University of Southern California Dissertations and Theses

Latino corporate leadership for human capital and productivity

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Latino corporate leadership for human capital and productivity

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Content Latino Corporate Leadership for Human Capital and Productivity
by
Maria Eugenia Barrios
Rossier School of Education
University of Southern California
A dissertation submitted to the faculty
in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of
Doctor of Education
August 2022

© Copyright by Maria Eugenia Barrios 2022
All Rights Reserved

The Committee for Maria Eugenia Barrios certifies the approval of this Dissertation

Dr. Annabella Dávila
Dr. Laurence Picus
Dr. Douglas Lynch, Committee Chair

Rossier School of Education
University of Southern California
2022

iv

Abstract
The purpose of this qualitative and phenomenological study is to explore how the
perception of leadership affects the productivity of Latino companies and the human capital of
employees. This study implemented 15 semi-structured interviews in a 65-employee digital
marketing startup operating in Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, Spain, Mexico, and Uruguay. The
main finding is that the person-centered leadership process (PCLP) is the one that most promotes
both productivity and human capital. The PCLP is a complex, dynamic and decentralized process
that involves the interrelation of five elements: (a) iteration space, (b) validation space, (c)
emotional containment space, (d) affective connection space, and (e) work-life balance space.
These components, in turn, are moderated by four facilitators: (a) role model leaders, (b)
emotional intelligent leaders, (c) accountability system, and (d) training. None of the elements of
the PCLP directly or in isolation affects productivity or human capital, if not the impact is
achieved in the simultaneous alignment of all these conditions. This study aligns with the critical
literature that explains leadership is not a set of personality characteristics of an individual but
rather a complex and independent process, with multiple elements interacting at multiple levels.
The central recommendation is the implementation of a person-centered leadership program that
implies, among other things, the creation of a People department, the implementation of the
accountability entrepreneurial operation system and a training program appropriate to the type of
knowledge required by each person. each hierarchy.

v

Table of Contents
Page
Abstract .......................................................................................................................................... iv
List of Tables ............................................................................................................................... viii
List of Figures ................................................................................................................................ ix
Chapter One: Introduction to the Study .......................................................................................... 1
Context and Background of the Problem ............................................................................ 1
Problem Statement .............................................................................................................. 4
Purpose of the Project and Research Questions .................................................................. 5
Importance of the Study ...................................................................................................... 5
Overview of Theoretical Framework and Methodology .................................................... 6
Definition of Terms............................................................................................................. 8
Chapter Two: Review of the Literature ........................................................................................ 11
Integrative Conceptualization of Leadership as a Complex Process ................................ 12
Definition of Leadership as a Complex Process ................................................................... 14
Leadership Is a Process of Mutual Influence ........................................................................ 15
Leadership Responds to Power Dynamics and Regulates Social Interactions ..................... 16
Leadership Is a Decentralized Process .................................................................................. 17
Leadership Occurs on Multiple Levels, on Multiple Timelines, and in a Context ............... 19
The Nature and Purpose of Leadership Is to Add Social Value ........................................... 21
Latin Context and Culture and the Impact on Companies ................................................ 23
Hybrid Companies ................................................................................................................ 24
Collectivism .......................................................................................................................... 25

vi

Paternalism ............................................................................................................................ 29
Chapter Three: Methodology ........................................................................................................ 32
Research Questions ........................................................................................................... 32
Overview of the Design .................................................................................................... 32
Research Settings .............................................................................................................. 33
The Researcher.................................................................................................................. 35
Data Sources ..................................................................................................................... 37
Instrumentation ................................................................................................................. 37
Data Collection Procedures............................................................................................... 37
Data Analysis .................................................................................................................... 38
Validity and Reliability ..................................................................................................... 40
Ethics 42
Limitations and Delimitations........................................................................................... 42
Chapter Four: Findings ................................................................................................................. 43
Participants ........................................................................................................................ 43
Findings............................................................................................................................. 43
Space to Become a Person .................................................................................................... 44
PCPL Facilitators .................................................................................................................. 57
Conclusion ........................................................................................................................ 67
Leadership Process to Enhance the Productivity of Latino Companies ............................... 67
Leadership Processes to Enhances the Development of the Human Capital of Latino
Employees ............................................................................................................................. 69
Chapter Five: Discussion and Recommendations......................................................................... 73

vii

Discussion of Findings ...................................................................................................... 73
Recommendations for Practice ......................................................................................... 74
General Recommendation: Person-Centered Leadership Program ...................................... 77
Strategy: Person-Centered Leadership Program ................................................................... 78
Structure: People Department ............................................................................................... 78
Systems: Enterprise Operating System Accountability ........................................................ 81
Shared Values ....................................................................................................................... 84
Style: Role Model Leadership and Emotionally Intelligent Leadership ............................... 85
Staff: Training ....................................................................................................................... 86
Skills ..................................................................................................................................... 90
Recommendations for Future Research ............................................................................ 92
Conclusion ........................................................................................................................ 92
References ..................................................................................................................................... 95

viii

List of Tables
Table 1. Sample Demographics ............................................................................................ 34
Table 2. Sample Design ........................................................................................................ 35
Table 3. Level of Analysis in Which the Subprocesses Operate .......................................... 45
Table 4. Numbers of Employees Who Had a Response to the Subprocess and Who Related
the Subprocess .................................................................................................................. 46
Table 5. Level of Analysis at Which Facilitators Operate .................................................... 57
Table 6. Numbers of Employees Who Responded to the Facilitator and Who Related to the
Facilitator ......................................................................................................................... 58
Table 7. Characteristics of the Leadership Process That Most Increases the Productivity of
Latino Companies ............................................................................................................ 68
Table 8. Characteristics of the Leadership Process That Most Develop Latino Employees’
Human Capital ................................................................................................................. 70
Table 9. Elements of the McKinsey 7S Model and Critical Questions ................................ 76
Table 10. Person-Centered Leadership Program Explained Through the McKinsey 7S Model
.......................................................................................................................................... 79
Table 11. Components and Tools of the EOS Accountability System ................................. 82

ix

List of Figures
Figure 1. Conceptual Framework ........................................................................................... 7

1

Chapter One: Introduction to the Study
This chapter aims to outline the problem of practice that this study will address, which is
the leadership of Latino companies. The chapter includes six sections. The first section
contextualizes the practice problem, and the second section delimits the problem. The third
section describes the purpose of the study and includes the research questions. The fourth section
explains why this study is significant, and the fifth section is the theoretical framework and
methodology. The last section presents definitions of relevant terms.
Context and Background of the Problem
Latin America and its companies have critical participation in the global economy
(Deloitte, 2014) for three reasons. First, Latin America is one of the world’s leading raw material
suppliers. Latin America represents 10% of the flow of the world economy, with a gross
domestic product (GDP) of 5.3 trillion dollars and a market of 632 million people (Organization
for Economic Cooperation and Development [OECD], 2017). Currently, raw materials make up
about 60% of exports, compared to less than 40% of exports in the early 2000s (Reyes &
Sawyer, 2020). The OECD (2020) estimated by 2028, Latin America will export 25% of
agricultural and fishery products worldwide.
Second, Latin America is a vital consumer worldwide. According to Chaufen (2020),
although the Latino economy is larger than the German economy and smaller than the Japanese
economy, the purchasing power parity (PPP) is as large as the economies of Japan and Germany
together. Chaufen defined PPP as the population’s financial ability to buy products and services
at local prices. This academic explained the Latino PPP is about half the size of the U.S.
economy. For example, Latinos buy 4 times more goods from the United States than they do
2

from China. Consequently, the U.S. exports more to Latin America than it does to any other
region in the world (Kumar, 2017).
Third, Latino companies are relevant to the global economy because they are the region’s
economic heart. Micro, small, and medium-sized companies represent 60% of the Latin
American economy (Banco de Desarrollo de Amércia Latina, 2020). More than 70% of the
revenue produced by the Top 500 Latino companies comes from firms located in the region, not
from international companies with local operations (Deloitte, 2014). Thus, Latin America is an
important supplier and consumer in the global economy, and companies are the main economic
agents.
Latino companies are polarized. Seventy-five percent of the workforce is made up of self-
employment, micro, and small businesses with deficient productivity levels. This segment
represents 6% of the productivity of large companies (International Labor Organization, 2018).
A few large companies produce the most revenue (McKinsey, 2019). Furthermore, 60% of the
first segment with the lowest productivity are informal companies. Informality is a main reason
Latin America is the least productive region globally (Grazzi et al., 2016).
Latin America ranks last in productivity and competitiveness globally (Deloitte, 2020;
Franko, 2019; Kantis et al., 2016). For example, the average labor productivity is 1.2%,
compared to the global 4.2% (Thompson et al., 2015). An average Latino worker produces only
one-fifth of an average U.S. worker (Caselli, 2014). Caselli (2014) defined the worker’s
production as output generated from their human capital, physical capital, and efficiency. Many
researchers have agree the leading cause of lack of productivity is poor human capital
development (Araujo et al., 2016; Capriles, 2009; Caselli, 2014). A Latino worker has less than
half the human capital of a U.S. worker (Caselli, 2014).
3

Low human capital in Latin America is associated with a deficiency of public institutions
(Bansusan, 2009; Neace, 2004; OECD, 2019). In addition, the significant disconnection between
the priorities of public institutions and the needs of the population, 75% of Latinos have little or
no trust in national governments, due to high rates of corruption (OECD, 2019). While some
studies have shown corruption is remediable through the government’s integrity and
transparency programs (OECD, 2019), others have affirmed it is inevitable. Stanfill et al. (2016)
said the institutionalization of corruption in Latin America is due to high poverty levels,
combined with the collectivist culture of the region.
As a result of the institutionalization of corruption, many Latinos have placed their trust
in the private sector. In a study of 2,783 emerging leaders, Banco de Desarrollo de America
Latina (2016) explained entrepreneurs perceive firms as economic development leading agents.
Thus, it is common for companies to compensate for the absence of public institutions by
protecting their employees socially and economically (Castaño et al., 2015; Dávila & Elvira,
2012; Vassolo et al., 2011).
Effective Latino companies have robust corporate social responsibility strategies (Amini
& Dal Bianco, 2017; Dávila & Elvira, 2012). These strategies compensate for the lack of
employee protection, due to the inefficiency of labor institutions, and range from initiatives to
transform the communities with which they interact to compensation, psychological contracts,
and training for employees (Dávila & Elvira, 2009). One central role of Latino businesses is to
alleviate social problems (Pirson & Lawrence, 2010), which significantly increases productivity
and employee engagement (Dávila & Elvira, 2009).
Most Latino companies fail to protect their employee because there is a leadership crisis.
There is a shortage of qualified people for leadership positions, and there are poor leadership
4

practices (Deloitte, 2014). Instead of focusing on increasing productivity or generating
technology, Latino managers typically concentrate on solving bureaucratic issues and dealing
with issues derived from social and political problems, such as crime, corruption, and constant
regulation changes (Franko, 2019).
The shortage of qualified talent for corporate leadership positions is a Latino and global
phenomenon (Clifton & Harter, 2019). Only 36% of firms say they have adequate leadership to
adapt to market growth demands (Oxford Economics, 2020). Only 15% of global employees are
committed to their work, and the team leader affects 70% of the employee commitment (Clifton
& Harter, 2019). According to multiple studies (Collison, 2011, 2017, 2019; Dihn et al., 2014; S.
K. Johnson & Lacerenza, 2019; Gronn, 2011; Hino, 2019; Hosking, 2011), the leadership crisis
present in the literature is insufficient for capturing the complexity of the leadership process.
Therefore, scientific findings do not respond to the demands of existing organizations (Collison,
2017; Day, 2011; Day & Liu, 2019; Hosking, 2011).
Problem Statement
Despite natural resources and a decade of sustained growth, Latin America continues to
be a region with one of the lowest global productivity indexes, due to low human capital (Araujo
et al., 2016; Caselli, 2014; Neace, 2004). Latino companies play a crucial social and economic
role in developing human capital in the region, and good leadership practices are required for this
to happen (Dávila & Elvira, 2012).
Paternalism, the most popular leadership style in Latin America, does not respond to
Latino companies’ double challenge of achieving productivity rates and developing human
capital. Although paternalistic leadership meets some needs of the Latino culture, such as
personalization and high-affective relations, it can generate considerable, destructive effects
5

