Cross-cultural leadership: leading around the world

• We discuss recent research documenting that societal culture affects the kinds of leadership characteristics, attributes, and behaviors that are desired.
• We discuss the recent research documenting that societal culture moderates the leadership style-outcome relationship.
• We review global leadership, which focuses on leaders of culturally diverse followers.
• We propose several potential research avenues and discuss integrating the cross-cultural and global leadership literatures.

Situational models of leadership have been discussed since the mid-1960s. In this paper, we review the evidence concerning one such contextual variable, societal culture. The traditional cross-cultural literature shows how culture affects the kind of leadership characteristics, attributes, and behaviors desired and believed to be important in a society. The research also shows that culture moderates the outcomes resulting from different styles of leadership. The newly emerging global leadership literature focuses on leadership when followers are culturally diverse. We review the current state of these literatures and provide research suggestions.