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Leadership
The moderating role of cultural training
similarity in leadership training effectiveness
effectiveness
259
Qiumei Jane Xu and Jianfeng Jiang
Northeastern Illinois University, Chicago, Illinois, USA Received 3 June 2009
Revised 10 August 2009
Accepted 5 October 2009
Abstract
Purpose – This paper aims to examine the moderating role of cultural similarity between leaders and
followers on leadership training effectiveness in terms of followers’ fairness perception and
organizational citizenship behavior.
Design/methodology/approach – A quasi-experiment was conducted with 40 managers from
international corporations as the subjects. The 40 subjects were equally assigned to a treatment group
and a control group. In each group, half share similar backgrounds with the followers while the other
half do not. Leadership training was offered to managers in the treatment group, but not to those in the
control group.
Findings – Results show that leadership training has positive effects on followers’ fairness
perception and organizational citizenship behavior, and the effects are stronger for those leaders who
are similar to their followers in cultural background.
Research limitations/implications – The study further supports that followers’ fairness
perception and organizational citizenship behavior will be enhanced if their leaders receive proper
leadership training, and it is the first to demonstrate that cultural similarity between leaders and
followers plays an important role in influencing leadership training effectiveness.
Practical implications – The training program described in this study is straightforward,
inexpensive, easy to implement, and can be used by organizations with a diverse workforce to improve
their training effectiveness and facilitate their leaders’ managerial efforts.
Originality/value – This is the first paper to examine how cultural similarity between leaders and
followers influences leadership training effectiveness.
Keywords Leadership, Training, Cultural synergy, Organizational behaviour, Social behaviour
Paper type Research paper

Introduction
The study of employee perceived fairness and organizational citizenship behavior
(OCB) has been a continuing interest of organizational researchers (e.g. Cohen-Charash
and Spector, 2001; Organ, 1988). Perceived fairness has been found to result in various
types of employee behaviors that have a positive impact on corporate performance
(Cohen-Charash and Spector, 2001; Colquitt et al., 2001; Conlon et al., 2005).
Organizational citizenship behaviors are behaviors in which employees go above and
beyond the call of duty to help others in a work team, to make constructive statements
about work, or to volunteer for extra job duties (Organ, 1988). Organizational Journal of European Industrial
citizenship behavior has been found to be a key determinant of organizational success Training
Vol. 34 No. 3, 2010
(Smith et al., 1983). For the above reasons, researchers have endeavored to study the pp. 259-269
factors that influence employee perceived fairness and organizational citizenship q Emerald Group Publishing Limited
0309-0590
behavior (Cropanzano et al., 2001; Podsakoff et al., 2000) DOI 10.1108/03090591011031746
JEIT Managerial leadership can influence employee perceived fairness and
organizational citizenship behavior (Avery, 2004). As managerial leaders are the
34,3 players who enact the formal and informal procedures of organizational activities
(Farh et al., 1990), they can either determine or mediate many of the returns to the
members of an organization, thus influencing their followers’ attitudes and behaviors.
For this reason, organizations have attempted to offer leadership training programs to
260 their managerial leaders so that those leaders can provide a positive social context to
help employees shape fairness perception and engage in organizational citizenship
behavior. A study by Skarlicki and Latham (1996) found that the levels of perceived
fairness and organizational citizenship behavior are both higher for those employees
whose leaders received training than for those employees whose leaders did not receive
such training.
However, we have to be aware that training effectiveness can also be influenced by
the successful transfer of such training. To achieve training effectiveness, trainees
should carry over to the work situation the knowledge, skills, behaviors, and attitudes
they learned in the training (Bates et al., 2000; Ramsay et al., 1996; Velada and Caetano,
2007; Vermeulen and Admiraal, 2009). Unfortunately, success of training transfer does
not always happen (Burke and Hutchins, 2007; Simons, 2004), and this can hinder the
effectiveness of leadership training on influencing employees’ behaviors. Further, other
factors may also reduce the impact of leadership training on employees’ behaviors. A
possible important factor is the similarity between leaders and their followers in terms
of cultural background. As all the previous studies used leaders and followers from
similar social contexts as the subjects to examine leadership training effectiveness in
terms of employee perceived fairness and organizational citizenship, we are totally
blind to the role of cultural similarity between leaders and followers in leadership
training effectiveness. With the trend of globalization, more organizations today select
to internationalize their businesses, and as a result, their employees become more
diverse than ever before. This means that today’s managers may not only supervise
employees who have a similar cultural background with them, but also supervise
employees who have a different culture background from them. In other words,
cultural diversity increasingly becomes an issue that more organizations need to face.
To fill this research gap, the purpose of this study is to examine how cultural
similarity between leaders and followers moderates the influence of leadership training
on followers’ perceived fairness and organizational citizenship behavior.
A quasi-experiment was conducted with 40 managers working in international
corporations. As this is an exploratory study, hypotheses were investigated and
tentative associations between cultural similarity and leadership training effectiveness
were identified.