(Rodríguez & Ríos, 2009). Rodríguez and Ríos (2009) explained effects include significant
managers’ burnout, standardization of coercion to achieve business goals, asymmetric power
relations perpetuation, and human capital subdevelopment. Latino leadership inefficiency is an
urgent problem to address because companies, being the economic and civic heart of Latin
America, affect the economy and the Latin society (Aguinis et al., 2020; Beamond et al., 2020;
Dávila & Elvira, 2007, 2012).
Purpose of the Project and Research Questions
This phenomenological study is an exploration of how perceptions of leadership in Latino
companies affects productivity and human capital. The study’s general definition of leadership is
that it is a complex, continuous, and dynamic process of influence and social regulation that
occurs at different levels of the organization and in multiple timelines to respond to power
dynamics and transform society (Day & Liu, 2019; Dihn et al., 2014; Guthey & Jackson, 2011;
Hosking, 2011; Lord, 2019; McCusker et al., 2019).
The research questions for this study are
1. How do perceptions of leadership affect Latino companies’ productivity?
2. How do perceptions of leadership affect employees’ human capital?
Importance of the Study
This study is essential primarily for two reasons. First, research on leadership in Latin
America is scarce, and a large segment has a focus on paternalistic leadership. The popularity of
paternalistic leadership in Latin America does not mean it is the most efficient. According to
Chou et al. (2015), paternalistic leadership has three subdivisions, and only one subdivision is
efficient (the moral-benevolent subdivision). Furthermore, paternalism is only efficient at a
certain organizational level and under specific conditions (Dávila & Elvira, 2012). If research on
6

and practice of Latino leadership continue to avoid complex and holistic approaches,
organizations and leaders will continue to promote paternalistic leadership as the leading way to
address the challenges of context and culture, despite the adverse effects. Rodríguez and Ríos
(2009) explained one of paternalistic leadership’s typical secondary effects is justification and
normalization of dominance and coercion, as the primary form for achieving business goals.
They also explained paternalism generates high burnout rates in managers, due to limited
opportunities for delegation.
Second, this study is relevant because no leadership theories or development programs
address significant skill and productivity gaps (Aguinis et al., 2020). Due to the lack of research
with postheroic and etic approaches (native to the region; Hino, 2019), it is difficult to develop a
leadership process that meets the complex demands of the Latin environment. Thus, Latino firms
need to exploit their potential to promote human and social capital and to achieve economic
development, improve the quality of life in the region, and ensure financial survival (Neace,
2004).
Overview of Theoretical Framework and Methodology
Tuck and Yang (2014)’s theory of change provided the framework for a possible solution
As Figure 1 shows, my theory of change is that the humanistic leadership process, also known as
person-centered leadership, yields company productivity and local community development;
however, the process between humanistic leadership and productivity development is not linear.
This process of change is interdependent with several other processes. In addition to being
humanistic, this study’s definition of leadership is that leadership as a process, contrary to heroic
or positivist approaches, where leadership is only personality characteristics or exists an isolated
dimension. Leadership as a process implies dynamic interactions at multiple levels of the
7

Figure 1
Conceptual Framework

organization and with its environment. Internally and externally, the company focuses on the
person to operate.
Humanistic leadership throughout the organization creates spaces of security and high
affection, which pseudo-collectivist Latino employees require, and allows hybrid operation of
the company. Hybridism requires paying parallel attention to business objectives, employees,
and the community’s financial and social development, allowing Latino companies to survive.
The safe and affective space and hybridism create optimal conditions to develop human capital,
which generates organizational capital, yielding productivity and community development.
The theory that frames this study is Carl Rogers’s (1951) person-centered approach
(PCA). The PCA is a humanist psychology theory that carries the belief that people require a
space of psychological safety or trust to develop their maximum bio-psycho-social potential
(Rogers, 1961). The central PCA tools are empathy, unconditionality, and authenticity (Rogers,
8

1957). This theory is apposite because it is highly congruent with the needs of pseudo-
collectivist Latino employees, who require high-affective and highly personalized work
environments (Elvira & Dávila, 2005; Gómez & Sánchez, 2005).
This study is a qualitative phenomenological study. It has a focus on understanding the
leadership process from the day-to-day experiences of Latino employees. Semistructured
interviews and observations were the primary data collection instruments. The data analysis
followed the phenomenological protocol suggested by Merriam and Tisdell (2016), and the steps
require the researcher to place purposeful reflections to put aside assumptions and maintain the
essence of the phenomenon as the central focus.
Definition of Terms
Human capital: Human capital is the total abilities of an individual (Wheelan, 2019).
Human capital includes all abilities, regardless of whether the origin of these competencies is
innate, by knowledge, by attitudes, or by experience (Tan, 2014).
Organizational capital: Organizational capital is a subcategory of human capital and
consists of resources that the organization develops to guarantee its efficiency. These resources
are strategies, systems, processes, structures, change management, and interpersonal
relationships (Tomer, 1981).
Latino hybrid organization: Hybridity describes the dual role that Latino businesses need
to perform to survive economically, socially, and politically. One function is to be profitable and
meet the competitiveness challenges of the global market. The other function consists of
protecting its employees economically and socially and developing human capital to compensate
for the significant skill gaps in the region. This second function compensates for the
ineffectiveness of public institutions and (Dávila & Elvira, 2012)
9

Leadership process: The literature includes considerations of leadership as a complex,
continuous, and dynamic process of influence and social regulation that occurs at multiple levels
of the organization and in multiple timelines, responding to power dynamics and transforming
society (Day & Liu, 2019; Dihn et al., 2014; Guthey & Jackson, 2011; Hino, 2019; Hosking,
2011; Lord, 2019; Lord & Dihn, 2014; McCusker et al., 2019).
Critical leadership literature: All organizational leadership research is outside
mainstream studies, meaning they are outside the positive paradigm. The positivist paradigm
considers leadership as a set of attributes of an individual and considers leadership as a static
element isolated from other phenomena of the organization and the environment (Collison,
2019).
Latin America: Latin America is an ethnic and geographical block made up of 20
countries that share a similar ideology and, except for Brazil, the same language, due to historical
similarities in legal systems, histories, and predominant religions.
Company productivity: According to the chief executive office (CEO) and chief financial
officer (CFO) of the digital marketing company in which this study was conducted, there are two
criteria by which the productivity of the company is measured: (a) the company’s general
productivity and (b) productivity per team. The companies’ general productivity is defined by
three comparisons: (a) the total turnover divided by the cost of employees, (b) the budget with
the total sales, plus profit, and earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization
(EBITDA), (c) the growth of each year versus the past. The productivity of the total company is
determined by the sum of the productivity of the different teams. Each team has different
indicators, depending on its role. For example, the sales team is measured by sales target, the
10

operations team by profit, customer success by average ticket, and finance by target achievement
(e.g., accounting closing, monthly collection).
11

Chapter Two: Review of the Literature
The productivity of Latino companies is crucial for profitability and vital for the social
(Neace, 2004) and economic development of the region (Liedholm, 2002). Latin America has
one of the most significant productive and human capital gaps on the planet (Araujo et al., 2016;
Casanova, 2020; Caselli, 2015). Caselli (2015) explained workers in Latin America produce
about 20% of what workers in the United States produce. Caselli explained this productivity gap
is due to human capital and efficiency. For example, a Latino worker’s observable physical and
human capital is 40% of the corresponding U.S. level. The efficiency of input use in Latin
America is 50% of U.S. levels.
Even though Latin productivity and human capital are complex phenomena and rely on
the collaboration of multiple entities (Inter-American Bank de Desarrollo, 2015), much of the
development depends on the private sector because public institutions are inefficient (Battilana &
Dorado, 2010; Neace, 2004). Thus, Latino companies face a double challenge to survive: (a) they
need to meet the globalized efficiency standards, and (b) they need to socially and economically
protect their employees and their families (Pirson & Lawrence, 2010). These challenges can be
countered with a humanistic approach, which places the person and interpersonal relationships at
the Latino company’s operation center (Dávila & Elvira, 2012). This change is possible with
efficient leadership development
Business leadership development continues to be a challenge in Latin America. In most
cases, the problem begins with mainstream literature and conceptualization of leadership
(Collison, 2011, 2017; Day, 2011; McCusker et al., 2019). The heroic approach that conceives
leadership as a set of personality traits is prevalent in worldwide leadership research. The
positivist approach, which considers leadership a static and linear phenomenon, is likewise
12

predominant (Collison, 2011; Dihn et al., 2014). Studies with heroic and positivist approaches
have not generated theories or practices that efficiently address the challenges of current
organizations because they are far from the nature of the phenomenon (Collison, 2017; Sorenson
et al., 2011; Vela & Carvalho, 2017). Leadership involves complex, social influence and social
regulation processes that occur at distinct levels and timelines (Dhin et al., 2014; Gronn, 2011;
McCusker et al., 2019).
The lack of research limits leadership development in Latin America (Aravena-Castillo &
Hallinger, 2018; Olavarrieta & Villena, 2014; Ronda-Pupo, 2016). Twenty percent of the
published literature on leadership comes from research of emerging geographical regions. Of this
20%, only 5% comes from Latin American studies or Latino scholars (Hallinger, 2020).
Moreover, most of these studies have an etic approach to understanding or measuring leadership
and use constructs built outside the local culture, typically in the United States (Hino, 2019).
This chapter has a dual purpose. The first purpose is to delineate leadership as a complex
process and apply postheroic and postpositivist conceptualizations. The second purpose is to
outline how the Latin socioeconomic and cultural contexts affect local companies and, therefore,
corporate leadership. Increasing understanding of leadership in all its complexity, Latino culture,
and Latinos companies’ socioeconomic challenges leads to the identification of concepts and
practices that increase Latin companies’ productivity and human capital.
Integrative Conceptualization of Leadership as a Complex Process
More than 100 years of leadership research has generated many leadership theories (Day
& Liu, 2019; Lord & Dihn, 2014; McCusker et al., 2019). Dinh et al. (2014) identified 66
theories, and Meuser et al. (2016) identified 49 and a wide variety of methodological approaches.
There is no theoretical model, research model, or development model that integrates this
13

