Leadership: Does Culture Matter? Comparative Practices Between Argentina and United States of America‪.‬

ABSTRACT The topic of leadership in the global marketplace has received a high degree of attention among scholars and practitioners over the past few years. Leadership of organizations and employees has definitely become more important as managing across borders and the advent of the virtual team has become increasingly prevalent. Paper explores impact of culture on leadership practices in two countries from culturally and economically different regions: Argentina and the United States of America. It uses the visionary approach to leadership developed by Kouzes and Posner (1987) which identified five leadership practices (actions or behaviors) employed by effective leaders: Challenging the Process, Inspiring a Shared Vision, Enabling Others to Act, Modeling the Way, and Encouraging the Heart. Using the Kouzes and Posner LPI-Self (Leadership Practices Inventory, 1993) instrument for data collection, the authors compared the results between MBA respondents in the two countries. The results of the study indicate that a number of significant differences do exist among respondents in the two cultures, with Argentine respondents consistently scoring higher than United States counterparts. The information may be of value in understanding perceptions concerning leadership patterns between the two countries and useful in managing human resources in the respective countries.