-participative management practices, or the four “country systems.” Non-consistent response to questions used to measure each different construct pattern across countries led to both low validity and low reliability, resulting in Smith et al.'s (1992) recommendation for identify leadership measures that are comparable across countries from the onset. Second, almost all studies included participation in decision-making as well as other aspects of interpersonal leadership such as authority, directing, influence, rewards, sanctions, goal-setting, motivation and communication.

Table 1. Comparative interpersonal leadership studies mid-1960s to the mid-1990s.

Authors^a	Countries included in the study	Interpersonal leadership type of measures
Haire, Ghiselli, and Porter (1966)	3,641 Managers in 14 countries (Argentina, Belgium, Chile, Denmark England, France, Germany, Italy, India, Japan, Norway, Spain, Sweden, and USA)	Democratic-participative vs. autocratic-directive leadership practices measured by assumptions and attitudes about: participation in decision-making, directing, instructions & information, rewards & punishment (e.g., no promotion)
Tannenbaum et al. (1974)	1,600 Employees in 5 countries (Austria, Israel, Italy, Yugoslavia, and USA)	Participative vs. authoritative-directive leadership practices measured by actual and ideal attitudes and behavior about: influence, participation in decision-making, interpersonal participation in decision-making (solicit and use subordinate opinions & suggestions), rewards and sanctions
Redding and Casey (1976)	1,000 Managers in 8 Asian countries (Hong Kong, Indonesia, Japan, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, South Vietnam, and Thailand)	Democratic-participative vs. autocratic-directive leadership practices. Replication of Haire, Ghiselli, and Porter (1966) study
Sadler and Hofstede (1976)	3,073 Employees in 6 countries (Australia, Brazil, France, Germany, Japan, and UK)	Four leadership decision-making styles from “leader decides and tells subordinates,” “leaders’ decides and explains,” “consults subordinate before decision-making” to “joint decision-making with subordinates” based on Tannenbaum and Schmidt (1973)
IDE (1979)	997 Employees in 12 countries (Belgium, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Great Britain, Italy, Israel, Netherlands, Norway, Sweden, and Yugoslavia)	Perceived and preferred decision-making method on a scale from: “subordinates not involved,” “subordinates informed,” “opinions given by subordinates,” “subordinates’ opinion taken into account,” “equal weight in decision-making” to “subordinate’s own decision”
Schaupp (1978)	800 Employees in 8 countries (Argentina, Canada, France, (West) Germany, India, Japan, Netherlands, and United Kingdom)	Perceived and preferred decision-making method on a scale from: from “leaders’ own decision,” “leaders decide but explain to subordinates” , “leaders consult subordinates before decision-making,” to “consensus decision-making if possible”
Bass et al. (1979)	1,046 Managers from 12 national groupings (Belgium, Britain, [Germany and Austria data pooled], France, Iberia [Spanish and Portuguese data pooled], India, Italy, Japan, Latin America, the Netherlands, Nordic countries [Danish, Finnish, Norwegian and Swedish data pooled], and USA)	Democratic-participative vs. authoritarian-directive leadership were actual and ideal attitudes and behavior measured on four scales, each on a different topic: (1) use of authority in getting things done; (2) manipulation versus participation, (3) concern for the welfare of subordinates, and (4) task versus human relation concerns
Heller and Wilpert (1981)	1,500 Managers in 8 countries (France, Great Britain, (West) Germany, Israel, Netherlands, Spain, Sweden, and USA)	The “influence-participation continuum” decision-making methods measured on a scale: from “leaders’ own decision,” via “leaders decide but explain to subordinates,” “leaders consult subordinates before decision-making,” “joint decision-making with subordinates” to “delegation of decision-making to subordinates”
Al-Jafary and Hollingsworth (1983)	381 Managers in 4 countries in the Arabian Gulf Region (Bahrain, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and United Arab Emirates) plus USA	Autocratic vs. participative leadership systems using Likert’s four systems; (1) exploitative authoritative, (2) benevolent authoritative, (3) consultative, and (4) participative (based on questions on leadership, decision-making, goal-setting, motivation and communication)
Bottger, Hallein, and Yetton (1985)	140 Managers in executive education from 4 geographical areas (Australia, Africa, Papua-New Guinea, Pacific islands)	Decision-making methods on a participation continuum including both individual and group-based alternatives: “leaders’ own decision based on own information,” “leaders decide with information from subordinates,” “leaders solicit ideas and suggestions from individual subordinates before decision-making,” “leaders solicit ideas and suggestions from groups of subordinates before decision-making,” to “group decision-making, leader acts as chair in the discussion”
Tannenbaum and Rozgonyi (1986)	6 Countries (Bulgaria, Germany, Hungary, Ireland, Mexico, and Romania)	Participative vs. authoritative-directive leadership practices Replication of Tannenbaum et al. (1974) with other countries
Pavett and Morris (1995)	180 Managers in 5 countries (Italy, Mexico, Spain, UK and USA)	Degree of participation using Likert’s four systems: (1) exploitative authoritative, (2) benevolent authoritative, (3) consultative, and (4) participative (based on questions on leadership, decision-making, goal-setting, motivation and communication)

^a Publications listed in chronological order of article publication.

Third, the identified variation in interpersonal leadership-related attitudes, assumptions, beliefs and behavior across country borders was posited to be due to culture, but not tested. This was instead done in the years to follow, reviewed in the next batch of studies that concentrate on cross-cultural leadership in multi-country research projects.

Cross-cultural leadership

From the mid-1980s and into the mid-1990s comparative leadership research was characterized by a growing concern about the implications of using instruments developed in one country for mapping leadership styles in multi-country studies. A group of international scholars launched a large-scale project to test leadership measures used in a Japanese research program (Misumi 1985) in other countries (see, e.g., Smith et al. 1989; Smith et al. 1992). The early Lewin and Lippitt (1938) and Lewin, Lippett, and White’s (1939) research had served as a starting point for what became a systematic interdisciplinary research program that lasted for 30 years in Japan and led to the development of the Japanese-based Performance-Maintenance (PM) leadership theory (Misumi and Peterson 1985).

