Expatriates' leadership behaviours and local subordinates' extra effort, satisfaction, and effectiveness

One of the most important managerial skills required for expatriate managers is to adopt or adjust their style of leadership to conform to their host-nation subordinates' cultural background. Ability to lead local subordinates has also emerged as an important factor in successful expatriates. This study aimed to determine: a) whether the leadership behaviours of Australian expatriates, as perceived by themselves and their Thai subordinates, tended to be more transformational or transactional leadership; and b) how the leadership behaviours displayed by the expatriates related to extra effort, satisfaction, and effectiveness among their local subordinates. Forty-seven Australian Expatriates and ninety-one Thai subordinates were asked to respond on the Multifactor Leadership Questionnaire (MLQ). Results revealed that the expatriates who performed transformational leadership had a stronger positive impact on getting subordinates to do more than they expected (extra effort), working with subordinates in satisfactory ways (satisfaction), and being effective as group leaders (effectiveness) than the expatriates who displayed transactional leadership behaviour. An increasingly changing global business environment presents a challenge to several multinational corporations to manage this change by using their expatriate managers to carry out the headquarters' policies in foreign countries. Comparative cross-cultural studies have indicated that one of the main managerial aspects required of expatriate managers was to adopt or adjust their style of leadership to conform to their subordinates' cultural background (e.g. Dorfman, Howell, Hibino, Lee, Tate, and Bautista, 1997; Campbell, Bommer, and Yeo, 1993; Doktor, 1990)