Motivation to Lead in Multicultural Organizations

Abstract

Conceptions of leadership are conspicuous in their absence from the field of organizational politics. We respond to this timely challenge by considering how cultural values and perceptions of organizational politics influence motivations to lead in a multicultural setting. By combining qualitative and quantitative methods of data collection and analysis, we expand the Motivation to Lead (MTL) construct proposed by Chan and Drasgow. In addition, we apply the concept of the work script to the Israeli high-tech industry to predict how cultural values and perceptions of organizational politics combine to shape motivations to lead.

Keywords

motivation to lead organizational politics cultural differences in leadership

Introduction

The effect of cultural values on leadership behaviors in multicultural organizational contexts has become an issue of importance and controversy (Ailon, 2008; G. J. Byrne & Bradley, 2007; Kark & Van Dijk, 2007). Current scholarship is increasingly concerned with individual personality and developmental factors to predict the emergence of leadership roles (Chan, 1999; Chan & Drasgow, 2001). Less is known about the effect of cultural values on the employee’s motivation to lead (MTL). We contend that these cultural values are embedded in the individual’s “work script,” defined by Giora and Poole (1984) as a schema held in memory that describes events, behaviors, or scenes confined to the workplace, and involving individuals, behaviors, or contexts. We therefore explore how the work script adopted by ethnic groups of native Israelis and Former Soviet Union (FSU) immigrants provides an interpretative framework that is tightly connected to the group’s perceptions of organizational politics and motivations to lead.

Work scripts and perceptions of organizational politics are intimately related to MTL, because leadership demands unusual levels of effort and the foregoing of self-interest of followers for the collective good (Vigoda-Gadot, 2007).

However, the examination of cultural values and their relationship to organizational politics presents complex theoretical and methodological challenges. For starters, organizational researchers need to devise a way to escape the well-documented tendency to pose cultural values as an objective, cognitive essence, rather than as a symbolic resource that is actively and creatively constructed by organizational members to serve various social aims (Ailon-Souday & Kunda, 2003). The context of immigration complicates matters even further: How do we begin to sketch the national, economic, and cultural contexts within which the discourses of workplace leadership are constructed? How do we account for immigrants’ establishment of new social contacts and long-term socialization to new values, norms, and codes of behavior?

For our study, we formulated a theoretical and methodological response to these challenges. Theoretically, we modified the concept of the work script to elucidate how an adopted script acts as a flexible interpretative framework in the work place. Faced with a similar challenge, Lerner, Rapoport, and Lomskey-Feder (2007) developed the concept of the “ethnic script” to show how it served immigrants as an interpretive tool in constructing their individual and collective identity in the new society. More important, they showed how scripts are activated, enacted, and manipulated, rather than adopted automatically. Mobilizing and modifying a script requires intense interpretation and reflection in confronting hierarchical social structures (Lerner et al., 2007). Thus, the concept of the work script enables us to refrain from treating cultural values as merely the passive embodiment of a predetermined cultural template. Instead, we show how engagement with a dynamically constructed work script is related to specific perceptions of organizational politics and yields differences in MTL.

Methodically, this article is explorative by nature, and combines qualitative and quantitative methods to elicit the movement of individuals within this politically charged field of action. Bourdieu (1987) warns us against analyzing interviewees’ stories as a linear and coherent progression of events and meanings. Rather, he encourages scholars to interpret interviewee’s texts as reflecting continuous movement within social and political fields. Scholars thus highlight the ways in which confusion, contradictions, ironies, indecisiveness, repetition, and reversion stand alongside each other or follow each other, without necessarily being related (Järvinen, 2000). Taking such an epistemological stance vis-à-vis the text sheds light on how immigrants position themselves within their workplace, as they learn the political, economic, and cultural features of the host country. In this study, we focus on immigrants to Israel from the FSU who arrived mostly in the 1990s, and who work in the Israeli high-tech industry alongside veteran Israelis. Our main goal is to understand the MTL of these immigrants, and how it is influenced by their cultural perceptions. We will begin by presenting the MTL concept, and then elaborate how we used the work script construct.

Motivation to Lead

MTL is defined as “an individual differences construct that affects a leader’s or leader-to-be’s decisions to assume leadership training, roles, and responsibilities. Presumably, motivation to lead affects one’s intensity of effort at leading, and one’s persistence as a leader” (Chan & Drasgow, 2001, p. 482). According to Chan and Drasgow (2001), MTL arises from four major factors: personality traits, values, leadership self-efficacy, and previous leadership experiences. Different combinations of these factors result in three different types of MTL. In affective MTL, the individual is motivated to lead by an inner desire resulting from the satisfaction and pleasure he or she derives from being a leader. In social-normative MTL, the individual is motivated to lead by social and normative reasons, such as a feeling of commitment to the group, or in response to a certain norm that is prevalent in his or her environment. Finally, calculative MTL is when the individual aspires to lead in order to enjoy concrete benefits related to the position. Chan and Drasgow (2001) relate in their model to the noncalculative dimension.

Traditionally, the MTL concept has related to psychological aspects such as self-efficacy and personality attributes (Chan & Drasgow, 2001). In our study, we chose to focus on preference for innovation, as a personality-related concept. The Jackson Personality Inventory Manual defines innovativeness as a tendency to be creative in thought and action (Jackson, 1994). This concept also plays an important role in the theory of entrepreneurial drive, designed by Florin, Karri, and Rossiter (2007) and thus can be easily applied to aspirations to lead. A recent study comparing the innovativeness of Russian and Finnish respondents revealed that Russians reported lower job demand for innovativeness than Finns, but higher personal and national innovativeness (Koponen, 2004). Another comparative study on innovativeness of American and Finnish entrepreneurs found that American entrepreneurs had somewhat higher preferences for innovation than their counterparts in Finland (Tuunanen & Hyrsky, 1997). These studies point to the importance of cultural background on the individual’s preference for innovation. However, although validated in two cultural contexts (in the United States and in Singapore), the Chan and Drasgow construct does not account for the effect of cultural perceptions on motivations to lead. When trying to apply this model to an immigration context, the following question arises: How does the immigration experience and cultural background affect migrants’ MTL in a multicultural work setting? We will use the work script concept to try to answer this question.

