Predicting excellent management performance in an intercultural context: a study of the influence of multicultural personality on transformational leadership and performance

Abstract

What makes a manager in an intercultural context an excellent performer? This question is the subject of the present study. The study examines the influence of the five dimensions of multicultural personality via transformational leadership on excellent performance in a sample of managers (N = 138) working in an expatriate assignment or in a job dealing with subordinates of different cultural backgrounds. As expected, cultural empathy, open-mindedness and social initiative were found to have a positive effect on transformational leadership. However, no significant effects were found from emotional stability and flexibility on transformational leadership. Furthermore, a more transformational leadership style led to higher performance in an intercultural context, which was measured using management performance appraisals. Since an indirect effect of cultural empathy, open mindedness and social initiative on performance via transformational leadership has been found in this study, it seems that both these dimensions of multicultural personality and transformational leadership are needed for excellent managerial performance in an international environment.

Keywords:

• intercultural organizational context
• management performance
• multicultural personality
• transformational leadership

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank the anonymous reviewer and Prof. Riccardo Peccei for their helpful comments on an earlier version of this manuscript. We would also like to thank Martine Lanser for helping us to collect the data for this study.