Yoruba Culture And Leadership Style In Nigerian Organisation

Culture and leadership research in the last decade witnessed a general upsurge. Empirical studies that determined the scores of the subgroup cultures and examined leadership styles and preferences in Nigeria, have not been exhaustively carried out. This study therefore examined subgroup cultures and leadership styles in Nigerian organizations. Due to the structure of most Nigerian public organizations which are characterized by multi-ethnic groups with heterogeneous cultural beliefs, this study examined the differences in the Hofstede’s culture dimensions’ scores, leadership styles and preferences among Yoruba subgroup in Nigeria with focus on Power Distance and Individualism/Collectivism. Survey research design was adopted, making use of questionnaire for data collection. The study made use of 345 members of staff purposively selected from among the Yoruba subgroups in the Central Bank of Nigeria Headquarters in Abuja. The data generated from the structured questionnaire were analyzed using Statistical Package for Social Science (SPSS) for descriptive statistics. Hofstede’s culture dimensions of power distance and individualism/collectivism were computed using the Value Survey Module (VSM) developed by Hofstede. This study found that there is a high power distance among the Yoruba subgroup, and the leadership style preferred by the Yoruba’s is the democratic style of leadership and that the Yoruba subgroup is a collectivistic society.