A Comparative Study On Leadership Style Of Chinese And American Managers In IT Companies In China: A Cross Cultural Perspective

With the intensification of globalization and the integration of Chinese economy into world economy, many multinational corporations come to China and they are playing an important role in the development of Chinese economy. At the same time, Chinese local companies are also developing rapidly. The influences of different cultures on the communication and cooperation between Chinese employees and their Chinese or American managers are unavoidable. While literature from both cross-culture studies and management research shows that culture is a significant factor affecting management behavior. China and America are two large countries with different cultures that exert extensive and profound influences in the world. What are the influences of these different cultures on managers'leadership style? This thesis applies the studies on leadership style into Chinese IT industry. It compares the differences of leadership style of Chinese and American managers'in Chinese IT companies and American IT companies in China from the perspective of Chinese employees and tries to explain these differences from cultural perspectives. Hofstede's cultural dimensions, Universalism versus Particularism and paternalism serve as the theoretical framework of culture in this thesis. Four patterns of leadership behavior: directive leadership, participative leadership, task-oriented leadership and relation-oriented leadership are selected to measure Chinese and American managers'leadership style. The author distributed questionnaire among Chinese employees from 5 Chinese IT companies and 5 American IT companies inChina and analyzed the data collected with Excel software to form the frequency distribution. It proved that there exist great differences between Chinese and American managers. In order to explain the survey results more reasonably, the author conducted follow-up interview with some of the participants about the satisfaction and effectiveness of their managers'leadership style.Questionnaire results basically sustain the author's hypotheses. Meanwhile, there are some new findings. Based on these results and findings, the author put forward some suggestions about how to adapt to cross-cultural communication for Chinese and American managers and Chinese employees respectively.