Admired Leadership Attributes: A Cross-cultural Comparison of Respected Leaders

The major goal of this study was to explore the perception of admired leadership characteristics of people in Korea, Japan, Canada, and the United States. Based on previous scholarly findings, a list of leadership characteristics was constructed and distributed to 2,000 employees in four countries. Among the 1,405 returned questionnaires, 1,363 were included in the analysis. Findings of the present study show meaningful differences in cultural tendencies of judging admired leaders. The present study suggests that future studies should consider including more leadership traits and exploring various other factors as main themes to study gender, geographical locations, length of employment, and degree of interactions in organizations.