A Cross-cultural Comparison Of Leadership Styles Of American And Chinese Managers In Fast Food Companies

China and America are two large countries with different cultures that exert extensive andprofound influences in the world. With the intensification of globalization and the integrationof Chinese economy into world economy, many multinational corporations come to Chinaand they are playing an important role in the development of Chinese economy. At the sametime, Chinese local companies are also developing rapidly. The influences of differentcultures on the communication and cooperation between Chinese employees and theirmanagers are unavoidable. Literature in both cross-culture studies and managementresearches shows that culture is a significant factor affecting management behaviors.This thesis applies the studies on leadership styles to the fast food industry and tries tofind out the influences of culture on manager s leadership styles in different corporate culturalbackground. The author compares the differences of leadership styles of Chinese managers inChinese fast food companies and American fast food companies in China from theperspectives of Chinese employees and tries to explain the differences from culturalperspectives. Three types of leadership behaviors included in the full-range leadership theory:transformational leadership, transactional leadership, and Laissez-faire leadership are set asthe leadership theoretical framework to measure Chinese and American managers leadershipstyles. The three types of leadership styles are affected by seven factors according to thetheory.In the first phase of the research, questionnaires are distributed to196employees of tenChinese fast food companies and ten American fast food companies in China. The behaviorsof participants managers with the features of the seven factors in the three types of leadershipstyles are tested. The retrieved data is arranged with Excel to form the frequency distributions.After that several independent t-tests are conducted with the statistical analysis software,SPSS to test the significance of the differences between the two groups of respondents. The results of the t-tests indicate that there exist great differences between managers in Chineseand American fast food companies in their leadership behaviors.In the latter phase of the research, follow-up interviews are conducted to further discussthe potential reasons of the differences of leadership styles in Chinese and American fast foodcompanies. The results of the interviews are analyzed under the guidance of the theory ofcultural dimensions in order to draw out the intercultural explanations of the differences of theleadership behaviors of the managers in Chinese and American fast food companies.Furthermore, some considerations and suggestions are put up at the end of the thesis for thefuture development of Chinese and American fast food companies and future researches.