Similarities and Differences in Managerial Judgment Around the World

Abstract

This chapter reviews key research on the similarities and differences in leadership and management across different regions of the world. It also looks at similarities and differences on other relevant aspects, that is, commitment, work values, personality and emotional intelligence. Research has tended to focus on drawing out the differences as that appears to be worthy of news and attracts interest. We also report on the types of errors in research which might actually make real differences appear much larger. The reality is that what we find is a great deal of similarity in leadership and management behaviour across the different regions of the world. Given these similarities, can we develop a management level Situational Judgment Test (SJT) that can be used effectively across different world regions? We believe this can be achieved by identifying SJT items that work consistently across world regions and then assembling a bias-free test with robust psychometric properties.