enormity of studies (Day & Liu, 2019; Dihn et al., 2014; McCusker et al., 2019; Northouse,
2019; Sorenson et al., 2011). Meuser et al. (2016) reviewed 864 articles from the Top 10
leadership journals from 2000 to 2013. They noted that 71% of the articles included more than
one theory, and 34% integrated more than three theories. While these scholars acknowledged
considerable efforts to integrate multiple theories and methods, they explained integrative
research is still incipient. These authors concluded leadership researchers work “like new
residents, who are minimally acquainted with their neighbors” (Meuser et al., 2016, p. 40).
As a result of a lack of integration, most studies on leadership do not capture the
complexity of the phenomenon (Day, 2011; Day & Liu, 2019; McCusker et al., 2019) and reduce
leadership to a set of characteristics of the personality (Collison, 2011; Dihn et al., 2014).
Furthermore, these studies are examinations of perceptions of and not the effectiveness of said
personality traits (Lord & Dihn, 2014). Therefore, since the 1920s, the primary knowledge
produced has had a focus on leadership outcomes, rather than its process (Dihn et al., 2014).
While researchers have made considerable efforts to seek a general theory of leadership
and seek interdisciplinary approaches that emphasize the systemic nature of leadership, much
remains to be achieved (Avolio et al., 2009; Lord et al., 2017). Sorenson et al. (2011) explained
most leadership theories lack practical application, do not recognize power asymmetries, and fail
to illustrate the leadership process and its purpose. In this integrative quest, a sizable number of
new theories have emerged in the last 20 years (e.g., strategic leadership, neurological
perspectives of leadership, and leading for creativity and innovation; Dinh et al., 2014).
Many studies have provided explanations that the lack of an effective theory, practice, or
development method is due to positivist, leader-centric, and Western-centric approaches in most
leadership research (Collison, 2011, 2017; Day, 2011; S. K. Johnson & Lacerenza, 2019;
14

McCusker et al., 2019). Hence, most studies describe leadership as a static, binary, or individual-
centered phenomenon. In this sense, all the studies that describe leadership as a behavior,
outcome, or compare one leadership style with another fall in this approach. Furthermore, most
studies hide the relationship between leadership and power (Collison, 2017; Sorenson et al.,
2011; Vela & Carvalho, 2017) and omit the complex, highly uncertain, and continuously
changing contexts in which leaders operate (Lord & Dihn, 2014).
Some researchers have explained that academia has intentionally produced inefficient
theories and methods to protect the interests of dominant groups (Alvesson & Sveningsson,
2003; Vela & Carvalho, 2017). Vela and Carvalho (2017), in their qualitative study with 33
CEOs of Brazilian companies, emphasized leadership is an ideology that serves two types of
interests. On the one hand, maintaining “the myth” of leadership justifies the 300 billion dollars
(Kruse, 2020) produced in the global training and consulting industry. On the other hand,
ideology also serves executive leaders’ monetary interests and social differentiation.
Definition of Leadership as a Complex Process
Apart from studies that reduce leadership to extraordinary gifts that only special people
have or that leadership is an ideology to sustain personal interests, other scholars have sought to
address what mainstream studies have not covered (Collison, 2011), describing leadership as
• a continuous, dynamic process (Day & Liu, 2019; Dihn et al., 2014; McCusker et al.,
2019)
• of mutual influence (Avolio et al., 2020; Lord & Dihn, 2014)
• socially regulated (Ciulla, 2019; Hannah et al., 2011; Hino, 2019)
• decentralized (Hino, 2019; Lord et al., 2016; Lyord & Dihn, 2014)
• complex (Avolio et al., 2020 ; Hannah et al., 2011 ; Lord et al., 2016)
15

• occurring at multiple levels (Dhin et al., 2014; Gronn, 2011; Yammarino & Dionne,
2019)
• occurring in numerous timelines (McCusker et al., 2019; Lord, 2019; Lord & Dihn,
2014)
• operating through the transformation of identities (Day & Liu, 2019; DeRue &
Ashford, 2010; S. K. Johnson & Lacerenza, 2019
• operating in response to power dynamics (Collison, 2011; Gordon, 2011) and the
environmental challenges (Lord & Dihn, 2014)
• operating in a context (Ciulla, 2019; McCusker, 2019)
• transforming society (Ciulla, 2019; Hosking, 2011).
This conception of leadership is oppositional to the positivist conceptualization, in which
leadership is an ability to influence a group to achieve a common goal (Collison, 2011, 2017;
Hino; 2019). Leadership is entirely different from the leader (Day, 2011; Day & Liu, 2019). For
example, leader’s development does not guarantee leadership effectiveness (Day & Liu, 2019).
Leadership is a process, and a leader is a person who requires a series of intrapersonal and
interpersonal conditions to facilitate leadership (Lord, 2011). In this sense, not all people in the
leadership process are leaders, and leadership does not necessarily exist in all spaces where there
are power dynamics (Gronn, 2011).
Leadership Is a Process of Mutual Influence
Leadership is a socially constructed, iterative, and bidirectional process, based on the
influence and perception of multiple people (Lord & Dihn, 2014). Leadership emerges when
numerous people (at multiple levels and times) intend to be leaders and followers and mutually
16

grant and claim said roles (DeRue & Ashford, 2010). Therefore, a group can perceive a person as
a leader at one point and as a follower in another (Lord & Dihn, 2014).
The construction of the identities of leader and follower occur in a changing context. For
example, Ryan et al. (2011) conducted three studies, exploring how context is a transcendental
moderator in companies’ managerial and gender stereotypes. They concluded the stereotype of
the ideal manager was only associated with the female stereotype in unsuccessful companies.
This association was not because the group expected the female manager to improve the situation
but because this stereotype could take the blame for the failure of the organization.
When leadership is effective, leaders and followers cocreate it and distribute it to the
group (Lord & Dihn, 2014). DeRue and Ashord (2010) showed that the more group members
internalize and confirm leadership identities, the more successful the leadership distribution
process is. They concluded leadership is a process of mutual and reciprocal reinforcement of
leader and follower identities that develop over time in a given context.
Leadership Responds to Power Dynamics and Regulates Social Interactions
Leadership is an intentional process, and a central purpose is to respond to power
dynamics. Leadership does not exist in all spaces with power dynamics. Leadership is artificial
(i.e., intentionally created; Ciulla, 2019; Lord, 2019; Vela & Carvahlo, 2017), and power
asymmetries are natural (i.e., inherent to human groups; Collison, 2011; Gronn, 2011).
Leadership requires, among other things, predisposition, discipline, continuous reflection,
dialogue, and being with the other (Hosking, 2011). Power dynamics arise when there are
asymmetric relationships between leaders, followers, and the context (Collison, 2011), and
power dynamics are natural (Gronn, 2011) and exist in all organizations (Collison, 2017).
17

Leadership is a means to deeply understand how organizations and societies centralize
and enact power and control (Collison, 2017; Gordon, 2011). Leadership is only intelligible if
the organization recognizes its power dynamics (Collison, 2017). Furthermore, some scholars
have said the reason for the existence of leadership is to regulate these dynamics to improve
society (Hosking, 2011).
Power is the core mechanism for establishing leadership (Sorenson et al., 2011). Power is
not the leadership dependent variable but the platform in which culture’s basic structures and
leadership practices happen (Collison, 2011, 2019). Although power and domination are inherent
in the organizations’ structures, most mainstream studies do not speak of power or control
(Collison, 2017; Gordon, 2011; Vilela & Carvahlo, 2017). One goal of leadership is to prevent
power relations from turning into dominant relations (Gordon, 2011). The more individuals go
after power, the more dysfunctional behaviors occur (Kets de Vries & Balazs, 2011)
In addition to regulating power, leadership regulate social interaction. The aim of
hierarchical leadership is to create an individual and collective regulation system to increase the
organization’s adaptability to the environment (Hannah et al., 2011). Leaders can influence the
organization’s individual and social regulatory structures in multiple ways (e.g., influencing
goals, identities, emotions, meanings, validating the emergence of other leaders, and using
formal policies; Hannah et al., 2011).
Leadership Is a Decentralized Process
One way leadership regulates relationships is through decentralization. Leadership is a
system of influence, in which the leaders, despite having a clear intention behind a specific
action, often cannot control the effects of their decisions. The structures, and subsystems of the
complex leadership process in which they operate, can enhance or restrict secondary effects of
18

leader decisions (Hannah et al., 2011; Lord & Dihn, 2014). Leadership is a process of social
influence because it occurs In an ecosystem of interdependent and dynamic networks of
individuals, groups, organizations, and collectives, in which new individual and collective
identities emerge spontaneously (Lord et al., 2016). If pursued, these new individuals and
collective identities emerge (Lord, 2019). Consequently, it is challenging to measure
performance and effectiveness in organizations because both are the product of the efforts of
multiple individuals imbued in unpredictable and complex environments. In this sense,
performance can occur long after leadership processes (Lord & Dihn, 2014).
Leaders can exercise considerable control (Collison, 2011). For example, a study with
more than 200 firms of varied sizes and industries observed CEOs influence an average of 15%
of the performance variance (Joyce, 2005); however, leaders do not exert this influence directly.
They do it through complex follower networks that determine relevant power processes (e.g.,
information distribution, resources distribution, the development of meanings, and collective
efficacy; Lord & Dihn, 2014). Therefore, leadership does not depend on a single individual or a
hierarchical and formal position (Collison, 2011; DeRue & Ashford, 2010; Gordon, 2011).
Hierarchy and formal leadership are two of many elements that coexist in the complex leadership
process (e.g., the composition of the group, the social regulatory structure, feedback, and
learning; Hannah et al., 2011).
Because of this multifactorial influence process, Lord (2019) emphasized that leadership
is a decentralized process. Lord explained leaders can influence indirectly because multiple
dynamic and interdependent levels come together for any change to emerge in the organization.
The researcher concluded leaders do not cause many of the dramatic changes in an organization.
19

