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Two sides of the same coin? Leadership and organizational culture

Melody P.M. Chong (City University of Hong Kong, Kowloon, Hong Kong)
Yufan Shang (Xi’an Jiaotong University, Xi’an, China)
Malika Richards (The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, Pennsylvania, USA)
Xiji Zhu (Central University of Finance and Economics, Beijing, China)

Leadership & Organization Development Journal

ISSN: 0143-7739

Article publication date: 6 September 2018

Issue publication date: 5 October 2018

7170

Abstract

Purpose

Researchers have adopted a somewhat narrow conceptualization of organizational culture, founded on specific assumptions about the impact of founders or top leadership. The purpose of this paper is to address this research gap.

Design/methodology/approach

Based on 356 Chinese employees, this paper examines the relationships between organizational culture, leadership and employee outcomes. Specifically, the paper focuses on a mediation model by looking at how different leadership processes impact the relationship between culture and outcomes.

Findings

Supportive and task leadership styles and a persuasive influence strategy are correlated with team, detail and innovation cultures, respectively, and are significantly stronger than that of other leadership styles/strategies. Partial support is found for the mediating effect of task and change leadership styles, and assertive and persuasive influence strategies. Contrary to the authors’ second assumption regarding the social learning effect on outcomes, the study provides a tentative conclusion that different culture types may have different levels of strength in molding middle management and consequently influencing subordinate outcomes. The model of “culture-leadership-outcome” generally shows a similar pattern with the reverse effect of “leadership-culture-outcome.”

Originality/value

This study was the first to examine the impact of organizational culture on leadership and their effect on organizational outcomes, and to compare the reverse relationship. It suggests a new model that combines social cognitive theory with concepts drawn from the social learning perspective. Both the significant and non-significant results enhance our understanding on the mediating effects of leadership and culture. The findings also enrich leadership theory because no empirical studies systematically examined the similarities and differences between style approaches and influence strategies.

Keywords

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank Associate Editor, Dr Judith McKnight and two anonymous reviewers for their constructive comments on drafts. The work described in this paper was fully supported by a grant from College of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences, City University of Hong Kong (Project No. 9610133) to the first author.

Citation

Chong, M.P.M., Shang, Y., Richards, M. and Zhu, X. (2018), "Two sides of the same coin? Leadership and organizational culture", Leadership & Organization Development Journal, Vol. 39 No. 8, pp. 975-994. https://doi.org/10.1108/LODJ-05-2017-0122

Publisher

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Emerald Publishing Limited

Copyright © 2018, Emerald Publishing Limited

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