I LIKE MY LEADER; NOT YOURS!

Abstract Organizations depend on the output of their employees to attain their organizational goals through sustainable competitive advantage. Individuals’ outcomes are an indicator of this. Thus, contextual factors may be directly or indirectly related to employee performance. One of these factors is leader-follower cultural fi t. Considering that a leader can also shape the organizational culture, the fi t between the leader’s and his/ her followers’ values can be transformed into a high-performance outcome. Since personal values are shaped by one’s culture of origin, employees who observe, assess, and judge their leader according to their own values refl ect on how congruent their perceived values are with those of their leader and act accordingly. By utilizing convenience sampling procedures, this research surveyed 202 full-time employees working in public institutions and organizations in Istanbul and its districts. The theoretical model was tested by moderated mediation analyses based on bootstrap methods. The research results revealed the collectivist traits of the region under analysis and indicate that individualistic tendencies may also be present. We found support to our theoretical model.


Introduction
What kind of leaders infl uence followers? Or which leader infl uences which follower? Several studies have sought to identify what kind of leaders infl uence followers and whether certain leaders have an eff ect on specifi c followers (i.e., Li et al., 2017). While classifying leadership styles, studies o en claim that certain types of leadership characteristics (i.e., transformational leadership) can be more infl uential (Mason et al., 2014;Leong and Fischer, 2011). However, it is clear that not every employee is aff ected at the same level, and factors such as context, personality traits and mental condition may reduce or increase such infl uence (Leong and Fischer, 2011;Campbell et al., 1993;Li et al., 2017). One of the arguments put forward in recent research (i.e., Bedi, 2019) is that every culture has its own leadership pa ern, and that employees can be more eff ective under certain types of leaders. As every culture does not exhibit a uniform characteristic and each society has embedded ethnic elements and subcultures within its own culture, each subculture can also have a distinct leadership pa ern. In line with this assertion, this research is based on the assumption that employees from different cultural backgrounds in Turkish employment se ings have diff erent reactions to the paternalistic leadership style that is claimed to be the favorite of Middle Eastern and Asian employees.
To contribute to this vein of leadership-culture literature, in addition to the aforementioned theories we base our theoretical assumption on Mobasseri et al.'s (2019) 'cultural fi t' theory.  e authors distinguish their description of cultural fi t from the others and explain this phenomenon with two dimensions: cognition and behavior. Cognition is an extension of 'mental representations, beliefs, and values that individuals draw upon to make sense of their everyday experiences', and the behavior is represented as 'the norms and expectations that circumscribe individuals' actions' (p. 4); in other words, it is individual's degree of compliance with the group's normative behavioral expectations. Due to the cultural proximity, followers see how their leaders are close to or resemble to their mental representations, beliefs and values; thus, they make sense and act upon.  is sense-making steer them to behave within the boundaries of cultural norms and general expectations such as showing respect, and bu oning up one's jacket when confronting the manager or listening in silence with fear of interrupting, etc. By drawing on Goff man's (1959) analogy, they argue people can make inferences about others' backstage cognition through observing their frontstage behavior. But more importantly, those inferences are usually based on the observer's own backstage cognition. If cognition and behavior are not aligned, it is possible that people might develop incorrect perceptions and assume cultural unfi t. Moreover, under the theory of basic human values, Schwartz (2012) highlights both common values in distinct cultures and individual diff erences due to personal priorities and hierarchy. According to this perspective, social culture can shape individuals' value judgments, while individual values can also aff ect social cultures and can lead to a slow change (Morris and Fu, 2001). Recent research refl ects the growing interest in values refl ected within organizations by leaders who are very eff ective in shaping the organizational culture, how employees perceive these values, and to what extent they fi t with employees' own values (Aycan, 2008;Brown and Trevino, 2009). Aycan (2008) refers to paternalistic leadership as an appropriate type of leadership to achieve eff ective and productive results in a collectivist society.
Turkey is considered as a collectivist country by many sources (e.g., Pellegrini and Scandura, 2006;Aycan, 2008;Gurbuz et al., 2018;Bedi, 2019). However, it has been proven that social cultures are not homogeneous, even within themselves, and they can be infl uenced by subcultures (Hofstede, 2001). Indeed, there are diff erences in the value judgments of people of Eastern and Western cultures, as has been observed among the Turkish people both by Turkish and non-Turkish researchers (Göregenli, 1995;Hofstede, 2001; Ayçiçeği-Dinn and Caldwell-Harris, 2013; Arpaci and Baloğlu, 2016). Similarly, Hofstede's 6-D model of national culture (Hofstede, 2001) reported Turkey's collectivism score within 33-41 band (Hofstede, undated). In other words, it varies from minimum 33 to maximum 41. For power distance, the score varies from minimum 62 to maximum 67; for masculinity it varies from minimum 43 to maximum 47; for uncertainty avoidance, the score varies from minimum 83 to maximum 88; and lastly, for long term orientation, the score varies from minimum 1 to maximum 86. All those minimum-maximum scores indicate likelihood of sub-cultures embedded in the dominant culture.  e literature reports similar fi ndings regarding the variety of sub-cultures (e.g., Triandis and Gelfand, 1998;Green et al., 2005;Taras et al., 2010;Eringa et al., 2015), and thus, Hofstede's model was criticized on this due to its manifestation of cultures mostly by their mean scores as if only one culture is existing.
According to the research on collectivist and individualist societies (Shavi et al., 2011), the vertical and horizontal aspects of collectivist societies, which diff er between the poles of status/hierarchy and equality, may have an impact on performance. Previous studies have reported diff erent results on the relationship between the paternalistic leadership style and performance. Here, in this study, in accordance with cultural fi t theory of Mobasseri et al. (2019), the model integrates both the mainstream culture and the subculture (through the vertical and horizontal characteristics of a collectivist society) such that depending on the followers' perception of cultural fi t, it tries to fi nd out a diff erence in the acceptance of paternalistic leadership and how it leads to an increase in the contextual performance. Additionally, it is observed that most of leadership studies are originated in Western culture.  e impact of national culture on infl uencing leadership a ributes and eff ectiveness is still in its infancy (Gu et al., 2015) and deserves further well-established studies. Lastly, in a Gallup survey in 2015, 50% of the 2,700 workers surveyed reported their managers as the most signifi cant reason for leaving their jobs (Snyder, 2015).  us, investigating the leadership in organizational contexts are still worth to study.

