Leadership Styles in the UK, USA, and Japan

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Introduction

According to studies done by scholars and other researchers, the aspect of leadership style or type closely relates with the particular culture of a country. In other words, countries adopt their own unique leadership styles that match their culture and belief in the society (Hur, 2008, p. 359).

This paper seeks to undertake an elaborate assessment of literature on leadership styles that are common in the United Kingdom. The paper also considers two other countries, the United States of America and Japan, in attempting to draw out comparisons in the leadership styles that are adopted in these countries.

Leadership Style in the UK

There is a tendency among managers in the UK to focus more on generalisation rather than specialisation. It is less likely that a manager in the UK would be expected to be technically the most competent person. In other words, UK’s leadership and management offer relatively little consideration on the aspect of pure academic consideration (Simons et al. 2003, p. 347).

Instead, a lot more emphasis is placed on relevant experience, as well as on a ‘hands-on’, realistic approach (McCarthy, 2005, p. 222). UK managers will rarely be referred to using their academic titles, such as doctor or professor. This can easily be seen as a sign of affectation.

Acquisition of man-management skills is critical for UK managers in order to enhance their team management capabilities. UK managers demonstrate solid interpersonal skills. These skills enable them to form and maintain very strong teams and work groups.

Managers work towards cultivating a close, humorous and soft relationship with their subordinates as a way of making them understand their needs and influence their performance. However, the managers are also firm in their decisions and are not necessarily affected by the closeness with their subordinates (Salis & Williams, 2010, p. 436).

In giving their instructions and directions, British managers often adopt an indirect way of doing things. British managers have the tendency of asking their subordinates to offer a helping hand in order not to be seen as explicit. The laissez faire economic background that has strongly been established in the UK brings about an aspect of individualism in the society.

To a greater degree, managers in the UK are informal in their practices as far as personal exchanges are concerned (Haynes, Marchington, & Boxall, 2006, p. 226). This is mainly caused by the value accorded to humanitarianism.

There is a greater realisation among the managers on the need to achieve greater social achievement. The managers often take pride in their ability to influence and shape up things. In essence, managers look at conflict, particularly at the workplace, with a negative view.

Most managers accept and use democratic management style as their main practice of doing business (Choi, 2007, p. 243). During the decision-making process, managers give a chance to their subordinates to provide their views and opinions.

The opinions and views are later considered in the final decision adopted. The managers also show greater willingness to entrust their subordinates with some level of decision-making. To the managers, the subordinates’ ability to be responsible means a lot for the firm and for their own ability to manage it.

The English people are widely a conservative society. They have greater love for traditionalism, conservatism, and the past, while they are also reluctant to change. The conservatism has seen most British managers take a lot of time to consider and adopt new styles and technology in their management practice (Fisher & Simmons, 2012, p. 31).

There is too much trust in the tried and tested management practices that it appears a bit difficult for the managers to try out innovations and recent practices on management, particularly where such new practices are proposed in foreign countries.

Leadership Style in the USA

American CEOs often adopt a leadership style from five different types, which include directive, empowering, participative, celebrity, or charismatic (Hamedoğlu, Kantor & Gülay, 2012, p. 320). The lack of a congruent culture in the country is mainly due to the mass immigration of various world cultures.

However, it is still notable that some of the common tendencies amongst Americans include functionalism, individualism, non-compulsory thinking, and dominance on nature. Additionally, Americans put much of their attention to what the present and the future holds, rather than focusing more on the past. They equally categorise people as either good or bad.

According to Hofstede’s cultural studies, Americans make up some of the world’s most individualist nations, where personal particulars and successes are used mostly to define people (Herrera et al. 2011, p. 2629). The supervisors or managers would hardly select staff from amongst their friends or other relatives.

More value is put on the work, with planning being considered as an important way of helping planning and decision-making. It is a common feature and thinking among American managers that they have the ability to control the environment, with the belief that strikes at work places and economic events problems are because of poor managers.

Americans have a high affinity to natural resources, as well as financial equipments. This is a feature that has enhanced their self-centredness. Americans, to a greater degree, consider themselves as superior and powerful over other cultures or nations (Celani, 2007, p. 119). This aspect has brought about self-consciousness within the society and in its leadership.

Leadership Style in Japan

The Japanese consider being human as a special value. They believe that the force of human beings is endless and, thus, it is important for training. The firms consider their employees as a great asset and give greater emphasis on training and skill development (Yuhee & Takeuchi, 2010, p. 1931). The existing regulations and laws mainly dictate leading of staff, with cultural emphasis also forming dominance on staff.

Unlike the USA, Japan is a collectivist culture (Sun, Horn, & Merritt, 2004, p. 318). Workers are often organised into groups or working teams and the managers supervise the group as a unit rather than individuals.

The leaders admonish individualism at the place of work and promote teamwork as a perfect way of achieving their objectives. The leader-follower value-based model considers kindness and friendship as being important (Wade-Benzoni et al. 2002, p. 87).

The managers take much of their time attempting to solve problems that emerge at the workplace involving their inferiors. Comparatively, Japanese managers tend to have a stronger liking for sorting out of problems that afflict their subordinates (Abramson, Keating & Lane, 1996, p. 123).

Equally, the middle level managers also enjoy offering their support to the superior managers to ensure that they collectively play a role in helping to achieve their objectives. Because working in groups require close coordination, the managers are often very good at building relations with both their colleagues and superiors.

The leaders, however, have a lesser power of control. Because they consider closeness in working together as teams, the managers consider maintaining warmness and relationships as more important to more power and control. This provides room for followers to make some of the decisions on their own (Paik & Sohn, 2004, p. 61).