Leadership Occurs on Multiple Levels, on Multiple Timelines, and in a Context
Leadership is a complex process. Complexity is a form of perception. A person proficient
in dealing with complexity is capable of distinguishing multiple elements of a system and,
simultaneously, of integrating these elements to understand a phenomenon in multiple
dimensions (Hannah et al., 2011; Lord et al., 2011). Mainstream studies, both heroic and
postheroic, have been efficient in distinguishing multiple elements of the leadership process
(e.g., leader versus follower, leader versus manager, transformational versus transactional) but
have not included integrations of all these elements as part of the same process (Collison, 2017,
2019). For example, understanding power dynamics and hierarchical structures in the
organization requires “addressing multiple, intersecting and potentially contradictory dialectics
in the organization, which the manager-worker binary does not consider” (Collison, 2017, p.
280).
The leadership process operates simultaneously at multiple, interdependent, and changing
levels over time (Lord, 2019; McCusker et al., 2019; Yammarino & Dionne, 2019). Leadership
works at the individual level, in dyads, groups, collectives, and networks (Yammarino & Dionne,
2019) in the organization and the environment (Dinh, 2014; McCusker et al., 2019). The
leadership process is different at each level (Dinh, 2014).
Yammarino and Dionne (2019) used the term level of analysis to refer to organizational
echelons because study objects, theories, research designs, sampling, data collection, inferences,
and professional practice vary entirely from one level to another: “As such, leadership theory
without levels of analysis is incomplete, leadership data without levels of analysis is
incomprehensible, and leadership practice without levels of analysis is ineffective” (p. 44). The
researchers conducted two studies that were reviews of 1,140 articles in more than 17 leadership
20

research areas. They concluded that despite some scholars having made considerable effort to
incorporate the level of analysis, less than 30% explicitly specified the level at which they were
theoretically or methodologically studying leadership.
As it does in varying levels, leadership operates in multiple spaces of time. According to
Lord (2019), the nature of the leadership process changes significantly in different periods. The
researcher explained leadership is understandable solely if the specific time dimension in which
the leadership process happens is clear. For instance, the emergence of a goal can take
microseconds; transforming a group process can take from minutes to days; and some change at
the organizational level can take months or decades. Therefore, Lord said, leadership research
and practice have short-term results (or no results at all) because leadership involves rapid
interventions at the individual level.
Because of the combination of levels and time, how the leadership process occurs
depends on the hierarchical level in which the process is happening, the time dimension in which
it is emerging, and the nature of the leadership process. The higher the level (e.g., executive
leadership, climate, organizational culture), the longer it takes (Lord, 2019).
McCusker et al. (2019) explained leadership occurs in conjunction with context. Whether context
serves as a guide, mediator, regulator, hinder, trigger, or consequence, leadership is only
intelligible when considering the complexity of the context in which it is happening. The context
gives meaning and relevance to the multiple processes in leadership. These scholars added that
context can take various forms (e.g., culture, surrounding situations, history, place, and even
people).
21

The Nature and Purpose of Leadership Is to Add Social Value
In an empirical study of 33 Brazilian executive leaders, Vilela and Carvalho (2017)
showed leadership is an ideology manufactured to guarantee the dominance of the executive
group. They added that leadership is a myth to sustain a millionaire industry and recreates the
leader as an individual with extraordinary qualities to justify the asymmetry in power relations.
Some scholars (e.g., Ciulla, 2019; Guthey et al., 2019; Hosking, 2011) have explained
leadership exists to contribute to significant social changes. Ciulla (2018) and Hosking (2011)
agreed that if leadership does not add value to society, it is not leadership but rather a
relationship of dominance disguised as leadership. These academics explained that adding social
value is a critical and inherent part of the leadership process, not a mere outcome of effective
leadership. Guthey et al. (2019) pointed out social transformation serves as an assumed common
goal that encourages collaboration and coordination among multiple stakeholders. Hosking
(2011) explained leadership requires the predisposition—of a person and of a system—to
dialogue, support, and appreciation to generate the necessary means (e.g., identities, knowledge,
and power) to sustain change. Leadership requires creativity, learning, and the emergence of new
structures to facilitate the organization’s adaptation to the environmental complexity (Hannah et
al., 2011).
Although leadership’s primary purpose and inherent nature is to add value, the process is
so complex that it does not always positively affect the organization. Leadership can build or
destroy value (Collison, 2019; 2017; Sorenson et al., 2011). Collison (2017) explained that
leaders, intentionally or not, can empower and oppress because of the great power they have in
organizations. For this reason, Collison added, it is essential to dismantle the leader’s inherently
positive identity and the positive discourses that revolve around leadership. Furthermore, it is
22

crucial to open a dialogue between the qualities and the “dark side” of some leadership styles,
the positive effects, and the resistance generated in followers. For example, transformational
leadership can empower or create dependency, depending on how followers form their identities.
Kark et al. (2003) found the transformational style increases dependence on followers, who
personally identify with the leader and advance empowerment with followers who identify with
the group.
Transformational leadership research illustrates how the mainstream literature has had a
focus on testing the positive effects of leadership, assuming an inherently positive process (Lord
et al., 2017). The inherently positive assumption demonstrates how, despite the extensive
research on transformational leadership since the 2000s, there are still no studies that correlate
this style with destructive leadership (Meuser et al., 2016). Consequently, it is relevant to
develop studies attentive to the process and free from the assumption that leadership is always
positive. To have a complete vision of the leadership process is essential in acknowledging forms
of control and resistance between leaders and followers (Collison, 2017, 2019).
Leadership operates through identity transformation and resignification
Positivist and postpositivist scholars agree that leadership is a process of identity transformation
at distinct levels (i.e., individual, relational and collective; Lord et al., 2016). Identity is essential
in leadership because identity engenders behaviors and values (S. K. Johnson & Laecernza,
2019). The activated level of identity detonates the individual behavior (Hino, 2019). For
leadership to be valid, the agent’s identity level (person, group, organization, context) needs to
match the type of process occurring (S. K. Johnson & Lacerenza, 2019).
Identity is relevant because changes in identities is the mechanism through which leaders
exercise their power (Collison, 2019). Identity change can occur explicitly—such as in
23

leadership training that encourages the person to see themselves as a leader and enact leadership
practices, identities, and discourses (Collison, 2017)—or the change of identity can occur
tacitly—such as when the organization or a group assumes the meaning of some events (S. K.
Johnson & Lacerenza, 2019).
In studying 6,000 U.S. soldiers during their deployment to Iraq, Avolio et al. (2020)
found followers’ attributes and leaders’ attributes affect how they evaluate the leader. For
example, the perceiver’s affective attributes, type of regulation focus (e.g., oriented toward
seeking pleasure or avoiding pain), and level of congruence with the leader affect the leader’s
rating.
In conclusion, leadership conceived beyond the heroic and positivist approaches is a
process of mutual influence that responds to power dynamics and regulates social interactions. It
is a decentralized process that occurs at multiple levels, on multiple timelines, and in a context.
Its nature and purpose are to add social value. Finally, leadership operates through the
transformation and redefinition of identity.
The following section describes the role of organizations and the most common
leadership style in Latin America as a response to the cultural and socioeconomic conditions of
the region.
Latin Context and Culture and the Impact on Companies
Latino markets are comprised of monopolies; high government intervention in the
regulation of the economy; increased social, economic, and political volatility; abrupt changes in
economic closure and opening; and high inequality, informality, and corruption (Dávila &
Elvira, 2005, Nicholls-Nixon et al., 2011). This context causes companies to have rigid and
bureaucratic control processes that undermine the empowerment and decision making of
24

employees and, in turn, the creation of informal social structures that compensate for the
impersonality and rigidity of these controls (Dávila & Elvira, 2005). In this environment, where
economic and political instability converge with globalization, survival is the most critical
achievement of companies (Elvira & Dávila, 2005).
Although Latin America had significant deregulation of markets in the 1990s, being a
region with abundant natural resources and presenting significant economic growth in the last
two decades, it continues to be the region with the lowest levels of productivity (Araujo et al.,
2016; Casanova, 2020; Caselli, 2015). The productivity of an average Latino worker is only one-
fifth of the productivity of an average U.S. worker (Caselli, 2015). Although multifactorial,
many studies agree that the leading cause of the low productivity levels is poor human capital
development (Bakker et al., 2020; Capriles, 2009; Caselli, 2015). For example, a Latino worker
has less than half the human capital of an U.S. worker (Caselli, 2015).
As a result of the significant lack of human capital, the World Economic Forum (WEF;
Melguizo & Pages-Serra, 2017) highlighted that Latin America is the region with the highest
skill gap on the planet. According to the WEF, 50% of formal Latino companies do not find
qualified candidates, and 55% of the workforce have informal jobs. Likewise, 81% of companies
do not have people prepared to assume critical leadership positions (Vargas, 2015).
Hybrid Companies
In this context, where survival determines corporate life and human capital is incipient,
one central role of Latino companies is to alleviate social problems (Pirson & Lawrence, 2010)
and promote the region’s economic development (Neace, 2004). Therefore, in addition to being
profitable, Latino companies need to develop other social and political faculties to survive
(Neace, 2004). For example, a critical competence of Latino organizations is to establish
25

alliances with public and private institutions to build development and resources (Neace, 2004)
and give voice to silent stakeholders (Dávila & Elvira, 2012). Dávila and Elvira (2012) called
silent stakeholders employees and their families who lack the necessary resources to make their
needs and interests explicit.
By cause of this double role (profitability and social development), some researchers
(e.g., Battilana & Dorado, 2010) have called Latin companies hybrids because they require
achieving utility and complying with global market standards and social transformation. These
scholars have explained that Latino companies need to design and execute private and public
activities to survive in a region lacking infrastructure and technology and with inefficient public
institutions. Oh et al. (2018) conducted a study in Peru and Chile in two multinational mining
companies. The mining companies required multiple informal dialogues with local community
leaders to understand and address their needs, so the companies could prevent common reprisals
from public institutions and achieve business aims. Due to the necessary hybridism, Latino
companies need a systemic approach with understanding of the high interdependence of
companies with various institutions, such as family, community, and the government, to be
efficient (Elvira & Dávila, 2005).
Collectivism
In addition to operating in an environment of survival and low human capital, Latino
businesses operate in a collectivist culture. Most leadership studies qualify Latino culture as
collectivist (Castaño et al., 2015; Guthey & Jackson, 2011; Hino, 2019) based on the GLOBE
Project (House et al., 2004) and Hofstede’s (2002) cross-cultural leadership study. The GLOBE
Project and Hofstede have pointed out most Latin American countries score high on the
dimensions of collectivism and respect for authority. Although these studies have been among
26

the most ambitious and most important references in the cross-cultural leadership literature, they
“cannot capture the dynamic nature of cultural interactions that often take place in several
intersecting contexts, including not only the national context but also organizational,
hierarchical, departmental and individual contexts” (Guthey & Jackson, 2011, p. 172). They are
studies that describe leadership from an etic approach, with dimensions built outside the culture
from which they are studied (Hino, 2019). Hino (2019) explained non-Western people do not
perceive leadership as behavior or attribute of an individual.
Osland et al. (1999) specified Latin America is pseudo-collectivist; even though
interpersonal relationships are essential, there is minimal trust in the out-group. Latin America is
a culture of low trust due to cultural heritage and decades of dysfunctional public institutions,
which has caused significant disadvantages in the competitiveness of companies (Neace, 2004).
For example, the lack of distrust in the organization (the out-group) causes control systems that
become so excessive that they generate costly transactions that affect efficiency, productivity,
and economic growth (Osland et al., 1999).
Another characteristic of Latin pseudo-collectivism on which several academics agree is
that family is the central value (Castaño et al., 2015; Gómez & Sánchez, 2005; Osland et al.,
1999). Often, family becomes the primary motivation of employees (Gómez & Sánchez, 2005).
Employees see work as necessary primarily to support their families (Dávila & Elvira, 2005).
The value of the family yields an expectation of high contact, personalization, emotionality, and
affection in the workplace (Dávila & Elvira, 2005; Gómez & Sánchez, 2005; Osland et al.,
1999). The affectivity that emulates the family or the in-group generates the loyalty, trust, and
flexibility needed to operate (Dávila & Elvira, 2005). For example, personalization at work—
27

