‘Good leaders do the dirty work’ implicit leadership theory at the multicultural workplace. Kap. 6

Abstract

Today, workplaces are increasingly culturally diverse, and managers and employees interact across various societal cultures. Facilitating communication and cooperation among individuals to accomplish shared goals is central to leadership, and multicultural workplaces represent new challenges and opportunities in this regard. This chapter proposes values work as a strategy, inquiring into the implicit ideas of good and bad leadership at the multicultural workplace with loosely held cultural categories. The aim of the chapter is to examine the factors that shape managers’ and employees’ implicit ideas of leadership and to analyse how leadership is negotiated in everyday interaction across cultures. Three nursing homes in Oslo, Norway, are the empirical context of the case study.