Cultural differences in communication and leadership – A comparison of Finland, Indonesia and USA

Abstract

For expatriate employees to adapt to different cultures, it is important to understand cultural differences and how these differences affect leadership processes in different countries. Communication plays a significant role in the implementation of leadership in different cultures. The purpose of this paper was to investigate the effects of culture and interactions with various leadership and communication attributes. Our study was based on three countries: Finland, Indonesia and United States. The sample consisted of 162 respondents from the three countries. Transformational leadership and coaching were measured using a survey instrument with six dimensions. Communication was measured with six dimensions that included emotional intelligence, clear dialog, insecure, impatient, dominating and avoiding. SPSS Statistics 28.0 and Hayes PROCESS macro were used to test the moderating effect of communication style on the relationship between culture and transformational leadership. Results indicated several statistically significant results between countries in both communication and leadership styles. Our findings indicate that cultural factors impact leadership and communication.