individualized attention and interest in the person and their family—is the employee’s vehicle to
fulfill their task (Osland et al., 1999).
People who do not participate in high-contact exchanges and are not part of these close
relationships tend to be resistant to change and excluded (Osland et al., 1999). Latino employees,
as they do not have the protection of formal institutions, require this emotional and high-contact
dynamic to generate psychological contracts with colleagues and supervisors that help protect the
conditions of their employment (Dávila & Elvira, 2012).
Elvira and Dávila (2005) said interpersonal relationships are the key to increasing the
efficiency of Latino organizations. Managing the productivity and efficiency of companies
requires a humanistic approach: a PCA that contrasts with the productivity-centered approach
that most companies globally hold. Elvira and Dávila explained Latino companies can achieve
the performance standards demanded by the global agenda, when they acknowledge social
relationships and psychological contracts. Other researchers (Ciulla 2019; Guthey & Jackson,
2011) have agreed the humanistic approach is central to increasing the productivity of Latino
companies.
The27ocio-d characteristic of pseudo-collectivism is the prevalence of vertical
relationships (Osland et al., 1999): the acceptance of asymmetric power relations (Gómez &
Sánchez, 2005). Rodriguez and Rios (2005) explained authority’s approval is often a vehicle to
develop the interpersonal relationship with the supervisor. Other times, employees accept
directivity to compensate for significant skill gaps. Because companies have a meager budgets
for training, they depend on internal resources, so they tend to adapt to incompetence, instead of
generating new knowledge. Rodriguez and Rios explained the centralization of decision making
28

is a reaction to the lack of technical knowledge, formal education, and analytical and
communication skills.
In addition to authority acceptance, there is dominance and coercion tolerance in many
Latino organizations. It is common for people in positions of power to use their positions for
personal gain (Osland et al., 1999). For example, the Labor Inspection Department of the
Ministry of Labor and Employment in Brazil released 37,203 workers from “conditions
analogous to slavery” (Ministry of Labor and Employment, 2010, p. 7) between 1995 and 2010.
These forms of slavery ranged from nonpayment or low payment to the imposition of
dehumanizing, unworthy working or housing conditions to threats to physical survival (Phillips
& Sakamoto, 2012)
Nicholls-Nixon et al. (2011) defined entrusted power for personal gain as corruption.
These researchers explained corruption is a widespread problem in emerging economies, and
most organizations ignore it, despite the financial costs and ethical challenges. Lord et al. (2017)
pointed out corruption permeates the contexts of high survival and goes beyond positions of
power of the organization. Lord et al. commented that abusive leadership, demagoguery, and
corruption are natural phenomena in business environments with drastic sociopolitical changes
and intense competition for potentially triggered resources. Lord et al. added there are no simple
solutions for massive sociopolitical changes, so leadership requires increasing complexity and
developing integrative leadership systems (e.g., systems that operate at multiple levels and in
various cultures).
The informal social networks of Latino companies are usually a collectivist response to
“get things done” in high inefficient systems (Duarte, 2006). Some researchers have emphasized
Latino companies subsist due to these informal socialization structures (Dávila & Elvira, 2005;
29

Gómez & Sánchez, 2005). For example, jeitinho, which consists of a informal bipartite
agreement, typical in Brazil, to break the rules, is a critical mechanism to survive the rigidity and
indifference of the Latino bureaucracy. It is also a form of resistance to power and consolidating
relationships in the workplace (Duarte, 2006).
Paternalism
One efficient mechanism for adapting companies to the sociopolitical, economic, and
cultural conditions of Latin America is paternalism (Dávila & Elvira, 2012). Paternalism is the
region’s most popular form of leadership (Aycan, 2002; Castaño et al., 2015).
Somet researchers have defined paternalism as a leadership style (Castaño et al., 2015), a
type of relationship (Dávila & Elvira, 2012), and as an ideology (Rodríguez & Ríos, 2008). As a
leadership style, it refers to an authoritarian and, at the same time, benevolent supervision
(Castaño et al., 2015; Oh et al., 2018; Pellegrini & Scandura, 2008). As a type of relationship,
paternalism is a supervisor-following symbiosis, in which, through a psychological contract, they
exchange protection for loyalty (Dávila & Elvira, 2012; Osland et al., 1999). As an ideology,
paternalism justifies the asymmetry of some relationships in the organization. For example,
paternalism often justifies the gap between the company’s profit and the compensation of the
employees (Rodríguez & Ríos, 2008). Paternalism ideology is contingent on an incipient labor
market (Rodríguez & Ríos, 2008), a significant lack of equity, or the predominant cultural values
of the family (Pellegrini & Scandura, 2006).
Paternalism is the modern and corporate version of the 29ocio--peasant dyad of the feudal
system, in which the personalized relationship maintains loyalty in the haciendas (Dávila &
Elvira, 2005; Rodríguez & Ríos, 2008). Loyalty, not efficiency, was the priority because the
29ocio- could conserve the land if he won the peasants’ votes in exchange for protection
30

(Rodríguez & Ríos, 2008); however, when the Latin market opens, organizations need to
measure themselves in terms of efficiency to remain competitive. That is when some
organizations fail to balance global productive demands and the demands of local relationships
(Gómez & Sánchez, 2005).
Paternalism is a leadership theory about which there is no agreement in the literature
(Pellegrini & Scandura, 2008). Although some scholars have emphasized that paternalism is
effective in Latino companies, regardless of the organization’s culture (Martinez, 2003), others
have said paternalism is only efficient under certain conditions, such as when the manager is
exceptionally talented or in a stable environment (Osland et al., 1999). Another mediator of
paternalistic leadership that Rodríguez and Ríos (2008) pointed out is the academic level of the
employees. They say paternalistic leadership loses efficiency, as the academic and educational
levels of the person increases because much of the motivation of someone trained lies in their
decision making power.
A third group of scholars says paternalism has nothing to do with efficiency. Instead, it
functions 30ocio-politically, as a vehicle to protect employees from the inefficiency of public
institutions (Rodríguez & Ríos, 2008). More than a style for efficiency, paternalism is an
adaptive response of organizations to increase the productivity of their employees, through a
focus on the person, the nurturing of the relationship, or domination (Pellegrini & Scandura,
2008).
Defining paternalism has not been enough to understand the leadership challenges of
companies in the region. It is challenging to identify leadership practices that effectively meet
local demands due to the constant internationalization of managerial knowledge (Dávila &
Elvira, 2012) and the scarcity of research on Latino leadership (Castaño et al., 2015).
31

Furthermore, many studies have treated paternalism as a set of personality traits, though this
process is only intelligible in time and in a complex system of interdependent identities (Hino,
2019).
Dávila and Elvira (2012) explained paternalistic leadership is only understandable as a
specific form of relationship between some dyads (leader-follower) and in certain specific
contexts. This style only describes one type of relationship from a level of analysis (dyads; Lord,
2017). Paternalism can work at the dyad level of some organizations and only in some specific
cases.
Latino companies have had to play a hybrid role to respond to pseudo-collectivism and
low productivity and human capital levels. Although it does not respond to corporate and social
needs, paternalistic leadership has been the most common response to face cultural and
socioeconomic challenges. Due to the centrality of the family and the high necessity to restore
trust to increase productivity and human capital in Latino companies, several have authors
suggested the development of a humanistic leadership process.

32

Chapter Three: Methodology
This research explores how the leadership process in Latino companies impacts
productivity and human capital. This chapter presents how this study aims to achieve this
understanding. The first section includes the research questions, an overview of the
phenomenological design, and why this method is most appropriate for this study. Subsequently,
this chapter describes the sample, the data sources, the data analysis process, and the study’s
validity and reliability tools. Finally, it explains my positionality and how it may affect the
research, ethics, and the study’s limitations.
Research Questions
The research questions are
1. How do perceptions of leadership affect Latino companies’ productivity?
2. How do perceptions of leadership affect employees’ human capital?
Overview of the Design
The study used a qualitative approach to allow a holistic vision. It enabled the naming of
multiple elements (Merriam & Tisdell, 2016) that intervene in the leadership process and
identification of how they are related. A holistic approach is essential to studying Latino
leadership because regional companies need to achieve profitability and simultaneously act as
agents of social transformation to survive. This double role increases the complexity of multiple
stakeholders’ interactions, contexts, levels, and timelines (Dávila & Elvira, 20212).
The qualitative design is phenomenological; that is, it was used to seek vivid experiences
of the participants, namely, how they experience the phenomenon on a day-to-day basis (van
Manen, 2014). This study included in-depth interviews to understand the leadership process from
the perspective of Latino leaders and employees. The phenomenological approach was essential
33

because most Latino research maintains an etic approach, attempting to align the region’s
leadership with theories, models, and measurements made abroad, mainly in the United States
(Hino, 2019).
Research Settings
For a qualitative study, Merriam and Tisdell (2016) suggested nonprobabilistic, typical,
and purposeful sampling. I selected a group of people, who, in addition to having information
with which to answer the research questions, reflect the full-time Latino formal employee and
manager. As can be seen in Table 1, the participants are from four different nationalities:
Argentinian, Brazilian, Colombian, and Mexican. Although the company had Uruguayan
employees, there was no Uruguayan employee available at the time the data was collected. The
participants’ ages ranged from 22 to 43 years, and the range of years of work experience was
from 3 months to 22 years. Eight of the participants define themselves as women and seven of
the participants as men; none of the participants identified as a gender other than man or woman.
As shown in Table 2, the 15 participants represent a sample equivalent to 33% of the total
population (n = 45) of the company. The sample represets the employee’s distribution in each
hierarchical level of the company. At the time of data collection, there were 25 frontline workers,
representing 55% of the total number of employees, 10 managers representing 22%, and 10 top
managers representing the other 22%. Five top managers were interviewed, instead of three, as
indicated by the ideal sample because two more interviews were required to saturate the data at
this hierarchical level.
The classification of the three hierarchical levels corresponds to the following criteria. A
top manager is an executive director, involved in strategic decision making and reporting
directly to the CEO (Carpenter et al., 2004). Taking this definition as the basis for delineating the
34

participants, this study considers middle managers those who report to a top manager and
supervise frontline employees. A frontline employee runs operational activities that require few
strategic decisions and does not supervise anyone.