The Work Script in a Multicultural Work Setting

Inspired by Hofstede’s (1980) typology, scholars have assumed that an individual’s values reflect his or her heritage, personal experiences, socioeconomic level, and acculturation (Cohen, 2007; Michailova & Hutchings, 2006; Schwartz & Bardi, 2001). These values influence how an individual perceives and interprets a given situation and the importance he or she ascribes to it (Schwartz, Sagiv, & Boehnke, 2000). Hofstede (1980, p. 18) defines values as “a broad tendency to prefer certain states of affairs over others” (Ardichvili & Gasparishvili, 2003). Over the years, scholars have attacked Hofstede’s model for its insistence on coherence, continuity, and homogeneity (uniformity). They thus suggested a shift of focus to a more dynamic vision of clashing, conflicting, overlapping, interbreeding, and mixing subcultures (Ailon, 2008; McSweeney, 2002, 2009). McSweeney, Hofstede’s greatest critic, advised abandoning the model of national culture altogether since it is “blind to cultural ambiguities, and differential access to material and symbolic resources” (Magala, 2009; McSweeney, 2009). Despite this, Hofstede’s work continues to have major influence on cross-cultural research (Chiang, 2005; Cohen, 2007; Magala, 2009; Michailova & Hutchings, 2006). This is perhaps because of recent successful attempts to apply Hofstede’s methodology to trace differences between groups within a relatively defined national culture (Cohen, 2007).

Whether perceived as a “schemata” (Hofstede, 1980), “toolkit” (Swidler, 1986, 2003), or “habitus” (Bourdieu, 1977), culture is generally understood as a template for action, or more specifically, “an acquired system of generative schemes adjusted to the particular conditions in which it is constituted” (Bourdieu, 1977, p. 95). For our purposes, an individual acquires organizational values through socialization, and practices them in his or her daily life. These organizational values constitute a form of cultural knowledge. Swidler (1986) was among the first to suggest that culture influences action, not by providing the ultimate values toward which action is oriented, but by shaping a repertoire or “toolkit” of habits and skills with which people construct “strategies of action.” These repertoires of meaning, claims Swidler (2003), inculcate diverse capacities that shape people as social actors. Relatively stable and persistent, these cultural repertoires provide the conceptual frameworks through which people perceive themselves and others, and also shape their habits and skills (Swidler, 1986, 2003). But how exactly are these repertoires adapted in a new cultural context?

Bourdieu (1984,1992) conceived of individuals as agents who form mental structures (such as: ideas, concepts and beliefs) that are embedded in their social position. These mental representations, Probyn (2004) offers, delimit an agent’s movement in specific social spheres. As actors compete for social positions, social structures are formed. In them, social actors are positioned relative to each other. This competition creates a social structure, which positions actors relative to each other according to the amounts and combinations of cultural capital they acquire (Anheier, Gerhards, & Romo, 1995; Bourdieu, 1989). Thus, a person’s cultural capital and social position will play a significant role in shaping his or her behaviors or aspirations. More specifically, and relevant to our study—social position affects the individual’s MTL.

Compared with Hofstede and Swidler, Bourdieu introduces a more nuanced framework within which to consider the covert relationship between power (social positioning and access to valuable resources) and culture. However, he downplays the interpretative work closely related to designing actions, especially in the case of ethnic group members, with respect to sociocultural institutions and other social groups within a given society (Lerner et al., 2007). Moreover, he neglects to consider how, in the process of interpretation, individuals not only manipulate commonly accepted cultural axioms to fit their purposes but also criticize them. Moreover, it is still unclear how these cultural predispositions, if they exist, shape actors’ motivations.

For these reasons, we turn to the concept of the script. Traditionally, the concept of the script, or cultural scenario, was used to explain the relationship between cultural messages, identity, and modes of activity. Ortner (1973; cf. Lerner et al., 2007) suggests that individuals use symbols to make sense of the “world order.” These symbols are organized in “key scenarios” which guide and motivate actions.

In the migration literature, Erel (2010) similarly suggests that migration results in new ways of producing and reproducing cultural capital. The immigrant builds on, rather than simply mirrors, the key scenarios of either the country of origin or the country of migration. We expand on Erel’s claim by constructing a model that defines the relationships between perceptions of organizational politics, work scripts, and motivations to lead among FSU immigrants and native Israelis.

Lerner et al. (2007) suggest that the migration process requires a continual and close reading of the new environment, as migrants constantly compare it with the familiar culture and society that they left behind. This “double vision” of the migrants enables them to use their available interpretive schemas critically, to attribute meaning to their new “reality,” and to locate themselves within new cultural scripts and unfamiliar social hierarchies (Lerner et al., 2007; Lomsky-Feder & Rapoport, 2001). In their study, they show how the immigrant process of critically drawing on an ethnic script while reading the new society made the script more flexible as an interpretive guiding tool. This process also provided the immigrants with potent ways of maneuvering within the new society. Our study adopts the concept of the script to understand how FSU immigrants in the Israeli high-tech industry construct a script specific to their employment atmosphere.

