M10BSS (2014-2015) International Leadership and Management

Course Work 2
This course work consist of 8 questions. All questions relate to the
accompanying text (the article) On becoming a leader in Asia and
America: Empirical evidence from women managers by Claudia Peus,
Susanne Braun, and Kristin Knipfer (The Leadership Quarterly 26 (2015)
5567).
Please answer the questions within the word limit set for each question.
(All answers beyond the word limit will not be evaluated). Use appropriate
in-text citations in your answer (within the word limit), and add a list of
references at the end. Each question also indicates the maximum amount
of points that can be obtained for that question.
Q1 (max. 150 words; 5 points)
Describe in your own words one major conclusion of the article.
Q2 (max. 150 words; 5 points)
Explain (in your own words) why studying gender issues in cross-cultural
leadership may lead to different results, compared to cross-cultural
leadership studies disregarding gender issues . (Please give at least two
reasons).
Q3 (max. 200 words; 10 points)
Explain which leadership style, not mentioned in the article, could also
have been appropriate to study female leadership. (Please give at most
one other leadership style).
Q4 (max. 200 words; 10 points)
Why are according to the article womens leadership style differences
between Asian countries more salient than womens leadership style
differences between Asia and the US? (Please give at least two reasons).
Q5 (max. 400 words; 20 points)
Clarify why individual success factors in the US are explained in terms of
individualism, whereas the same individual success factors in China are
explained in terms of collectivism. (Motivate the clarification).
Q6 (max. 400 words; 20 points)
Explain which glass ceilings are implicitly mentioned in the article, as a
barrier for achieving leadership positions in each different countries.
Q7 (max. 300 words; 15 points)
The article distinguishes between success factors at four levels of analysis:
individual; interpersonal; organizational; social systems. Explain why these
four levels of analysis may be interdependent, and what consequence that
may have for the final conclusion of the article.

Q8 (max. 200 words; 15 points)

Why is the title of the article inappropriate, and what would have been a
better title?
Question 3
However, there have been numerous studies that could prove the fact that women also could
become effective leaders if given the opportunity.
Chaganti (1986) maintains that though women are encountering many significant obstacles in
handling their own businesses, most of them still manage to become successful. Women of today
are trying to prove that the common belief that male leaders are more effective as entrepreneurs
is not true in all situations.

The article proposes that women are better leaders as entrepreneurs if they would apply the
transformational leadership style. The article particularly suggests that through transformational
leadership style, women entrepreneurs tend to excel in the dimensions of building trust and team
building skills. The article establishes certain assumptions about entrepreneurship and leadership
style.

In the recent decades, women have been given the opportunity to showcase their skills in leading
an organization. As they present their leadership skills, it has been found out that transformational
leadership style would make women better leaders and entrepreneurs that would eventually
erase gender biases when it comes to business leadership.

When women employ the transformational leadership in their organizations, Moore (2011)
suggests that they become effective leaders as they encourages the building of trust among the
members of their organizations. This is because women are more democratic than men as
leaders that has become one clear predictor of their success in the organization. In relation to
their democratic approach, women tend to put emphasis on working relationships, cooperation
and being responsible to their team members, which have become their assets in leading an
organization. In emphasizing the working relationships, women have been found out to
successfully integrate the members of the organization into certain expected results. This claim is
quite evident and effective in certain organizational settings that have individual members with
unique traits. It is basically successful as well in establishing an egalitarian type of interpersonal
relationships, as the author suggests (Moore, 2011).

stresses that women lead this way in order to motivate their members to be creative and put their
ideas on a collaborative manner. They try to balance the authoritative style of men and the
communication style of women, as leaders. In this way, women become better leaders than men.

It was noted also by Moore (2011) that women entrepreneurs are highly effective when they
utilized the transformational leadership style in situations where performance and interactions are
highly significant. People tend to be motivated if the leader expresses concerns about them. In

this manner, women leaders tend to nurture and communicate to the team members in order to
attain certain results. This is basically in contrast on how men tend to lead. The authoritative
nature of men leaders seems to be a liability in some organizational situations.