Literature review and hypotheses

Perceived fairness
Perceived fairness was defined as employees’ perception of their leaders in terms of the
adherence to the principles of procedural and interactional fairness (Skarlicki and
Latham, 1996). Employees perceive high procedural fairness when the agreed on
processes are used to make decisions that affect the employees (Leventhal, 1980). When
leaders make decisions logically and are sincere in their interactions with followers,
employees perceive a high level of interactional fairness (Bies and Moag, 1986). Leaders
who understand the importance of organizational fairness and practice the principles
of organizational fairness appropriately in a working context can increase followers’ Leadership
perceived fairness. Leventhal (1980) argued that leaders’ accurate and consistent
decision making, setting of ground rules, creation of change mechanisms, and bias
training
suppression all will yield a high level of followers’ perceived fairness. In the leadership effectiveness
training program used in this study, managers in the treatment group learned the
exchange rules that facilitate consistency and accuracy, how to clarify work
requirements so that followers can meet the agreed-on performance expectations, and 261
were aware of the bias in decision-making processes. Thus, those leaders who received
training are more likely to strengthen their followers’ fairness perception:
H1. Followers whose leaders received training have higher perceived fairness
than those whose leaders did not receive the training.

Organizational citizenship behavior

Organ (1988) defined organizational citizenship behavior (OCB) as “individual
behavior that is discretionary, not directly or explicitly recognized by the formal
reward system, and that in aggregate promotes the effectiveness functioning of the
organization”. Researchers have agreed on the importance of OCB and devoted
considerable amount of attention to the antecedents of citizenship behavior (LePine
et al., 2002; Podsakoff et al., 2000; Smith et al., 1983). For example, Organ and Ryan
(1995) found that employee characteristics such as conscientiousness and
agreeableness have positive effects on citizenship behavior. Task characteristics
such as task feedback and task routinization are also important determinants of
citizenship behavior (Podsakoff and MacKenzie, 1994). Finally, group cohesiveness
was found to be significantly related to citizenship behavior (Podsakoff et al., 1996).
The past research has mostly focused on studying the employee dispositional
(Bateman and Organ, 1983; Organ, 1994; Smith et al., 1983) and situational (Niehoff and
Moorman, 1993; Podsakoff et al., 1993) antecedents of OCB. Although researchers
found that leaders play an important role in influencing employee citizenship behavior
and deserve more attention in future research (Moorman, 1991; Moorman et al., 1993),
no researcher has studied the effect of leadership training in organizational fairness on
OCB, with the exception of Skarlicki and Latham (1996). Even for Skarlicki and
Latham’s study, the positive relationship they found between leadership training and
OCB was only tested in the labor union context. Whether this relationship can be
generalized to other contexts awaits further research. Summarizing the above
discussion, we propose that:
H2. Followers whose leaders received training have a higher level of
organizational citizenship behavior than those whose leaders did not
receive the training.

