Organizational culture and leadership: a viable relationship?

Abstract

This work examines the relationship between organizational culture and the leadership of managers from 37 restaurants in a Brazilian state capital. As a theoretical approach, the study adopts the concept of organizational culture as variable; the concepts of transformational and transactional leadership; and the relationship between organizational culture and leadership. Using a questionnaire, we investigate the relationship between four types of organizational culture - clan, adhocracy, market, and hierarchy - and transformational leadership (in terms of four categories: idealized influence, inspirational motivation, intellectual stimulation, and individualized consideration). We also examine the relationship between those four types of culture and transactional leadership (focusing in three dimensions: contingent reward leadership, management by exception, and absence of leadership). We found a negative correlation between the dimension of management by exception and adhocracy culture, and between the dimension of individualized consideration and hierarchy culture. Furthermore, we observed the predominance of adhocracy and clan cultures.