Moreover, women tend to become effective leaders when they employ the transformational
leadership style in settings where there is gender diversity. In a gender diversified work settings,
women tend to neutralized the gender biases among the members of the organization. It is
important to emphasize that male employees are more inclined to trust their women owners
which usually leads to productivity. This is another advantage of women leaders from their
counterparts. Women have the natural tendency to obtain certain trust from other people, which
has been very effective if used as a leader (Moore, 2011).

Question 4

To summarize, research on how women leaders enact leadership in Asia and how
their leadership styles compare to the ones enacted by their Western counterparts is
largely lacking (with notable exceptions, e.g., van Emmerik, Euwema, & Wendt,
2008; van Emmerik,Wendt, & Euwema, 2010). Similarly, analyses of culturally
dependent interpretations ofWestern-dominated leadership dimensions in Asian
contexts are largely missing (House et al., 2014). Concordantly, in building a frame of
reference for the analysis of women's leadership styles in Asia and the U.S., we
conceptualize our findings not based on single leadership constructs
Westerndeveloped ones such as transformational, transactional (Bass & Avolio,
1994), or ethical leadership (Brown & Trevio, 2006), nor Asian-developed ones such
as paternalistic leadership (Pellegrini & Scandura, 2008) and nurturant-task
leadership (Palrecha et al., 2012; Sinha, 1984)but rather to integrate them.
Following DeRue, Nahrgang, Wellman, and Humphrey (2011) we distinguish
between relational-oriented and task-oriented leader behaviors, with relationaloriented behaviors encompassing consideration, empowerment, participative, or
nurturing leadership and task-oriented behaviors comprising initiating structure,
directive, or task leadership. Finally, in line with recent values-oriented types of
leadership (e.g., Peus et al. 2012; Walumbwa, Avolio, Gardner, Wernsing, &
Peterson, 2008) as well as the morality aspect of paternalistic leadership (Chen et
al., 2014), we include valuesorientation. Hence, we propose the following research
questions:
In sum, our findings about success factors and barriers revealed commonalities but
also differences across countries. For several factors the differences between Asian
countries are even more pronounced than the differences between Asia and the U.S.
Furthermore, our results highlight the significance of a qualitative approach as we
found cross-cultural differences concerning the meaning of some of the coding
categories but not their frequencies.
Leadership styles
Regarding the question how women's leadership styles can be characterized, we
successfully applied a categorization based on DeRue et al. (2011) and Peus et al.

(2010), namely relational-oriented, task-oriented, and values-oriented leadership. Our

findings
suggest that there is no clear distinction between Asian and Western leadership,
but thatwe rather need to consider the very specifics of leadership among different
countries.While our findings showed similarities on some dimensions (e.g., high
levels of valuesoriented leadership in the U.S. and Singapore), they differed in other
regards (e.g., a high level of task-oriented leadership in China, whichwas neither
present in the U.S. nor in India or Singapore).Wewere able to show that a seemingly
equivalent emphasis on certain leadership dimensions (e.g., contributing to employee
development) may have divergingmeanings depending on the culture. For example,
in China leaders stressed that employees need to be developed to enable them to
better achieve company goals, while the focus of employee development was on
helping employees to become leaders in India and on supporting employees' private
lives in Singapore. In order to provide a more nuanced description of leadership in
each country, brief summaries are presented below.
QUESTION 5
Unlike in Asia women in the U.S. described having taken risks in their careers as a
crucial success factor. This is in line with high levels of individualism in the U.S.
culture (Hofstede, 1980; House et al., 2004) as well as a self-employed career
paradigm, which considers career as a series of projects in which fnding one's
own way to move up is crucial (Bridges, 1994).
In the U.S., leadership was characterized by high levels of individualism
(Hofstede, 2001) as well as the dominance of a self-employed career paradigm
(Bridges, 1994).Women leaders highlighted that they had followed their
individual vision of becoming a leader and pursued it by taking risks, learning
continuously, and seeking out the organizations that would best meet their goals
(which for many included combining their career with caregiver roles). The
importance of an individualistic orientation was also evident in the way women
managers described their leadership, that is, being guided largely by their own
values.
Hofstede (1980) defned culture as the "software ofthe mind" shared by a number
of people. That is, culture is a level of collective "programming" which
distinguishes the members of one group or category of people from another.
Hofstede (1980) proposed four cultural dimensions: power distance, uncertainty
avoidance, individualism/ collectivism, and masculinity/femininity. Each of40
countries was placed on each one of those four dimensions, via an extensive
survey. He found that East Asian countries show strong collectivism and power
distance, whereas the United States shows strong individualism and low power
distance (Heine, 2008). These results suggest that leadership concepts in Asian
countries may be different from leadership in the United States (Hofstede, 1980).
Cultures are typically divided into two categories: Collectivist and Individualist
cultures, such as those of united states and western europe, emphasize personal
achievement regardless of the expense of group goals, resulting in a strong sense
of competition. Collectivist cultures, such as those of china, korea and japan,
emphasize family and work group goals above individual needs or desires.