 eoretical background and hypotheses
By referring to seminal studies, Mobasseri et al. (2019, p. 13) argue that the organizational research conceptualizes cultural fi t as 'the individuals' acting in ways that conform to normative expectations defi ned by the shared beliefs, assumptions, and values of organizational members. On the other hand, corporate culture in institutionalized organizations and organizations with a strong vision serves as the glue that holds all employees at all levels together in a common objective and future goal. Individuals try to comply with this common culture and values, and the extent to which they comply can bolster their professional success. Sometimes, however, strong and charismatic leaders may seek to redesign the corporate culture in alignment with their goals and objectives (Wilderom et al., 2012). An important factor in this se ing is how much followers believe in, adapt to, and are inspired by the leader's vision.  e most important determinant of the organizational culture is o en its leader; however, other leaders may also emerge from that culture (Jung and Avolio, 1999;Sarros et al., 2002;Wilderom et al., 2012).  us, leader-follower cultural fi t is as important as the corporate and leader culture in terms of high performance (Wilderom et al., 2012).  is 'fi t' concept has also been discussed, rather indirectly, in two papers with two diff erent approaches. Firstly, Hudson (2013) bases his assumptions on the a achment theory, and asserts that 'a good leader-follower relationship brings meaning and value to the follower's work; provides the follower with protection from undue risk and uncertainty that may arise in problem-solving, innovation, and creativity; and lessens the follower's stress associated with competitive pressures'. Likewise, Gu et al. (2015, p. 516) argue this issue in accordance with identity theory, and claim that 'employee identifi cation with leader is a follower's relational self-based on close relations with the leader, which is diff erent from a follower's collective self (referred to as social identity) based on the group or organization membership and identifi cation'. Further, they analyze this identifi cation with the leader in two diff erent ways: 'One evokes a subordinate's self-concept in the recognition that he or she shares similar values with the leader, the other gives rise to a subordinate's desire to change his or her self-concept so that his or her values and beliefs become more similar to that of the leader' (p. 516). When employees' jobs in a workplace are closely linked, they are more likely to be infl uenced by each other's and their leader's behaviors (Adkins and Russell, 1997). Individuals in a work se ing where such close relationships are established, experience respect for and confi dence in their leaders (Becker, 1992). An employee who thinks he or she is working with a leader who fi ts with his personal and cultural values considers his or her leaders' expectations for work within the framework of value congruence and strives to meet these expectations (Greenberg, 1990).

