Leadership research in Asia: A brief assessment and suggestions for the future

The main purpose of this essay is to discuss fundamental issues regarding future research on leadership in Asia. In order to meaningfully introduce these issues, I begin with an overview of leadership research in Asia, briefly covering some of the similarities and differences between Asian and Western leadership approaches. Throughout the essay, I rely chiefly on China as an example. I stress that instead of developing theories and measures unique to specific countries, such as China, the focus should be on the identification of moderators that explain relationships between leadership and both its antecedents and outcomes. I further argue that for such an approach to be viable, future scale development efforts should include respondents from multiple cultural contexts so that relatively universal boundary conditions/domains can be identified. I further contend that assessing differences between countries, such as China compared to Western countries, will be most beneficial if cross-level research designs and analyses are employed.