Trends, developments and gaps in cross-cultural research on leadership

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Abstract
Literature on leadership and literature on culture are each rich and deep, but the two were largely unrelated during the first several decades of their development. In more recent years, many researchers have explored relationships between these two literatures. In this chapter, we identify four developments or trends in the last 25 years of cross-cultural leadership literature. First, our understanding of etic or universal findings has advanced and become more complex, but also more realistic. Second, there has been refinement in the definition of “culture” and the identification of the dimensions of culture, with several researchers having identified particular cultural dimensions that seem to be directly relevant to leadership. Third, the social information processing literature has been extended to the leadership and culture literatures. Finally, there is a movement toward larger studies that not only collect data from multiple countries, but also through multiple research methodologies.