“Performance” and “Maintenance” in the PM-theory are similar to, but not the same as, the task-oriented and people-oriented categorizations of leadership. The findings from PM research in Japan showed that general leadership functions differed from specific leadership practices that varied depending on the investigated organizational context. Misumi and Peterson (1985) thought that this combination of general and specific leadership behaviors could be applicable in other parts of the world and initiated a large-scale research project. The researchers (see, e.g., Peterson, Smith, and Tayeb 1993; Smith et al. 1989; Smith et al. 1992)⁷ involved in the “Western arm” of the Misumi-based research project found that not only did the specific leadership behaviors, but also the general functions included in the Maintenance and Performance, vary across countries. For example, questions took on a different meaning across countries when the researchers analyzed the Performance category. The planning-oriented questions did not associate with the pressure-oriented questions (e.g., the use of supervision, rules, regulations, and follow-up of work) in the same way in other countries as they had done in Japan. The Performance measure was therefore split into two categories “Planning-P” and “Pressure-P,” where “Pressure-P” was found to vary greatly across countries. Smith et al. (1992) noted this with interest as at that time supervision, rules and similar practices were no longer investigated in “Western” research. One of the conclusions in the research group was the need to develop leadership categorizations that enabled comparisons of leadership similarities and differences across countries.

From the mid-90s the amount of research on leadership in a cross-cultural context had skyrocketed (Dickson, den Hartog, and Mitchelson 2003). From this surge in leadership studies I identified three streams examining leadership across multiple countries in novel ways. In a first stream, cultural dimensions were used to make predictions or provide detailed cultural analysis (see, e.g., Banai and Reisel 2007; Dorfman et al. 1997; Eylon and Au 1999; Lindell and Arvonen 1996). In the second stream, cultural dimensions were used to empirically test and confirm that culture was linked to leadership (see, e.g., Ardichvili and Kuchinke 2002; Bochner and Hesketh 1994; Glazer 2006; Newman and Nollen 1996; Offermann and Hellmann 1997). In the third stream, researchers drew on new approaches such as using events or scenarios to study leadership (Fu et al. 2004; Smith et al. 1998; Smith, Peterson, and Schwartz 2002; Zander et al. 2011; Zander et al. 2020).

In the first stream of studies, cultural dimensions were used to develop predictions and analyze results. In the second stream of studies, existing measures of cultural dimensions were used to test whether there was an empirical link between leadership and culture. Hofstede’s (1984) four original dimensions, namely power distance,⁸ uncertainty avoidance, individualism versus collectivism, masculinity versus femininity, have been put to extensive use in the field of international business in general (see reviews by Kirkman, Lowe, and Gibson 2006; Rapp, Bernardi, and Bosco 2010; Taras, Kirkman, and Steel 2010) as well as in studies in cross-cultural leadership in particular. For example, Lindell and Arvonen (1996) studied task-oriented, employee-oriented, and development-oriented leadership in Latin-European and Nordic European countries, as well as in Hungary, and found that power distance, uncertainty avoidance, and masculinity were helpful in understanding across-country variations in leadership.

Similarly, in a study on effective leadership carried out in Japan, Korea, Mexico, Taiwan and the USA by Dorfman et al. (1997), Hofstede’s (1984) power distance and individualism-collectivism dimensions were used to predict and analyze managers’ and professionals’ responses to questions on leadership. Charismatic leadership, supportive leadership, leader contingent reward, participative leadership, directive leadership, and leader contingent punishment were all found to differ across countries, with directive leadership varying the most. The style of leadership also varied in its impact on job performance, where the first three types mentioned above were found to have a positive effect on performance in all studied countries, while the latter three differed in positive and negative impacts among countries (Dorfman et al. 1997). In a study of participative decision-making, based on an experimental design, involving Canadian, East Asian and North European MBA students with full-time or part-time work experience,⁹ Eylon and Au (1999) found that participants’ cultural background was related to them being empowered. Students from low power distance cultures performed similarly whether empowered or not, while students from high power distance countries did not perform as well when empowered as when not empowered.

Banai and Reisel (2007) based their study on culturally developed hypotheses. Leader support in six countries (Cuba, Germany, Hungary, Israel, Russia, and the United States) was measured by items such as “provide opportunity for individual initiative,” “reward good job performance,” “emphasize performance evaluations,” and “employees’ opportunity to grow to capture subordinate’s perception of leader support”. Additionally, the authors measured task identity, job feedback, job autonomy, task significance and task variety, where, for example, one of the items queries about positive feedback: “Do managers [or coworkers] let you know how well you are doing on the job?”. Banai and Reisel (2007) found that leader support (or the lack thereof) could predict feelings of alienation in differing cultural environments. Leader’s support was more important in Cuba, Hungary and Russia, than in Germany, Israel and the USA.

Moving on from earlier years’ contention that any variation detected across countries could be due to culture, a second stream of studies began to test whether that was actually the case and produced empirical evidence of significant links between culture and leadership. Mostly, the analysis was conducted by using Hofstede’s (1984) cultural dimensions, but also other cultural dimensions such as those developed by Laurent (1983), Trompenaars (1993),¹⁰ Schwartz (1994), and later, cultural dimensions developed by Maznevski et al. (2002) and House et al. (2004) were put to use. Some early examples of how interpersonal leadership type of tasks are associated with culture were provided by Bochner and Hesketh (1994), who found that Hofstede’s power distance dimension was related to superior-subordinate communication, decision-making and supervision in 28 countries. Offermann and Hellmann (1997) mapped how power distance was negatively associated with leader communication, delegation, and team building, while uncertainty avoidance was positively related to less delegation and more leader control across 39 national cultures. Newman and Nollen (1996) studied management practices (e.g., employee participation, policies and direction, and rewards system) in 18 countries in Asia and Europe and found that these were empirically linked to Hofstede’s (1984) cultural dimensions, including the fifth dimension of long-term versus short-term orientation (Hofstede 1991 ). Notably, financial results were higher when management practices were congruent with national culture (Newman and Nollen 1996). Ardichvili and Kuchinke (2002) studied management by exception, inspirational motivation, intellectual stimulation, individual consideration, contingent reward, charismatic leadership, and laissez-faire leadership in Russia, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Germany, and the US and found significant links with Hofstede’s cultural dimensions. They emphasize that there are not only differences between Russia, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Germany and the US but also between the four countries within the former USSR. Ardichvili and Kuchinke (2002) attempted to study transformational and transaction leadership (and laissez-faire leadership) but found that these leadership constructs did not hold together and suffered from poor validity across the countries in the study.