To define our respondents’ work script, we asked how they perceived proper or moral conduct in the workplace. We then asked them to report on what they considered important in terms of working conditions, teamwork, and decision making. Finally, we presented our respondents with specific work scenarios and asked them to describe how they would handle the situation.

Perceptions of Organizational Politics

How do perceptions of organizational politics relate to natives’ and immigrants’ work script? Organizational politics represents a unique domain of interpersonal relations, characterized by the direct or indirect (active or passive) engagement of individuals in influence tactics and power struggles. These activities are frequently aimed at securing or maximizing personal or collective interests or, alternatively, avoiding negative outcomes within the organization (Ferris, Perrewé, & Douglas, 2002; Kacmar & Ferris, 1991). A recent attempt to build a political theory of leadership in organizations found that perceptions of organizational politics had both a direct and a mediating effect on the relationship between leadership and performance (Vigoda-Gadot, 2007). House (1995) suggests that leadership behavior gives purpose, meaning, and guidance to collectivities by articulating a collective vision, which appeals to ideological values, motives, and self-perceptions of followers. If so, motivations to lead are closely related to both access to and actual use of valuable cultural capital. Leadership, contends Vigoda-Gadot (2007), is first and foremost the ability to influence people to perform tasks over a period of time, using motivational methods rather than power or authority. If so, we must consider how employees who work in specific political settings mobilize particular work scripts, to yield different motivations to lead. We, thus, assume workplace politics to act as both structural and behavioral antecedents of immigrants’ and natives’ MTL.

Based on this line of thinking, we tried to predict, through quantitative research, the individual’s MTL as affected by four main factors: demographic characteristics (gender and ethnic origin), tendency for innovation, work script, and perceptions of organizational politics. The following general model demonstrates the relationships between these factors (see figure 1).

Figure 1.

General research model

Immigrants From the Former Soviet Union

We focused on two groups of workers in the Israeli high-tech industry with different cultural backgrounds: Israeli natives and immigrants from the FSU. Since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1989, about 1 million FSU immigrants have immigrated to Israel. They now constitute the largest ethnic origin group among the Jewish population of Israel (Leshem & Lissak, 2000). The FSU immigrants were motivated mainly by “push factors” in their home countries—notably political and economic instability. The critical mass of newcomers led to the formation of an autonomous community with its own economic infrastructure, political representation, media, and social networks (Remennick, 2004). Although Jewish immigrants from the FSU come from ethnically and socially diverse backgrounds, they share the Russian language and Russian cultural heritage (Lerner et al., 2007; Remennick, 2002). When immigrant students from the FSU were asked to characterize their “ethnic script,” most students described it primarily in terms of Russian “culture,” dedication to scholarship and education, and, to a lesser extent, opposition to the Soviet regime.

On arrival, qualified immigrants faced the significant challenge of occupational integration in the small and already saturated Israeli professional markets. The numbers of immigrant specialists often exceeded those of their local colleagues (e.g., around 80,000 engineers from the FSU joined 25,000 Israeli ones). By 2002, the number of FSU immigrants working in high-skill occupations in the Israeli high-tech industry gradually reached roughly the same number as native Israelis (Cohen-Goldner & Eckstein, 2002, 2004). By and large, the group’s integration into the high-tech industry can be considered successful. The authors hypothesize that this may be due to the timing of the immigration, which coincided with a period of growth in the field. It might also be due to the immigrants’ willing participation in vocational programs offered by the Ministries of Labor and Absorption. Moreover, as immigrants accumulate Israeli human capital via language, vocational training, and on-the-job learning, they are able to shift to better jobs within the industry (Cohen-Goldner & Eckstein, 2002, 2004).

Despite the overall successful integration of FSU immigrants in the high-tech industry, evidence shows that the FSU immigrants are less represented in managerial roles and leadership positions in these organizations, as compared with the Israeli natives (Amit & Bar-Lev, 2010). In the present study, we aim to further explore this issue by focusing on the MTL concept. We try to predict the sources of MTL among FSU and Israeli natives, and explore the cultural and organizational determinants of this motivation. While controlling for certain demographic and psychological characteristics, we ask whether the specific cultural values (represented by a work script) together with the organizational positioning (politics) contribute to the MTL.

Method

To collect the data, this study used both qualitative and quantitative research methods, a combination most suited for thorough exploration of populations for whom data are scarce.

The general research population is workers in the Israeli high-tech industry, both Israeli natives (veteran) and immigrants who arrived from the FSU after 1989. The qualitative data were obtained through a series of semistructured interviews with high-tech workers. We interviewed 18 FSU immigrants, who expressed their preference to be interviewed in Russian, 9 native Israelis serving as project managers in multicultural teams or units in several high-tech companies, and 9 senior HR managers in high-tech companies and employment agencies. The interviews lasted between 45 minutes and an hour and were tape-recorded and transcribed for analysis. Interviewees were selected using modified snowball sampling, a method that entails following the network of actors, allowing each to identify other relevant respondents (McInerney, 2007). The snowball sampling method was especially useful in contacting senior managers, who were at first reluctant to participate in the study. To protect privacy, we used pseudonyms to hide the identities of the interviewees and their firms. All interviewees were asked to describe their working experience in Israeli high-tech firms. The stories we gathered reflect a collection of events, impressions, and interpersonal relations that the narrators chose to present in describing their immigration and work experiences. In this article, insights from the interviews are used to further elucidate our participants’ interpretative work as they made sense of their working experience (Lerner et al., 2007).

