Perceived Managerial and Leadership Effectiveness Within South Korean and British Private Companies: A Derived Etic Comparative Study

• Date: 01 June 2016
• Author: Dae Seok Chai,Junhee Kim,Shinhee Jeong,Robert G. Hamlin,Sewon Kim
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1002/hrdq.21253
• Published date: 01 June 2016

HUMAN RESOURCE DEVELOPMENT QUARTERLY, vol. 27, no. 2, Summer 2016 © 2016 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

Published online in Wiley Online Library (wileyonlinelibrary.com) • DOI: 10.1002/hrdq.21253 237

Perceived Managerial

andLeadership Effectiveness

Within South Korean and British

Private Companies: A Derived

Etic Comparative Study

Robert G. Hamlin , Sewon Kim , Dae Seok Chai , Junhee Kim ,

Shinhee Jeong

This derived etic cross-case/cross nation comparative study explored

the extent to which behavioral indicators of perceived managerial and

leadership effectiveness, as perceived and judged by managers and non-

managerial employees in South Korean private sector companies, are

different ( local/context-specific ) or similar ( potentially global/context-

general ) to behavioral indicators perceived by their counterparts within

British private sector companies. The empirical data used for the study

were obtained from emic replication studies previously carried out by

the authors in South Korea and the United Kingdom respectively. High

degrees of overlap and convergence were revealed, with the vast majority

of managerial behaviors (87.75% South Korean and 90.53% British) that

distinguish effective managers from ineffective managers being found to be

the same, similar, or congruent in meaning. The most surprising result of

the study is that only 1 out of 13 South Korean behavioral indicators found

to be non-convergent showed any evidence of being local/context-general ,

and thus culturally embedded. Overall, the findings bring into question

the validity of past claims in the cross-cultural management literature

which assert that particular types and styles of managerial and leadership

behavior are contingent upon the cultural aspects of specific societies and

countries. Our study is a rare example of Type 4 indigenous management

research, and our findings are illustrative of what has become known as

geocentric ( emic-and-etic ) knowledge.

Key Words: Korean and British managers , managerial behavior , perceived

managerial and leadership effectiveness , cross-nation comparison

238 Hamlin, Kim, Chai, Kim, Jeong

HUMAN RESOURCE DEVELOPMENT QUARTERLY • DOI: 10.1002/hrdq

Introduction

Most theories and models of management and leadership have been derived

in Western contexts, predominantly in the United States (Avolio, Walumbwa,

& Weber, 2009 ; Northouse, 2015 ; Walumbwa, Avolio, Gardner, Wernsing,

& Peterson, 2007 ; Yukl, 2010 ); and many if not most educators, trainers,

and developers of managers and leaders worldwide use them to inform their

respective education and training/development programs on the assumption

that they are universally applicable (Britto, 1973 ; Gopinath, 1998 ; Li, 2012 ;

Rousseau & Fried, 2001 ). However, this assumption is increasingly being

challenged by various scholars, who argue that the relevance and transferabil-

ity of findings from U.S. and other Western management research to Eastern

and other non-Western cultures can be problematic due to the significant

organizational and cultural differences affecting the managerial and leader-

ship environments of organizations (Alimo-Metcalfe & Alban-Metcalfe, 2001 ;

Chhokar, Brodbeck, & House, 2013 ; Peterson & Hunt, 1997 ; Triandis, 1993 ),

and not least within Asian countries including South Korea (Li, 2012 ; Liden

& Antonakis, 2009 ; Wang, 2011 ).