Glazer (2006), similarly to Banai and Reisel (2007), studied leader support, but she empirically explored whether subordinate perceptions were linked to cultural dimensions. In her study of 19 countries across five geographic regions she found that “supervisor emotional support,” measured by the following two items: “providing you with the support you need to do a quality job,” and “treating you with respect as an individual,” were positively related to Schwartz’ (1994) cultural dimension of “autonomy.” Autonomy is highly valued in the Anglo countries and Western Europe, but less so in Asia and Eastern Europe where instead Schwartz (1994) “conservatism” is highly endorsed.

The third stream of studies, using events and scenarios, identified significant links between culture and leadership. In the Smith et al. (1998) 23 country-study of disagreements, organizational critical incidents were used to describe two different types of disagreements. The authors measured how these were handled and found that they were related to Hofstede’s power distance and individualism dimensions. There was a stronger reliance by superiors on subordinates when handling disagreements in low power distance countries (and reliance on superior’s own experience in individualist countries), whereas in collectivist countries superiors relied more on formal rules and procedures when settling disagreements (Smith et al. 1998). In another event-handling study carried out in 47 countries, two of the studied situations, typical in almost any organization within any nation, focused on subordinates as managers’ source of guidance (Smith, Peterson, and Schwartz 2002). Subordinate participative-oriented guidance sources were employed by those who endorsed Hofstede’s (1984, 2001) high individualism, and low power distance and femininity, as well as those who endorsed Schwartz’ (1994) autonomy, egalitarianism, harmony dimensions, which, according to Smith, Peterson, and Schwartz (2002), is a combination more typical for Western Europe than for the USA. Overall, Smith, Peterson, and Schwartz (2002) found that power distance and Schwartz’ (1994) mastery dimension provide the most concise estimate of superior reliance on hierarchical sources, and, consequently, they were able to predict vertical relationships, but had less success in predicting lateral relationships. These findings remind us of culture’s importance in superior-subordinate relationships.

Fu et al. (2004), using scenarios in 12 countries, tested and found empirical support for a link between managers’ perceived effectiveness of tactics used to influence subordinates (as well as superiors and peers) and House et al.'s (1999) cultural measures of uncertainty avoidance and in-group collectivism. Similarly, also using scenarios, Zander et al. (2011) found that leaders’ action choices varied across the 17 studied countries. Three scenarios (out of six) described interpersonal leadership-type of situations involving decision-making, rewarding, and empathizing situations.¹¹ With few exceptions, the selected action alternatives varied across countries for each situation regardless of whether the responding MBA students (with full-time and part-time work experience) had responded in their mother tongue or in English, suggesting a culturally primed leadership action. The claim that culture affects leader action choices was further supported by Zander et al. (2020) who found the choices to be empirically linked to House et al.'s (2004) culturally endorsed leadership dimensions in meaningful ways.

A few observations are derived from the review (see Table 2). First, a construct validity problem, similar to that identified in the comparative leadership studies, exists where examined leadership behaviors do not associate with each other in the same way in different countries. This stresses the importance of identifying interpersonal leadership (behaviors, beliefs, attitudes and expectations) measures that are comparable across countries from the outset of the research project. Second, as leadership is found to be linked to culture, it is important that newly developed leadership measures are culturally endorsed before putting them into use in multi-country studies.

Table 2. Cross-cultural leadership studies from the 1990s and onwards.