Cultural similarity
An increasingly diverse workforce is a big challenge confronting managers in the
twenty-first century (Williams and O’Reilly, 1998). For example, Tsui and O’Reilly
(1989) found that increased dissimilarity in supervisor-subordinate demographic
characteristics is associated with lower employee effectiveness, less personal attraction
and increased role ambiguity experienced by subordinates. However, the nature of the
impact diversity has on employee perceived fairness and OCB is not fully understood.
Researchers have examined diversity in terms of age, gender, race, educational
JEIT background, etc. (Tsui et al., 2002; Vecchio and Bullis, 2001, Williams and O’Reilly,
34,3 1998). Few studies have focused on cultural diversity. In fact, the global expansion of
businesses has significantly increased the chance that people from different cultures
will work together. Thus, the effective communication between leaders and their
followers from different cultural backgrounds becomes a big concern.
The similarity-attraction paradigm developed by Byrne (1971) argues that leaders
262 and their followers are more attracted to one another if they are of a similar cultural
background because both the leaders and their followers might possess common life
experiences, beliefs, and values. Cultural similarity invokes an attraction dynamic
whereby culturally similar individuals accentuate the positive attributes of each other
and derive positive social identity from identifying with others from similar
backgrounds. In other words, followers who have similar cultural backgrounds with
their leaders will more easily recognize that their leaders change their behaviors
positively as a result of the training. Thus, they are more likely to have improved
perceived fairness and citizenship behavior as a social exchange:
H3. Cultural similarity between the leader and the follower will moderate the
effect of leadership training on perceived fairness of the followers. The effect
of leadership training on the perceived fairness of the followers will be higher
for those followers who share similar cultural backgrounds with their leaders.
H4. Cultural similarity between the leader and the follower will moderate the
effect of leadership training on followers’ organizational citizenship behavior.
The effect of leadership training on followers’ organizational citizenship
behavior will be higher for those followers who share similar cultural
backgrounds with their leaders.
The hypothesized relationships of the four constructs are shown in Figure 1.

Methods
The sample
A total of 40 managers working in international corporations voluntarily participated
in this study. In the treatment group, 20 managers received leadership training. In the
control group, no managers received leadership training. For each group, ten managers

Figure 1.
had different cultural backgrounds from their followers, and the other ten shared Leadership
similar cultural backgrounds with their followers. Of the 20 managers in the training
condition, seven were women; the mean age of the subjects was 30.4 years (SD ¼ 5.9);
training
the mean level of their education was a bachelor’s degree; and the mean number of their effectiveness
tenure was 8.7 years (SD ¼ 9.5). In the control group, eight of the managers were
women; the mean age of the subjects was 31.6 years (SD ¼ 7.5); the mean level of their
education was a bachelor’s degree; and the mean number of their tenure was 7.9 years 263
(SD ¼ 8.6).

Procedures
This study was conducted in a Midwestern city in the USA. The training program was
developed by Skarlicki and Latham (1996). It consisted of four three-hour sessions
conducted over a three-week period. Session one used case studies to focus on the
understanding of Leventhal’s (1976, 1980) determinants of procedural fairness; session
two provided trainees a sense of “voice” in the decision-making process by using
role-play exercises; session three focused on three specific skills of strengthening the
fairness of the leader’s interpersonal interactions with their followers; and session four
involved managing the appearance of fairness through group discussions. The trainees
were asked to practice their organizational fairness skills between training sessions.
Pre-test and post-test measures of followers’ perceived fairness and OCB were
administered both immediately before and three months after the training intervention.

Measures
The independent variable is leadership training in organizational justice. This dummy
variable is coded as “1 ¼ received training” and “2 ¼ not received training”. The
moderator variable is cultural similarity. The dependent variables are followers’
perceived fairness and followers’ organizational citizenship behavior.
Cultural similarity. Cultural similarity refers to the similarity of the cultural
backgrounds of the leader and the follower. In both the treatment group and the control
group, half of the subjects had followers who were born and grew up in the same
country, and half of them had followers who were born and grew up in different
countries. These countries mainly include those in North America, Western Europe,
East Asia, or Africa. When pairing leaders and followers from different countries, we
tried to avoid having the leaders and followers all from countries in a similar cultural
hemisphere, say, North American and Western European countries. In other words, if
leaders were from North American or Western European countries, then they were
paired with followers from East Asian or African countries; and if leaders were from
East Asian countries, then they were paired with followers from North American or
Western countries. For example, one of the leaders was born and grew up in the USA
and his follower was born and grew up in China.
Perceived fairness. Perceived fairness includes both procedural fairness and
interactional fairness. Procedural fairness was measured by an eleven-item scale
developed by Folger and Konovsky (1989). The scale was based on six rules of
procedural fairness developed by Leventhal (1980). The items focused on the degree to
which leader action procedures demonstrate consistency, bias suppression, accuracy,
correctability, representativeness, and ethicality (e.g. “My leader allows us the chance
to have our say and express concerns regarding the enterprise’s business”). The
respondents used a five-point Likert-type scale ranging from one (strongly disagree) to
JEIT five (strongly agree). Interactional fairness refers to the perception that the leader has
34,3 logic for and is sincere in interactions with their followers. It was measured using a
14-item scale (Moorman, 1991). The first eight items asked the followers about the
perception of the supervisors’ behavior when enacting procedures (e.g. “Does your
leader consider your viewpoint when making decisions?”). The second part of the items
assessed followers’ perception of the leader’s interpersonal interactions with them. The
264 respondents used a five-point Likert-type scale ranging from one (strongly disagree) to
five (strongly agree). The followers were assured confidentiality in completing these
questionnaires. The correlation between the measures of procedural and interactional
fairness was high (r ¼ 0.81, p , 0.001). Thus, the score from both scales were added to
produce an aggregate measure of the followers’ perceived fairness. The Cronbach
reliability coefficient for the final perceived fairness scale is 0.88.
Organizational citizenship behavior. Data on followers’ OCB were obtained from
self-reports by followers. Organizational citizenship behavior was measured by using a
six-item scale developed by Smith et al. (1983). For each OCB item, followers indicated
on a seven-point Likert-type scale (1 ¼ strongly disagree, 7 ¼ strongly agree) the
extent of their agreement regarding their respective particular behaviors. The internal
consistency reliability of this scale is 0.93.

