Page 73 - ALR2019 Handbook

Future Leadership Research: A View from Beyond Leadership

Kerry Kennedy

Cooper and Denner, (1998, p. 63) argued that “bringing concepts of culture into
psychological theories is an abstract, disputed, and inherently irresolvable process”. Yet
this interrupting role of culture does not only apply to psychology. It applies to any area
that seeks cultural explanations for phenomena. Once the role culture plays in areas
such as teaching, learning, leadership, curriculum and assessment etc. is explored we
question generalizability and universality. Cultural research, therefore, can lead us into
places we might prefer not be!

In this presentation I want to refer to the way selected research that focuses on Asian
contexts can take us to such places. As researchers from what might loosely be called
the Western tradition (whether it is positivist or post-structural) we may enjoy taking
pot-shots at those whose views of the paradigm differ from ours, but they are
pot-shots from within the paradigm. Cultural research, however, takes us outside the
paradigm and gives us new lenses with which to view phenomena.

The tension arises, however, when what we experience in the new culture is reduced
to what we know from within our paradigm. We often do this on the assumption that
what we know is right, and what we are experiencing differently is an aberration.
Cultural research, however, requires us to view the ‘aberration’ as the norm and to
seek explanations for it from the cultural context in which it is embedded.

In exploring these issues examples from different areas of research will be provided to
expand on this point.

Reference:
Cooper, C. & Denner, J. (1998). Theories linking culture and psychology: Universal and
community-specific processes. Annual Review of Psychology, 49, 559-84.

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