Do Positive Leadership Strategies Vary Across the Nations? The Study of Polish, French and American Universities

Purpose: The main aim of this paper is to identify the differences and similarities in applying positive leadership strategies in American, French and Polish universities. Design/methodology/approach: The research methods applied in the study include literature analysis and the online questionnaire survey conducted within university staff from the United States, France and Poland. Findings: The research has shown that generally speaking, the closest to Cameron’s (2012) positive leadership model is the image presented by the Americans. The French and the Poles should still work on implementing positive leadership strategies in their organisations to achieve extraordinary performance. The investigation has determined some beneficial takeaways for higher education institutions leadership. Research and practical limitations/implications: The paper has some limitations: a limited access to literature, a small size of the study sample, the questionnaire in English where for only one of the countries it is a first language. Originality/value: Embedding the research on positive leadership in various organisational and cultural contexts is one of areas which require more research attention. Among them the studies in the context of academia are worth mentioning. As of 13 May 2018, in the Scopus database, there were found no records including the conjunction of phrases ‘positive leadership’ and (‘university’ or ‘higher education institution’) in the titles of indexed articles. As regards the conjunction of phrases ‘positive leadership’ and ‘culture’, one item (Youssef-Morgan and Luthans, 2013) was found under the aforementioned criteria. With this paper an attempt to present current research on positive leadership strategies in the university context and contrast that with cultural dimensions will be taken. Paper type: research paper.