Results
The cell means for the control groups and treatment groups are shown in Tables I
and II. Followers had the highest rating of perceived fairness and organizational
citizenship behavior when their leaders had similar cultural backgrounds with them
and attended the leadership training program. Followers whose leaders attended the
leadership training program had higher ratings of perceived fairness and
organizational citizenship behavior than those followers whose leaders did not
attend the training.
Multiple regression analyses were performed to test the hypotheses. For each of the
dependent variables (perceived fairness and organizational citizenship behavior), a
separate analysis was performed. Tables III and IV report the results of the two
independent regression analyses. Leadership training was significantly related to

Pre-training Post-training
Training No training Training No training
(n ¼ 10) (n ¼ 10) (n ¼ 10) (n ¼ 10)
Table I.
Cell means for perceived Cultural similarity (n ¼ 10) 3.10 2.80 3.80 2.77
fairness Cultural dissimilarity (n ¼ 10) 2.76 2.33 3.20 2.36

Pre-training Post-training
Training No training Training No training
Table II. (n ¼ 10) (n ¼ 10) (n ¼ 10) (n ¼ 10)
Cell means for
organizational citizenship Cultural similarity (n ¼ 10) 4.20 2.40 5.11 3.23
behavior Cultural dissimilarity (n ¼ 10) 3.10 2.10 4.22 2.50
perceived fairness (F ¼ 15.76, p , 0.001). H1 was supported. The interaction between Leadership
leadership training and cultural similarity was significantly positively related to training
followers’ perceived fairness (F ¼ 5.33, p , 0.05). H3 was also supported. In support of
H2, leadership training was significantly related to organizational citizenship behavior effectiveness
(F ¼ 15.44, p , 0.01). H4 proposed that cultural similarity between leaders and their
followers will moderate the effect of leadership training on followers’ organizational
citizenship behavior. As shown in Table III, the interaction between leadership training 265
and cultural similarity was significantly positively related to followers’ organizational
citizenship behavior (F ¼ 6.73, p , 0.05). Thus, H4 was supported too.

Conclusions and discussion of implications and limitations

Conclusions
In this study, we tested the hypotheses that cultural similarity will interact with
leadership training to influence followers’ perceived fairness and organizational
citizenship behavior. We had two key findings from this study. First, as we
hypothesized, training leaders in organizational fairness promotes followers’ perceived
fairness and organizational citizenship behavior. As indicated by the results, followers
whose leaders received training have higher levels of perceived fairness and
organizational citizenship behavior than those whose leaders did not receive such
training. Second, cultural similarity between leaders and followers moderates the
effects. As indicated by the results, for leaders who received training, followers who
have the same cultural backgrounds with their leaders have higher perceived fairness
and organizational citizenship behavior than those who have a different cultural
background from their leaders.

