Leadership Research Summary:
- Likert scale surveys are frequently used in cross-cultural studies on leadership. Recent publications using digital text algorithms raise doubt about the source of variation in statistics from such studies to the extent that they are semantically driven. The Semantic Theory of Survey Response (STSR) predicts that in the case of semantically determined answers, the response patterns may also be predictable across languages. The Multifactor Leadership Questionnaire (MLQ) was applied to 11 different ethnic samples in English, Norwegian, German, Urdu and Chinese. Semantic algorithms predicted responses significantly across all conditions, although to varying degree. Comparisons of Norwegian, German, Urdu and Chinese samples in native versus English language versions suggest that observed differences are not culturally dependent but caused by different translations and understanding. The maximum variance attributable to culture was a 5% unique overlap of variation in the two Chinese samples. These findings question the capability of traditional surveys to detect cultural differences. It also indicates that cross-cultural leadership research may risk lack of practical relevance.
Leadership Research Implications and Findings:
- The specific conclusion from this study is that cross-cultural studies in leadership need a more sophisticated view on the relationship between language and action in theory as well as practice. Studies that pick up semantic patterns are more likely to be language research than research on actions, a difference dealt with at length in action theory and control theory (Frese and Zapf, 1994; Weseman, 2007; Prinz et al., 2009; Parks-Stamm et al., 2010; Schaller et al., 2015; Gantman et al., 2017). When response patterns from semantically driven surveys are replicable across contexts, it may only mean that the same sentences can be said, with approximately the same understanding, across these contexts. This is unsurprising in itself – it equals the mere methodological requirement to have surveys translated and re-translated to ensure their identical meaning across languages (Herdman et al., 1997). In today’s global economies, most sentences that describe working environments may be translated from one language to another.
- That is not the same as saying that the same things matter, that acts are carried out the same way, and with the same effects on people in the surroundings. The epistemological error that seems to be frequently committed in organizational behavior is to confuse behaviors with their intentions and effects on an abstract level. This has been theoretically proven by van Knippenberg and Sitkin (2013) in the case of transformational leadership, where definitions and operationalizations conflate independent and dependent variables.
- Recent developments in indigenous Chinese research on leadership shows the likelihood that there exist distinct types of leadership behaviors that also have distinct effects on Chinese employees. This differs from the effects on, e.g., Western employees in the same companies (Chen and Kao, 2009; Cheng et al., 2014; Chen et al., 2015; Qin et al., 2015; Zhang et al., 2015). We obviously need more efforts to address the perceived differences that practitioners and scholars alike experience in the field, and generate instruments that capture these differences instead of neglecting them. That requires a less ethnocentric and more advanced philosophical foundation for understanding the role of language in research and cross-cultural leadership
Â