A Critical Review of Implicit Leadership Theory on the Validity of Organizational Actor-National Culture Fitness

Abstract

According to implicit leadership literature, actor-national culture fitness is a necessity to be labeled as a leader. However, studies which focus on implicit leadership theory and national culture have some contradictory findings. A systematic review of these studies reveals that participants could score high on opposite implicit leadership values and a sufficient theoretical explanation for these surprising results have not been given so far. This paper argues that showing full harmony with the cultural expectations of followers is not a necessity to be seen as a leader. Actors who can fill the cultural gap with their different cultural values can also be labeled as leaders. This paper contends that organizational actors with cultural values differing from those of the followers with certain cultural orientations are more likely to be labeled as leaders. People from individualistic societies may be more prone to label ‘team oriented leadership’ dimension as their outstanding leadership prototype whereas people from masculine societies may show ‘humane oriented leadership’ as their outstanding leadership prototype.