Agency, conscientiousness, and leadership emergence in Asia: How managers in countries with and without British influence differ from each other.

Abstract

The current study investigated differences in personality characteristics for emerging managers across several Asian countries as well as the United Kingdom. We hypothesized that managers from countries with a historical British influence would score similarly to managers from the United Kingdom on a measure of agency and that managers from countries with no historical British influence would score higher on a measure of conscientiousness than would managers from the British-influenced countries. To test our hypotheses, we sampled 4,519 managers across eight Asian countries that completed the Hogan Personality Inventory. We found support for our hypotheses, which suggests that historical economic and political factors can have long-lasting effects on the predominant management style of a country or region. We discuss the relevance of these results for multinational corporations and future researchers. These results can support organizations engaged in international expansion, management due-diligence programs for international mergers and acquisitions, cross-border contract negotiations, the preparation of expatriates, the development of regional managers with cross-country purview, and the development of global high-potential evaluation programs. These results can also support consulting psychologists and other professionals by providing context to coaching and development engagements that involve managers who operate in, or interact with stakeholders from, the countries we examined.

Inclined but less skilled? Disentangling extraversion, communication skill, and leadership emergence.

“…Whereas this scholarship directly indicates extraversion as a positive predictor of leadership emergence, many other arguments for extraversion’s role have instead inadvertently argued for communication skill, as shown in Table 1. For instance, individuals will be most likely to emerge as leaders when their social skills create effective interactions (Cogliser et al, 2012; Guerin et al, 2011; Nahrgang et al, 2009) and enable them to better influence others while managing relationships (Sanger et al, 2017). Demonstrating the skill to communicate effectively verbally (speaking with clarity, confidence, and expressiveness) and nonverbally (using appropriate expressions and gestures) has been closely tied to perceptions of charisma (e.g., Antonakis et al, 2011; Frese et al, 2003; Towler, 2003), which in turn forms a basis of leadership perceptions (Antonakis et al, 2011).…”

The agency paradox: What personality and multirater- assessment data tell us about leader success in Japan.

“…We recommend assessors critically consider the countries to which a leader-identification model will be applied when it includes a measure of agency. If a country where the FFM leadership prototype features a level of agency that is below average (as it tends to be in Japan, Mainland China, South Korea, and Thailand; Sanger et al, 2017), it is important to study how the model will affect those nominated to participate. For example, if the program targets a pool of midlevel managers from these countries, lower levels of agency may have already infiltrated the organization’s leadership ranks.…”

“…Even researchers who question whether personality characteristics consistently predict leader effectiveness have conceded that narrow personality dimensions, such as agency, are better predictors of performance (Bergman, Lornudd, Sjöberg, & Von Thiele Schwarz, 2014). Still, in countries like Japan, Mainland China, South Korea, and Thailand, those with low levels of agency seemed to advance in organizations despite their apparent lacking in the facilitative proclivities, and they appeared to do so more readily than did those with low agency in other contexts (Sanger, Nei, Ferrell, & Yang, 2017;Shalhoop & Sanger, 2012;Winsborough & Sambath, 2013). For this study we pursued data to expand the understanding of this trend.…”

“…Second, we speculated the possibility another personality factor serves as an alternate to securing leadership nominations in environments that are operationally different from those of the West and agency is therefore less necessary for success. Previous empirical research has demonstrated that certain Asian countries’ organizational leaders can be clustered by agency and conscientiousness scores and that managers from countries with lower levels of agency tended to have higher levels of conscientiousness (Sanger et al, 2017). When high-potential evaluation models feature agency, often the intention is to assess or support the assessment of an individual’s achievement motivation.…”

“…Modern national culture plays a significant role in shaping leadership expectations across countries (Duke, 2010; Erez, 2011; Minkov & Blagoev, 2014; Sanger et al, 2017; Schwartz & Bardi, 1997). MNCs tend to organize general management functions, in large part, by country.…”