Bridging Leadership and Culture: A Theoretical Consideration of Transformational Leadership and Collectivistic Cultures

Abstract

Although transformational leadership has gained increased attention by management researchers as a new paradigm for understanding leadership in organizations, little research effort has focused upon the linkage between transformational leadership and collectivistic cultures. Nor has a theoretical consideration been offered to elucidate the emergence of transformational leadership outside of the United States, particularly in collectivistic cultures. To address this theoretical shortcoming, this paper presents several characteristics of collectivistic cultures as preconditions for facilitating the transformational leaders' effectiveness. Specifically, four characteristics of transformational leadership suggested by Bass and his colleagues are linked to collectivism for describing a conceptual bridge between these two distinct paradigms.