"A Comparison of Leadership Effectiveness among China, Japan, and Korea:Crossvergence Perspective"

This study analyzed how leadership effectiveness is different across cultures from Ralston et al.’s (1997) crossvergence perspective. Based on implicit leadership theory, we developed and tested a framework for the effects of group-focused and individual-focused transformational leadership (GTFL and ITFL) on employees’ affective organizational commitment (AOC) using survey data from 601 employees of China, Japan, and Korea which are considered as the Confucian Asia cluster. The results showed that GTFL had positive effects on AOC only for Japanese and Korean employees. In contrast, ITFL had positive effects on AOC only for Chinese and Korean employees. We suggest that the findings may result from individuals’ cultural value differences that can be largely explained by different economic influences in these three countries. Furthermore, we investigated the moderating effect of contingent reward leadership (CRL) between the two TFL styles and AOC. There were contradictory moderating effects of CRL on AOC observed only for Korean employees. Specifically, CRL strengthened the positive relationship between GTFL and AOC, whereas CRL weakened the positive relationship between ITFL and AOC. We discuss theoretical and managerial implications of crossvergence of leadership effectiveness among the three countries.