The Effects of Culture on the Leadership Style in Georgia

Abstract

Differences in leadership styles do exist across cultures and nationalities as revealed in the literature on culture and culture's influence on the leadership processes. Leadership style plays an important role in shaping the behavior and attitudes of the members of an organization. This research attempts to investigate the culture dimensions of Georgia and their effect on the dominating leadership style in this country. The research was based on Implicit Leadership Theory. It consists of interviews, literature review, participant and unobtrusive observations, and questionnaire-based data collection. Quantitative data were collected from a total of 160 employees of different organizations and profession. Correlation analysis was done to find out relationship between culture and leadership dimensions of Georgia. The results indicate that the Georgians view their society as high in In-group Collectivism, Assertiveness, and Power Distance cultural dimensions. These results make Georgia close to Easter European countries cluster according to the GLOBE study. Employees observe the dominant leadership style in Georgia as Middle-of-the-road Leadership though according to culture dimensions results it should be close to Authority-Compliance Leadership. Correlation analysis revealed that high In-group Collectivism culture dimension is more influential in workplaces than high Assertiveness and Power distance culture dimensions. Because of this effect Employee Orientation variable is higher than was expected.