Abstract
Multisource feedback is important for leadership development and effectiveness. An important asset of such feedback is that it provides information about the self-other agreement between leaders and observers. Self-other agreement relates to several positive individual, dyadic, and organizational outcomes. Given the increasingly intercultural context in organizations, it is imperative to understand whether and how cultural distance between leaders and observers relates to self-other agreement. We hypothesize that cultural distance within leader-observer dyads is negatively associated with self-other agreement. Moreover, we expect that this relationship is stronger for leader-superior than leader-subordinate dyads. We use a unique multi-cultural dataset of 7,778 leaders (52 nationalities) rated by 22,997 subordinates (56 nationalities) and 10,132 superiors (54 nationalities) to test our hypotheses. Results confirm that cultural distance is negatively associated with self-other agreement; we show that this relationship is driven by increased self-ratings and by reduced other-ratings. In addition, we find that these results are more pronounced for leader–superior than for leader–subordinate dyads. Implications for the theory and practice of self-other agreement and multisource feedback are discussed.
Highlights
In the contemporary, globalized and interconnected business world, where the number of intercultural interactions between people are ever increasing, practicing effective leadership has never been more challenging (Maddux et al, 2021)
We investigate the extent to which cultural distance relates to self-other agreement of transformational and transactional leadership behaviors (Burns, 1978; Bass, 1985; Bass and Avolio, 1990), which we respectively define as the extent to which leaders articulate a compelling vision, mission, and strategy, and the extent to which leaders set up appropriate reward structures and provide feedback
Previous research has demonstrated that self-other agreement differs between countries and cultures (e.g., Atwater et al, 2005; Gentry et al, 2007; Varela and Premeaux, 2008) and that being from different countries and cultures can affect evaluations in general (e.g., Caligiuri and Day, 2000; Kossek et al, 2017). Continuing these streams of research, by integrating literature on self-other agreement (Yammarino and Atwater, 1993; Atwater et al, 1998) with leadership categorization theory (Lord et al, 1982, 1984; Lord and Maher, 1991), we show that cultural distance within leader–observer dyads is negatively associated with selfother agreement
Summary
In the contemporary, globalized and interconnected business world, where the number of intercultural interactions between people are ever increasing, practicing effective leadership has never been more challenging (Maddux et al, 2021). Research shows that disagreement is generally more likely to occur than agreement (Harris and Schaubroeck, 1988; Tsui and Ohlott, 1988; Heidemeier and Moser, 2009; Lee and Carpenter, 2018), especially when leaders and observers hold different perceptions about the evaluation criteria used (Tsui and Ohlott, 1988; Yammarino and Atwater, 1993; Oh and Berry, 2009) These criteria are, at least partly, based on people’s cultural backgrounds, which has important implications for how people conceptualize effective leadership practices (Den Hartog et al, 1999; House et al, 2004) and how people evaluate and provide feedback (Atwater et al, 2005, 2009; Gentry et al, 2007; Varela and Premeaux, 2008; Eckert et al, 2010). More research on the link between cultural distance and self-other agreement is warranted
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