The relationship between paternalistic leadership and contextual performance
A behavioral and an outcome aspect must be distinguished for the defi nition of performance (Campbell et al., 1993). Behavioral performance refers to an individual's acts that serve the goals of his or her organization.  e outcome aspect of performance refers to the results of an individual's behaviors. For example, the work of a retailer in the fi eld is related to his or her behavioral performance, while the sales fi gures constitute the outcome aspect of performance (Campbell et al., 1993). As behaviors and outcomes are not seen at the same time in organizations, performance evaluation is diffi cult.  us, Borman and Motowidlo (1993) point out that total performance is determined by two sub-dimensions, including task performance and contextual performance, and indicate psychological and sociological factors as the determinants of contextual performance. Task performance refers to an employee's direct (e.g., production department) and indirect (e.g., management and support sta ) contributions to the goods and services in his or her organization. Contextual performance refers to the social and psychological se ing created by employees working in the production of goods and services, although they do not directly contribute to the goods and services provided.
Previous research indicates congruence as an indicator of performance and member values as an indicator of congruence (Glew, 2012). Values have a decisive infl uence on performance, as they aff ect behavior (Schwartz, 2012).  is is also regarded as the origin of value congruence (Lamm et al., 2010). Norms are the point of reference of values, and the reasons for individual behavior are based on norms set through values (Kant, 1997). In this regard, behaviors considered to be the determinants of performance serve as a source of motivation (Schwartz, 2012), and refl ect the culture in which norms are developed as one of the most important determinants of values (Bicchieri, 1990). Many studies have revealed that norms developed according to the characteristics of cultures in which people live are the source of motivation for behavior through their values (Nordlund, 2009;Schwartz, 2012).
Paternalistic leadership, addressed in culturally oriented leadership studies, is accepted as a type of leadership with a heightened awareness of social norms (Mansur, 2016). Paternalistic leadership refers to a leader's father-like behaviors towards his followers, such as protection, guidance, the satisfaction of needs, and problem solving, which are demonstrated by a family leader within the infl uence of social norms in patriarchal societies (Bedi, 2019). Paternalistic leadership behavior in collectivist societies is associated with high hierarchical relationships and strong family and interpersonal relationships (Aycan, 2008;Bedi, 2019). Uhl-Bien and Maslyn (2005) defi ne paternalistic leadership as an authoritarian form of leadership with a coercive character that conforms to theory X management style, and frame it on a totally pragmatic basis within which a superior expects subordinates to achieve high performance. In the existing literature, paternalistic leadership is o en characterized by three dimensions: authoritarianism, benevolence and morality. However, instead of a rigid defi nition of authority, the fi eld research points out that subordinates or followers voluntarily accept their leader's protection and control for their own sake (Pellegrini and Scandura, 2006). Similarly, Aycan and Kanungo (1998) investigate the negative correlation between paternalistic leadership and authoritarianism, and perceive such leadership as an interaction in which employees are also active and supported rather than a unilateral process in which only the leader is active and dominant. Aycan (2008) claims that diffi culty regarding communication in collectivist societies with a high-power distance can be resolved through interaction and reciprocity of behaviors based on paternalistic leadership. A high-power distance results from power inequality, and this power arises from the status of individuals in collectivist societies.  e negative aspect of this power to isolate individuals is avoided through paternalistic leader's benevolent, protective, and caring behaviors.
In collectivist societies, the leader of an organization or society is perceived as an offi cer who protects, looks a er, and guides individuals as long as they demonstrate loyalty and obedience. Considering the determinants of performance within the theory of value congruence, a high level of congruence between the cultural values of an organization driven by paternalistic leadership behaviors and the values employees derive from collectivist cultures can lead to an increase in contextual performance that positively aff ects overall performance. In light of these arguments, the following hypothesis is proposed: H 1 Paternalistic leadership positively predicts employees' contextual performance.

