The thesis «Causes and consequences of culturally congruent leadership: Theoretical and empirical insights» contributes to the two broad fields of causes and consequences of culturally congruent leadership.

It consists of five interrelated papers. Two of the five papers are empirical, while the other three papers are conceptual. The focus of the first three papers is on culture-practice fit, whereas the last two papers address the issue of congruity from the perspective of values.

The thesis commences with a conceptual paper that identifies mechanisms that tie cultural values at different levels to the cultural adaptation of leadership styles, and addresses the relative strength of these mechanisms under a variety of cultural conditions.

The second paper is an empirical paper aiming to investigate how societal level and leaders' individual paternalistic values are associated with leader behaviors. Six hypotheses are tested using a survey data, and the proposed relationships are partly supported. The findings show that societal level paternalism is linked with structural leadership, while self-paternalism is associated with humanistic and symbolic leadership.

The third paper is also an empirical one, examining whether individual level masculinity-femininity moderated the association between leadership styles and followers' job satisfaction. Three hypotheses are derived and tested using survey data. The results demonstrated that followers high on masculinity have higher job satisfaction when exposed to a political leadership style.

The fourth paper is a conceptual study that addresses the mechanisms that link cultural values and leader-society value congruence. The study explains how leader-society value congruence is produced and why such congruence is more likely to occur in some cultures than in others. Several theoretical perspectives are used to develop a series of propositions. The fifth paper is again a conceptual paper that develops a model of how the effects of leader-society value congruence is contingent upon the societal cultural values. A series of propositions are generated based on how cultural values moderate the relationship.

Prescribed topic for the trial lecture:

«Cultural Adaptation of Leadership: Benefits and Costs»

Time of the trial lecture:
11.15 - 120.00 in Karl Borch's Auditorium, NHH

Title of the thesis:
«Causes and consequences of culturally congruent leadership: Theoretical and empirical insights»

Time and place for the defense:
1315 - in Karl Borch's Auditorium, NHH

Members of the evaluation committee:
Professor Vidar Schei, NHH (Committee Chair)

Professor Michele J. Gelfand, University of Maryland                                     

Professor Bjørn W. Hennestad, BI

Supervisor:
Professor Rune Lines, Department of Strategy and Management (NHH)

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