The quantitative data were obtained from an Internet survey that was completed by 231 high-tech workers. The survey was available in Hebrew and in Russian, and was distributed using several methods. First, we sent the link to the survey to the 36 interviewees from 18 high-tech firms who participated in our qualitative research. Second, we distributed the survey to an e-mail list of 60 workers that we obtained from the interviewees. Since the response rate was low and participants were reluctant to be identified, we then sent the survey to lists of workers in the high-tech industry and to students in management programs who work in the industry, with a request to spread the link to relevant participants. The final sample included 231 high-tech workers, 164 veteran Israelis, and 67 FSU immigrants, 59% men and 41% women. The respondents came from 60 high-tech companies.

The survey was composed of 106 questions related to demographic characteristics (such as gender, place of birth, family status, number of children), the job in the organization (job seeking, job description, seniority, language at work, job satisfaction), and questions (which form four indices) related to the individuals’ tendency for innovation, work scripts related to work values, perceptions of organizational politics, and the individual’s MTL.

Tendency for Innovation

We used the preference for innovation aspect in the Entrepreneurial Drive Questionnaire (Florin et al., 2007). The questionnaire is composed of 13 statements and the respondent is asked to indicate how far he or she agrees with each statement (typical statement: “I’m excited when I can approach a task in an unusual way”). Replies are given on a five-point Likert-type scale from strongly disagree to strongly agree. Cronbach’s alpha reliability coefficient on this index was .88.

Work Script

Our work script incorporated various scenarios or behaviors that pertain to work values. These were tested by a questionnaire formed by the research team, based on Hofstede’s (2001) work. Three kinds of perceptions were examined: perceptions toward collaboration with others (three questions), the importance of professional achievements (three questions), and the importance of work conditions (four questions). The questionnaire was composed of statements for which the respondent was asked to indicate his perception of the importance of the statement, using a 5-point Likert-type scale from not important at all to very important. Cronbach’s alpha reliability coefficients for each type of perception were .69, .62, and .71, respectively.

Organizational Politics Perceptions

We used a questionnaire based on the work of Kacmar and Carlson (1997). The respondent was asked to indicate to what extent he or she thinks each statement is correct. The statements are related to politics in the promotion process in organizations (e.g., “an organization should promote people according to the personal preference of managers and not according to performance”), and bullying behaviors in organizations (e.g., “it is appropriate to have people that always get what they want in the organization because no one wants to confront them”). Replies were given on a 5-point Likert-type scale from not correct at all to very correct. High scores represent the respondent’s perception that organizations should not promote workers based only on their performance and should allow bullying behaviors among workers. The final index is composed of seven items with Cronbach’s alpha reliability equal to .73.

Motivation to Lead

To examine MTL, we used the MTL questionnaire developed by Chan (1999). Chan’s original questionnaire consisted of 27 items divided into three scales (each with nine items), which represent the three MTL factors in the model (affective, social-normative, and noncalculative). We used a shortened version of nine items (three for each factor). The construct validity of the MTL shortened version was tested using a pilot sample of 180 respondents. The correlations between the original version and the short version were very high for the three MTL factors (r = .87 for affective MTL, r = .89 for calculative MTL, and r = .89 for normative MTL). A typical statement of affective MTL is “I usually want to be a leader in the groups that I work in.” A typical statement of normative MTL is “I have been taught that I should always volunteer to lead others if I can.” A typical statement of calculative MTL is “I am only interested in leading a group if there are clear advantages for me.” Respondents were asked to indicate to what extent they agreed with each item on a 5-point Likert-type scale, from strongly agree (5) to strongly disagree (1). Cronbach’s alpha reliability coefficients for each factor were .85, .68, and .61, respectively.

To examine the reliability of the research instruments and relationships between the research variables, we used a correlation matrix. We used structural equation modeling with AMOS 5 software (Byrne, 2001) to test the hypothesized model. Following Anderson and Garbing’s (1988) “two-step” approach, we tested the measurement model first and then the structural model.

The measurement model assesses whether all items on a given scale represent the same latent construct. A rule of thumb is that a measurement model with three indicators per latent construct is ideal, and it can bear up to five indicators without estimation difficulties (Bagozzi & Heatherton, 1994). When more than five items measure the same construct, a parceling procedure can be used to randomly combine items into composites (Bagozzi & Heatherton, 1994). Parceling reduces random errors and simplifies the model while simultaneously maintaining the integrity of multiple-indicator measurement. We used parceling procedures for the tendency for innovation index in the model; all other indices were built according to their subdimensions.

The structural model provides maximum likelihood estimates of all identified model parameters, and evaluates the degree to which the model reproduces the observed variance–covariance matrix in terms of a chi-square goodness-of-fit statistic (Bollen & Long, 1993). This method enabled us to test the fit of the correlation matrix (Byrne, 2001; Hoyle, 1995). Our main general model (Figure 1) suggests that the worker’s demographic characteristics (gender and ethnic group) influence the worker’s tendency for innovation, his or her work script, and his or her perceptions of organizational politics. These variables in turn influence the worker’s MTL (affective, normative, or calculative). Several alternative models were examined to determine the best model for the research variables.

Results

The descriptive findings obtained from the survey presented in Table 1 show that the groups differ in demographic characteristics. The FSU immigrants tend to be older than the veteran Israelis. As a whole, our sample of FSU immigrants is composed of people whose average length of stay in Israel is 18 years. On average, the FSU immigrants came to Israel at the age of 18 years. They are highly educated and have extensive labor market experience (Friedberg, 2000). About 34% of FSU immigrant respondents have MA and PhD degrees, compared with only 22% of veteran Israelis working in the high-tech industry. As for their level of religiosity, the majority of both groups of high-tech employees reported that they were not religious, with a higher rate of secularity among FSU immigrants.

Table 1.

