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CULTURE AND LEADERSHIP, ACROSS THE WORLD: THE GLOBE BOOK OF IN-DEPTH STUDIES OF 25 SOCIETIES. By J. S. CHHOKAR, F. C. BRODBECK, & R. J. HOUSE. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates (2007) Hardcover, 1162 pages
In 1980, Geert Hofstede, in an article challenging the assumption that American management theories apply in cross-cultural settings, noted that the "first U.S. book about the cultural relativity of U.S. management theories is still to be written." His landmark study on cultural differences in management practices (G. H. Hofstede, 1980) had just been published. But most American managers and leaders continued to proceed on the parochial assumption that the wisdom of American management literature represented the one best approach that could be offered to leaders worldwide. Over the years this notion has been thoroughly challenged by cross-cultural researchers. The work of Hofstede led to further investigations of cultural management practices and values. What many of these studies had in common was the notion that there were culture dimensions that could be compared from culture to culture (Adler, 2002; Lewis, 1996; Schwartz, 1999; Trompenaars, 1998). The most ambitious of all cross-cultural leadership studies, however, is the so-called GLOBE study, a collaborative research endeavor that according to the Hong Kong scholar Kwok Leung may very well "go down in the history of management research as a hallmark for diversity, inclusiveness, richness, and multilateralism" (xvi). Culture and Leadership, Across the World is the second volume of the GLOBE (Global Leadership and Organizational Behavior Effectiveness) research project. This volume presents the results of GLOBE's Phase 3, which consisted of an in-depth description of culture and leadership in 25 of the 62 countries studied by the GLOBE project. The results of Phase 1 (the development and validation of the research methods) and Phase 2 (the description of culture and leadership factors in 62 countries) were reported in the 818-page book Culture, Leadership, and Organizations (House, Hanges, Javidan, Dorfman, & Gupta, 2004), which was reviewed by Thom Wolf in the first issue of this journal (2006).
The present volume contains 28 chapters, written by 57 authors, in 1162 (xxxi) pages, including 61 pages of index. The first two chapters are introductory, followed by 25 country chapters, and a concluding chapter integrating the rich findings of...