Authors^a	Countries included in the study	Interpersonal leadership type of measures	Cultural endorsement^b
Smith et al. (1989) Smith et al. (1992) Peterson, Smith, and Tayeb (1993)	1,177 Employees from six electronic assembly plants in 4 countries (Great Britain, Hong Kong, Japan, and USA)	Misumi’s Performance Maintenance Leadership—focus on subordinate performance vs. maintaining good relations (maintenance)	By research design and questionnaire development cross-cultural testing of the generality of the leadership measures
Bochner and Hesketh (1994)	265 Employees of 28 different nationalities working at an Australian Bank	Communication Decision-making Supervision	Power distance
Newman and Nollen (1996)	875 Employees from 18 countries in Europe and Asia (176 work units of one large U.S.-based corporation,)	Management practices (e.g., employee participation, emphasis on employee’s individual unique contribution, policies and direction, and rewards system)	Power distance Uncertainty avoidance Individualism vs Collectivism Masculinity vs Femininity Long-term vs Short term time orientation
Lindell and Arvonen (1996)	3,000 Subordinates in 7 European countries in the Latin-Europe region, Nordic European region and Hungary	Task-orientation Employee-orientation Development-orientation	Culture-based predictions, impact of region analyzed, cultural dimensions discussed (power distance, uncertainty avoidance, masculinity)
Zander (1997)*	17,000 Employees and managers in 18 countries (one large multinational, plus other multinational and national firms in other industries in each studied country)	Interpersonal leadership preferences: Empowering Coaching Supervising Reviewing General communication Personal communication Proud-making (positive feedback) (Interaction intensity)	Endorsed by cultural dimensions: Laurent (1983) Hofstede (1984) Trompenaars (1993) Schwartz (1994) Maznevski et al. (2002)
Dorfman et al. (1997)	1,598 Managers and professionals from multinational or large national firms in 5 countries (USA, Mexico, Japan, Korea, and Taiwan)	Charismatic leadership Participative leadership Supportive leadership Directive leadership Leader contingent reward Leader contingent punishment	By research design and cultural dimensions discussed (power distance, individualism and collectivism)
Offermann and Hellmann (1997)	425 Mid-level managers of 39 nationalities in a multinational firm	Communication Delegation Team-building Control	Power distance Uncertainty avoidance
Smith et al. (1998)	3,259 Managers and supervisors from a variety of organizations, public and private in 23 countries	Handling of disagreements at work	Power distance Individualism
Eylon and Au (1999)	135 Canadian, East Asian and North European MBA participants of 13 nationalities at a Canadian University	Level of empowerment	Experimental design drawing on power distance
Smith, Peterson, and Schwartz (2002)	Around 5,000 middle-level managers in private and public firms in 47 countries	Vertical superior-subordinate relationships (also formal rules and own experience as guidance when handling work events)	Reliance on vertical sources is associated with: power distance, collectivism and masculinity Schwartz’ cultural dimensions: hierarchy, embeddedness, and mastery Trompenaars’ cultural dimensions: conservatism, and loyal involvement. Best predictors are power distance (Hofstede) and Mastery (Schwarz)
Ardichvili and Kuchinke (2002)	4,065 Managerial and non-managerial employees from different firms in 6 countries (Georgia, Germany, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, and USA)	Charismatic leadership Inspirational motivation Intellectual stimulation Individual consideration Management by exception Contingent reward Laissez-faire leadership	Own measurement of Hofstede cultural dimensions that correlate but only weakly with leadership dimensions
House et al. (2004)*	17,000 Mid-level managers from three industries in 62 countries	Charismatic leadership Participative leadership Team-oriented leadership Humane-oriented leadership	House et al.'s (2004) cultural dimensions: performance orientation, humane orientation, future orientation, assertiveness, gender egalitarianism, power distance, uncertainty avoidance, and in-group collectivism
Fu et al. (2004)	1,764 Managers from different industries in 12 countries (China, France, Hong Kong, India, Japan, Mexico, Netherlands, New Zeeland, Taiwan, Thailand, Turkey, and the US)	Perceived effectiveness of managers’ influence tactics on subordinates	House et al.'s (2004) cultural dimension measures of uncertainty avoidance and in-group collectivism
Glazer (2006)	15,606 Employees in 19 countries (in 5 geographic and/or social regions)	Supportive leadership Supervisor emotional support	Schwartz' (1994) cultural dimension measure of “Autonomous”
Banai and Reisel (2007)	1,933 Salaried clerical and administrative staff in six in 6 countries (Cuba, Germany, Hungary, Israel, Russia, and USA)	Supportive leadership as helping and guiding subordinates, e.g., toward goal accomplishment, independent decision-making, and preparing plans to guide action	By research design as countries differ on power distance, individualism and collectivist dimensions
Zander, Mockaitis, Harzing and 21 co-country investigators (2011)	1,776 Participants from executive MBA programs in 17 countries (Brazil, Chile, Finland, Germany, Greece, India, Japan, Lithuania, Malaysia, Mexico, Netherlands, Philippines, Portugal, Sweden, Thailand, Taiwan, and Turkey)^c	Scenarios on: Decision-making: (7 decision alternatives from leader’s own decision to accept majority viewpoint) Rewarding high-performing employees: (7 decision alternatives, e.g. individual-based, group-based, non-monetary rewards etc.) Empathizing: (6 decision alternatives for when a subordinate has a very sick partner)	Linked to House et al.'s (2004) culturally endorsed leadership prototypes: Charismatic leadership Humane-oriented leadership Participative leadership Self-protective leadership Autonomous leadership
Zander, Mockaitis, Harzing and 20 co-country investigators (2020)	1,868 Participants from executive MBA programs in 22 countries (above sample plus Canada, France, Ireland, UK, and the USA)^c

^a Articles by authors marked with an asterisk are treated in more detail in a separate section of the historical review.

^b Given the dominance of Hofstede’s cultural dimensions usage in the literature, only non-Hofstede cultural dimensions are noted with author names.

^c The Zander et al. (2011) study includes respondents who completed questionnaires in their local language plus those responding in English; in the Zander et al. (2020) sample only those who have responded in their local language are included in the sample, but also included are respondents from English-speaking countries plus France.

The third observation is that researchers have over the years gradually lost their interest in studying the function of directing, for example via supervision, rules and regulations, and follow-up with negative feedback etc. While it is less studied, directing still demonstrates a large (or even in some studies, the largest) variation across countries.

Thus, given that leadership and culture were identified as closely linked in earlier research, any newly developed interpersonal leadership measures would need to be both comparable across countries and culturally endorsed to be used in large-scale multi-country studies. In the subsequent section, we describe the work of scholars who have done exactly that when identifying new measures of leadership (House et al. 2004; Zander 1997).

Contemporary comparable and culturally endorsed leadership measures

We have seen in the reviewed cross-cultural studies that national culture is empirically linked to leadership. This finding lays the ground for further studies of the type of leadership that is accepted by subordinates, and whenwhere a shared cultural understanding makes cooperation and other work endeavors possible (Calori et al. 1997; Newman and Nollen 1996). Building on Berger and Luckmann’s (1967) theory of social construction, Calori et al. (1997) describe how individuals internalize cultural values and beliefs in their formative years through family and education. This influences their later perceptions and behaviors, for example, regarding leaders and leadership. To Newman and Nollen (1996, 755), national culture is a “central organizing principle of employees’ understanding of work, their approach to it, and the way in which they expected to be treated.” Such underlying cognitive schemata specify what is expected from leaders, capturing people’s implicit and naïve conceptualizations of leadership, as postulated by implicit leadership theory (Lord, Foti, and De Vader 1984; Lord, Foti, and Phillips 1982; Offermann, Kennedy, and Wirtz 1994; Shaw 1990). Assuming that primary socialization has a strong influence on mental schemata, and thus on leadership prototypes, we can think of these leadership beliefs as being “culturally anchored” or “culturally endorsed.”

Two large-scale projects (House et al. 2004; Zander 1997) have provided us with leadership measures specifically developed to be comparable across countries and culturally endorsed. The projects were both initiated in the early 1990s. One project was the Global Leadership and Organizational Behavior Effectiveness Project (GLOBE) studying Ideal Leadership Prototypes, headed by the late Professor Bob House and involved more than 200 scholars worldwide (Dorfman et al. 2012), and the other project was my dissertation project of Interpersonal Leadership preferences (Zander 1997). Interestingly, both sets of leadership measures were based on more than 17,000 respondents; in the GLOBE project the respondents were dispersed across 62 countries, in my study across 18 countries. The GLOBE project data were collected from midlevel managers in many different organizations, while I collected data from employees working in various work positions, in different departments, with varying length of tenure, women and men in different age groups, and from more than one organization in each country.