Table 1
Sample Demographics
Level Role Years of
Work
Experience
Age Nationality Gender Location
Top
manager
C Suite 22 43 Argentina Man Buenos Aires,
Argentina
VP 9 29 Argentina Man Barcelona, Spain
VP 17 36 Argentina Man Barcelona, Spain
Manager Manager 10 31 Colombia Man Bogotá, Colombia
Manager 11 29 Brazil Woman Sao Paulo, Brazil
Manager 5 27 Argentina Woman Buenos Aires,
Argentina
Frontline
workers
Specialist 6 34 Mexico Woman Mexico City,
Mexico
Analyst 1 23 Argentina Man Buenos Aires,
Argentina
Analyst 1 25 Mexico Woman Mexico City,
Mexico
Analyst 3.5 28 Brazil Woman Sao Paulo, Brazil
Analyst 3 35 Colombia Woman Buenos Aires,
Argentina
Analyst 6 months 23 Argentina Man Buenos Aires,
Argentina
Analyst 3 months 22 Argentina Woman Buenos Aires,
Argentina

35

Table 2
Sample Design
Number of
employees per
hierarchy
Percentage
employees of
this hierarchy
with respect to
the total
population
Ideal number of
people to
interview in
this hierarchy
Actual number
of people
interviewed
from this
hierarchy
Top managers 10 22% 3 5
Managers 10 22% 3 3
Frontline
workers
25 55% 8 7
Total of
employees
45 100% 15 (33%) 15

A condition of the sample was that the interviewees were Latino and were currently
working in a full-time position for this mobile marketing company. This sample was adequate
because it represented a third of the total population of employees, four nationalities that existed
at the time of data collection, represented each hierarchical level, and was balanced between men
and women.
The human resources team helped by sharing the organization chart and the emails of
each employee, and, after obtaining permission from the CEO, I sent an email with the invitation
to participate in the study to 16 people. Although all of them confirmed their participation, one of
them was not available because his schedule was saturated throughout the data collection period.
The Researcher
The company that was the site of the study was one of my clients. In the last 10 years, I
have been in charge of a startup that offers consulting and training in leadership and emotional
intelligence to Latino organizations of various sizes and industries. The services we have
36

implemented are varied, from one-to-one coaching for top managers to large-group team
building to leadership and strategy consulting to face-to-face and virtual courses. No participant
had direct interaction with me in any previous intervention, reducing the bias that my presence
could have cause.
For this particular client, I have trained the top manager’s team. To prevent my presence
from biasing I wrote a reflective memo before starting the interviews to acknowledge any
previous perception I had of the top managers and set them aside; however, I recognize that my
presence as a researcher, doctoral candidate, businessperson, coach, and consultant established a
dominant relationship, even with the participants with whom I did not interact.
My positionality has an impact on the study. I identify as a Latin American woman,
cisgender, white, young, upper class, and ethnically Mediterranean. Both of my parents were
entrepreneurs, and I attended two of the best universities in Latin America. These characteristics
have placed me in a privileged position (Morgan, 2018), with certain exceptions. Some of the
exceptions have been being a woman and dedicating myself professionally to singing for 10
years, which allowed me to be part of the working class and LGBTQ+ community. Also, I have
experienced being a person of color for the past 4 years in the United States, and English is not
my first language.
I see how my positionality was simultaneously a potential tool and a potential weapon for
Latin American leadership. My positionality could be a tool because it allowed me to reflect on
leadership from a critical perspective. This ontological leadership reflection is virtually
nonexistent in Latin American companies, whose priority is survival. Perhaps the ontological
leadership approach could help companies find more possibilities to survive and provide value
for their stakeholders.
37

My positionality could be a weapon because it was difficult for me to understand living
permanently in poverty, the lack opportunities, and how these things relate to leadership. For
example, I have long thought that bad leadership practices in Latin America have been due to
executive leaders’ narcissism, not as a product of a lack of opportunities. Losing sight of my
positionality can easily make me believe in the illusion that bad leadership practices are
conscious choices, rather than consequences of a class power system.
Data Sources
This study used two methods to collect data. The first was the interview, which is the
primary data collection system of the phenomenological approach (Merriam & Tisdell, 2016).
The interview was semistructured. Merriam and Tisdell (2016) explained the semistructured
protocol is flexible: the interviewer does not necessarily need to follow the order to listen to the
interviewee’s voice. The second method was observations, which consisted of my field notes and
reflective memos, recording participant behaviors in the field (Creswell & Creswell, 2018).
Instrumentation
The interview protocol consisted of 15 open questions, divided into three sections (see
Appendix). The first section was related to how participant perceived their leadership and the
company’s leaders. The second section focused on how the participant perceived company
leadership could increase productivity. The third section was related to how leadership can raise
the human capital of the company and the community.
Data Collection Procedures
The first interview took place on February 14 and the last on March 2, 2022. Participants
were asked to set aside an hour, and the average length of the interviews was 53 minutes. All the
interviews, with the prior authorization of each participant, were recorded on Zoom and
38

transcribed with the Office 365 dictation program. Likewise, all the interviews were conducted
Spanish, except for one that was conducted in English because one Brazilian participant felt
more comfortable speaking in this language. The other two Brazilian participants had advanced
Spanish. I compiled the field notes and the reflections in reflective memos that I wrote at the end
of several of the interviews.
Data Analysis
The data collection process was comprised of four stages, corresponding to the
phenomenological design method proposed by Merriam and Tisdell (2016). Epoche, or
bracketing, was the first stage. In this stage, 1 week prior to starting the interviews, the I wrote
my opinions and prejudices about the leadership of Latino companies and how I thought these
things related to productivity and human capital. The objective was to identify my biases and put
them aside before starting data collection and analysis (Castillo, 2020). Following the suggestion
of Turner and Astin (2020), I included my emotions and reflections in this document. Some
reflections were answers questions, such as which of my biases are present? How do I think my
positionality is affecting my perception of data?
Phenomenological reduction and horizontalization occurred simultaneously during the
data analysis. Reduction is a research strategy that helps the researcher to continuously return to
the experience, leaving aside theories, meanings, research methods, presuppositions, or casual
aspects of the phenomenon under study (van Manen, 2014), and horizontalization has to do with
giving equal importance to all the pieces of data in the initial phase of the analysis and then
organizing data by themes (Merriam & Tisdell, 2016). To implement both reduction and
horizontalization, I coded all interviews with a deductive approach, meaning in first-stage
39

coding, I used in-vivo codes, which are the codes that use the words of the participants (R. B.
Johnson & Christensen, 2017).
In the first-stage coding, I used Atlas.ti Web (Version 22) version software to identify 78
in-vivo codes. Then, according to the most repeated codes in the Atlas.ti code chart, I
reorganized the codes by hierarchical themes and returned to validate the new codebook based
on what the participants expressed in the transcripts. I carried out seven phases of second-stage
coding, repeating the process of reorganizing the codes and returning to the data 7 times to
validate the categories and code interrelationships (R. B. Johnson & Christensen, 2017), until
reaching a data saturation point, which is when no new themes were found in the data (Ravitch &
Carl, 2021). The first and second phase coding took 12 weeks. The second-phase coding took
seven cycles because one critical poins of data analysis in a phenomenological study, according
to Ravitch and Carl (2021), is to stay as close as possible to the data. Thus, the final code book of
the second-phase coding ended up with 12 codes.
The fourth stage is the imaginative variation that consists of describing the essence of the
invariable qualities of the phenomenon, observing the data from several perspectives and
identifying the qualities that do not vary, regardless of whether the angle of observation changes
(Castillo, 2020; Merriam & Tisdell, 2016). For this, I used Gibb’s (2018) comparative analysis
method, which consists of four major stages: (a) coding hierarchies, (b) comparisons, (c) models,
and (d) describing explanations. After I classified the codes by hierarchy, with the help of the
Atlas.ti code chart, I carried out five case-by-case comparisons. I compiled how the 15
participants interpreted the high hierarchy codes in five tables. In this way, I identified
similarities and differences that I contrasted again with the data.
40

I subsequently identified six typologies. Gibbs explained typologies are a tool for
classifying concepts that can be multidimensional. The typologies helped me notice the
participants interpreted the topics according to their hierarchical levels.
Finally, I identified two models, corresponding to Chapter 4’s two main findings. Gibbs
(2018) explained a model “is a framework that attempts to explain what has been identified as
key aspects of the phenomenon being studied in terms of several other aspects of elements of the
situation” (p. 117).
Validity and Reliability
According to Merriam and Tisdell (2016), qualitative research validity and reliability are
proportional to the study’s ethical level. They specified three criteria to determine the study’s
ethical degree: (a) internal validity, (b) reliability, and (c) external validity. They explained
internal validity has to do with the congruence between the findings and reality: the credibility of
the results. Because humans are the primary data collection and analysis instruments in
qualitative studies, interventions must sustain congruency between the researcher and the
participant.
Creswell and Creswell (2018) suggested several ways of doing these interventions, and
this study used three of those strategies during the data analysis process: (a) clarifying bias, (b)
member checking, and (c) rich and thick description. Clarifying the researcher’s bias means my
constant reflection on how my positionality affected the study (Creswell & Creswell, 2018). This
intervention outlines the previously described three stages (i.e., epoche, reduction, and
horizontalization). Before and during the interviews and data analysis, I completed a total of 16
reflective memos that included field notes before.
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Member checking consists of verifying with the participants the precision of the
descriptions and conceptualizations made by the researcher (Creswell & Creswell, 2018). For
this, to each participant, I sent an editable Word document with all of that participant’s quotes
and with the corresponding researcher interpretations to be presented in Chapter 4 as findings.
The quotes and interpretations were arranged in the form of a list with check boxes. The
instruction was for the participant to check only the boxes for quotes and interpretations they
agreed reflected what they meant. All quotes and interpretations were approved by the 15
participants.
Finally, the findings included a detailed description of how participants at each
hierarchical level perceived each of the most important concepts and findings. The nine main
themes were presented based on the different interpretations of the three subgroups of the
sample.
The rich, thick description served as the main reliability tool of this study. Reliability has
to do with how much the study can be replicated in another context (Merriam & Tisdell, 2016).
As Merriam and Tisdell (2016) suggested, I described the findings richly and thickly, so readers
can determine if they could apply the resulting theory to their organizational environment.
Finally, external validity has to do with how much the study’s findings can be applied to
other situations (Merriam & Tisdell, 2016). The sample of this study included participants of
four different nationalities from six different locations, of different ages, with different years of
work experience, different genders, and different hierarchical levels. The variety of nationalities
and locations makes this study representative of Latin America. For example, Argentina has a
very different culture from Mexico, and there are participants from both countries in this study.
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Ethics
All participants received an informed consent in Spanish that met the Institutional Review
Board (IRB) requirements. Each participant signed and returned the consent form before
scheduling the interviews. In the same email in which I sent the consent, I underlined that
participation was voluntary and that under no circumstances would the denial of participation or
abandonment of the study during the research affect the participant’s position. I used the Ethical
Issues Checklist Several (Patton, 1994) to reference this communication. I explained the purpose
of the study and saved the data in a password-protected file, to which no one else had access.
Before signing the agreement, I communicated by Slack with each participant. Slack is
the main communication tool that the employees of this company use. In the Slack audio
message, I asked if the participants had any questions about any of the email information. Before
starting the interviews, I reminded participants the participation was voluntary and asked if there
were any questions.
Limitations and Delimitations
The limitations of this study are that, on the one hand, except for one participant, all the
others are Millennials. On the other hand, all the participants, being from the same company,
based their work experience in the mobile digital marketing industry. In this sense, the findings
of this study are limited to what Millennial Latino employees of the mobile marketing industry
think.

