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cratic leadership style is more appropriate (Hartog, House, Hanges & Ruiz-Quintanilla, 1999). That is why it is important to understand the similarities and differences across culture, especially the Japanese and United States to compare and contrast both nation approaches to leadership.
To compare the leadership of United States and Japanese culture the model that will be used is Hofstede's (1980, 2001) cultural dimension which consist of power distance, uncertainty avoidance, individualism - collectivism, masculinity - femininity, and future orientation. Even though there has been much criticism for the generalization of a nation's culture and its inability to represent the cultural differences within each country (Siyakumar & Nakata, 2001), this model still can be used to compare the differences of leadership in United States and Japanese culture because the behavior and characteristics of leaders in one country is relatively the same compared to the other regardless.

权力差距-Power distance

The concept of leadership is closely related to the power distance between the leaders and their followers. This is because the role of a leader is related to power, influence and status in the society or in organization (Lord & Maher, 1991 as cited in Hartog et al., 1999). Power distance itself is the degree of acceptance from the society of the power and authority distribution in organizations and institutions, defined by Hofstede (1980, 2001).
Power distance and decision making process and authority are related together in inversely manner (Schuler & Rogoysky, 1998). United States is regarded as a country with low power distance in the culture dimension. Therefore the decision making and responsibility is more likely to be more directed from the leaders. On the counterpart the Japanese decision making process is unique where the process has to go through peer consultation before it is approved. This is also related to the responsibility of leaders in each country. Glinow, Huo and Lowe (1999) assert that pursuing goals and degree of responsibility varies depends on the degree of leaders authoritarianism.

个人主义-集体主义-Individualist - Collectivist

This dimension is defined as a degree of framework where society is closely related to their group or not (Hofstede, 1980, 2001). In individualist countries where people are more concerned about their own interest and needs, leaders tend to take credit of their success. Compared to the countries where collectivism is more valued the credit of success goes to the group. This is similar to the argument of Yan and Hunt's (2005) argument where:
“Individualistic cultures, such as the U.S., where leaders often take credit for their organization's success, inference-based perceptions dominate. However, in collective cultures, such as Japan, where self-effacement is valued, leaders often keep a low profile when their organizations succeed, and recognition-based perceptions dominate”.

Lack of insensitivity towards the culture which ignores the expected behavior, value and assumptions can put leaders at stake, especially leaders that expatriate to another country where the cultural dimension is different. This dimension is well affected by the socioeconomic development of a country and also its democratization which increase the independent thought and