I first briefly introduce the GLOBE project and the ideal leadership prototypes, before presenting my own work of developing interpersonal leadership measures. In a twenty-year retrospective article, Dorfman et al. (2012) describe how 128 leadership attributes and attitudes were studied in the GLOBE project. On the one hand, only 22 of the 128 were found to be universally rated as desirable, among these were for example “trustworthy,” “decisive” and “informed,” while on the other hand, eight attributes were deemed as universally undesirable including “irritable,” “ruthless” and “malevolent.” The remaining 98 attributes were culturally contingent as to whether they were seen as ideal. We learn that 35 attributes proved to be strongly culturally contingent with a large variation across the studied societies, including for example “ambitious,” “elitist,” but also—perhaps surprisingly—attributes such as “compassionate” and “cunning” varied in how they were perceived across countries. These 128 attributes and attitudes were first aggregated, through statistical processing, into 21 primary leadership dimensions, and then into the six leadership ideal prototypes (methods and analytical procedures are described in-depth in several GLOBE-generated publications; for a brief and informative summary, see, e.g., Dorfman et al. 2012).

Six leadership attributes and attitudes that enhance or impede outstanding leadership were thus identified as ideal leadership prototypes (Dorfman et al. 2012; House et al. 2004) whereas the following four specifically covered interpersonal types of leadership: (1) charismatic/value-based leadership (leaders’ ability to inspire and to motivate followers based on a set of core values); (2) participative leadership (leaders involvement of others in the making and implementation of decisions; (3) team-oriented leadership (leader effective team building and implementation of a common goal among team members); and (4) humane-oriented leadership (leader supportive and considerate behavior). These four leadership types were endorsed by cultural dimensions measured in the GLOBE project (see Table 2).¹²

The GLOBE project has made a major contribution to our understanding of leadership across countries, and provided ample evidence of cultural endorsement, using ideal leadership types to study leadership.¹³ However, drawing on a sample of mid-level managers only, it is the leaders’ own ideas about how leadership should be carried out that are surveyed, not the leadership expectations of those being led. The fact that cross-cultural leadership research remains largely “leader-centric” has been strongly criticized (Popper and Druyan 2001; Uhl-Bien et al. 2014). There is a need, as argued by Mockaitis (2005), for leaders to understand the expectations of subordinates to be able to lead in acceptable and encouraging ways to achieve organizational goals. Stewart (1991) emphasized that managers are reliant on achieving through others, and Yun, Cox, and Sims (2006) added that contemporary leaders cannot alone harness all of the necessary expertise to excel at work. As Uhl-Bien et al. (2014, 83) remind us “(i)t is accepted wisdom that there is no leadership without followers, yet followers are very often left out of the leadership research equation.” Bearing this in mind, why not ask those being led about their leadership preferences, and if we do ask subordinates, will we still find a cultural-linked variation across countries?

Asking subordinates is precisely what I did in my study of interpersonal leadership preferences (Zander 1997).¹⁴ More than 17,000 respondents in 18 countries—that included Australia, Austria, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Japan, the Netherlands, Norway, the Philippines, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, and the United States—participated in the study. These countries represent the Anglo-American cluster, the Germanic cluster, the Latin-European cluster, the Nordic cluster, the Latin-American and the Far East cluster (Ronen and Shenkar 1985, 1988, 2013). Although not enjoying a world-wide coverage, the country distribution across clusters is satisfactory to claim validity (Smith et al. 1998) and to carry out multi-country research involving culture analysis (Smith, Peterson, and Schwartz 2002), as well as carrying out cluster analysis. The analysis of interpersonal leadership measures confirms earlier cluster research (Zander 1997, 2005).¹⁵

To arrive at internationally comparable interpersonal leadership measures that are valid and reliable within each studied country and that vary across countries, I carried out a comprehensive series of procedures, described in detail in Zander (1997). In brief, the questionnaire was theoretically derived, and I formulated 24 questions to measure interpersonal leadership, which together with a set of background variables was what could fit on one page of a large multinational conglomerate’s in-house survey. The questions were discussed with managers who had broad international experience and research colleagues, before finalizing a questionnaire that was translated by professional translators and back-translated by scholars and practitioners for whom the language was their mother tongue (Brislin 1986). I developed a research design where I first carried out a pilot study on a sub-sample of the data-set, after which data were collected from one large multi-national company in 16 countries and analyzed. As a validation measure, a replication sample had been collected in 15 countries from 24 companies in industries other than the main sample (for more details see Zander 1997).¹⁶ Given that data were collected from more than one firm and one industry in each country, I could offset any organizational or industry culture influence by excluding results that did not hold across the examined firms and industries in each country.

In order to examine more specific aspects of leadership, while remaining mindful that the measures were valid and reliable (Smith, Peterson, and Schwartz 2002; Yukl 2012), inter-item correlation patterns and reliability measures within each country in both the main sample and the replication sample were examined. Two valid and reliable interpersonal leadership constructs, “empowering” and “coaching,” were identified. These were measured as follows: empowering was based on questions about delegation of responsibility, participation in decision-making, involvement in company strategy discussions, and the immediate manager’s appreciation of employees taking initiatives, as well as also appreciation of employee offered advice; coaching was based on questions about the immediate manager’s concern for individual employees’ careers, encouragement of employees’ cooperation with others, making them feel part of a team, as well as making them (and their department) do their utmost. Additionally, there were five items on different topics, measured on an absolute time-frequency scale, which varied significantly across countries and were culturally endorsed (Zander 1997). Two items covered directing (supervision and reviews), two items covered communication (general and personal) and one item covered positive feedback (making proud of achievements).

