Abstract
With the exponential advancement of technology, global sharing, industrialization and economic development, national and global cultures are becoming more collective. More importantly, this fundamental paradigm shift is affecting national and global educational leadership cultures. Therefore, the power/distance index (PDI); individualism versus collectivism (IDV); uncertainty avoidance index (UAI); masculinity/femininity (MAS); and long-term orientation versus short-term orientation (LTO); are of interest when considering national and global cultures. These cultural dimensions can be exemplified in the responses of eight female educational leaders: three Canadians and one from Jamaica and Trinidad; two Grenadians and one Lebanese. This qualitative methodology in the form of a phenomenological study found that all respondents displayed varying degrees of each aspect of Hofstede’s five cultural dimensions which can be charted along a continuum from high to low index factors. Each dimension is linked to different leadership styles. PDI is linked to servant leadership, IDV is linked to shared/participatory leadership, UAI is linked to transformational leadership and emergent leadership, and MAS is linked to people versus task-oriented leadership. In each case, the slight variances in responses reflect the microcosm of the macrocosm where each country’s particular culture is mirrored. Recommendations are made for a more androgynous leadership style as well as more androgynous socialization processes if national and global educational leadership cultures are to become less gendered and more instrumental and functional based on the demands of the particular environment. It is expected that a focus could be placed on transcultural rather than intercultural studies in leadership and education.
Highlights
Hofstede [1] defined culture as “the collective programming of the mind that distinguishes the members of one group or category of people form another” (p. 39)
According to Hannay [9] servant leadership thrives in a culture where there is “low power distance, low to moderate individualism, low to moderate masculinity, low uncertainty avoidance and a moderate to high long-term orientation” (p. 1)
It can be seen that school leaders have the task of providing intellectual stimulation and individual support [49] and establishing positive working relationships with key stakeholders in order to promote school improvement and change
Summary
Hofstede [1] defined culture as “the collective programming of the mind that distinguishes the members of one group or category of people form another” (p. 39). Leadership is described by Cole [2] as a dynamic process whereby an individual influences another individual to contribute voluntarily to the realization and attainment of the goals, objectives, and aspiration of values of the group. In considering these two definitions one can see that culture and leadership share an interdependent relationship where one feeds the other and vice versa. House, Wright and Aditya [3] concluded that the expectations of what defines leadership behaviours varies across cultures They determined that the effectiveness of task-focused and people-focused behaviours are culture-specific
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