The relationship between paternalistic leadership and horizontal and vertical individualist and collectivist tendencies
Even some societies classifi ed as individualist and collectivist do not demonstrate homogeneous behaviors, and can be distinguished as horizontal (valuing equality) and vertical (emphasizing hierarchy) societies (Nelson and Shavi , 2002).
 e distinction between horizontal and vertical individualist and collectivist culture is based on Hofstede's (2001) defi nition of power distance in communities. Power distance is divided into low and high-power distance cultures, and further grouped into four diff erent categories within individualist and collectivist societies.
Individuals' values regarding competition, success and power in vertical individualist societies diff er from the egalitarian values of individuals satisfi ed with a basic welfare level in horizontal individualist societies. In addition, individuals in vertical collectivist societies put the overall benefi t of their organization above their personal benefi ts, show respect for the organizational authority, and act according to their values.  ese individuals represent the status and prestige of the family, organization, and community to which they belong and behave accordingly (Shavi et al., 2011). On the other hand, horizontal collectivist societies place great emphasis on individuals' sense of interdependence, cooperation, and solidarity and the survival of the organization (Gannon, 2001).
Considering the cultural norms of the collectivist society in light of the assertions above, paternalistic leadership can be infl uential on the horizontal and vertical behavior tendencies of collectivist societies through protection, preservation, and help and guidance behaviors (Aycan, 2008) by taking into account social balance. Accordingly, we propose the following: Paternalistic leadership has a positive and signifi cant eff ect on employees with horizontal-vertical collectivist tendencies (H 2a ) , but negative and signifi cant eff ect on employees with horizontal-vertical individualist tendencies (H 2b ) .

The mediating role of horizontal and vertical individualist and collectivist tendencies
 e determining role of culture in the emergence of performance requires that leadership behaviors be culturally focused within collectivist societies (Brodbeck et al., 2004).  e level of employee performance that organizations in collectivist societies need in order to a ain their goals can be achieved by paternalistic leadership behaviors that are congruent with the cultural values of individuals (Aycan, 2008). Diff erent results in various studies on parental leadership behavior (Uhl-Bien and Maslyn, 2005; Aycan, 2008; Pellegrini and Scandura, 2006) suggest that paternalistic leadership exerts an infl uence on the organization through diverse mediating variables. Although there are individualist people in collectivist societies, horizontal and vertical tendencies emerging with sub-values diff erentiated under collectivism can lead to the mediation eff ect of paternalistic leadership. Pellegrini and Scandura (2006) suggest this example seen in collectivist societies for the US, representing the characteristics of an individualist society. In an organization in an individualist society like the US, employees who sometimes display collectivist traits can work effi ciently through the value congruence with paternalistic leaders, contrary to the general trend (Pellegrini and Scandura, 2006). In a collectivist culture like Turkey, vertical and horizontal diff erentiation can occur in organizations, and individualist tendencies can arise even in a collectivist organization.
 e dominant culture is defi ned as a culture that dominates the majority of a society, and it exhibits subcultures formed by individuals who share common values under the dominant culture but do not pose a threat to the dominant culture.  e emphasis on the social and psychological climate in the defi nition of contextual performance suggests that subcultures play a mediating role, since they are formed by individuals who diff er in terms of experiences, feelings, thoughts, and behaviors in the dominant culture. Social and psychological similarities play an active role in the formation of subcultures. Behaviors of individuals who share the subculture do not pose a threat to the dominant culture, but rather increase the productivity of organizations if they are tolerated (Tushman and O'Reilly, 1997). As long as subcultures in collectivist or individual societies do not negatively aff ect the overall objectives and dominant culture of the society, they can lead to an increase in performance; thus, subcultures should be supported to increase productivity (Khatib, 1996).
If individualist tendencies in collectivist societies or horizontal and vertical tendencies in collectivist-individualist societies are accepted as subcultures, they can play a mediating role in the relationship between paternalistic leadership and performance. In light of these arguments, the following hypotheses are proposed: Horizontal-vertical collectivist (H 3a ) and horizontal-vertical individualist (H 3b ) variables play a mediating role between paternalistic leadership and contextual performance.

