Year: 2017
Type: dissertation
Study design: Observational Study
Abstract: This research explores national and cultural differences in nonprofit leadership. Despite the global expansion of nonprofit organizations, limited research is found in the literature that studies national and cultural differences in nonprofit leadership specifically. This research is designed in two phases to address the overall research question of whether national cultures influence servant leadership in nonprofits. The first phase is a comparison study between U.S. nonprofit employees and South Korean nonprofit employees to examine if there are national differences on people’s preferences for nonprofit leadership. The second phase explores the relationship between Hofstede’s six cultural dimensions (i.e. power distance, individualism vs. collectivism, masculinity vs. femininity, uncertainty avoidance, long-term vs. short-term orientation, indulgence vs. restraint) and servant leadership attributes based on Barbuto and Wheeler’s (2006) subscales (altruistic calling, emotional healing, wisdom, persuasive mapping, and organizational stewardship) by filtering criteria from the World Values Survey (2014) dataset. The study utilizes statistical procedures and analyses such as ANOVA, MANOVA, DFA, EFA, Pearson’s correlation, and canonical correlation to explore these national differences and cultural influences on nonprofit servant leadership. For the first phase, results indicate different nonprofit leadership preferences between the United States and South Korea as they have different national cultures, in particular that U.S. nonprofit employees show more preference for servant leadership than South Korean nonprofit employees. The second phase indicates significant correlations between the cultural dimensions and the servant leadership attributes. The findings of this research have significant implications to help nonprofit leaders and managers for global expansion and/or operations in multinational settings such as leadership training development for local employees or cultural trainings for nonprofit expatriates.
Author: Sung-Il Chung
Language: English
Subfield: Business and International Management
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
Funder: Princeton University
OpenAlex ID: W2770022008