Big Data in Leadership Studies: Automated Machine Learning Model to Predict Preferred Leader Behavior Across Cultures
www.mdpi.com
With global leadership as the new norm, discussion about followers’ preferred leader behaviors across cultures is growing in significance. This study proposes a comprehensive predictive model to explore significant preferred leadership factors, drawn from the Leader Behavior Description Questionnaire (LBDQXII), across cultures using automated machine learning (AML). We offer a robust empirical measurement of culturally contingent leader behavior and entrepreneurship behaviors and provide a tool for assessing the cultural predictors of preferred leader behavior to minimize predictive errors, explore patterns in the data and make predictions in an empirically robust way. Hence, our approach fills a gap in the literature relating to applications of AML in leadership studies and contributes a novel empirical method to better predict leadership preferences. Cultural indicators from Global Leadership and Organizational Behavior (GLOBE) predict the likelihood of the preferred leader behaviors of “Role Assumption”, “Production Emphasis” and “Initiation of Structure”. Hofstede’s Long-Term/Short-Term Orientation is the most critical predictor of preferences for “Tolerance of Uncertainty” and “Initiation of Structure”, whereas the value of restraint impacts the likelihood of preferring leaders with skills in “Integration” and “Consideration”. Significant entrepreneurial values indicators have a significant impact on preferences for leaders focused on “Initiation of Structure”, “Production Emphasis” and “Predictive Accuracy”. Findings also support earlier studies that reveal age and gender significantly impact our preferences for specific leader behaviors. We discuss and offer conclusions to support our findings that foster development of global business managers and practitioners.

Abstract

: With global leadership as the new norm, discussion about followers’ preferred leader behaviors across cultures is growing in significance. This study proposes a comprehensive predictive model to explore significant preferred leadership factors, drawn from the Leader Behavior Description Questionnaire (LBDQXII), across cultures using automated machine learning (AML). We offer a robust empirical measurement of culturally contingent leader behavior and entrepreneurship behaviors and provide a tool for assessing the cultural predictors of preferred leader behavior to minimize predictive errors, explore patterns in the data and make predictions in an empirically robust way. Hence, our approach fills a gap in the literature relating to applications of AML in leadership studies and contributes a novel empirical method to better predict leadership preferences. Cultural indicators from Global Leadership and Organizational Behavior (GLOBE) predict the likelihood of the preferred leader behaviors of “Role Assumption”, “Production Emphasis” and “Initiation of Structure”. Hofstede’s Long-Term/Short-Term Orientation is the most critical predictor of preferences for “Tolerance of Uncertainty” and “Initiation of Structure”, whereas the value of restraint impacts the likelihood of preferring leaders with skills in “Integration” and “Consideration”. Significant entrepreneurial values indicators have a significant impact on preferences for leaders focused on “Initiation of Structure”, “Production Emphasis” and “Predictive Accuracy”. Findings also support earlier studies that reveal age and gender significantly impact our preferences for specific leader behaviors. We discuss and offer conclusions to support our findings that foster development of global business managers and practitioners.

  • @ParagoneEnglish
    2•21 days ago

    This seems spot-on.

    I do wish, however, that it wasn’t only Hofstede’s research that was being used as a reference, as Lanier’s “Foreign to Familiar” is, while identifying fewer dimensions, every bit as fundamental as Hofstede’s “Exploring Culture” book is…

    Lanier identifies the Tropical vs Nordic cultural dimension, & also the old-culture vs new-culture dimension,

    neither of which Hofstede seems to have acknowledged.

    Lanier isn’t male, of course, so expecting male-academia to do anything other than ignore her work … isn’t going to accomplish anything, this century, is it?

    & as for the people who automatically-contempt automatic-machine-learning, it’s a brilliant use of technology:

    let the machine identify what the factors are, & which way they’re going, in the different cultures.

    Think of it as enhanced data-mining, & that’s the best idea to know it as, really…

    Not even slightly related to the generative-LLMs with their hallucinations, at all.

    This article is a treasure: to the one who posted this, https://lemmy.world/u/[email protected] , Thank You!

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    • @ParagoneEnglish
      1•21 days ago

      Oh, this need be added:

      Lanier never published in academia, ttbomk, only through her book…

      However, Universe couldn’t possibly care if a meaning is published outside, or inside, of academia’s filter-bubble, crowded as it now is with “paper mills” and their fake-science publications…

      Scientific Method is the ONLY test for Truth of something, right?

      Lanier’s stuff tests-out.

      Contempting it, because a particular filter-bubble hasn’t “authorized” it to be True in Universe’s eyes, is … cultural chauvanism, & nothing else…

      Universe isn’t, in any way whatsoever, dependent on academic-filter-bubble for What It Holds To Be True, right?

      I’ve a test of her Tropical culture vs Nordic culture that for me hammers-it-home:

      I’ve spent years as a homeless person, including out in the bush.

      WHEN failure to do something oneself WILL terminate one’s life in the cold, THEN one gets off one’s ass & doesn’t rely on “society” to “take care of one”, right?

      That isn’t in Tropical culture, only in cultures where cold threatens individual-survival/viability.

      People can debate all they want about whether it’s significant, or not, or valid, or not,

      but … go out there & put your life on the line for a few winters & see if it alters your instincts, or not, eh?

      I say it does, & that no amount of ideological bullshit can falsify the evidence that direct-experiment produced, in altering me.

      People who won’t do the experiment say “it isn’t proven”, & they won’t accept the testimony of people who have done the experiment…

      Hence my inability to respect ivory-tower “authority” which won’t do the experiment, rejects evidence contradicting its filter-bubble, etc…

      Do the experiment , that is rule number ZERO, right?

      Empiricism!

      Lanier’s stuff checks-out, through & through, & its not having been published within academia’s filter-bubble in no way, whatsoever, negates its validity.

      _ /\ _

      • @ParagoneEnglish
        1•21 days ago

        Reading the PDF…

        The “most preferred leadership behavior” is … being male?

        Uncertainty-avoidance ( that’s a Hofstede dimension, why do they seem to be claiming otherwise? ) is 2nd, which explains why ideology/prejudice, Kahneman1-mind, for anybody who has read his “Thinking Fast and Slow”, on the 2 mind-systems, is preferred to considered-reasoning!

        Damn…

        Humankind … hasn’t got a chance in hell, … of surviving this century’s challenges,

        has it?

        That kind of polarization/programming … is completely incompatible with species-wide adapting.

        Here are some background links, for you people:

        https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hofstede's_cultural_dimensions_theory#Dimensions_of_national_cultures

        https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_leadership

        I think they really missed a trick, by not looking into whether Kegan4 or Kegan5 is preferred, in leadership, in different cultures ( though Hofstede’s Success-orientation, formerly “masculinity”, would be a reliable indicator for Kegan4 & against Kegan5 )…

        Kegan4’s … bulling-boss mode, it’s a stage-of-unconscious-mind-development which is pushing-out-unacceptable-meaning, & its instinct “knows” that validity is zero-sum: anybody else having any validity, that costs one’s own ( exclusive ) validity.

        Kegan5’s … systems-of-systems mode.

        scroll down a bit, from this link, & read the table…

        https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Kegan#The_Evolving_Self

        Kegan & Lahey’s book “Immunity to Change” is on 3, 4, & 5, & how not getting one’s unconscious-mind to change utterly destroys potential, for little reason.

        They provide leverages for getting one’s unconscious to grow-up, too…

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