Unpacking the relationship between CEO leadership behavior and organizational culture

Both the functionalist and the attribution perspectives support a strong association between CEO leadership behavior and organizational culture. However, contingency perspective points to the potential limits of the leader's ability to change or shape an organization's culture. We aim for a deep understanding of when and why decoupling between CEO leadership behavior and organizational culture may occur. We examined this issue in a novel context, the People's Republic of China, where there is large variance on leader discretion in different types of firms. We conducted two survey studies and an interview study to unpack the nature of the relationship. The findings offer insights on both leadership and institutional factors that may account for the decoupling between CEO leadership behavior and organizational cultural values. We offer directions for future research on both leadership and organizational culture phenomena and their potential relationships or lack of.