Relevance of culture in studies of leadership: ignored or dismissed?

Until recently, conclusions drawn about leadership have been made from a decidedly Western perspective, primarily based on theory developed in the U.S. using data gathered from U.S. sources. As our data show, however, times have changed, as there has been a significant shift in the source of leadership research with study samples increasingly coming from outside the U.S. Although the GLOBE study illustrated that national culture has a significant impact on how leadership is practiced and perceived, our data also show that cultural influence is largely ignored in terms of its impact on empirical findings. This raises an important question: Are we being misled by applying theories built in the U.S. to empirical work performed in different cultural contexts? Through analysis of leadership research published in five major journals between 1991 and 2015, we address this and related issues, including authors’ acknowledgement of cultural implications. We also discuss important issues associated with the results and propose steps to address the cultural influence on future leadership research.