Demographic Characteristics

Variables	Former Soviet Union immigrants	Veteran Israelis
Age in years; mean (SD)	37.4 (9.2)	33.3 (7.4)
Percentage male	68.7	58.5
Percentage married	68.7	62.2
No. of children; mean (SD)	1.4 (1.3)	1.1 (1.3)
Education (%)
BA	37.3	50.6
MA	29.9	20.7
PhD	4.5	1.2
Technical degree	13.4	16.5
Other	14.9	11
Religious affiliation (%)
Secular	82.1	74.8
Traditional + other	16.4	20.2
Religious	1.5	4.4
Orthodox	0	0.6
No. of years in Israel; mean (SD)	18 (5.6)	—
n	67	164

Our next step was to examine the differences between the two groups in labor market characteristics. As Table 2 indicates, more than 80% of individuals in both groups work in their profession. However, veteran Israelis are more highly represented in management roles, whereas FSU immigrants are more highly represented in core technical high-tech jobs. Both groups reported finding their current employment by employing multiple sources. However, veteran Israelis reported a greater reliance on social networks than the FSU immigrants. The majority of respondents reported that the language spoken at work is Hebrew (more than 80%). However, whereas the veteran Israelis reported English to be the second spoken language at their workplace, the FSU immigrants reported Russian to be the second language spoken at their workplace. In addition, veteran Israelis reported higher proficiency in English in comparison with their FSU immigrant counterparts. Finally, workers in both groups reported a similar level of job satisfaction, but FSU immigrants reported longer stays in their current places of employment than their Israeli counterparts.

Table 2.

Labor Market Characteristics

			Significance tests
Variables	Former Soviet Union immigrants	Veteran Israelis	χ² (Cramer’s V)
Working in their profession (%)	82.1	84	0.00 (.00)
Type of job (%)			11.24 (.23)
Human resources manager	1.5	1.2
Project manager and general manager	13.6	21.4
Team leader	16.7	16.5
Programmer, software tester, information and communication technology implementer	48.5	32.3
Engineer: General	7.6	6.1
Marketing	3	3.7
Other	9.1	17.7
Job seeking (%)			26.50** (.36)
Newspaper ad	10.6	7.4
Employment website	18.2	19.1
Employment Bureau	4.5	1.2
Ministry of Immigrant Absorption	1.5	—
“Nefesh B’Nefesh” (nongovernmental organization)	1.5	—
Friends or relatives	34.8	50
Other	28.8	22.2
Language spoken at work (%)			20.11** (.31)
Hebrew	84.6	83.9
English	1.5	15.5
Russian	12.3	0.6
Other	1.5	0.6
			T test
Index of English proficiency; score of 1-5; mean (SD)	3.8 (0.9)	4.5 (0.6)	5.81**
No. of years in the current job; mean (SD)	6.4 (4.8)	3.9 (3.7)	3.19**
Job satisfaction; score of 1-5; mean (SD)	3.6 (0.9)	3.7 (0.9)	0.76
N	62	164

p < .10. **p < .05. ***p < .01.

The two groups differed in their work perceptions. Table 3 presents general work perceptions and perceptions related to leadership.

Table 3.

Work Perceptions of Former Soviet Union (FSU) Immigrants and Veteran Israelis

Variables	FSU immigrants; mean (SD)	Veteran Israelis; mean (SD)	Scale reliability α (no. of items)	T test
Tendency for innovation	3.53 (0.61)	3.70 (0.51)	.88 (13)	1.68*
General work perceptions
Work script
Collaboration with others	4.34 (0.45)	4.52 (0.56)	.69 (3)	1.89*
Professional achievement	4.03 (0.51)	4.36 (0.53)	.62 (3)	3.49***
Work conditions (wage)	4.06 (0.51)	4.27 (0.56)	.71 (4)	2.16***
Organization political perception (OP)
Index of OP promotion and bullying (1-5)	1.75 (0.53)	1.48 (0.41)	.73 (7)	3.89***
Motivation to lead (MTL)
Index of MTL affective	3.11 (0.88)	3.60 (0.78)	.85 (3)	3.26***
Index of MTL normative	3.18 (0.70)	3.56 (0.58)	.68 (3)	2.75***
Index of MTL calculative	3.24 (0.78)	2.99 (0.75)	.61 (3)	1.78*
N	62	164

p < .10. **p < .05. ***p < .01.

As apparent from Table 3, we identified a significant difference in the tendency for innovation between the groups. Veteran Israelis reported a higher tendency for innovation than FSU immigrants. Examining the work script adopted by the two groups, we identified two major differences: Compared with FSU immigrants, veteran Israelis regarded professional achievement and work conditions to be of considerable importance in choosing and maintaining an employment position. Compared with their FSU counterparts, veteran Israelis placed higher value on collaboration with others at work. But this difference was found significant only at p < .1. The findings related to perceptions of organizational politics indicate that workers in both groups thought negatively of participating in “backstage organizational politics” (a score of less than 2 in a 1-5 scale). However, the FSU immigrants scored higher on organizational politics, indicating that they are more inclined to accept political behaviors in the workplace.

Finally, veteran Israelis reported higher MTL based on affective or normative grounds, whereas FSU immigrants’ motivation tended to be based on calculative considerations. Thus, FSU immigrants reported being less interested in leading and more calculative about the outcomes of leading. The affective and normative sources of motivation were positively and significantly correlated (r = .43, p < .01). These sources were also positively and significantly correlated with a direct question in the survey. We asked the respondents to report whether they would be interested (1-5) in moving to a managerial job (instead of a professional job), provided that the wages were similar in both roles (r = .45, p < .01). The correlation between the calculative MTL and the other motivation variables was found to be insignificant.

