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The purpose of this paper is to develop a reliable and valid field survey research instrument to assess national cultural cognitive templates of preferred leader behaviour dimensions to facilitate education, development, and training of managerial leaders operating across diverse organisations.

The study consists of focus group evaluations of the validity and the translations to local languages of a survey instrument assessing leader behaviour preferences in business organisations.

The studies find that the survey instrument and its translations are valid and reliable for assessing preferred leader behaviour across national cultures. The length of the survey is problematic, and a new project is underway to produce a shorter version with equivalent reliability and validity.

As the research project is long term, at this point, a relatively long survey is available for research, with a shorter version planned for the future.

Practical implications include producing and validating a field survey research instrument that is reliable and valid across cultures and languages, and can be employed to improve the understanding, development, and education of managers and leaders of international business organisations.

Management and leadership processes are employed in all aspects of life, and can be better understood and improved through this research project.

The majority of cross-cultural research is leader-centric studies of implicit leader characteristics; this project expands the scope of studies further into follower-centric studies of observed leader behaviour.

This article aims to introduce the theoretical underpinnings of a project that contributes to the empirical field research study literature concerning societal cultural and individual value priority effects on explicit preferred leader behaviour of employed businesspeople, and in some cases business students. The article then reviews research studies and results related to the theories and operationalisations.

This particular article is an introduction to the history and systems of the Leader Behaviour Description Questionnaire XII (LBDQXII) instrument to assess preferred leader behaviour priorities, followed by a review of empirical studies employing the instrument.

The findings indicate that the LBDQXII is adequate for the task at hand, and that societal cultural differences moderate variability in preferences for leader behaviour associated with leadership effectiveness. The reputation of the LBDQXII has been damaged by researchers, editors, reviewers, and dissertation and thesis supervisors’ lack of knowledge or disregard of available knowledge concerning the development of the instrument, its use, and proper methods and methodology. The results in the project studies indicate that similarities such as the same local language coupled with geographic proximity lead to similar kinds of preferred leader behaviour priorities between countries and within countries having diverse sub‐cultures, such as China. Although the samples were all employed businesspeople, sample differences can have significant effects, such as influence stemming industry membership. A conclusion is that, carefully applied and analysed, the LBDQXII is a useful, reliable, and valid survey instrument that can be employed to prepare, educate, and develop expatriates and local managers as to what behaviours are expected in business organisations in different cultures.

The reliabilities of some scales in the LBDQXII are low for some dimension scales for some countries. An objective of the research project is to produce a shorter, more reliable survey for use across cultures. Studies in the project indicate an influence on factor structure apparently due to the overarching analytic cognition or holistic cognition nature of a society.

The practical implications of the project are to identify and measure preferred leader behaviour dimensions that are similar and different across national and sub‐national cultures. Such information can be used to develop global leaders and to educate and train managerial leaders for success in multiple countries. A conclusion is that the LBDQXII can be employed to prepare, educate, and develop expatriates and local managers for international assignments.

Explicit theories of leadership (ELTs) and implicit theories of leadership (ILTs) have received varying amounts of attention in leadership research. Reading the leadership literature, the author finds little consideration of ELTs (explicit theories of leadership), most study and report on implicit traits, or a mixture of implicit and explicit. A major contribution of this research project and this special issue of the journal is the development of testing and support of an explicit theory of leadership and presenting progress in its operationalisation, and it evaluates a widely used survey instrument across cultures.

The study aims to investigate the national cultural clusters myth, studying the relationships between individual cultural values and preferred leader behaviour of working businesspeople in “Latin American” samples from Santiago, Chile, and Guadalajara, Mexico. The set of research questions to be addressed are: Are the rankings of value dimensions by businesspeople different between “Latin American” Chile and Mexico? Are the rankings of preferred leader behaviour dimensions different between Chile and Mexico? Are the predictive relationships of leader behaviour preferences by value dimension priorities different between Chile and Mexico?

In an investigation of the relationships amongst preferred leader behaviour and individual value dimensions, the study employs field survey research using two experimental but well established and documented instruments, the Schwartz Values Survey and the Leader Behaviour Description Questionnaire. Comparisons between results from two samples from Chile and Mexico are carried out.

