Ideal Leadership Behavior Expectations Of Chinese College Students

With globalism's increasing importance, cross cultural leadership research has developed rapidly during the last three decades. Cultural background is commonly found to have a pervasive influence on leader behaviors and followers'perceptions and expectations of ideal leaders. It has been well recognized that leadership studies which ignore or minimize the cultural context risk constructing only partial understandings of how leadership in different settings is developed. Various studies have shown that a country's culture helps to explain its leadership effectiveness. Yet, very little cross cultural leadership research has been conducted in the Chinese context and too little is known about what leadership behaviors work effectively on Chinese employees.Using the Leadership Behavior Description Questionnaire developed by Pro. Hemphill in Ohio State University, this study surveys the ideal leadership behavior expectations of Chinese college students (N=107) so that leaders of other cultural backgrounds can tailor their leadership behaviors accordingly to improve leadership effectiveness with the Chinese.The survey result shows that ideal leaders in Chinese college students'mind should always"maintain a closely knit organization"and"use persuasion and argument effectively and exhibit strong convictions". These future Chinese employees also expect leaders to often reconcile conflicting demands, proactively take their leadership role, let followers know their expectations, give followers freedom to make decisions and take action, tolerate uncertainty and postponement without anxiety, exhibit foresight and ability to predict outcome with accuracy, and consider followers'well being, contributions and comfort. The last desirable behavior is"production emphasis", which indicates that Chinese college students expect their future leaders only occasionally to push them to work harder for increased production and encourage overtime work.Statistics also show that demographical factors, such as gender, educational level, and university location also have an influence on students'expectations of ideal leaders. For instance, compared with male, female students expect more demand reconciliation, tolerance and freedom, and role assumption behaviors.