comparative value priorities of chinese and new zealand

CULTURE AND LEADERSHIP
In every culture followers have expectation that their leaders’ characteristics should fit
into the traditional leadership prototypes in their minds. Not conforming to social norms
and values is likely to make followers quickly perceive a leader as incompetent and not
deserving of that position, despite his or her personal abilities and achievements (den
Hartog, House, Hanges, Dorfman, and Ruiz-Quintana, 1999).
Cultural values are important to leadership behaviour because “leadership is a
complement to superordinateship” (Hofstede, 1984: 257). A leader must fulfil
subordinates’ expectations of what leader behaviour ought to be within the cultural
context; else the leader will not be effective. The tendency of treating leadership (and
other practices and theories) as a culture-independent characteristic has been labelled by
Lawrence (1994) as ethnocentrism, that is, the erroneous assumption that theories
developed in one culture, for example the United States, would have global validity.
Due to the dominance of U.S. theories and U.S.-oriented theory bias in many academic
journals, much of the world has been struggling with how to adapt U.S. leadership
concepts and theories for use in other cultures. This is probably a fruitless endeavour;
societal culture influences leadership behaviours and effectiveness (e.g. Chhokar et al.
2007, den Hartog et al., 1999; House et al., 1997; House et al. 2004; Peterson and Hunt,
1997). Cross-cultural studies help to better understand leadership behaviours in different
cultures or in multicultural environments (Dorfman et al., 1997; Rao et al., 1997). They
also provide useful advice and guidelines for practitioners to improve leadership
effectiveness in organizations with workforces and management teams that are
becoming more and more culturally, ethnically and internationally diverse (Ah-Chong
and Thomas, 1997; Elron, 1997; Smith et al., 1997). An increasing amount of
knowledge about cross-cultural leadership is being accumulated (Hunt and Peterson,
1997).
Culture is widely treated as a multidimensional concept and construct (e.g. Hofstede,
1991, 2001; Trompenaars, 1994, House et al., 2004). Many dimensions that can define
cultural differences with acceptably valid and reliable measures have been developed
(e.g. Hofstede, 1991; Hoppe, 1990; Leung and Bond, 1989, Schwartz, 1992, House et
al. 2004). Studies using purported universal cultural dimensions are abundant in other
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