ANOVA
Independent variables Dependent variable df F p

Post-perceived fairness
Pre-perceived fairness 1 18.66 0.000
Leadership training 1 15.76 0.000 Table III.
Cultural similarity 1 4.72 0.041 Cultural similarity
Leadership training £ Cultural similarity 1 5.33 0.032 moderating effect on
Error 35 perceived fairness

ANOVA
Independent variables Dependent variable df F p

Post-organizational citizenship
behavior
Pre-organizational citizenship behavior 1 20.35 0.000 Table IV.
Leadership training 1 15.44 0.000 Cultural similarity
Cultural similarity 1 5.66 0.023 moderating effect on
Leadership training £ Cultural similarity 1 6.73 0.013 organizational citizenship
Error 35 behavior
JEIT Theoretical implications
The theoretical implications of the present study are three-fold. First, this study is
34,3 consistent with the notion that effective leadership behavior can increase followers’
perceived fairness and organizational citizenship behavior. More specifically, training
that helps leaders to apply the principle of organizational fairness and facilitate
decision-making processes increases followers’ fairness perception and citizenship
266 behavior.
Second, this study addresses a few limitations of previous research on perceived
fairness and organizational citizenship behavior. In the present study, followers
provided their own ratings of organizational citizenship behavior, which avoided the
potential problems related to using supervisory ratings of OCB. This study further
supports that followers’ fairness perception and organizational citizenship behavior
could be enhanced through a training intervention for leaders.
Finally, while recent research on perceived fairness and organizational citizenship
behavior acknowledges the importance of leadership behavior, it does not explicitly
include the situational factors such as cultural similarity between leaders and followers
into study. The context that managers work in can impact leadership training
effectiveness. For example, the working environment nowadays is becoming
increasingly diverse. In western countries such as the USA, traditionally, leaders are
predominantly white males. When leaders are of a minority while followers are of a
majority, the effectiveness of leadership training in organizational justice might differ
(Pearce and Xu, 2009). Thus, future research on leadership training effectiveness can
examine situational factors such as the dissimilarity between leaders and followers in
terms of age, gender, and other demographic characteristics.

Practical implications
Practically, the training of leaders in fairness principles in this study was
straightforward, inexpensive, and easily implemented. Practitioners can use this
training program in the real work setting. This is particularly meaningful for
non-profit organizations and service companies in which managers cannot fully
anticipate and thus are less capable of controlling and monitoring employee behavior
and measuring employee performance. Perceived fairness and organizational
citizenship behavior become critical for these organizations.
Second, this study pays attention to cultural diversity influence on leadership
training. As organizations become globalized, managers are likely to have
subordinates with diverse backgrounds. Organizations need to incorporate those
diversity factors in their leadership training. This will improve training effectiveness
and thus facilitate management activities for leaders.

Limitations and directions for future research

This study is not without limitations. This study explores how the factor of cultural
similarity moderates the effect of leadership training on employees’ perceived fairness
and organizational citizenship behavior. However, as cultural similarity includes
several dimensions, the study does not show which particular dimensions of cultural
similarity were related to the reported effects. That is, there may be some facets that
account for all of the variance. A topic for future research is to identify specific
dimensions of culture that might impact training effectiveness. For example, in the
cross-culture literatures, individualism-collectivism, and power distance are two of the
well-accepted dimensions of culture. Future research should examine what specific Leadership
dimensions play an important role in the relationships examined in this paper. A
questionnaire for leaders and followers in terms of culture might be used.
training
Also, the relationships were tested in this study based on the assumption that the effectiveness
transfer of training is successful. As researchers found out that success of training
transfer does not always happen (Burke and Hutchins, 2007; Simons, 2004), the effects
of leadership training on employees’ perceived fairness and organizational citizenship 267
behavior and the moderating role of cultural similarity between leaders and followers
may be distorted. Future researchers are encouraged to operationalize this construct
and include it into study.
Moreover, this study is an exploratory study and has a small sample size. Future
researchers are encouraged to use larger samples to validate our findings. Finally, this
study examined the training effectiveness in terms of the variation in followers’
perceived fairness and organizational citizenship behavior. A more fruitful approach in
assessing training effectiveness would be to examine whether leaders who received
training also have relatively higher perceived fairness and organizational citizenship
behavior.

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About the authors

Qiumei Jane Xu is an Assistant Professor in Management at Northeastern Illinois University,
USA. Jane holds a Doctoral degree in Management (University of California, Irvine, 2007). Her
research interests include employee development, organizational citizenship behavior and
diversity. Qiumei Jane Xu is the corresponding author and can be contacted at: q-xu@neiu.edu
Jianfeng Jiang is an Assistant Professor of Marketing at Northeastern Illinois University,
Chicago, Illinois, USA. He received his PhD in Marketing from the University of Mississippi in
2007. His research interests are in the areas of retail competition, labor productivity, and
miscellaneous interdisciplinary topics. Since graduation, he has published several articles in
international journals such as Marketing Intelligence & Planning.

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