Global evidence suggests that a majority of management research con-

ducted in non-Western cultures, although limited, has been “normal sci-

ence” (Kuhn, 1996 , p. 5) based on the dominant North American positivist

( functionalist) research paradigm (Khatri, Ojha, Budwar, Srinivasan, & Varma,

2012 ; Panda & Gupta, 2007 ). Moreover, the preference of most indigenous

researchers and Western scholars who explore local phenomena in Eastern

countries, particularly in Asia, is to conduct “deductive” inquiries using exist-

ing theories and constructs derived from Western research (see Leung, 2007 ;

Leung & White, 2004 ; Li, 2012 ; Tsui, 2006 ; White, 2002 ). Tsui ( 2009 ) con-

siders this tendency to be a cause for concern because it risks researchers

making discoveries that only fall within the domain covered by the Western

theory and because it may slow the development of valid global management

knowledge and hamper scientific progress. Furthermore, such research may

be insufficient to provide understanding of novel contexts, or may even lead

to biased or inaccurate conclusions (Tsui, 2007 ). A similar situation exists

regarding leadership research. As Zhang et al. ( 2012 ) perceived from a cross-

cultural perspective, drawing on Yukl ( 2010 ), almost all leadership studies

throughout a century-long history have been conducted in the West (pre-

dominantly in North America and particularly the United States), and many of

them have been primarily deductive inquiries. Hence, in light of the apparent

dearth of “non-normal science” and “inductive” studies of management and

leadership within non-Western countries, it is not known whether indigenous

lay understandings, concepts, theories, and models of management and lead-

ership are similar to or different from what has been identified in the United

States and other Western countries. Our study attempts to address this lack

of knowledge.

Perceived Managerial And Leadership Effectiveness 239

HUMAN RESOURCE DEVELOPMENT QUARTERLY • DOI: 10.1002/hrdq

In response to the various calls for indigenous management research

in non-Western contexts, and particularly in Asian countries, Author 2 plus

Authors 3 to 5, with mentoring support from Author 1, previously have con-

ducted and reported a prior “non-normal science” emic replication study of

what people within South Korean private-sector companies perceive as the

behavioral indicators of effective managers and ineffective managers within

their own organizations (see Chai, Jeong, Kim, & Kim, 2015 ). Our cur-

rent cross-case/cross-nation comparative study is an extension of this prior

research in South Korea. It compares and contrasts the findings of that (non-

Western country) study against those resulting from two equivalent replica-

tion studies carried out in the United Kingdom by Hamlin and Bassi ( 2008 )

and Hamlin and Sawyer ( 2007 ), respectively.

All three emic replication studies explored effective and ineffective man-

agerial behavior using an “inductive” qualitative methodology and critical

incident approaches to capture local (context-specific) behavioral indicators

of perceived managerial and leadership effectiveness, rather than conducting

“deductive” studies that utilize theories and constructs derived from previous

Western (or non-Western) research. The reason for selecting British rather

than U.S. cases for comparison was that we have not individually or col-

lectively carried out equivalent replication studies in America, and to our

knowledge no contemporary researchers in the United States have explored

the same topic with the same focus using the same research methodology

and methods.

The purpose of our qualitative cross-case/cross-nation comparative study

has been to search for similarities and dissimilarities across the three com-

pared emic replication studies (cases) and to differentiate any identified local

(context-specific) behavioral indicators of perceived managerial and leader-

ship effectiveness from those identified as having potential for generic (con-

text-general) applicability. A total of 39 geocentric behavioral indicators have

been identified, which (a) challenge predominant discourse about the contin-

gent nature of management and leadership, (b) support those who theorize the

existence of the universal effective manager, and (c) provide what we believe

to be the first body of indigenous South Korean empirical evidence suitable

for use as an added case for further generalizing and refining a “universalis-

tic” taxonomy of perceived managerial and leadership effectiveness that has been

cumulatively developed by Author 1 with various co-researchers from other

countries (see Hamlin, Patel, Ruiz, & Whitford, 2012 ) through a process of

replication logic and multiple cross-case analysis (Eisenhardt, 1989 ).

Literature Review

To address the research purpose, this review of literature focuses on current

concerns and criticisms of international management research, indigenous

management research in Asia, and current debates concerning culture and