Both collectivist and individualistic cultures havee theiw failings. People in

individualist cultures are susceptible to lonliness, and people in collectivist
cultures can have a strong fear of rejection. Elders who instill collectivist
rejection rules in youngssters are often rejected by forreign direct
investement from individualist capital. Individualist doers are self-assured
and very independent people. They are quiet realistic, very rational,
extremely matter of fact people. They strongly cultivate their individualism
and enjoy applying their abilities to new tasks. But they are also very
spontaneous and impulsive persons who like to follow their sudden
inspirations.

TRAITS OF COLLECTIVISM
Each person is encouraged to be an active player in society, to do what is best for
society as a whole rather than themselves.
The rights of families, communities, and the collective supersede those of the individual
Rules promote unity, brotherhood, and selflessness
Working with others and cooperating is the norm; everyone supports each other
As a community, family or nation more than as individual
TRAITS OF INDIVIDUALISM
I identity
Promotes individual goals, initiative and achievement
Individual rights are seen as being the most important. Rules attempt to ensure self- importance
and individualism
Independence is valued; there is much less of a drive to help other citizens or communities than
in collectivism
Relying or being dependent on others is frequently seen as shameful
People are encouraged to do things on their own to rely on themselves

http://psychology.wikia.com/wiki/Collectivist_and_individualist_cultures

Individualist - Collectivist
This dimension is defined as a degree of framework where society is closely related to their group
or not (Hofstede, 1980, 2001). In individualist countries where people are more concerned about
their own interest and needs, leaders tend to take credit of their success. Compared to the
countries where collectivism is more valued the credit of success goes to the group. This is
similar

to

the

argument

of

Yan

and

Hunt's

(2005)

argument

where:

Individualistic cultures, such as the U.S., where leaders often take credit for their organization's

success, inference-based perceptions dominate. However, in collective cultures, such as Japan,

where self-effacement is valued, leaders often keep a low profile when their organizations
succeed, and recognition-based perceptions dominate.
Lack of insensitivity towards the culture which ignores the expected behavior, value and
assumptions can put leaders at stake, especially leaders that expatriate to another country where
the cultural dimension is different. This dimension is well affected by the socioeconomic
development of a country and also its democratization which increase the independent thought
and action, concern of others, acceptance to change, self indulgence and pleasure and decrease
the conformity, tradition and security (Schwarz & Sagie, 2000).

Schwartz, S. H., & Sagie, G. (2000). Value consensus and importance: A cross-national study.
Journal of International Business Studies, 14(2), 61-74.
Hofstede, G. (1980). Culture's consequences: International differences in work-related alues
(Abridged ed.). Newbury Park, CA: Sage.
Hofstede, G. (2001). Culture's consequences: Comparing values, behaviors, institutions, and
organizations across nations (2nd ed.). Newbury Park, CA: Sage.