When carrying out individual-level factor analysis as a second validation procedure (while controlling for country sample sizes as well as for demographic and tenure-based characteristics), these five time-based items factored together into a single construct (the other factors corresponded to the empowering and coaching constructs). In my view, this construct captures “interaction intensity” that is how frequently employees prefer to interact with their immediate managers, where some prefer frequent interaction with their immediate manager regardless of the topic, while others prefer more limited interaction whether it refers to communication, supervision, or receiving positive feedback on carried out work.

The theoretically derived and empirically developed interpersonal leadership dimensions (including interaction intensity) were found, through multiple analyses of variance, to vary significantly across the 18 studied countries. Hypothesized links to national culture were confirmed (for all but a few dimensions) through country level correlation analyses, allowing interpersonal leadership to be culturally endorsed by cultural dimensions developed by Laurent (1983), Hofstede (1984), Trompenaars (1993),¹⁷ Schwartz (1994), and Maznevski et al. (2002). Statistical procedures were carried out in accordance with state-of-the-art praxis in cross-cultural management (including cross-cultural psychology) in the mid-1990s. In addition to these, I also conducted individual-level analysis beyond factor analysis procedures by carrying out within-country analysis in all countries included in the study to ensure that the identified interpersonal leadership measures were valid and reliable in each of the 18 countries in the study. Notably, my research design and approach were in line with more recent recommendations such as those outlined by Banai (2010), Hult et al. (2008), and Hui and Triandis (1985).

In sum, new internationally cross-culturally endorsed interpersonal leadership measures, have thus seen the light in two complementary large-scale multi-country studies (House et al. 2004; Zander 1997). In the next section, the field of cross-cultural leadership within the realm of interpersonal leadership is discussed and suggestions for how to move the field forward are outlined.

Discussion and a research agenda

Cross-cultural leadership had emerged as a legitimate and independent field of research by the early 2000s (Dickson, den Hartog, and Mitchelson 2003). Our knowledge about culture and leadership has increased immensely over the period that I have surveyed. One of the strong themes running through my review is participation in decision-making and empowering. In multi-country studies these themes are analyzed separately from leadership styles that involve employee support and concern for the individual. This is very different from single country studies, where support and concern are typically combined together with participation and empowerment in a people- and relationship-oriented leadership categorization.

In my view, an explanation for this discrepancy can be found by applying a cultural perspective. To portray culture’s elusive nature, we try to use expressions that open up doors to our imagination while still resounding with our (still analogue) analytical minds. For example, the (powerful) cultural dimension of “power distance” conjures up images of “power,” the ultimate source of influence that can take on many forms, but also leads our thoughts to regulated authority, and “distance” as separating those with power from those without it. In this way, power distance captures the meaning and purpose of hierarchy, the power-based reality of hierarchical level differentials, and the interpersonal interaction and communication praxis between those with and those without power across said levels with a simple and easily relatable expression.

When the cultural dimensions linked to different leader behaviors (and beliefs, attitudes, ideals, expectations, perceptions and preferences) do not co-vary in the same way from one country to another, leader behaviors need to be examined separately across cultures. For example, the concepts of participation and empowering are mostly related to Hofstede’s power distance and Schwartz’ hierarchy (in some studies to individualism-collectivism), while the concepts of support and concern for subordinates are mostly related to cultural dimensions such as Hofstede’s uncertainty avoidance and masculinity-femininity, as well as Schwartz’ harmony and autonomy dimensions. The mentioned cultural dimensions are found across several studies to be independent of each other, that is to say they do not co-vary in the same way across countries. Thus, we cannot expect that the leadership behaviors and beliefs that they endorse can be lumped together in coherent constructs, but instead need be treated separately as is done by Zander (1997), and in the GLOBE project (House et al. 2004).

Since its inception as a research program, the GLOBE project with its 200 or more scholars has generated a prolific stream of articles, books and book chapters, building on and extending the original House et al. (2004) research. The culturally endorsed ideal leadership prototypes have over the years moved into numerous other areas of research, such as communication, corporate social responsibility, education, ethics, entrepreneurship, and sustainability, demonstrating the value and viability of interpersonal leadership. Scholars thus continue to build and broaden our knowledge base of cross-cultural leadership and provide more detail on the concepts and contingencies that surround various types of interpersonal leadership.

In parallel with the development of ideal leadership prototypes and interpersonal leadership preferences, a variety of leadership conceptualizations have sprouted out (or enjoyed renewed attention) in the field. Most of these clearly differ from interpersonal leadership, but relatively close at hand we find the field of Global Leadership, also rooted in cross-cultural management (Bird and Mendenhall 2016). Emerging mainly from the expatriate leadership depths of cross-cultural management research, global leadership has flourished as an independent field of research. As described by Mendenhall et al. (2018) it surfaced in response to managers’ and executives’ frustration with their lack of global experience and skills in the face of the fast-paced and increasingly growing globalization. In a recent publication on the importance of providing education and training in global leadership competencies for future leaders to make a difference, Mendenhall et al. (2020) expand the main idea. In their view, two overarching competency domains, “Global Business Competencies” and “Intercultural Competencies” (based on six conceptual domains that, in turn, derive from 50 identified global leadership competencies) positively influence global leadership effectiveness, and as such are critical to learn. The focus on competencies and skills in the global leadership literature sets it clearly apart from interpersonal leadership, which instead focuses on action and interaction with subordinates, team members and other employees. However, as successful interpersonal leadership across countries presupposes intercultural skills and competencies, continued exploring which skills, competencies, and other attributes are specifically important to interpersonal leadership—drawing for example on work done on global leadership but also that carried out in the GLOBE project on leader attributes—could provide us with important insights in future research.

The leader perspective adopted by House et al. (2004) in the GLOBE project comes from a research tradition attempting to answer the question of what makes a leader effective in their leadership, and furthermore how leaders should ideally lead so that others would follow and do what they have to do to get the work done. The follower (subordinate, team member) perspective embraced by Zander (1997) is based on the question of how employees want and are able to contribute to the organization, workwise, in the belief that this will, at the end of the day, lead to the work getting done and employees feeling satisfied about their accomplishments. Fundamentally, it is also different in its emphasis on leaders as only being truly effective when being given the “license to lead” by those being led (Zander 1997).

