Abstract

SOLOMON, AW  and  STEYN, R. The relationship between subordinate cultural identity, leader cultural intelligence and empowering and directive leadership. JCMAN [online]. 2017, vol.14, n.1, pp.119-155. ISSN 1815-7440.

Literature suggests that leadership is a function of culture. It would consequently be expected that empowering and directive leadership will be informed by staff members' cultural identity but will be guided by the leader's cultural intelligence. There is, however, a lack of empirical insight in this respect. This study, therefore, examined the part played by subordinate cultural identity in the display of empowering and directive leadership by leaders, given a leader's cultural intelligence. A cross-sectional survey design was used on a sample of 1140 persons, working across 19 diverse South African organisations. Reliability and factorial validity of the measuring instruments were assessed and found to be satisfactory. Correlations between empowering and directive leadership with (a) subordinate cultural identity were small, but with (b) leader cultural intelligence were medium to large. Leader cultural intelligence was found to be a better predictor of empowering and directive leadership than was subordinate cultural identity. The results suggest that leader cultural intelligence may be important in the display of empowering and directive leadership, but that the cultural identity of subordinates might not play a determining role in this regard. Organisational leaders are thus encouraged to develop their cultural intelligence.

Keywords : cultural identity; cultural intelligence; culture; directive leadership; empowering leadership; leadership styles; South Africa.

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