To further understand the factors explaining the affective, normative, and calculative MTL, we used structural equation modeling. Three models were tested, for each MTL source: predicting the normative MTL (Model 1), the affective MTL (Model 2), and the calculative MTL (Model 3). We first checked each of the models (Models 1, 2, and 3) with direct lines between the demographic variables to the worker’s tendency for innovation, his work script, and his or her organizational political perceptions, and from these work perceptions we drew direct lines to the MTL. These models did not fit the data well: All fit indices did not exceed .90, and the root mean square of approximation (RMSEA) was insignificant (p > .07). Three alternative models were tested, adding direct lines between each of the demographic variables (gender and ethnic origin) and the MTL. These models offer a better fit for the data and are presented in Figures 2, 3, and 4, respectively.

Figure 2.

Model 1: Predicting normative motivation to lead (N = 212)

Figure 3.

Model 2: Predicting affective motivation to lead (N = 212)

Figure 4.

Model 3: Predicting calculative motivation to lead (N = 212)

The results for Model 1, which predicts normative MTL, are presented in Figure 2. The results indicate that the model fits the data well: The fit indices exceeded .90, and the RMSEA was significant (p < .07). The comparison of these results with the results obtained for Model 2, which predicts affective MTL, indicate that Model 1 fits the data better than Model 2. In Model 2, not all fit indices exceeded .90, and the RMSEA was insignificant (p > .07). The results for Model 3 indicate that the model fits the data well: The fit indices exceeded .90, and the RMSEA was significant (p < .07). We tested the three structural models and present the results in Figures 2, 3, and 4, following Hoyle’s (1995) recommendations. For each model, the results are presented in diagrams with specification of the main statistical measures: regression weights, multiple correlation coefficients, and fit measures of each structural model.

Figure 2 is a graphic presentation of the results obtained from the structural model predicting normative MTL. The model predicts 56% of the variance of normative MTL. As is apparent from the figure, there is a positive and significant correlation between gender and preference for innovation (β = .32) and normative MTL (β = .29), meaning that men score higher on their normative MTL and have higher preference for innovation than women. However, the work script representing work preferences is significantly higher among women compared with men (β = −.29). The work script is negatively related to organizational politics, meaning that workers who place more importance on achievements, collaboration with others, and work conditions are less in favor of organizational politics. The ethnic origin (Israeli vs. FSU) is also significantly linked to the other variables in the model. Veteran Israelis score significantly higher on the tendency for innovation (β = .27), and on the normative MTL (β = .44), but their scores on the organizational politics perceptions are significantly lower than among FSU immigrants (β = −.38). According to the model, the work script (β = .57), and to a smaller degree, organizational politics perceptions (β = .15), positively and significantly predict normative MTL. However, tendency for innovation is not significantly related to the normative MTL. This finding means that MTL out of a normative commitment is explained both directly and indirectly by demographic and ethnic variables, through work perceptions (work script and perceptions of organizational politics). This MTL is unrelated to the individual’s tendency for innovation.

Model 2, depicted in Figure 3, presents a different picture. In general, the model predicts 39% of the variance of the affective MTL. Gender has a similar effect on the other variables in this model, as in Model 1. As for ethnic origin, in addition to the significant effects also apparent in Model 1, the link between ethnic origin and work script is positive and significant at p < .1 (β = .12). The effect of ethnic origin on the affective MTL is significant and positive (β = .17), but lower than the comparable effect on normative MTL. Another difference between the models is related to the predictors of the MTL. Whereas the tendency for innovation was not related to the normative MTL in Model 1, it was found significant and positive (β = .33) in predicting affective MTL in Model 2. We did not find that organizational politics and work script were related to the affective MTL.

The final model, Model 3, depicted in Figure 4, presents the prediction of the calculative MTL. The model predicts only 8% of the variance of the calculative MTL, a very small percent compared with the two other models. We identify some additional differences between the models. In Model 3, gender has no significant effect on the calculative MTL. However, work script was found to have a significant and positive effect on the calculative MTL (β = .28). The effect of ethnic origin on the calculative MTL is significant (p < .1) and negative (β = −.17), indicating that veteran Israelis have lower levels of calculative MTL as compared with FSU workers. Another difference between the models is related to the predictors of the MTL. The tendency for innovation was found significant (p < .1) and negative (β = −.25) in predicting calculative MTL in Model 3, whereas the work script was found significant and positive. We did not find that organizational politics perceptions were related to affective MTL.

In comparing the three models, we conclude that the set of suggested explanatory variables in our study provide a better prediction of the normative MTL construct, and to a lesser degree, of the affective MTL, than for the calculative MTL.

Apparently, the immigrants’ preference for technical jobs and a more calculative mode of leadership were derived from their perceptions and experience of workplace politics. Evidence obtained in our qualitative study supports these findings. Consider, for example how Alex, an FSU immigrant working in a small Israeli company, characterizes his company’s political climate:

He who works the hardest will not necessarily get the credit, but rather the one who talks the most or shouts the most. The one who makes himself heard will get the credit. . . . My mentality is more Russian.

Alex’s sentiments were reiterated in many of our migrants’ stories. The FSU immigrants tended to perceive their organizations as more political than their native counterparts. Many of them thought that their organizations either turned a blind eye to organizational politics, or openly allowed it. Many of them admitted to “not knowing how to make demands” or “how to ask for what they deserved.” Interestingly, they seemed to purposefully distance themselves from any informal behavior that might be construed as self-serving. They often claimed that in comparison with their Israeli counterparts, they possessed a stronger work ethic and were more inclined to engage in what Vigoda-Gadot (2006) names “organizational citizenship behavior”.