Two samples from large cities in Latin America, Santiago, Chile, and Guadalajara, Mexico, are compared using preferred leader behaviour dimensions and individual values and their relationship to one another. Significant sample and gender sub‐sample differences were observed for preferred leader behaviour, indicating that the perception of preferred leader behaviour priorities differed between businesspeople in Santiago and Guadalajara. Results indicate a general preference in both samples for a Parental Leader style, nurturing in Chile and stern in Mexico, and managerial leaders should be a source of enjoyment and pleasure in business; indications are that engaging in business is an enjoyable endeavour. Gender (sex) differences were observed between samples for preferred leader behaviour. Due to several demographic differences in job level and age in the samples, further work is required to verify the differences observed.

Samples are from two cities, Santiago, Chile, and Guadalajara, Mexico, with an obvious requirement for studying additional regions in the country. Interpreting the findings is challenging and needs to be clarified though further focus group studies to assist in interpreting similarities and differences.

Practical applications of the outcomes of the study are that the results can be used to inform managerial leadership training and development and practice for expatriate and local managerial leaders working in the two cities.

The authors’ literature review and data analyses have some social implications as they found contradictory and misleading discussions of the relative placement of Mexico, Chile, and other countries in South, Central, and North America using cultural value dimension studies that need to be rationalised in further research.

The study is of value to practitioners and researchers interested in managerial leadership in Latin American countries.

The purpose of this paper is to empirically investigate the relationships between societal culture value dimensions and employee preferences for empowerment behaviors by managerial leaders across societal cultures. To do this, the authors synthesize the extant literature to underpin this study and to set the research agenda for future empirical work.

Using field survey research method, the authors obtain and analyze data from ten samples in eight geographically and culturally diverse societies from a global longitudinal study of preferred managerial leader behavior.

Cultural value dimension predictor variables affect employee preferences for leader empowerment behaviors in the societies studied. Some significant effects of gender and organizational factors on these relationships were found.

Future research should expand upon variations in the meaning of employee empowerment across cultures, consider other cultural models and theories, and a more extensive set of personal, organizational and relational factors.

Employee preferences for leader empowerment behaviors are more likely the result of the interplay, exchange and trade-offs between cultural, personal and organizational values. The effectiveness of employee empowerment is contingent upon well-designed training programs aligning management and worker values, goals and tasks.

The authors offer more realistic, objective and evidence-based insights into the cultural influences on the effectiveness of empowerment and employee cognitions towards it than the extant, conceptually and methodologically compromised, strategic cross-cultural studies.

The purpose of this paper is to refine and validate the most widely used leader behavior measurement instrument, LBDQXII, into a more parsimonious instrument for assessing cognitive templates of preferred leader behavior across cultures.

The 100-item LBDQXII survey was administered to 6,451 participants from 14 countries; these data were used to refine the survey.

The shorter survey instrument is a valid and reliable tool for assessing preferred leader behavior. Four periods in the LBDQXII “evolution” are identified: emergence, expansion, stagnation and revival.

The new LBDQ50 can be used to collect data across cultures, contributing to both global management development and scholarly studies.

This project corresponds to calls to shorten the well-established leader behavior instrument into a measurement tool that is reliable and valid across cultures and languages. This can be administered by both private and public organizations, contributing to greater effectiveness. Furthermore, it retains its scholarly scope encompassing follower-centric studies of leadership.

Leadership processes are found in all aspects of life and can be better understood and improved within and across cultures using the shorter version.

An efficient instrument to measure preferred leadership behavior across and within cultures. The availability of the LBDQ50 will allow practitioners and researchers to advance understanding of preferred leadership behavior as a predictor of organizational effectiveness. Most such instruments are overly-long, which hinders data collection opportunities. This newly developed instrument can lead to better response rates and easier applicability in organizational settings.

In this study the authors endeavour to further develop and validate the Behavioural and Contingency theory of leadership.

In a field survey research study, the authors collect, analyse, compare, and discuss explicit leader behaviour preferences of employed businesspeople in Istanbul and Izmir, Turkey, rating their “ideal managerial leader” and their actual organisational manager.

In Istanbul and Izmir businesspeople tend to prefer leaders who focus on managing the business system over other considerations such as relationship management; task orientation is more important than relationship orientation. In the business environment, there appear to be little or no differences in preferences relating to gender; men and women have nearly identical preferences; age has some influence; generally, older businesspeople tend to have higher preference scores for a managerial leader who clearly defines his or her own role, and lets followers know what is expected, and pushes them to work harder and exceed past performance. Subordinates neither received nor expected Paternal leader behaviour. They expected and did receive moderately Authoritarian leader behaviour.