Consideration of Management Practices for UK Managers Working in the USA and Japan

Both the USA and UK are highly individualistic societies. A UK manager working in the USA will find it easier to handle workers in the country because of the similar individualistic characteristics. However, Japan scores lowly in individualism compared to the UK. A manager from the UK working in a subsidiary in Japan will have to adopt a collectivistic approach in order to achieve greater success.

For instance, it would be more appropriate for the manager to organise his workers into teams and groups in order to create a closely-knit workgroup (Fukushige & Spicer, 2011, p. 2110). The approach should be to consider groups as more important to his performance than placing emphasis on individuals. The manager should determine the objectives for the groups and hold meetings with the groups rather than its individuals.

Working in the US, a UK manager will face the challenge of high self-centredness from his workers. Because Americans consider themselves to be highly superior compared to other societies in the world, the manager is likely to face some level of strong ego from the workers. This would require great democratic leadership from the manager.

In making decisions, the manager would need to involve the subordinates so that they would greatly feel to be part of the decision-making system. If the decisions arrived upon by the organisation will seem to encompass the workers’ own input, there will be greater commitment on their part than if the manager would appear to do it on his own (Hofstede, 2001, p. 112).

Equally, working in the USA would require that a UK manager adopt a lot of delegation of roles to his junior managers and supervisors. This would imply that the junior managers, most of whom would be Americans, would directly handle and deal with the subordinates.

This is critical because, in a way, it would shield the UK manager on most occasions from directly dealing with his subordinates. It would, thus, help in averting unnecessary resistance and conflict from the workers (Bass, 2000, p. 18).

Conclusion

Different countries in the world have varying cultural practices that affect their styles of leadership. Most managers in a country would generally adopt a similar or a uniform practice in their leadership and management. The United Kingdom is synonymous with the practice of managers using informality while undertaking their roles.

British managers value humanitarianism and consider the fact that skill development is critical for improving the performance of their organisations. There is some level of democratisation in management, where leaders allow their followers or subordinates to contribute in the decision making process.

On the other hand, Japan is a collectivistic society where managers consider groups with greater emphasis than they do to individuals. Managers in Japan will tend to condone poor performance from workers as they seek to achieve greater performance going forward more than would be the case in the USA.

Although the US managers adopt democracy in their practice, there is greater individualism within the society. Workers strive to achieve as individuals more than they would as a team or group.

List of References

Hamedoğlu, MA, Kantor, J & Gülay, E 2012, ‘The effect of locus of control and culture on leader preferences,’ International Online Journal of Educational Sciences, vol. 4, no. 2, pp. 319-324

Abramson, N, Keating, R, & Lane, H 1996, ‘Cross-national congnitive process differences: A comparison of Canadian, American and Japanese managers’, Management International Review, vol. 36, no. 2, pp. 123-147

Bass, BM 2000, ‘The future of leadership in learning organizations’, The Journal of Leadership Studies, vol. 7, no. 3, pp. 18-37

Celani, DP 2007, ‘A structural analysis of the obsessional character: A Fairbairnian perspective’ The American Journal of Psychoanalysis vol. 67, pp. 119–140

Choi, S 2007, ‘Democratic leadership: the lessons of exemplary models for democratic governance’, International Journal of Leadership Studies, vol. 2, no. 3, pp. 243-262

Fisher, R, & Simmons, R 2012, ‘Liberal conservatism, vocationalism and further education in England’, Globalisation, Societies & Education, vol. 10, no. 1, pp. 31-51

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Haynes, P, Marchington, M, & Boxall, P 2006, ‘Workplace union-management partnership: prospects for diffusion of contemporary British Approaches in New Zealand’, Asia Pacific Business Review, vol. 12, no. 2, pp. 225-241

Herrera, R et al. 2011, ‘The relationship between attitudes toward diversity management in the Southwest USA and the GLOBE study cultural preferences’, International Journal of Human Resource Management, vol. 22, no. 12, pp. 2629-2646

Hofstede, G 2001, Culture’s consequences: Comparing values, behaviours, institutions, and organizations across nations, 2nd ed, Sage Publications, Thousand Oaks, CA

Hur, M 2008, ‘Exploring differences in leadership styles: A study of manager tasks, follower characteristics, and task environments In Korean Human Service Organizations’, Social Behavior & Personality: An International Journal, vol. 36, no. 3, pp. 359-372

McCarthy, G 2005, ‘Leadership practices in German and UK organisations’, Journal of European Industrial Training, vol. 29, no. 3, pp. 217-234

Paik, Y, & Sohn, J 2004, ‘Expatriate managers and MNC’s ability to control international subsidiaries: The case of Japanese MNCs’, Journal of World Business, vol. 39, no. 1, pp. 61-71

Salis, S, & Williams, A 2010, ‘Knowledge sharing through face-to-face communication and labour productivity: evidence from British workplaces’, British Journal of Industrial Relations, vol. 48, no. 2, pp. 436-459

Simons, H et al. 2003, ‘From evidence-based practice to practice-based evidence: the idea of situated generalisation’, Research Papers In Education, vol 18, no 4, pp. 347-364

Sun, T, Horn, M, & Merritt, D 2004, ‘Values and lifestyles of individualists and collectivists: a study on Chinese, Japanese, British and US consumers’, Journal of Consumer Marketing, vol. 21, no. 5, pp. 318-331

Wade-Benzoni, K et al 2002, ‘Cognitions and behavior in asymmetric social dilemmas: a comparison of two cultures’, Journal of Applied Psychology, vol. 87, no. 1, pp. 87-95

Yuhee, J, & Takeuchi, N 2010, ‘Performance implications for the relationships among top management leadership, organizational culture, and appraisal practice: testing two theory-based models of organizational learning theory in Japan’, International Journal of Human Resource Management, vol. 21, no. 11, pp. 1931-1950

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