Asia is a continent with rich and diverse traditions.1 Mesopotamia, Ancient India and Ancient China were cradles of civilization. For most of thousand years of history prior to the Industrial Revolution, Asia was much more developed than the rest of the world by many indicators (Khanna, 2019). Besides its historical significance, about 60 percent of the worldās current population lives in Asia, which also contributes to more than one third of the worldās GDP. Given its highest GDP growth rate among all continents, Asia is expected to cast even larger influences over the rest of the world in the near future. Statements claiming that the 21st century is āthe Asian Centuryā (Ishida & Park, 1985; Kishore, 2008) and claims that āthe future is Asianā (Khanna, 2019) exemplify how Asia is viewed for its current and future significance to the world. However, the breakneck pace of economic growth in many Asian countries has created a double-edged sword ā many countries formerly regarded negatively by some as ābackward countriesā have become engines of development in the new world economy in just several decades, while there is a huge pressure to forge Asia business leaders in a compressed timeframe (Bruning & Tung, 2013). Asiaās increasingly important role on the world stage and the challenges confronting Asian firms to develop effective leaders demand a better understanding of Asian leadership.
This chapter will review the cross-culture leadership research, with a focus on East, South, and Southeast Asian countries. We will first review cross-culture leadership research frameworks, including those developed by Hofstede and from the GLOBE Project. Then we will provide country-specific historical, social, cultural and leadership research overviews of several important Asian countries, including China, Japan, India, Indonesia, and Thailand. Finally, we will summarize challenges and opportunities to develop the Asian-centric leadership research by integrating current cross-culture leadership research literature.
Existing Cross-Culture Leadership Frameworks
Management scholars hold different views on the influences of culture on leadership. Accordingly, researchers are either taking on perspective culture-universal or perspective culture-specific, with the former viewing leadership as consistent across cultures and the latter viewing leadership as unique to a particular culture (Bass, Stogdill & Bass, 2008). This dichotomization of cross-cultural leadership views corresponds to the distinction of āemicā for the culture-universal versus āeticā for the culture-specific research approaches respectively that originated in linguistic and anthropology (Dorfman et al., 1997). The culture-specific or emic research is also sometimes named an āindigenous approachā in leadership (Cheng et al., 2004) as well as in social psychology (Yang, 2000). It is worth noting that a group of scholars from Hong Kong and Taiwan, including Kuo-Shu Yang and Kwang-Kuo Hwang, have made significant contributions to the progress of indigenous psychology, particularly the establishment of the indigenous Chinese psychology (Leung, 2007). In general, both culture-universal and culture-specific approaches have received some empirical support (Dorfman et al., 1997).
Bird and Mendenhall (2016) reviewed the cross-culture management studies from the past half-century. They reviewed leadership research based on a cross-culture research typology, including unicultural, comparative, and intercultural types, that was originally proposed by Adler (1983). The unicultural approach is essentially the culture-specific view with the focus on leadership within the cultural context of a single country. The comparative method is to compare leadership in two or more countries. The intercultural research is the examination of interactions of people from different cultures or countries. After summarizing past cross-culture leadership research based on this typology, Bird and Mendenhall (2016) proposed a fourth category of global leadership, referring to the exploration of leadership in a global context.
The most well-known and influential cross-culture framework was developed by Geert Hofstede. According to Hofstede, national cultures can influence management and leadership in substantial ways. Based on his cross-national surveys collected in IBM from the late 1960s to the early 1970s, he developed the culture dimension theory (Hofstede, 1984, 2001) to explain national culture through evaluating values of individuals along six dimensions: power distance, individualism vs. collectivism, uncertainty avoidance, masculinity vs. femininity, long-term orientation vs. short-term orientation, and indulgence vs. restraint (Hofstede & Milosevic, 2011). Among these dimensions, the first four have been more extensively studied by cross-cultural scholars. A review of literature summarizing management research between 1980 to 2002 shows the application of the Hofstede framework to study leadership at the individual, the group, as well as the country levels (Kirkman, Lowe & Gibson, 2006). Although his framework has been challenged on both the theoretical and empirical aspects through heated exchanges (Hofstede, 2002; McSweeney, 2002a, 2002b; Williamson, 2002), meta-analysis studies have shown the validity of this framework and have even proposed some new directions for improvement (Steel & Taras, 2010; Taras, Kirkman & Steel, 2010).
The Global Leadership and Organizational Behaviour Effectiveness (GLOBE) research program provides another well-known framework of culture value. According to the GLOBE Project leader Robert House, the purpose of GLOBE is to help understand how culture influences leadership, organizational effectiveness, and societal-level outcomes such as economic competitiveness and human conditions, through a collaboration among 160 scholars in 62 different cultures (House et al., 2004). GLOBE quantifies cultural attributes along eight dimensions, including uncertainty avoidance, power distance, collectivism (including institutional collectivism and in-group collectivism), gender egalitarianism, assertiveness, future orientation, performance orientation, and humane orientation. Based on the culturally endorsed implicit leadership theory (CLT), the GLOBE Project also describes leadership along six dimensions: charismatic/value-based leadership, team-oriented leadership, participative leadership, humane-oriented leadership, autonomous leadership, and self-protective leadership. These six dimensions are further divided into 21 subscales in the Leader Attributes and Behavior Questionnaire. Compared to Hofstedeās framework, GLOBE claims to be more theory-oriented. There have been comparisons of these two cultural models and debates on which one is more valid (Hofstede, 2010; Javidan et al., 2006; Smith, 2006; Venaik & Brewer, 2010). The existing meta-analysis on GLOBE dimensions is available but limited (Schneid et al., 2015). Table 1.1 provides a summary to compare the Hofstede and GLOBE models.
Table 1.1:Summaries of the Hofstede and GLOBE studies.
| Differences | Hofstede Model | GLOBE Model |
| Time period | 1967ā1973 | 1994ā1997 |
| Respondents | Managers and non-managers | Managers |
| Organizations surveyed | IBM and its subsidiaries | 951 organizations globally |
| Industries | Information technology | Financial services, food processing, telecommunications |
| Dimensions | Power distance, individualism vs. collectivism, uncertainty avoidance, masculinity vs. femininity, long-term orientation vs. short-term orientation, indulgence vs. restraint | Power distance, uncertainty avoidance, ... |
