Perception of Leadership Styles and Trust Across Cultures and Gender Case Study

56th President of the United States which has represents an unprecedented race in the American Democratic Party between Senators Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. The relationship of Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton's leadership styles from the perspective of four distinct variables: gender, culture, trust and likelihood of voting. The author believes that the perception of fairness is the single most essential leadership trait which leaders should acquire in order to garner trust and commitment among voters. Consequently, the author also believes that this also applies to leadership in the business world.

The article conducts a literature review that focuses on different aspects of leadership. There is some controversy in the study of leadership as the author alludes to. There are several research studies that show that there is empirical evidence to suggest that leaders play a critical part in an organization working toward organizational goals. However, some of works have made the claim that leadership is virtually irrelevant in this pursuit. Much of the literature has moved past this superficial debate however and has continued to dissect different aspects of leadership.

The article continues to illustrate various components of leadership and how they are presented in the literature with Obama's and Clinton's leadership styles and campaign messages as the focal point.For example, the article mentions that Barack Obama's winning Democratic Party Nominee Elections campaign, his change message in particular, was far superior in 2008 from an ethical standpoint. This seems to be a fairly loaded assumption that is difficult to test empirically.

He contrasts Clinton's campaign as a more top down approach based on her political life that allowed her to mingle constantly with the political elite. By contrast, Obama's career formed from a more bottom up approach in he worked as a community organizer in Chicago. It is noted that transformational leadership can be facilitated by the level of trust in the leader. Therefore, based on these criteria, it is assumed that Obama's level of trust based on his bottom up career development would be higher and more legitimate among the populace. Although this seems like a reasonable statement, it is still highly speculative without any empirical analysis being conducted on the two candidates.

The actual experiment works to test some of the hypotheses that were generated in the literature review. The independent and dependent variables were measured with a survey that used the Likert Scale….....