Effects of Leadership Style and Followers' Cultural Orientation on Performance in Group and Individual Task Conditions

Abstract

We manipulated transformational and transactional leadership styles and compared them in individual and group task conditions to determine whether they had different impacts on individualists and collectivists performing a brainstorming task. Results showed that collectivists with a transformational leader generated more ideas, but individualists generated more ideas with a transactional leader. Group performance was generally higher than that of individuals working alone. However, contrary to expectations, collectivists generated more ideas that required fundamental organizational changes when working alone.