My department in about 60% Chinese and the remainder are from various backgrounds. My current boss seems to be completely oblivious to the fact that not everyone in our department is Chinese. She talks in Chinese and forces everyone to go to Chinese restaurants for team lunches, etc. She's extremely smart and nice, but tries to micro-manage us and does not give us much freedom to make our own decisions. I can see that most of the Chinese employees seem to get along with her but everyone else hates her. It's unfortunate because she does make an effort and I often wonder if it's because she has not adapted herself to diversity of our group. David specifically addresses this in his web poster and his research does indicate that the Chinese culture does use more of a transactional approach. Surely if my boss adapted herself more to the American culture and tried to use transformational leadership she would be more successful with non-Asian employees.
I found this web poster to be extremely informative and thorough. I thought the section on the four leadership approaches were especially interesting. I think situational leadership is one of the most difficult approaches for a manager. It seems to me like this approach should be the most successful but research indicated that it doesn't have a significant effect on team performance.
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