Culture, Shared Mental Schemes, and Leadership: Comparing the Association of Culturally Contingent Implicit Leader Behaviors and Leadership Effectiveness and Organizational Commitment Between Two Subgroups of Latinos in the United States
Culture, Shared Mental Schemes, and Leadership: Comparing the Association of Culturally Contingent Implicit Leader Behaviors and Leadership Effectiveness and Organizational Commitment Between Two Subgroups of Latinos in the United States
Luis Guillermo Penaranda | 2018
Abstract
This investigation builds on the foundation of culturally endorsed implicit leadership theories (CLT), advanced by the Global Leadership & Organizational Behavior Effectiveness (GLOBE) study. CLTs are cognitive structures or beliefs about leadership effectiveness that are shared by members of particular national societies but not as strongly by members of other societies. The GLOBE study focused on comparing societal cultures defined in terms of national identity and geographic location but did not consider that, within those societies, there are subgroups of people whose mental programs about leadership may have been formed in other cultures, as is the case of migrant communities. The present study examined two subgroups of Latinos in the United States (i.e., those who migrated from Latin American countries and those born and raised in the United States) who may resemble the cultural implicit beliefs about leadership behaviors of their societies of origin (i.e., Latino vs. Anglo). The GLOBE study identified seven leader behaviors that are culturally contingent—they are perceived in some cultures as enhancing outstanding leadership, while in other cultures the same behaviors are viewed as inhibiting outstanding leadership. This exploratory study examined the extent to which foreign-born and native-born Latino church volunteers in the United States differ in their association of GLOBE’s seven culturally contingent CLT leader behaviors with leadership effectiveness (LE) and organizational commitment (OC). Regression models were used to examine the relationships between perception of culturally contingent CLT leader behaviors and both LE and OC for each of the subgroups. The difference in the regression coefficients of the regression models of each subsample were examined to test the hypothesized differences between the two groups of participants. Data were collected using a cross-sectional survey within the context of Latino church volunteers. The results showed positive relations, mainly between self-sacrificial, status-conscious, bureaucratic, and humane orientation leader behaviors and LE and OC. The only statistically significant differences between the models for each subgroup occurred when examining internally competitive, face-saver, and autonomous leader behaviors. Theoretical and practical implications of these results are presented, and suggestions for future research are discussed.