125 Leadership Styles in Competing Organizational Cultures By ...

leadership styles work best in different organizational cultures (Alvesson, 2002). Thisleadership-culture relationship significantly influences the performance of organizationsand requires further investigation (Block, 2003)Researchers have been discussing the definition of leadership for many years withdiffering results but most agree that leaders have a perceived influence on organizationalmembers (Bohn & Grafton, 2002; Rost, 1991; Yukl, 1989). There are differences in howto investigate leadership and the development of different measurements of leadershipstyles (Yukl, 1989). One of the most researched and influential frameworks for leadershipis the theory of transformational and transactional leadership developed by Burns(Eisenbach, Watson, & Pillai, 1999; Parry, 2002). While there are alternativesframeworks for describing leadership, transformational leaders have received muchresearch attention and are included in this study because they are very effective atachieving organizational goals and outperforming other styles of leadership (Yammarino,Spangler, & Bass, 1990).Organizational culture may be defined as a common set of values and beliefs that areshared by members of an organization which influences how people perceive, think, andact (Schein, 1990). Culture becomes a basic set of assumptions that guides anorganization’s social relationships and are moderated by an unspoken socializationprocess, which is often taken for granted by vested members. This value system is usedas a reference by members as they make decisions in the performance of their duties.Moreover, organizational performance has been directly linked to organizational culture(Berrio, 2003).Leadership styles and organizational culture are not independent of each other. Researchhas shown there is constant interplay between leadership and organizational culture (Bass& Avolio, 1993; Berrio, 2003; Parry, 2002). Bass and Avolio (1993) found that anorganization’s culture derives from its leaders and culture affects the development of itsleadership. Furthermore, effective leaders need to be attentive to beliefs, values andassumptions in an organization, in short, the culture. By having higher levels ofemotional intelligence, these leaders can understand the emotions of followers and theinfluence of organizational culture on the situation (Barling, Slater, & Kelloway, 2000).Leaders may use this understanding of the culture and its effect on the organizationalmembers to aid them in selecting optimal leadership techniques. Hart and Quinn (1993)found that managers are more effective when they are culturally complex. They havemore tools to deal with different situations. Lok and Crawford (1999) determined thereare different leadership behaviors correlated with specific cultural traits. Furthermore,culture has also been measured as a strong influence to both organizational success andachievements of the leader (Berrio, 2003). Therefore, it is important to know which stylesof leadership are found in specific types of organizational culture.The purpose of this study was to determine which leadership styles, the dependentvariable, are found in specific types of organizational cultures, the independent variable.The method to investigate this relationship was to conduct an exploratory survey of manyorganizations to determine correlations linking cultures with leadership styles. ThisLeadership Review, Kravis Leadership Institute, Claremont McKenna College, Vol. 10, Summer 2010 126