Servant Leadership

The Impact of National Culture on Leadership: A Case of Servant Leadership

Andre A. Pekerti

UQ Business School, The University of Queensland

Building 12, 11 Salisbury Rd. Ipswich, QLD 4305, Australia

E-mail: a.pekerti@business.uq.edu.au

Ph: + 61 7 3381 1046; Fax: + 61 7 3381 1053

Sen Sendjaya

Department of Management, Monash University

Building 11E, Wellington Road, Clayton VIC 3800, Australia

Email: sen.sendjaya@buseco.monash.edu.au

Ph: +61 3 9905 0729; Fax: +61 3 9905 5412

Abstract

This study extends the GLOBE study of 62 societies by investigating an emerging model of servant leadership (SL) across cultures. SL is a holistic and altruistic approach of leadership that focuses on the commitment to serve other people. Adopting Implicit Leadership Theory’s (ILT) premise that people hold cognitive categories to distinguish between prototypical leaders from non-leaders, we predicted that SL would exist in Australia and Indonesia, but its practice would be moderated by culture. Our predictions were supported, SL was perceived to be culturally universal in Australia and Indonesia. However, the different attributes perceived to make up SL were not all rated as equally important. We argued that individual self-construals, socialization and national context would explain how and why culture-specific perceptions of SL exist. The implications of our study on international management practice are discussed in the concluding section.

Key words: Culture-specific, Culture universal, Implicit theory of leadership, Self-construal, Servant leadership.

The Impact of National Culture on Leadership: A Case of Servant Leadership

INTRODUCTION

In their conclusion of their chapter on leadership and cultural variation. Dorfman, Hanges and Brodbeck (2004, p. 711) re-iterated the pervasive question asked in the cross-cultural management literature, “Does culture influence leadership, and, if so, why and how?” The answer was partly given in Dorfman and House’s...