Our Israeli respondents affirmed our FSU immigrants’ sentiments. Several of our native Israeli interviewees remarked that “the Russians are known for being more organized than the Israelis. They are quieter. They keep to themselves. They don’t make a lot of fuss. But they are more productive. They are smart and educated people.” Hila, a project manager at a large high-tech firm, also spoke highly of the FSU immigrants’ diligence:

There is certain seriousness to them, a highly developed work ethic. They respect their workplace and their job. They are very thorough, which stands out especially against the Israeli tendency to improvise and cut corners. . . . They [FSU immigrants] have an uncompromising attitude towards work.

Despite their undisputed work ethic and professional capabilities, as presented in Table 2, FSU immigrants were less represented in managerial roles than their native Israeli counterparts. When asked whether given the same salary, they would prefer to be promoted to a technical job or a managerial one, only 6% of the FSU immigrants reported preferring a managerial position, as compared with 24% of the native Israelis. Their relatively low preference for management roles may stem from their lower tendency for innovation and lower MTL. However, their reluctance to fill managerial roles might also be attributed to their ambivalence toward managers as a class. Maxim is a project manager who immigrated to Israel 14 years ago. He served in the Russian army and worked in a Russian high-tech company before immigrating to Israel. Maxim beautifully summarizes the contempt that many of our respondents felt toward management:

In the FSU, lots of things were based on personal relationships, and on the goodwill of the manager and his decisions. If the manager decided to do something, you did it. He didn’t have to base this decision on anything, on plans or arguments. . . . Here it doesn’t work that way. . . . [In the FSU] an employee could consult the manager, but actually the manager knew little of what was happening. . . . Of course this was during the period of total system collapse, where all the old institutions were replaced by new ones, and new businesses started to develop.

Many of our FSU interviewees were extremely critical of their managers, often accusing them of having inferior technical knowledge, a preference for quick fixes, and a low capacity for truly creative brainstorming. When asked to profile their managers, several interviewees described inattentiveness and lack of foresight as well as lack of the necessary expertise for long-term planning. Nathan, a veteran FSU immigrant (who immigrated in the 1970s), explained the view of managers held by FSU immigrants whose formative years were spent in the Russian academic world or job market:

Authority has a distinguished place in Russian tradition. The manager and the expert are distinctive in their organizational roles. It doesn’t matter if I think the manager is an idiot, and that I know better—I will not question his authority. The manager’s job is to make decisions, and the expert’s job is to execute. . . . When they [FSU immigrants] become managers themselves, they expect the same attitude from their subordinates. They expect no contesting of their decisions or challenges to their authority.

Vladimir, a software engineer from the FSU who works in an Israeli firm with a majority of FSU employees, recounts the differences between FSU immigrants and native Israelis with regard to problem solving:

There is a difference between the Tzabars (Israeli natives) and those who came from Russia. An engineer that was educated in Russia is used to doing everything himself. The crisis in the FSU was so deep that you couldn’t just get to the store and buy things, you had to make them yourself. So we are used to delve into our work and develop things from scratch . . . that attitude feeds into our work.

Self-sufficiency was definitely a source of pride and an advantage in the Israeli high-tech market. Yevgeny, a software engineer from the FSU who works in a small Israeli firm, explains the cultural imperative of education:

Perhaps in Russia the importance of [formal] education is more pronounced than here. There was a saying in Jewish families, “Every Russian is an engineer.” Getting an education wasn’t a question. You had to invest yourself in your studies. You had to succeed. And I arrived here with this cultural baggage—to learn and to succeed, and it helped me. I served in the army for five and a half years as an engineer, even before I was certified. I developed things from scratch, even before I was a real engineer.

Despite the general perception of the FSU immigrants as possessing higher levels of formal education and a more manageable work ethic than their veteran Israeli counterparts, several of our native Israeli respondents admitted to their distrust in their FSU counterparts. In their view, the FSU immigrants’ tendency to keep to themselves and hoard critical information fed their suspicions. Dorit, an HR coordinator at a large outsourcing firm, spoke explicitly of a negative attitude among high-tech firms toward FSU immigrants:

We have this software that sorts out CVs. There is a category called “educated in Russia,” because that is less valued. . . . So yes, they are discriminated against. There are companies that explicitly ask not to send them Russians. Nowadays, it is difficult to find Israeli QA and software engineers, but the firms are specifically asking for Israelis. Today these teams are predominantly Russian. The culture there is Russian. They talk Russian amongst themselves, while the managers are looking for diversity.

Adi, a veteran Israeli engineering manager at a high-tech firm, expressed this type of suspicions bluntly and openly:

The Russians have a tendency to keep crucial information to themselves. A Russian won’t tell so that they won’t be able to replace him. This is a defining characteristic with them—this job security. As a manager, I will try to deliberately separate them so they won’t gang up on me.

Our interviewees’ statements resonate with recent research on management in Russia. McCarthy and Puffer (2003) indicated that Russians have a strong tendency to work with those with whom they are familiar, and to exclude those they consider outsiders (McCarthy & Puffer, 2003; Michailova & Hutchings, 2006). Consequently, assert Michailova and Hutchings, Russian workers tend to guard knowledge they view as being potentially harmful or disadvantageous. Their fairly high power distance, along with high uncertainty avoidance and minimal trust, predisposes minimal disclosure of crucial information.

Several of our FSU immigrants felt that they were “passed over” as managers. Feeling left out of the organizational “political game” and underappreciated apparently had an effect on their MTL. Yevgeny, an FSU immigrant working in a high-tech firm, talked about his frustration at not being promoted:

Not everyone can be an entrepreneur. They disregard all of my ideas. They told me that I was highly motivated, and that eventually I will be a project manager. But nothing happens. I initiate stuff that is essential and important to the firm, but no . . .

Michael, an FSU immigrant, similarly stated,

It is not so easy to get ahead here. All of the managerial positions are taken, and they don’t plan on stepping down any time soon; even though the R&D unit has grown nicely in my time. . . . They didn’t promote anyone from the existing team.

