Differences in leadership behaviour between expatriate and local bosses as perceived by their host country national subordinates

Abstract

Presents an investigation of how host country national subordinates perceive the leadership behaviour of their expatriate bosses in foreign assignments. From a sample of 240 middle managers in Hong Kong with experience of both local Chinese bosses and expatriate bosses from a broad spectrum of Western and Asian countries, finds that the subordinate managers assessed the leadership behaviour of their expatriate bosses to be significantly different from that of their Hong Kong Chinese bosses. US bosses were perceived as the most different and Japanese bosses, as well as bosses from other Asian countries, were seen as the least different, while British bosses and bosses from other Western countries constituted a middle group. Discusses the implications of these findings for international business and future academic research.

Adjustment to Hong Kong: US v European expatriates

“…Typically, it has been found that expatriate managers apply the same management style as they used in their home country and do not adjust or adapt to the norms and practices of the host country (Selmer, 1995). In Hong Kong, Black and Porter (1991) found that US managers applied a very similar management style as managers in the USA and Selmer (1997a) found that Hong Kong subordinates perceived the management style of US bosses as more different than that of bosses from the UK and other western countries.…”

The development of entrepreneurship in Chinese communities: An organizational symbiosis perspective

“…The relationship of Chinese "middlemen" entrepreneurs in Southeast Asia with the large firms that were set up by Western colonialists in Southeast Asia can be considered to be a kind of mutualism. In this symbiotic relationship, the enterprising Europeans in Southeast Asia had no particular liking for the Chinese, but found their small firms to be indispensable in business (Selmer, 1997). In addition, for a new and small entrepreneur with limited resources, the formation of this mutualistic symbiosis would increase the chance of survival and success.…”

Ideal leader profiles in the Icelandic business sector: Evidence of uniformity of followers’ attitudes

“…These 100 items were factor analyzed to construct 12 dimensions of leader behavior (see table below). The literature indicates that LBDQXII is a reliable (Stogdill, 1965) and valid instrument (Halpin and Winer, 1957;Black and Porter, 1991;Selmer, 1997). The main discussion regarding preferred leader behavior today relates to whether or not those leader behavior preferences depend on context (Festekjian et al, 2014).…”