The purpose and research questions of this study
The main objective of this article is to research and investigate whether cultures have a specific impact on leadership styles. With the help of this article we should be able to answer the question how cultures can influence different styles of leaderships; whether leadership styles are culturally linked and/or culturally biased.
In terms of leadership, this paper will primarily show whether, based on the culture characteristics, it is more a transactional type of leadership or more a transformational type of leadership. In order to keep everything explicit, Malaysia and Australia are taken as two examples within this research paper.
In short, we will learn:
• Different leadership styles and its approaches; transactional and transformational
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Cultures with small power distance like Australia believe that roles and responsibilities can be changed based on individual effort and achievements and subordinates of today can be superior tomorrow (Hofstede and Hofstede, 2005).
Individualism
On the individualism index Australians have 90, indicating that Australians value their independence and expression of their own ideas in their workplace.
Masculinity-Femininity
On the masculinity index Australian employees scored 61 which is slightly high, indicating that argument “a woman can do anything a man can do” is accepted by Australian employees. A little high score of Australian masculinity also indicates that behaviour in school and work are based on the shared values that people “strive to be the best they can be” and that “the winner takes all”.
Uncertainty avoidance
Australia has an intermediate score of 51. Australia has a very formal business conduct with lots of rules, policies and expects structure at work.