Is a leader's character culture-bound or culture-free? An empirical comparison of the character traits of American and Taiwanese CEOs *.

Executive Summary

Most experts agree that our character is influenced by our distinctive national culture, but the world is becoming more "boundaryless" as international trade, transportation and communication systems become more efficient. As a result, it is unclear whether the global marketplace has begun to homogenize the character traits of business leaders. This research hypothesizes that character traits of business leaders will be one of the last aspects to be homogenized in our global marketplace. To explore this hypothesis, we compare and contrast three dimensions of leadership character (i.e., personality, values, and spirituality) for American and Taiwanese CEOs in small- and medium-sized firms. In general, we found robust differences between these two sets of CEOs offering support for the "culture-bound" nature of leadership character. To our knowledge, this is the first systematic examination of the inner character of CEOs in a cross-cultural study.

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Strategic leadership effectiveness is increasingly seen as a function of the competence and character of those in executive positions (Bennis, 1998). While there is extensive research on the skills and competencies required of effective leaders, there is relatively little scholarly exploration of leaders' inner character (Renshon, 1998) and only anecdotal evidence from a cross-cultural perspective (Usinier, 1998).

Despite the fact that leadership always comes down to a question of character (Bennis, 1998), there is remarkably little systematic research on this topic. Character is defined as "the complex of mental and ethical traits marking and often individualizing a person." (1) Given this general definition, leadership character can be conceptualized as the highly individualized inner landscape which guides a leader's perceptions and behaviors.