Measuring culture effect size differences in Slovenian and Portuguese leadership practices: Cross-cultural leadership Universality or Contigency?

Abstract

This paper measures the cultural effect size across five types of leadership practices by using the Leadership Practice Inventory (LPI) instrument and drawing on the GLOBE research project framework. It tests cultural universality vs. contingency in five LPI leadership practices in an East-West EU comparison, both with an ex-socialist past. It employs four different effect size statistics. The paper contributes to the narrowing of the empirical gap in researching leadership practices in a small, East-West European country context. Only two of the five leadership practices show statistically significant effect sizes. Furthermore, the leadership practice Encouraging the heart is the only one to display a relatively moderate effect size. Thus, the evidence seems to support the universalist perspective over the contingency perspective.