Does ecology drive cultural leadership prototypes? A truly fascinating question.
Today I’m reading a forthcoming article in the Leadership Quarterly entitled Ecology, culture and leadership. What a fascinating read on a topic that I have to admit I don’t know very much about. The article focuses on cultural leadership prototypes (CLP‘s). The notion is simple enough: different societies, and different human cultures have different ideas of what makes a good leader.
In their literature review, the authors rely on data from GLOBE, which is one of the largest cross-cultural leadership studies, to demonstrate the variability in CLPs per culture.
Then they asked themselves, why do we have these different cultural leadership prototypes? Where do they come from? Interestingly, they advance the theory that evolution may have played a part. They posit that different evolutionary conditions in the physical and social ecology lead to different cultural leadership prototypes. They study different conditions, such as natural disasters or communicable diseases, or imbalanced sex ratios in society, or war. Using the insights of evolutionary psychology, which they transferred to leadership research — a major contribution to the literature, they theorized different mechanisms on how ecology leads to CLP via evoked and transmitted culture.
Transmitted culture is what we normally think about passing on the culture through teaching, art, education, role models and other avenues. Evoked culture is a more subtle construct. Given the same ecological situation (e.g., famine) humans demand similar CLPs to help them cope with it because of underlying psychological processes that evolved over time under similar circumstances. This is well within the purview of evolutionary psychology.
Overall, I was fascinated by the reading. For me, it is a form of situational leadership theory, but written globally on the whole scale of humankind’s experience on the planet (both history and prehistory). Under what situations do humans develop different cultural leadership prototypes? How are these CLPs transmitted over time? Very interesting questions.
Not surprisingly, the article ends with even better questions like for example, under what circumstances would societies evolve preferences for CLPs that favor female traits? or do CLPs change over time?
A great source of historical evidence for these explorations, seems to me, would come from the historical narratives describing first contact between the Europeans and Indigenous Peoples around the globe in the last four centuries. As the Europeans expanded, they encountered many cultures with different CLPs. Many of these first contacts have been recorded on both sides, and those narratives have great potential for studying whether different types of physical ecologies (e.g., islands vs. jungles vs. mountains) and social ecologies of indigenous people and colonists led to different types of CLPs. Qualitative narrative studies could do this work quite well.
What is not clear to me is the dynamics of CLP and oppression. When an elite imposes a particular CLP on everyone else who prefers another CLP, what happens? Does that situation create new CLPs for both groups?
Again, the historical record on how the Europeans conquered Indigenous Peoples is very likely to show how European CLP models were imposed on populations who did not prefer them, and what type of Indigenous and Colonial CLPs were created as a result. Would that be an evoked or transmitted mechanism in play? Probably both.
Of course, we see the same dynamics today, as the communication and transportation revolutions expand, they transmit western CLP models to all societies around the world, including places and groups who prefer very different CLPs because of their own history and ecology. This is done via media, in music, film and art, in curricula for schools and universities, and by educating an international elite at a limited number of western elite universities.
Finally, are there evolutionary reasons why political left and right prefer different CLPs? Do these vary by country?
Dissertation ideas
If you’re a dissertation student in leadership, looking at this field may interest you particularly if you have a background in evolutionary psychology or in evolution itself through the life sciences. I have listed some ideas above, but I am sure you can think of many more.
Qualitative studies like narrative, discourse analysis, grounded theory and phenomenology may be very interesting to be able to elicit the diversity of CLPs.
Quantitatively, experiments to determine if ethnic and cultural background, different transmitted culture conditions, or different lived experiences which would evoke different CLPs based on the theory, demonstrably cause different CLP choices would be important to know and relatively easy to carry out.
Organizationally, a study of the various CLPs preferred by members of the same organization would be of great interest. For example, within this theory, the social ecology of slavery could create both evoked and transmitted culture mechanisms that might result in descendants of slavery preferring different CLPs but having to work in organizations that do not recognize this fact. Obviously, some women may prefer different CLPs than some men which would explain why women-led organizations are led differently. Similarly, CLP formation processes on refugee or immigrant workers within organizations could be explored as well. Within this organizational context, this new ecological CLP theory is likely to change our view and understanding of organizational culture.
Importantly, if I work under a CLP I do not prefer, does that impact my productivity? Does it impact my likelihood of being promoted?
Finally, from an ethical and human rights perspective, an exploration of whose CLPs are more respectful of human rights seems an important dimension of this work, since it is obvious that we cannot all live in societies and work in organizations with our preferred CLPs.
Reference
Lonati S. & Van Vugt, M. (2023). Ecology, l culture and leadership: Theoretical integration and review. The Leadership Quarterly. Forthcoming
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The AI generated image responded to the prompt: Leadership, ecology and culture; colorful painting.
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