Sample
Participants were civil servants from Istanbul and its districts, either working in local governments or in local agencies of central government institutions. Istanbul, as one of the biggest metropolitan cities in the world, and as being the biggest city of Turkish Republic, hosts a melting pot of citizens from almost everywhere in Anatolia. Considering the multi-cultural mosaic of the city, it would not be wrong to think that civil servants working here are coming from everywhere in Turkey and representing their ethnical and sub-cultural clues.
Women composed 32.7% of the sample, and 67.3% were men. Among the respondents, 55% have been working for 0-5 years, 44.6% for 6-10 years, and one person for 11-15 years. 29.7% are married and 70.3% are single. 45.5% have a high school/vocational high school degree, 49% have a bachelor's degree, 4.5% have a master's degree, and 1% has a doctorate's degree.  e age of the participants ranges from 18 to 49.

Measures
Although collectivism and individualism are accepted as two distinct cultural patterns, Triandis and Gelfand (1998) argued that there are many variations of collectivism and individualism. To measure these distinctions, they suggested to coin the horizontal and vertical relationships.  is could help researchers to fi nd how an individual sees himself in a culture where he is living. When asking 'what you have in common with your family and friends' or 'what makes you diff erent from your family and friends' (Trafi mow et al., 1991) researcher could get answers whether the person sees himself either as one of them or diff erent from them. And for this purpose, the authors employed the horizontal and vertical individualism and collectivism scale to fi nd the same among the civil servants.
 e items on all scales were rated on 5-point Likert scales ranging from 1 = strongly disagree to 5 = strongly agree.  e reliability and validity statistics are presented in Table 2.  e validity measured by KMO and Bartle 's test of sphericity seems within the acceptable ranges for all the scales.  e total variance explained for paternalistic leadership questionnaire is 73.90%; for the horizontal and vertical individualism and collectivism scale is 60.94%, and lastly for the contextual performance scale is 58.77%. Unexpectedly, the horizontal and vertical individualism and collectivism scale did not yield four factors as proposed by Özbek (2010).  ere are some studies which report inconclusive results regarding the number of factors (Wasti and Erdil, 2007) but still, with two factors, we continued to perform the analyses.

Paternalistic leadership questionnaire (PLQ)
Aycan et al.'s (2013) 10-item questionnaire was employed in the research. A sample item is thus: ' e ideal leader creates a family environment in the workplace.'

Horizontal and vertical individualism and collectivism scales
Two separate 8-item scales originally developed by Singelis et al. (1995) and later modifi ed by Triandis and Gelfand (1998) were used in the research.  e scales were translated into Turkish by Özbek (2010). A sample item on the individualism scale is thus: 'Winning is everything.' A sample item on the collectivism scale is thus: 'Parents and children must stay together as much as possible.'

Contextual performance scale
 e contextual performance scale, developed by Jawahar and Carr (2007), was used to measure contextual performance. A sample item on the scale is thus: 'I perform my duties with extra special care.'

Data collection
From June 21 to August 3, 2018, both authors contacted with their networks in three biggest online forums of civil servants 1 .  e contacts were asked to fi nd volunteers to fi ll in an online Google survey. A total of 221 questionnaires were returned out of which 19 were extracted due to missing data or other reasons; therefore, in total 202 valid questionnaires ware used. SPSS Statistics 23 so ware and PROCESS macro version 3.1 were used for data analysis. Figure 1 presents the research model.