Despite that the leadership research within GLOBE and by Zander stem from differing perspectives (leader-centered versus employee-centered), there is also an interesting partial overlap in some of the construct conceptualization and the recognition that these vary across countries and are culturally endorsed in somewhat similar ways. This raises the question of whether Zander’s (1997) interpersonal leadership dimensions can be seen as the mirror images of House et al. (2004) ideal leadership prototypes, and if so, whether this kind of analysis will lead to similar outcomes. Future research of this type could for example ask the question if it matters whether we ask leaders how to lead, or subordinates how they want to be led. Tentative findings from an exploratory analysis of the Zander database, indicate that it should matter whether the respondents are leaders or subordinates, given that significant difference in managers and non-managerial employees’ interpersonal leadership preferences could be identified. It is neither surprising nor a far-fetched assumption that the powerful notion of authority would affect the symmetry of interpersonal relations.

The power of cultural belonging is demonstrated by the nationality of respondents from 15 countries being found to be overwhelmingly better at predicting interpersonal leadership preferences than tenure- or demographic-based characteristics such as gender, age, professional or hierarchical work position (Zander and Romani 2004).¹⁸ A 42 country-study by Euwema, Wendt, and Van Emmerick (2008) also largely confirms a stronger nationality than gender effect in subordinates’ evaluation of interpersonal leadership. These empirical findings, however, do not preclude the notion that personal and tenure-based characteristics are of importance. On the contrary, and particularly in combination, they matter at the intersection of individual-based categorizations. By adopting an intersectionality perspective in future research, we can move away from a simplistic one-dimensional view of human beings, and close erstwhile debates of the kind “what categorization matters the most?” (Bond and Smith 2018; Lücke, Engstrand, and Zander 2018; Zander et al. 2010). Engaging instead in a multi-facetted view of individuals would endow us with a more comprehensive understanding of both leaders and subordinates, and thus enable a more thorough delineation of the needs and workings of interpersonal leadership.

The critical question that the GLOBE research group returns to is that of leadership effectiveness. Ideal leadership prototypes have been found to explain leadership expectations among mid-level managers, but not directly predict leadership behavior, at least not among CEOs (Dorfman et al. 2012). This is not surprising as “far-from-action” concepts, such as leadership ideals, tend to have less predictive power on behavior than concepts that are close-to-action such as “action intent” (Szabo et al. 2001; Zander et al. 2020). In a close-to-action concept it is important to provide contextual and situational details, as this strengthens the action intent and in so doing comes closer to behavior (Zander et al. 2020). Ideals, prototypes, attitudes, and beliefs, followed by preferences, are in that order far-from-action to closer-to-action conceptualizations. The use of event and scenario alternatives (Fu et al. 2004; Smith, Dugan, and Trompenaars 1996; Smith, Peterson, and Schwartz 2002) are even closer to action, and as such have a better capacity to predict leadership behavior, but they are not as close as action intent (Zander et al. 2020). A promising way forward is for scholars to work with a larger diversity in research design and methods and identify leadership concepts and constructs that are closer-to-action, as these would have the potential to vastly improve predictions as well as our understanding of interpersonal leadership behavior and expectations.

Finally, if we take a look around us and try to peer into the always opaque future, which of today’s happenings can be thought to shape (and perhaps dominate) the way we shall work in the future. Interpersonal leadership, i.e. getting things done with the help of others, is fundamental to collaboration and coordination of human action and as such is not likely to disappear in any near future. It is, as I have argued, culturally endorsed, primary socialized and draws on implicit leadership theories of leaders and subordinates, which have been found to remain largely stable over time (Offermann and Coats 2018). However, interpersonal leadership in the future will most probably take on other forms, such as no longer being the property of one individual and shift toward forms of paired, rotated or shared leadership (Zander and Butler 2010) where in particular shared (or distributed leadership) is of relevance for collaborative work in teams. As global virtual teams have become increasingly common (Gibson and McDaniel 2010; Zander, Mockaitis, and Butler 2012), with some organizations even becoming completely team-based (Zander et al. 2015), different demands may be placed on interpersonal leadership as it moves from dyadic leadership relationship into team-based leadership. Team leaders may face fault-lines (Lau and Murnighan 1998; Zander and Butler 2010) or a power paradox (Maznevski and Zander 2001; Zander, Mockaitis, and Butler 2012),¹⁹ and need to figure out how to enact interpersonal leadership in the face of these challenges, while still leveraging the potential inherent in multicultural (and often virtual global) teams. When working from a distance the opportunities to socialize in non-work situations shrink and thereby limit the possibilities to interpret and express interpersonal leadership expectations. It is therefore likely that interpersonal leadership will get even more complicated (Bond and Smith 2018) and fraught with misunderstandings. As the need to work virtually (also in dyadic form) from a distance increases, so does the need to understand what this entails for leaders and employees, and whether and in what way this will make a difference to interpersonal leadership as we know it.

Concluding reflections

Almost a decade ago, Taras, Steel, and Kirkman (2011, 194) observed that “culture has a profound impact on preferences for leadership styles and management systems, perceptions of authority, organizational fairness, interpersonal relationships, communication, and expectations about organizations and coworkers, and many other organizationally relevant outcomes.” One overall conclusion from the comprehensive and detailed reviews undertaken in my historical exposé of interpersonal leadership is that Taras, Steel, and Kirkman's (2011) claim still holds. The thriving field of research that I have tried to cover in part is a testimony to the relevance and continued topicality of the phenomenon of cross-cultural leadership in general, and of interpersonal leadership in particular.

I have presented a historical review of comparative and cross-cultural leadership with respect to interpersonal leadership. The criticality of identifying leadership that is comparable across countries and culturally endorsed from the outset emerges from the review. I describe two such endeavors in more detail; the leader-centered work with ideal leadership prototypes from the GLOBE project (House et al. 2004), and my own work with employee-centered interpersonal leadership research (Zander 1997). These two sets of leadership dimensions are complementary and can together provide us with a more fine-grained, insightful and comprehensive picture of leadership across countries.

