Leadership/Followership Similarities Between People in a Developed and a Developing Country: The Case of Dominicans in NYC and Dominicans on the Island

Abstract

This article presents the descriptive findings of two small-scale surveys regarding four organizational-behavior dimensions conducted in the Dominican Republic (a developing country) and New York City (in a developed country) with subjects of Dominican origin. The four dimensions studied are: managerial styles, followership types, power bases at work, and delegation of authority. The comparison of the two groups showed that they share more similarities than differences in terms of the four organizational-behavior dimensions investigated. The study provided an opportunity to begin to explore how much the workplace values of the mother culture prevail and how much the values of the host country's culture influence organization behavior in the case of immigrants at work. The implications of this small-scale study for leadership development in the Dominican Republic and for managing workplace diversity in the U.S. are discussed.