Impact of Asian cultural values upon leadership roles and styles
| Author | Nesli Kahraman Gedik,Korhan Arun |
| DOI | 10.1177/0020852320935982 |
| Published date | 01 June 2022 |
| Date | 01 June 2022 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
Article
Impact of Asian cultural
values upon leadership
roles and styles
Korhan Arun
Tekirdag Namik Kemal University, Turkey
Nesli Kahraman Gedik
Tekirdag Namik Kemal University, Turkey
Abstract
In light of an increasingly integrated society, in-depth research is needed to explore how
particular perceived values may guide leadership behaviour by measuring the everyday
actions of employees. As Asian individual values become collective, there is an
increased likelihood that they will be perceived as cultural values that translate into
expectations of leadership roles. This article considers the impact of changes in lead-
ership roles from a role theory perspective, based on Asian values leading to changes in
leadership styles. The sample is taken from an organised industrial zone which consists
of a high immigrant workforce that continues to grow. The research was conducted in
western Turkey but has appeared in leading survey results on Asian cultural values. This
study found significant symbolic interactionism between values and leadership roles.
There were also correlations between roles and leadership styles, since leaders also
influence the interpersonal roles of their employees. Among managers involved in
decision-making and information processing, an autocratic participative leadership
style has emerged.
Points for practitioners
In every organisation, leaders should be aware of values in their organisations by mea-
suring the everyday actions of employees. To become proficient leaders, they should
learn to act in a manner suitable to the roles expected by their subordinates.
Furthermore, to be efficient, leaders should adopt what is considered a ‘proper’
style through comparison to the indicated roles. In a nutshell, leadership, values and
Corresponding author:
Korhan Arun, Tekirdag Namik Kemal University – Business administration, Tekirdag 59030, Turkey.
Email: korhanarun@gmail.com
International Review of Administrative
Sciences
!The Author(s) 2020
Article reuse guidelines:
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DOI: 10.1177/0020852320935982
journals.sagepub.com/home/ras
2022, Vol. 88(2) 428–448
International
Review of
Administrative
Sciences
leadership styles are interference acts that affect all processes, from recruitment to
strategic management.
Keywords
cultural values, leadership roles, leadership styles, role theory of leadership
Introduction
A leader’s primary responsibility is to perform their specialised or designated role
(Yukl, 2013). The leadership role is more likely to be productive if it relates to the
values of group members (Lefkowitz, 2003; Senge, 2010). However, this relation is
not clear (Reiche et al., 2017). Values are important because their impact on
behaviour is measurable (Karp, 1996; Ertosun and Adiguzel, 2018). Role theory
implies that expectations define roles. Here, leadership as a role is strongly affected
by particular values, which will thus result in favouring a specific leadership role at
work (Chong et al., 2018). This article seeks to relate the findings of an empirical
study that addresses current practices and perceptions of leadership, roles and
styles to the societal values identified in a predominant organisational values
system.
The role theory of leadership considers the extent to which leadership behav-
iours are fixed or change in response to values (Merton, 2000). Nevertheless, this
definition is more theoretical than would be ideal for a working definition of
leadership research. The Western-Eastern dichotomy is one of the categorisations
of values that has been defined (Nisbett and Wilson, 1977; Oyserman et al., 2009).
Additionally, role theory pays little attention to the processes by which individuals
select the factors that are most effective in their roles (Isaacson et al., 2012;
Franzese, 2013).
Because followers may have values that are distinct from their leaders, organ-
isations encourage followers to be authentic to their values (Algera and Lips-
Wiersma, 2012). Since organisations are sets of subsets, we should consider
group-level values. Furthermore, as these groups’ values are related to the immi-
grant workforce in Turkey, a consideration of cultural values would be more
appropriate for understanding organisational values (Porto and Ferreira, 2016;
Tamayo et al., 2000). During crises at the periphery of Turkey, businesses witness
encounters between Asian and Western cultures, in which each culture approaches
the conflict based on its own cultural aspects (Demir et al., 2011; Albayrak and
Albayrak, 2014). The cultural dimensions of values are a critical element in the
comparison of organisations (Porto and Ferreira, 2016); therefore, this work
focuses on these two dominant cultural values from the organisational perspective.
Avolio, Sosik and Berson (2012) state that the main blind spot in the leadership
field is translating a given context into learned, manageable outcomes. How leaders
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Arun and Gedik
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