Results
 e psychometric properties of the scales are shown in Table 2. Accordingly, the suitability of the sample is satisfactory for all measuring instruments. However, the culture scales yielded a one-factor structure in contrast to the two-factor structure proposed in the existing literature. Prior to hypothesis testing, Pearson's correlation coeffi cients were calculated (Table 3). A moderate positive correlation is observed between employees' contextual performance and perceived paternalistic leadership (r = 0.38; p < 0.000).  ere is no correlation between employees' contextual performance and horizontal-vertical in-dividualist tendencies (r = -0.03; p > 0.05).  ere is also a high positive signifi cant correlation between employees' contextual performance and their horizontal-vertical collectivistic tendencies (r = 0.71; p < 0.000). As predicted, there is a moderate negative correlation (r = -0.56; p < 0.000) between perceived paternalistic leadership and horizontal-vertical individualist tendencies, while the perceived paternalistic leadership of employees displaying horizontal-vertical collectivistic tendencies indicates a low but positive correlation (r = 0.26; p < 0.000).  (2018) as an add-on for SPSS, was used for hypothesis testing. A mediation analysis was performed within Model 4 with 5000 bootstrapped samples.
Employees' perceived paternalistic leadership positively predicts their contextual performance (β= 0.360, p < 0.000).  us, H 1 is accepted. Paternalistic leadership has a negative and signifi cant eff ect on employees with horizontal-vertical individualist tendencies (β= -0.680, p < 0.000). On the other hand, paternalistic leadership has a positive and signifi cant eff ect on employees with horizontal-vertical collectivist tendencies (β= 0.180, p < 0.000); thus, both H 2a and H 2b are accepted. According to the analysis of the mediation eff ects, the horizontal-vertical collectivist tendency has a signifi cant eff ect (β= 0.876, p < 0.000); this is also true for the horizontal-vertical individualist tendency but the unstandardized coeffi cient seems small (β= 0.093, p > 0.000). Although the Sobel test is used for testing the signifi cance of a mediation eff ect in the current literature, research results show that the interpretation of indirect confi dence intervals obtained by bootstrapping is more signifi cant in light of the new statistical methods (Hayes, 2018, p. 201).
Additionally, what accounts more is that if the sampling distribution of the mediated eff ect is skewed away from 0, this reveals the power of bootstrap tests (Hayes, 2018).  us, we run a bootstrapping test with 5000 samples and looked at the upper and lower bounds of the confi dence intervals (see Table 5). For the variable of horizontal-vertical individualist tendency, the true total indirect eff ect is 95% likely to range from 0.0008 to 0.1823 -the estimated eff ect is 0.093 (lying in between these two values). If zero does occur between the LLCI (Low limit confi dence interval) and the ULCI (Upper limit confi dence interval) then we can conclude that the total indirect eff ect is signifi cant. Following the same procedure, for the horizontal-vertical collectivist tendency, we found the true total indirect eff ect is 95% likely to range from 0.0730 to 1.018 -the estimated eff ect is 0.876 (lying in between these two values). If zero does not occur between the LLCI and the ULCI then we can conclude that the total indirect eff ect is signifi cant.  us, it seems that both cultural tendency variables have a full mediation eff ect (H 3a and H 3b are accepted). For the fi rst regression model given in Table 4, we found the following: (path a 1 ) R 2 = 0.317; F 92.837 = 200.000, p < 0.000. For the second regression model, we found the following: (path a 2 ) R 2 = 0.069; F 14.837 = 200.000, p > 0.000. For the third and last regression model, we found the following: (paths b 1 -b 2 and c') R 2 = 0.546; F 79.349 = 200.000, p < 0.000.  us, in the fi rst model, paternalistic leadership, accounts for 32% of the variance in the mediating variable (horizontal-vertical individualist). In the second model, paternalistic leadership accounts for 1% of the variance in the mediating variable. It is clear that, in the last model, two mediating variables signifi cantly account for 55% of the variance in the independent variable and employees' contextual performance.

