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The purpose of this paper is to examine the direct effects of empowering and employee-centered leadership on well-being, and the indirect or mediating role of social organizational climate between leadership behavior and well-being in a cross-cultural perspective.

Questionnaires were distributed in two furniture retail stores in Sweden and two stores in China belonging to the same company. The final sample consisted of 483 participants from the Chinese and 254 participants from the Swedish stores.

The results of the structural equation modeling showed that there was no direct effect between leadership behavior (employee-centered leadership and empowering leadership) and well-being in either the Swedish or the Chinese sample. Further, the findings of the study indicate that social climate mediates the relationship between leadership behavior and employee well-being, but this seems to be culturally contingent. The mediating effect is prevalent in a culture that has been considered as having a collective orientation and where the power distance is high.

Despite some methodological limitations such as the cross-sectional design and problems with acquiescence in responses, the results indicate the complexity of the role of culture in organizational behavior.

Managers working in increasingly globalized contexts need to take into consideration that some organizational behaviors gradually become more universal, whereas others remain culturally contingent.

The paper illustrates the complex relationship between leadership behavior, social climate, and employee well-being in the same corporate culture, but in different cultural settings.