Despite differences in motivations to lead and in their perceptions of organizational politics, we found no significant differences in how respondents of both groups reported addressing professional problems, completing projects, and working in teams.

Discussion

Our study contributes to recent efforts to conceptualize leadership from a political as well as a cultural perspective (Ammeter, Douglas, Gardner, Hochwarter, & Ferris, 2002). In considering how political perceptions and cultural values embedded in workers’ work scripts relate to motivations to lead, we were able to show how actors’ positioning within an organization as well as their adopted work scripts effect their motivations to lead. In Bourdieu’s terms, our study deepened our understanding of how access to valuable cultural capital shapes both perceptions of organizational politics and motivations to accept leadership roles in an organization. Moreover, our study traces the manner in which FSU immigrants mobilize and maneuver the Israeli work script, and use it as a flexible interpretative strategy. We were thus able to trace migrants’ movement within dynamic social and political fields. For instance, we found that the immigrant respondents insisted on outwardly rejecting any informal practices that might be construed as manipulative. In so doing, they rejected valuable know-how that could have facilitated their participation in their organizations’ political game. Still, our FSU immigrants retained the Russian political practice of personalizing connections with fellow FSU employees as a way of garnering the protective qualities of a closely knitted community. Dunn (2004) explains that in communist Russia, the practice of blat—a network of horizontal exchange relationships among a circle of intimates—was a legitimate way to gain privileged access to goods in shortage, and to exchange valuable information. Under conditions of shortage and uncertainty, blat was the only means “to arrange things.” Unfortunately, this practice, whereas efficient in communist Russia, has backfired in the Israeli milieu, as it feeds Israelis’ fears, suspicions, and distrust. Furthermore, in the Israeli high-tech market, FSU immigrants have yet to reach enough influential positions for blat to be of any assistance.

We found that immigrants’ political perceptions of the organization and their adoption of a specific work script affected their motivations to lead. Whereas native Israelis were more inclined to lead, either as an inherent desire or out of a sense of duty or responsibility, FSU immigrants scored higher on the calculative dimension. Chan and Drasgow (2001) claim that individuals who score high on the normative MTL dimension are motivated by a sense of social duty and obligation, and are also accepting of social hierarchies. People who score high on the affective MTL are motivated by an inner desire to be a leader, and as found in our study, have a higher tendency for innovation. The FSU immigrants in our study do not express such desires. In the survey, only a very small portion of the FSU immigrants reported to prefer a managerial position. This low figure may be explained by their ambivalence toward managerial roles and toward their Israeli managers. The calculative MTL dimension is higher among FSU immigrants and may indicate that FSU immigrants are willing to consider managerial roles only if they obtain concrete benefits related to the position. However, the information obtained from the interviews point to a more complex explanation.

Left out of the organizational political game, FSU immigrants have no recourse but to follow a promotional path that relies more heavily on technical expertise, credentials, and organizational loyalty, rather than networking and coalition building. Both natives and FSU immigrants considered organizational politics to be an unfair, irrational, and undesirable behavior. However, as apparent from the qualitative results, whereas native Israelis tended to consider it a necessary skill for getting ahead in the workplace, the FSU immigrants who lacked a stable power base and effective means of influence perceived organizational politics as a source of frustration and injustice. They reacted by stressing their professionalism and technical ability. It is therefore understandable why FSU immigrants more readily accept highly hierarchical and bureaucratic systems that differentiate and emphasize differences in rank (Zaidman & Drory, 2001). In addition, as Vigoda-Gadot (2000) suggested, less powerful employees may be more careful to avoid risking their position and job security.

Previous studies have confirmed the relatively small percentage of FSU immigrants in managerial positions (Darr & Rothschild, 2005). Several scholars pinned the reasons for this relative marginalization of FSU immigrants on their inappropriate cultural predisposition or work script (Popper & Druyan, 2001). Others, such as Darr and Rothschild (2005) and Kushnirovich (2010), have identified a structural disadvantage that prevents them from penetrating existing networks of social ties within the local scientific and engineering community. Informal networks pervade the Israeli high-tech industry as a means of mobilizing knowledge and know-how. Thus, organizational actors that are strongly positioned in these informal networks have greater access to resources. More important, they have greater access to well-connected others (Ammeter et al., 2002; Darr & Rothschild, 2005; Darr & Talmud, 2003). However, none of these previous studies address the relationship between cultural values, organizational positioning, and the desire or interest in engaging in politics (i.e., political will). Consequently, these studies shed little light on how political perceptions of the organization may contribute to FSU immigrants’ underrepresentation in managerial roles, as well as how it may shape their motivations to lead. Our study contributes to current knowledge by addressing this gap in our understanding of these complex issues. Nevertheless, future studies are invited to expand our knowledge of how access to cultural capital, as well as organizational positioning, may shape natives’ and immigrants’ political skills and leadership styles.

Footnotes

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The authors declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The authors disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: The data for this study was obtained with the support of The Institute for Immigration & Social Integration at Ruppin Academic Center and The Israeli Ministry of Immigrant Absorption.

Bios

Karin Amit, PhD, is a senior lecturer in the Department of Business Administration at Ruppin Academic Center, and serves as the Academic Committee Coordinator of The Institute for Immigration & Social Integration at Ruppin Academic Center. Her research interests are: Immigration, social integration and identity, social networks & leadership.

Shirly Bar-Lev, PhD, is a Lecturer at the School of Engineering in Ruppin Academic Center. She holds a doctorate in Sociology from Bar-Ilan University and was on the faculty of Haifa University. Her research interests include: Organizational Politics, Implementation of health information technologies, knowledge management, and Internet research.

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