In the development of a research agenda, I analyze observations emerging from the literature review and pose questions that aim to further extant research. I have also incorporated some of the contemporary trends, such as distance leadership, global virtual teams, and individualization by applying an intersectionality perspective when proposing directions for further research.

Finally, and notably, it is rather unlikely that interpersonal leadership, important to human collaborative endeavors, will disappear, but it will most probably take on other forms. This process will be especially exciting and inspiring to study in the future.

Acknowledgements

I would like to express my gratitude to Moshe Banai and Abraham Stefanidis for the opportunity to contribute to ISMO’s 50th Anniversary Issue, and I also gratefully acknowledge Riksbankens Jubileumsfond, Sweden (SAB15-1019:1) for financial support.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Lena Zander

Lena Zander (Ph.D.) is Professor of International Business at Uppsala University in Sweden. Lena’s research focus is on interpersonal leadership, global virtual teams, and integration of highly qualified migrants in multicultural organizations. Her work has received multiple best-dissertation, -paper, and -reviewer awards at AIB, ANZAM, and AOM.

Notes

1 These types of leadership behaviors are in mainstream single-country studies frequently referred to as “leadership,” a general term, less-informative and easy to confuse with other types of leadership such as strategic leadership, or industry leadership. Other examples include “full-range leadership” (Diebig, Bormann, and Rowold 2016) or “meta-categories” (Yukl 2002). However, relying on too broadly defined leader behaviors limits progress in increasing our understanding (Yukl et al. 2019) where instead studies of a wider range of specific leadership behaviors could lead to an improved understanding of leadership effectiveness and how to improve it (Yukl et al. 2019).

2 Lamm et al. (2016) also identified personal attributes, especially those necessary for managing conflict as well as encouraging innovative thinking and fostering happiness and emotional healing are important, but not discussed in this article.

3 Change-oriented leadership had been identified as a third metacategory in an earlier study with data from Sweden (Ekvall, Arvonen, and Nyström 1987) which was then tested, and found to hold, on another sample including respondents from Finland and the USA in addition to Sweden (Ekvall and Arvonen 1991). The change-oriented category captures a visionary type of leadership combining aspects such as initiating new projects, pushing for growth, offering new ideas, willing to experiment and quick to make decisions, just to mention the most salient aspects of the type of leadership very much needed around the time of the study, and afterwards, as noted by the authors.

4 The three leadership categories of task-oriented, relation-oriented and change-oriented were also identified by Kaluza et al. (2020) as constituting a meta-category of “constructive leadership,” where its opposite “destructive leadership” includes passive and active destructive behaviors. Inceoglu et al. (2018) also identified a category they labeled “passive leadership.”

5 In the literature “constructs” are also referred to as “scales” or as “meta-categories”, the latter by Yukl et al. (2002). In this article, I mainly use “constructs” but also “categories” especially when referring to Yukl et al.’s (2002) meta-categories. They consist of a set of items (questions or statements) used to measure an overarching concept such as “Relation-oriented leadership”, which is measured by using the following items: (1) provide support and encouragement, (2) provide recognition for achievements and contributions, (3) develop member skill and confidence, (4) consult with members when making decisions, and (5) empower members to take initiative in problem solving.

6 Likert’s four systems were later referred to only by the more neutral numbers as labels, i.e. system 1, system 2 and so-forth.

7 This is a large-scale project resulting in a substantial amount of publications, and only a few key articles are listed here.

8 Hofstede (1984) borrowed the concept of “power distance” from Mulder and colleagues who researched power, power inequalities and power distance (see e.g., Mulder et al. 1973).

9 MBA students with working experience are considered a good proxy for managers (Staw and Barsade 1993).

10 Trompenaars’ (1993) cultural dimensions were further developed by Smith, Dugan, and Trompenaars (1996) and Hampden-Turner and Trompenaars (2011).

11 The other three scenarios address “conflict resolving,” “goal setting,” and “face saving” focusing on the respondent’s superiors, rather than subordinates or organizational level. These three were also found to vary across countries (Zander et al. 2011, 2020).

12 The other two leadership dimensions from the GLOBE project are: autonomous leadership (leader’s independent and individualistic attributes); self-protective leadership (leaders ensure individual and group safety through own status enhancement and face saving).

13 This is a large-scale project resulting in a substantial amount of publications.

14 My PhD dissertation on this topic was awarded with the following three best dissertation prizes: the 1998 Barry M. Richman Best Dissertation Award, Academy of Management, USA; the 1998 Richard N. Farmer 1998 Best Dissertation Competition Award, Academy of International Business, USA, and the Best PhD Dissertation in Economics, Business or Management in Sweden Award defended during 1997 (Civilekonomernas Riksförbunds Ekonomipris 1998 för bästa doktorsavhandling i företagsekonomi framlagd under 1997).

15 Moreover, Zander and Butler (2012), in their AOM conference nominated best paper, identified that similar country cluster configurations emerge in particular in multi-country studies of leadership or culture. We are currently revising our theorizing and our proposed probable explanation for these reoccurring cluster configurations.

16 Canada is only included in the main analysis as no data-collection was carried out in Canada in the replication study. Australia and Spain are only analyzed in the main sample as the sample size in the replication sample was too small to be included in the statistical analysis. Brazil and the Philippines are only included in the replication sample as no data was collected in these countries for the main sample.

17 See end note 10.

18 In a prize-awarded conference paper, Zander and Sutton demonstrate that nationality remains a stronger predictor of interpersonal leadership preferences than length of tenure refuting claimed effects of secondary socialization. This article is currently under further development.

19 Fault-lines (Lau and Murnighan 1998; Zander and Butler 2010) in teams can be strong if sub-teams form based on several common categorizations, e.g., young female Iranian engineers and older male British marketing executives in the same team, which can lead to polarization and conflict. When a leader faces a power paradox (Maznevski and Zander 2001; Zander et al. 2012) it means that some of the staff at the department or team members prefer a certain type of leadership, e.g., empowering, whereas others in the team find this to be poor leadership (the leader should make the important decision, not hand it over to others to handle), and vice versa if the leader engages in a more centralized leadership some see this as highly competent while those with empowering leadership expectations find it to be frustratingly poor leadership. Thus, the leader faces a power paradox.