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Chapter Four: Findings
This qualitative phenomenological study explored how Latino employees’ perception of
leadership affects productivity and human capital. This chapter presents the main findings.
Participants
This study involved 15 Latin American employees from a digital mobile marketing
startup operating in six locations around Latin America and Spain. Except for one partner and
top managers, the entire population of employees is Millennials. The age range is from 21 to 43
years old, and the work experience range is 22 years to 3 months. Eight of the participants were
women and seven were men.
This study included interviews with five top managers, three managers, and seven
frontline workers. The number of people interviewed for each hierarchy was proportional, in
most cases, to the number of employees that existed in this hierarchy at the time of the data
collection. For example, seven frontline workers were interviewed, representing 46% of the
participants. The population of frontline workers in the company at the time of collecting the
data was 55%. Likewise, three managers were interviewed, representing 20% of the sample, and
this level is 22% of the company’s population. The exceptional case was that I interviewed five
top managers instead of three, as would correspond to the 22% company subgroup population. I
requested two extra interviews with top managers to achieve data saturation of this hierarchy.
Findings
The first section presents and describes the two most important findings. The second
section describes the answer to the two research questions, and the third section presents the
conclusions.
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Space to Become a Person
The first finding, with 143 mentions by the participants, is the person-centered leadership
process (PCLP) which, according to the participants, is the leadership process that most increases
the company productivity and the one that most develops employee human capital. The PCLP is
a dynamic, complex, and independent ecosystem of social influence and enables employees to
reach their full potential. In the words of a frontline worker, it is “a breeding ground” that arises
from multiple levels of the company and is made up of numerous subspaces for productivity and
human capital to occur.
The name of the PCLP reflects the significant alignment of this leadership process, with
the PCA, which is the theory that frame this study, and with the person-centered or humanistic
approach cited in Chapter 2, which several academics explained is a trigger Latino companies
productivity (Ciulla 2019; Elvira & Dávila, 2005; Guthey & Jackson, 2011). Although the PCLP
is a dynamic process, participants identified five key subprocesses and four enablers that shape,
expand and sustain the PCLP. The following two sections describe in detail the PCLP
subprocesses and enablers.
Before listing and defining each subprocess, it is essential to make two clarifications. The
first is that although the 15 participants agreed that five subprocesses affect the PCLP, the
perception of each subprocess varies significantly according to the level of analysis. Returning to
level of analysis concept (Yammarino & Dionne, 2019), the level of analysis refers to the
different hierarchical levels in organizations, where the leadership process occurs at different
times and ways. For this study, three levels of analysis will be considered: (a) company, (b)
team, and (c) dyad. As seen in Table 3, the participants’ hierarchy determined their perceptions
of the levels at which the five subprocesses occur.
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Table 3
Level of Analysis in Which the Subprocesses Operate
Level of
analysis
Frontline worker Manager Top manager
Company Iteration space
Validation space
Work-life balance space
Iteration space
Validation space
Emotional containment
space
Work-life balance space
Team Affective connection
space

Dyad Iteration space
Validation space
Emotional containment
space
Emotional containment
space

The second clarification is that, as shown in Table 4, all the subprocesses affect the
company’s productivity and the employees’ human capital to a greater or lesser extent; however,
the participants perceived some subprocesses directly affect the productivity of the company, and
other subprocesses affect the development of the employees’ human capital. In this sense, it will
be specified in the description of each subprocess with which of the two research questions it is
related, and in the conclusions, the two research questions will be answered.
The five subprocesses are (a) iteration space, (b) emotional containment space, (c)
validating space, (d) affective connection space and (e) work-life balance space. The five spaces
are listed and defined in order of importance in the following sections.
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Table 4
Numbers of Employees Who Had a Response to the Subprocess and Who Related the Subprocess
PCLP subprocesses n Number of employees
who perform this element
with Productivity (RQ1)
Number of employees
who related this element
to Human Capital (RQ2)
Iteration space 14 3 8
Emotional containment
space
14 5 5
Validating space 13 8 2
Affective connection
space
11 7 4
Work-life balance space 7 5 2

Iteration Space
Fourteen participants described the need for an interative space, and eight of those
participants related and explained how this subprocess is a responde to the development of the
human capital of employees. According to the participants, space to iterate is a process that
occurs at the dyad and company levels. The higher the employee is in the hierarchy, the more
this space was perceived as a company process. The lower the employee is in the hierarchy, the
more this space was perceived as a dyad process.
The participants defined the space to iterate to a process that allowed them to develop
their hard and soft skills because they had the freedom to make decisions, express and tests their
ideas, dialogue, transform their paradigms, solve problems with support, feel cared for and
supported when committing mistakes, feel challenged, and feel that leaders trust their abilities to
generate solutions. As one frontline worker said, iterative space yields the ability for “trial and
error, trial and error, until you get to something that works for you.”
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A top manager explained one-on-one executive coaching sessions are a corporate
resource that has been most useful in developing his leadership skills because coaching is “a
place where you see things differently, where you open your mind.” Another top manager
pointed out the corporate process that most helped him develop his skills was the weekly
strategic alignment meetings because the top managers “have the humility to be able to ask, to be
able to ask for advice, to be able to take opinions from the others.” Another top manager
explained she could empower herself in her sales territory when the committee “dedicated to
evaluating whether the client has potential and whether we should bring it or not” was flexible
and allowed her to iterate: “We knew they were clients who had little chance of success, but we
tried it anyway, and one client that we thought would not work worked very well, so this trial
and error system helped us a lot.”
While top managers perceived human capital was developed by iterating in corporate
processes, frontline workers perceived the space to iterate occurred in the dyad. One frontline
worker exemplified how iteration in the dyad most helped him learn. He said, “I like the call I
have on Tuesdays with the name of his immediate supervisor . It is like a space where I can
contribute my ideas and make decisions together.” Likewise, two other frontline workers
explained learning was accessible when their supervisors supported, instead of punishing, their
mistakes. One explained, “There are days when things don’t go well. It’s good to know that
[your supervisor] supports you and that no one is questioning you. It is a peace of mind that
makes me work better.” Another frontline worker explained his supervisor told him, “I help you.
I facilitate you. I share what I know, but, on the other hand, I want you to grow. I want you to be
the one who makes mistakes and the one who learns.”
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According to the participants, Latino employees develop human capital when the
company facilitated their sense of agency, which was when the dyad or the company provided a
space of trust that allowed employees to self-manage their mistakes and learning. The trust space
that enhances the employee’s personal agency is an important finding because, according to
Osland et al. (1999), many Latino companies invest in expensive control systems to compensate
for the lack of trust in employees.
These findings show the disadvantages of these control systems are a high financial cost
and the inefficient in terms of increasing human capital. Instead of being controlled, Latin
employees expect to have a space to make mistakes, learn, and self-manage.
Emotional Containment Space
Fourteen of the 15 participants commented that emotional containment was the third most
relevant aspect of the PCPL. Emotional containment is a subprocess that occurs in the dyad or in
the company to help the employee feel supported when they experience fear or anxiety and for
leaders to model the emotional self-regulation necessary to operate effectively at work. In
addition, seven participants explicitly related this subprocess to the company’s productivity and
the employees’ human capital.
Like the other subspaces, participants’ perceptions of the meaning of this space changed
based on their hierarchical level. For example, frontline workers expected their supervisor to
contain their fear of making mistakes at work, their anxiety about expressing their opinion, and
their fears stemming from personal life situations. Two frontline workers shared how support
from their supervisor was crucial to adapting to their new positions and developing their
productivity. One said, “When I started, I brought up many personal issues that caused me
anxiety, and I did feel much support from her supervisor’s name . I felt that there was someone
49

who listened to me, asked me questions, and was interested in me.” Aother participant explained,
“This is the first time I have worked, and the advice that [my supervisor  gave me helped me
solve my work problems, but it also helped my life and for my future even if I went to work
somewhere else.” Another frontline worker compared her relationships with her former and
current bosses to explain how emotional support was essential for developing her skills. She said
in her previous job, she “s[stood] out for being the one who sells the best” because, among other
things, she was not afraid to ask her boss questions to learn something new “because I knew he
would answer me with love.” She explained, on the contrary, it had taken her longer than she
thought to learn a new critical process of her position because her current supervisor could not
control the employee’s emotions. She said, “I’m afraid of rejection; it makes me feel insecure. I
am already an insecure person, and having him as my boss makes me triple insecure. It is awful.”
For managers, emotional containment had to do with the friendliness of the leader. One
manager said much of what he learned about leadership had to do with a leader from his previous
job who was “super nice. He supported me in everything; he understood me in everything, like a
mother. He sat next to me to check my progress and invited me to go for a beer. I think that’s my
leadership culture.”
For top managers, emotional containment did not arise in the dyad but in various
company processes. One referred to emotional contention as the systematic monitoring of the
leader’s empathy level and space in weekly alignment meetings. He said emotional containment
is about “having spaces in meetings in which we say how we feel no matter how long it lasts 5
minutes. We express our emotions.” Likewise, two other top managers referred to emotional
support as “a place to turn to in the company,” referring to a team or department that could assist
50

them if needed. One said, “I am a new leader, and I have the support of human resources to
learn.”
This finding about emotional containment affirms that emotions must be expressed for
engagement at work (Clark & Estes, 2008) and that one of the critical social faculties of Latino
companies is to develop the internal capacity to contain employees’ emotions. Latino companies
need to create social faculties (Neace, 2004) to moderate social problems and be competitive
(Pirson & Lawrence, 2010). In this case, the participants shared productivity and human capital
were enhanced when the company contained employees’ emotions, at the dyad and company
levels, implying spaces for emotional containment in Latin companies, rather than being a
luxury, are vital to achieving business objectives.
The significance of emotional containment at work aligns with two aspects of PCA. The
first aspect is unconditionality. As mentioned previously, the first type of relationship that
promotes professional and personal development includes empathy. The second aspect is
empathy. Rogers (1958) explained the most effective facilitators and therapists are those who can
validate all the emotions that the follower experiences, so they can trust and accept the internal
experience and thus release actualizing tendencies. Actualizing tendency refers to human beings’
innate capacities to develop their maximum potential (Rogers, 1951). As the participants shared,
it would be relevant, on the one hand, to promote programs that develop the empathic
relationship in the dyad, measure the leaders’ empathy level, and open corporative spaces—
formal and informal—for the expression and containment of emotions.
Validating Space
A validating space is a space in which the employee feels their supervisor or company
validates their emotions, considers them capable and essential, is interested in their personal life,
51

