The Effects of National Culture on Leadership Style, Cooperation and Knowledge Sharing and Creating Culture in Organizations

Knowledge management (KM) is not simply a technological application; more importantly, it is also a social process. Human and social factors such as national culture, leadership style and organizational culture may have influence on knowledge processes in organizations. In this research, we investigated how national culture affects on leadership style, cooperation and knowledge sharing and creating culture in organizations. Constructs of national culture consist of horizontal and vertical dimensions of individualism-collectivism. Moreover, we proposed that leadership style and cooperation play roles as mediator between national culture and knowledge cultures in organization. This research was conducted in Taiwan and New Zealand. We also examined the cultural tendency of Taiwan and New Zealand and the cultural difference between these two countries. The survey result shows that Taiwan’s participants are more vertical collectivist and New Zealand’s participants are more horizontal individualistic. We also found that horizontal collectivism is positively related to transformational leadership and cooperation. Moreover, transformational leadership and cooperation are positively associated with knowledge creating culture. Based on these findings, we suggest that horizontal collectivism may be the most important cultural pattern for a knowledge-creating organization.1. Introduction 1 1.1. Background 1 1.2. Why Taiwan and New Zealand? 3 1.3. Purpose of Research 3 2. Literature Review and Hypotheses 4 2.1. Knowledge and Knowledge Management in Organizations 4 2.1.1. Knowledge and Organizations 4 2.1.2. Knowledge Management and Knowledge Sharing and Creating Culture in Organizations 5 2.2. Culture and National Culture 7 2.2.1. Culture 7 2.2.2. National Culture 8 2.2.3. Individualism and Collectivism 8 2.2.4 National Culture and KM 10 2.3. Leadership and Organizations 12 2.3.1. Leadership in Organizations 12 2.3.2. Transactional and Transformational Leadership 12 2.3.3. National Culture and Leadership in Organizations 14 2.3.4. Leadership and Knowledge Sharing and Creating Culture in Organizations 15 2.4. Cooperation in Organizations 17 2.4.1. Cooperation and Organizations 17 2.4.2. Cooperation and National Culture 17 2.4.3. Cooperation and Knowledge Sharing and Creating Cultures 18 2.5. Research Framework and Hypotheses 19 3. Research Design 21 3.1. Constructs and Operational Definition 21 3.1.1. National Culture 21 3.1.2. Leadership Style 22 3.1.3. Cooperation of Organization Culture 23 3.1.4. Knowledge Sharing and Creating Culture in Organizations 23 3.2. Questionnaire Design 23 3.2.1. National Culture 24 3.2.2. Leadership Style 24 3.2.3. Cooperation, Knowledge Sharing and Creation Culture in Organizations 24 3.2.4. Background of Respondents 24 3.3. Subjects and Data Collection 25 3.4. Analysis Methods 25 3.4.1. Descriptive Statistics 25 3.4.2. Structural Equation Model and Partial Least Squares Method 25 4. Results and Discussions 28 4.1. Description of Data 28 4.2. Cultural differences between Taiwan and New Zealand 29 4.3. Results of PLS Estimation and Discussions 34 4.3.1. Measurement Model 34 4.3.2. Structural Model 39 5. Conclusions, Implications, Limitations and Future Research 50 5.1. Conclusions 50 5.2. Managerial Implications 51 5.3. Limitations and Suggestions for Future Research 52 Reference 54 Appendix A Questionnaire for Taiwan 60 Appendix B Questionnaire for New Zealand 6