A cross-cultural examination of the fit between expected and observed leadership behaviors and employee satisfaction: an empirical study of the expectations and satisfaction of Chinese employees toward the leadership behaviors of their expatriate supervisors

Abstract Building on person-supervisor fit and implicit leadership theories, we examined the effect of the fit between expected and observed leadership behaviors on employee satisfaction in a cross-cultural context. The data we analyzed had been collected from 237 Chinese employees who reported directly to 40 expatriate senior managers. The results of the polynomial regression analyses and response surface modeling showed that a high degree of fit was associated with a high degree of supervisor satisfaction and that such satisfaction was higher when the expected and observed leadership behaviors exhibited a high level of alignment. Our study’s theoretical contributions and practical implications are discussed.