QUESTION 6
Barriers to advancement
The barriers towomen's advancement can also be grouped into individual, interpersonal,
organizational, and societal level factors: Women's lower levels of self-confidence or propensity to
assert self-interests (individual level) and a lack of access to powerful networks or the absence of role
models (interpersonal level) as well as biased recruiting and selection practices in organizations
(organizational level) have been discussed as major barriers (see Peus & Traut-Mattausch, 2007, for a
summary). Among the factors that have been regarded as most obstructive for women's advancement
to leadership positions are gender stereotypes (see Heilman, 2012, for an overview). This is due to the
fact that stereotypes operate at the social systems level and thereby influence the lower levels.
Method
Since quantitative methods would be insufficient to capture the particular meanings of success factors
and barriers to advancement to a leadership position as well as of leadership styles in different
cultures (Avolio, Walumbwa, & Weber, 2009; Bryman, 2004, 2008; Parry,Mumford, Bower, &Watts,
2014; Pratt, 2009),we chose a qualitative approach and conducted personal interviews with female
managers fromthe U.S. and Asia. This allowed us to examine how women advance to leadership
positions and how they enact leadership in their specific cultural context.
Barriers
The most important barriers to women's advancement across countries occurred at the social systems
level. Virtually all of the barriers that were regarded as substantial by women managers were
consequences of gender stereotypes. Negative performance expectations and double bind
While the implications of gender stereotypes were mentioned as barriers to women's advancement
across all four countries, negative performance expectations and the resulting need to prove one's

competence as well as the double bind of being assertive but at the same time communal (Heilman,
2012) were mentioned somewhat more frequently by women in the U.S. than in the
Asian countries.
Caregiver roles and responsibilities
The most salient barrier overall pertained to caregiver roles and responsibilities. However, attitudes
and strategies to overcome this barrier varied substantially between countries. In the U.S. the default
for women managers was to pursue their career but to have children, too. Although this required
making sacrifices in one's career, none of the U.S. managers reported having made the deliberate
choice not to have children, as has been reported earlier for other countries such as Germany ( Peus &
Traut-Mattausch, 2008). All in all managers from the U. S. described that they were able to combine
their caregiver roles with a leadership positionlargely because of paid help, support from their
husbands, friends, or employers, and by havingmade job-related decisions such as switching
organizations or going sideways in their careers for some time. Only one third of the Chinese
managers explicitly mentioned conflicts between caregiver and managerial roles; the majority put a
strong emphasis on their career. This is in line with results froma study by Yang, Chen, Choi, and Zou
(2000)who found that due to the collectivistic orientation in China sacrificing family time for
professional purposes was seen as self-sacrifice for the benefit of the family.
In contrast, the default expressed by Indian managers was to get married (in part also arranged
marriages) and to have children. Therewas no decision to bemade about assuming caregiver roles or
not. Rather than an obstacle to one's career, familywas seen as a source of support and a fallback
position when things at work go wrong.
In Singapore, more than half of the managers emphasized their duties as caregivers at home. Those
women with children said that without the support of their family and domestic helpers they could not
have kept on working. Regret or guilt that they could not spend as much time with their children and
their family was often voiced.

QUESTION 7
In an early approach to explaining how women advance to leadership positions, Ragins and
Sundstrom (1989) distinguished between factors at four levels of analysis: (1) individual, (2)
interpersonal, (3) organizational, and (4) social systems. The individual level focuses upon the
resources of an individual, such as achievement orientation or career aspirations. The interpersonal
level focuses on relationships with subordinates, peers, and in particular supervisors. Since personal
relationships may serve the function of role modeling, we also consider role models on the
interpersonal level (cf. Gibson, 2004). The organizational level captures practices related to selection
and promotion. The social systems level focuses on society at large and comprises factors such as
gender stereotypes.