The Impact of National Culture on Leadership

The paper analyses the impact of national culture on leadership and leadership styles. It has been determined that national culture impacts leadership and leadership styles by defining the meanings that both leaders and their followers ascribe to the reality that surrounds them. The analysis includes the impact that the dimensions of national culture, identified in the Geert Hofstede’s and GLOBE’s researches, have on leadership. The paper analyses the impact that the dimensions of national culture have on two main dimensions used to differentiate leadership styles: authoritarianism–participative orientation and task orientation–people orientation. It has been determined that power distance and individualism– collectivism as well as uncertainty avoidance and assertiveness decisively impact the selection between authoritarian and participative leadership styles. The national culture’s “masculinity”–“femininity” dimension, as well as gender equality, performance orientation, people orientation, and future orientation correlated with it, impact the selection between people orientation and task orientation. In certain contexts, high uncertainty avoidance also impacts this leadership dimension. By intertwining two leadership styles’ dimension, four leadership styles are created, as well as cultural contexts in which each of the styles is favoured, preferred, and thereby more effective. Serbian national culture, with its assumptions and values, implies using of authoritarian people-oriented style.