| As the world's economy is globalized and the composition of American work force becomes culturally diversified, there is a growing concern that current models of motivation may need to be modified to adequately apply to culturally diverse groups. The lack of consideration of the impact of cultural and contextual differences makes it difficult to generalize U.S. motivation theories and managerial practices across cultures. As such, one of the major concerns among a number of leadership researchers is whether managers should lead differently in various cultural settings.;Results of this research suggest several conclusions. First, the positive effects of transformational leadership across all performance measures indicated that it can indeed increase followers' motivation and performance both at individual and group levels, especially among collectivistic Asian-American subjects. Second, the interdependent nature of the task generally had positive effects on followers' objective performance measures, regardless of their cultural orientation. Third, when means were simultaneously examined under different combinations of leadership, task and/or reward condition, leadership style had the greatest effect on followers' performance. The effects of transformational leadership were robust regardless of the different sets of conditions examined in the current research. Finally, results from the path analyses indicated the effects of leadership on performance were both direct and indirect, through trust in and value identification with the leader. This pattern of results occurred regardless of the followers' cultural values orientation.;The purpose of this dissertation was to examine the impact of different leadership styles and different cultural values in ad hoc groups, on the performance of those individuals and groups under various task structure and reward allocation conditions. Specifically, two leadership styles, transformational and transactional leadership were compared to determine whether those styles had a differential impact on the performance of individuals and groups working on a specific problem-solving task. In addition, the main effects of leadership style, on followers' performance were examined under different task structure (independent vs. interdependent task) and reward allocation (individual vs. group rewards) conditions, using a 2 (leadership style) x 2 (task structure) x 2 (reward allocation rules) crossed experimental design with each of two ethnic groups. |