The large majority of studies of leadership focus on implicit leadership theory, describing characteristics and traits of leaders. This study employs explicit leader behaviour theory and operationalisations to identify subordinates’ ideal leader behaviour compared to actual organisational manager behaviour in Turkey.

This paper aims to present a meta‐analysis of available statistical data and literature for gender‐related practices concerning women in business and education across countries, comparing the patriarchal belt and South Asian countries in the belt to the rest of the world. The purpose of the project is to investigate the progress of enhancement of opportunities for women to engage in non‐agricultural work in the belt, and, as women’s participation in tertiary education is touted as an impetus in enhancing women’s opportunities, investigate its effect.

The existence of a belt of countries from North Africa through Bangladesh and rural China is well known, with societies demonstrating a consistent pattern of restriction and suppression of women. No development of theory treating the patriarchal belt as a whole has been published. The authors earmark this as a future endeavour. They employ ten years of statistical summaries of percent of women in the non‐agricultural labour force and ratios of women to men in tertiary education provided by the United Nations in support of the UN Millennium Development Goals to compare changes in these activities in countries in the patriarchal belt, South Asia, and the rest of the world. The method is to carry out statistical comparisons of trends derived from annual averages for the two measures.

The literature review indicates that for millennia in the patriarchal belt societal practices have institutionalised women’s lack of access to participation in the labour market and generally from participating in much of public life. The analyses indicate that participation in non‐agricultural employment has decreased over the past decade in the belt compared to the rest of the world. Opportunities for women to participate in tertiary education have on average been increasing during this period for most countries of the world including those in the patriarchal belt. However, this circumstance has not led to increased participation in the non‐agricultural work force.

The practical implications seen are that the UN Millennium Development Goals (UNMDG) are important to improving the lot of individuals, some goals that purport to lead to improvements in human and gender rights in regions such as the patriarchal belt may have no real effect, and other, more useful goals need to be investigated. Economically, the exclusion of women from voluntary productive labour as detrimental to the development of a nation is seen.

In the patriarchal belt societal practices institutionalise negative discrimination concerning women, often codified in laws that prohibit women from participating in much of public life or fully competing in the labour market. The evaluation of these conditions using European and North American standards proposes that these women are abused and denied their rights. Nonetheless, initiatives such as agreements on the UNMDG appear to have no effect, and other solutions need to be pursued.

The originality and value of this paper is that it investigates the complete set of patriarchal belt countries, across countries that include both Muslim and Hindu majorities. It concludes that while religions tenets are employed to justify patriarchal practices, long‐standing tribal practices appear to be far more influential.

The purpose of this paper is to address issues relating to the United Nations Millennium Development Goals (UNMDG) in the Middle East, analysing socio‐cultural issues having direct relevance to the region's progress toward “Promote Gender Equality and Empower Women”.

The authors employ meta‐analyses with data from the United Nations, the Arab Human Development Report, and various sources of measurement of national means for Hofstede's five‐dimensional model of cultural value.

The authors find that the percentage of women in employment, excluding the agricultural sector, in their sample of Middle East countries has declined since 2000, while in the samples of other Muslim‐majority and all other countries the percentage employed has increased.

The limitations of the authors' research are that complete sets of data for women in employment are not available for all years for all countries in their samples.

Implications for practice for governments and businesses in Middle East countries are that women are a valuable economic resource which is being excluded from contribution and for the past decade the change in the Middle East has been in a negative direction.

The economic contributions and rights of women in the Middle East lag behind most of the developed and developing nations, including other Muslim‐majority nations.

This study provides empirical evidence from publicly available data concerning the employment status of women in Middle Eastern nations. The authors found no similar empirical studies in the literature. The study is of value to planners and policy‐makers in business, government, and non‐governmental organisations.

The Ohio State leader behaviour description questionnaire XII (LBDQ XII) was used to assess the leadership preference opinions of business managers in England and Germany. Significant differences were noted between the two national groups. The most dramatic difference was on the factor production emphasis, defined as “measuring to what degree the manager applies pressure for productive output”, with the English sample indicating a preference for a leader to demonstrate a significantly higher level of production emphasis than the German sample. Large, significant differences were also observed for demand reconciliation, persuasiveness, tolerance of uncertainty, initiation of structure, predictive accuracy, and superior orientation. For English leaders, the followers seem to prefer a more interventionist approach. For German leaders, the imposition of Ordnung (order) is critical.