Discussion and conclusion
In parallel with other studies (e.g., Kağıtçıbaşı, 1997;Green et al., 2005; Ayçiçeği-Dinn and Caldwell-Harris, 2013), the research results also reveal the collectivist traits of the region under analysis, and indicate that individualist tendencies may also be present. Additionally, these studies argued individuals living in more modernized and high-income parts of collectivist societies may show individualist behaviors. Turkish families with high-income and some with well-education background want more autonomy for their children compared to the low-income ones (Kağıtçıbaşı and Ataca, 2005).  is may even result in cultural confl ict in the same society and social philosophers wanted to fi nd answers on how a social order could be established. Some researchers go even further to claim that it is not that easy to diff erentiate societies as collectivist-individualist, and it is possible that some people may be an individualist and a collectivist at the same time (Green et al., 2005, p. 322). Green et al. (2005) argue from a social psychological perspective, and a ribute the reasons to social contexts and social relations. A person can demonstrate individualist tendencies at work while his/her collectivist traits may be more prominent at home among family members.
On the other hand, leaders with individualist behaviors may be seen distant and unfi t by followers who have collectivist tendencies (Caza and Posner, 2014). Paternalistic leadership behavior is a process of mutual interaction and voluntary acceptance, as pointed out by Pellegrini and Scandura (2006), rather than a coercion and imposition, as proposed by Uhl-Bien and Maslyn (2005).  e results also confi rm that a leader may have a crucial eff ect on collectivist members more than the individualist ones (Aycan, 2008). Additionally, as it was stated in Kağıtçıbaşı's (1997) study, Turkish followers value leaders who ask about their personal stuff , family issues, children, problems; i.e. common behaviors of collectivist individuals.  e research has also revealed that the sensitivity to psychological and sociological factors determining contextual performance can be predicted by paternalistic leadership, and that paternalistic leadership can be infl uential, especially among employees with collectivist tendencies.  us, the performance that will enable organizations to achieve their goals requires sensitivity to the cultural characteristics of the society.
According to the research results, both individualist and collectivist tendencies have a diff erent mediation eff ect on paternalistic leadership behaviors.  is result implies that a leader should devote some a ention to sub-cultural diff erences. With the increase of globalization, multicultural workplace se ings are now more common. Given that cultures increasingly diff er in their every segment, not only in Turkey but also in many parts of the world, managers and leaders who have expectations for the behavioral outcome and total aspect of performance should consider it. Interaction, harmony and solidarity with followers are emphasized as the determinant of performance in many leadership approaches and theories (Aycan, 2008;Bedi, 2019;Niemeyer and Cavazo e, 2016).  e research results have supported the positive effect of paternalistic leadership on collectivist cultural traits based on interpersonal interaction and solidarity.  us, leaders should develop and exercise cultural awareness and consider the importance of interpersonal interaction and congruence. In parallel with this result, the study by Wasti et al. (2007) in Turkey highlights that cultural values, which are the source of motivation for behaviors, should be investigated at the individual level.  e manifestation of individual diff erences raises awareness and can overcome problems related to congruence.
 e results of the present research have also confi rmed Göregenli's (1995) claims that Turkey, as an example of an eastern culture, cannot be classifi ed as a pure collectivist society. However, this research has yielded no horizontal and vertical separation, as claimed by research focused on Turkey using the individualism and collectivism scales (i.e. Özbek, 2010). Both this study and previous research (Wasti, 2007;Göregenli, 1995) support the claim that the perceived values of individuals who share the same socio-cultural se ing can also vary by time and situation.  us, leaders should be more sensitive of and compatible with their interpersonal relations and behaviors (Lamm et al., 2010). In conclusion, the recent increase in mass migration as a result of environmental wars and economic crises implies that individuals with diff erent cultural tendencies will live together permanently in many societies previously thought to be homogeneous.
 e study has some limitations.  e surveys were applied at diff erent times and at various intervals. However, they are open to bias because they were fi lled out based on self-report. Future studies can address the understanding of social values in order to improve performance and the eff ect of communication factors on the congruence process.
Additionally, the horizontal and vertical individualism and collectivism scale used for this study seems to have some psychometric problems with regards to its number of factors.  us, it will be benefi cial to use other measurement tools such as Singelis et al.'s (1995) original 32-item scale as well as other various 27 scales that measure individualism and/or collectivism (Oyserman et al., 2002). And lastly, along with contextual performance, task performance could also be added as another dependent variable.