listens to them, and attends to their needs. It is also a space where, as a participant mentioned,
“there is absolute freedom from how you dress and behave.” As in the emotional containment
subspace, the higher the employee is in the hierarchy, the more they perceived validation
occurred through the company’s processes. On the contrary, in the lower the employee is in the
hierarchy, the more they associated this space with the dyad.
The validating space was mentioned by 13 participants, and eight of those participants
gave responses related to the research questions on company productivity. A top manager
explained she felt validated because the company provided her with resources to assist with her
personal life issues. She explained she felt seen “with the coaching sessions to achieve the goals,
maybe not so much at the company level, but personal goals that I have.” She said this validation
helped her feel more productive. In this same sense, a manager said her motivation increased
when the company sent a survey “so that each one could share their values and based on this,
create the values of the company and not just do them from above.” The survey made her feel
that the company took her into account for her processes, which was motivating.
The frontline workers explained how validation and listening occurred in the dyad. One
participant stressed the importance of her supervisor listening to her so that her work would
improve daily. She said, “If my supervisor didn’t listen to me, or if she said no to everything I
proposed, without even seeing if there were a chance, my job would be stagnant.” Another
frontline worker explained she felt empowered and recognized because she had a boss who had
great confidence in her abilities, so much so that he assigned her projects that, in other teams,
would usually have been given to a man with more experience. She said,
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My boss gave me jobs that may be for older men. He always empowered me. He always
thought, ‘She can. She can. She can.’ He always put me forward. It is something that I am
very grateful for because he believed in me.
The participants thought the company’s productivity was furthered when the company
and the dyad trusted, recognized, and respected the employee’s abilities, which is in line with the
idea that Latin companies that support a PCA have a competitive advantage in global markets, as
compared to the competitiveness of companies that have a productivity-centered approach
(Ciulla, 2019; Elvira & Dávila, 2005; Guthey & Jackson, 2011).
This finding aligns with one of the premises of the PCA. In the PCA, the type of
relationship that promotes the development of people’s maximum potential is the relationship
that promotes unconditionality, understood as the ability to respect the person’s self-
determination. The person makes the best decisions when they have self-determination (Joseph,
2020). Clark and Estes (2008) said a person’s motivation increases when they feel they control
how they do their job.
Affective Connection Space
According to 11 participants, the subspace for affective connection was the fourth most
mentioned subprocess. Seven related this subspace to the human capital of the employees. The
participants described the affective connection as a space for interaction, usually informal,
organized by the company or by informal teams with the sole purpose of connecting emotionally
with coworkers. These spaces for connection could be given in many modalities. The
relationship could be developed at lunches with colleagues, inside or outside the office, in
WhatsApp groups to talk about nonwork issues, in sports activities, in meetings, or in
workshops, talks, or teambuilding that had nothing to do with the development of job skills.
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The participants who most talked about this space were the frontline workers. They
explained this space occurred mainly at the team level. The only formal connection space at the
company level, to which three of the six frontline workers referred, was a face-to-face emotional
intelligence training that the company implemented at the end of the previous year, where
several employees traveled to meet in Buenos Aires, Argentina. One participant commented,
“That trip affected me positively because now I know everyone, and they are all excellent
friends. This encourages me a lot to commit to my work.” All other frontline workers indicated
affective connection happened in informal spaces in teams. A frontline worker illustrated how
affective bonds occurred in informal spaces at the team level:
We go to lunch, laugh, tell anecdotes, and talk about the football game, which helps to
have a good group and climate. For me, it is very important because that later is reflected
in how each one works and the desire they put into their work.
Another frontline worker illustrated how affective connections continued outside the company:
I have three WhatsApp groups with different guys from the company, and we chat
about everything except the company. I don’t know if this gives you soft skills, but like it
or not, it’s a breeding ground for you to grow in all this human and social side.
In addition to being in line with Clark and Estes’s (2008) work about emotionally positive
environments supporting motivation, this finding is also in line with the high contact and
affection Latino employees expect in the workplace. As explained in Chapter 2, affectivity and
high contact are the usual mechanisms that Latino employees use to generate the trust and
flexibility necessary to operate effectively (Davila & Elvira, 2005). This was well illustrated by
the participants when they explained that the space they have outside the office to connect
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emotionally is what allows them to trust their colleagues more and thus be more productive in
their work.
The participants perceived the affective connection at the team level, which is important
for companies in two ways. One, high contact and affection are mechanisms with which Latino
employees build trust and generate efficiency (Dávila & Elvira, 2012). As Dávila and Elvira
(2005) explained, affection and high contact provide the trust and flexibility required to operate
efficiently. Because of this requirement, these two indicators should be assessed and used to
promote corporate strategies that further facilitate the team connection. Two, most participant
who referred to this space were frontline workers, which is a symptom of the independence of
this subprocess in the PCLP. In other words, this ecosystem of relationships is kept alive because
of the frontline workers’ team, regardless of the company’s leaders or processes. Frontline
workers develop many socioemotional skills in this space, and the company is a nondirective
facilitator.
Work-Life Balance Space
The last often mentioned subprocess was the space for life and career balance. Seven
participants described this subprocess, and five—particularly the managers—pointed to it as a
determining factor of productivity. In this subprocess, the company provides resources that
facilitate remote work and commits itself to providing spaces so that its employees effectively
have a balanced life and are not, as a manager said, “workaholics.” A manager shared that
flexibility is important because “if companies don’t provide a good work environment, a little
more flexible, then people won’t stay. It is losing that talent that you trained. Either we are cool
people, or we will die at the level of human talent.”
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Participants perceived this subspace as a company process. For example, a manager
explained the company should monitor employees’ work-life balance to increase their
productivity. She also commented that it was imperative that the company allowed her “to have
personal time and that not everything is just working. … I can think better and be more creative.”
Likewise, another participant said, “I feel terrific if I play sports and see my friends and my
family. I think that is very important. If one is not well with oneself, it will be reflected in how
one works.”
Another manager highlighted that it is crucial for leaders to be consistent and set an
example of life balance. She shared she had had leaders who “drank a lot, didn’t exercise, didn’t
eat well, and had nothing else to do with their lives other than work,” which was demotivating
for her because they were not referents of the company values nor of work-life balance. She
added when she did not find this congruence in leaders, it was more difficult for her to “share
more of her personal life to create a good work environment.”
Some participants commented that the company needs to promote flexibility, meaning
employees can manage how they distribute their time and activities and can take a day off rest
after intense work periods. As one manager said, the company can promote “the Flexi Friday that
is used in some places to have more personal time in which you can have lunch with your
family.” Flexibility implies employees can work remotely when the person so requires it. It
involves having the opportunity to choose between working from a preferred location or working
from the company’s office. A same manager said, during the pandemic, “it was great that my
company  set up an office because working 24/7 with your family is not good for you. Having a
place to go to work and socialize with other people was great.”
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Finally, one manager added that balancing personal and professional space meant that the
company “gives you facilities” to “make a delivery and things like that that are time-consuming”
and thus stay more focused on work. This manager gave the example of companies in Colombia
that, as an initiative for work-life balance, gave their employees the benefit of doing errands for
them and thus helping them make their time at work more productive. Another manager also
gave a similar example and said that “a benefit that some companies in Argentina give” is giving
subsidies to pay electricity and internet bills in the homes of employees so that they could have
better connectivity conditions.
This finding is aligned with Bloom et al. (2015) and Gashi et al. (2022). Bloom et al.
explicated that a satisfying remote work experience promotes productivity under certain
conditions. Gashi et al. explained the effectiveness of remote work depends on the employee’s
ability to self-manage, set goals and achieve the desired performance, which may be why
managers emphasized the need for this space. Managers might find this subspace helps them be
more productive because they have the self-management skills that remote work demands. Thus,
the company could promote remote work as a tool to increase the company’s productivity, when
employees have self-management capacities.
This finding is also in line with Kelliher et al. (2019), who underlined that work-life
balance is a corporate practice that promotes employee motivation and job satisfaction and
requires the support of leaders to be implemented effectively. In this sense, as the participants
explained, the company requires processes that facilitate and monitor work-life balance, and
leaders must be an example and promoters of said balance.
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PCPL Facilitators
The second main finding of this study, with 132 mentions, is about PCLP enablers. The
participants identified four PCLP catalysts, which will be called facilitators. The facilitators
propel the PCLP, and the PCLP propels productivity and human capital. Two facilitators involve
perceived characteristics of leaders, and the other two involve company work processes.
As with the subprocesses, the four facilitators operate at two company levels. The two
most important are located at the dyad level, and the next two are processes that occur at the
company level. The participants associated some facilitators with the first research question, and
others with the second research question. Table 5 shows the number of employees who
mentioned the facilitator and the number of employees who related facilitators to productivity or
human capital. Also, each of the following subsections will specify which facilitator is related to
the company’s productivity and which to the development of the employee’s human capital (see
Table 6).

Table 5
Level of Analysis at Which Facilitators Operate
Level of
Analysis
Frontline worker Manager Top Manager
Company Training
Accountability system
Training
Accountability system
Training
Accountability system
Team Role model leaders
Dyad Role model leaders
Emotionally
intelligent leaders
Role model leaders
Emotionally intelligent
leaders
Emotionally intelligent
leaders

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Table 6
Numbers of Employees Who Responded to the Facilitator and Who Related to the Facilitator
PCLP facilitators n Number of employees
who perform this
element with
Productivity (RQ1)
Number of employees
who related this
element to Human
Capital (RQ2)
Role model leaders 15 3 9
Emotional intelligent leaders 15 6 5
Training 14 5 12
Accountability system 13 9 5

Role Model Leaders
All 15 participants mentioned role model leaders, and nine related it to employees’
human capital. Except for a top manager, all participants referred to a role model leader as a
person who, due to credibility, generated inspiration and confidence in followers. According to
the participants, role model leaders have four characteristics: (a) knowledge, intelligence, and
experience, (b) credibility, (c) accessibility and transparency, and (d) resilience.
The first characteristic—knowledge, intelligence, and experience—of role model leaders
refers to the reader’s understanding and ability to succeed in the industry. A manager said the
leader who had inspired him the most “was a reference and super speaker. He was everywhere.
The guy is un duro. He was the one I learned the most about how the industry moves, how to
handle everything.” A frontline worker said his company’s leaders were “very selected people,
very prepared in their field, very good on what they do. As they generate much confidence.”
A frontline worker described the role model leader as someone who knows how to solve
problems and whose intelligence helps her followers to challenge their paradigms. Another
frontline worker said the leader who had most impacted her life “taught her to be very resolute.
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He helped me a lot to grow that part of the analysis. He taught me to see what a problem was
like, how to solve it, how to deal with it.” She added a role model leader is inspiring because
they are “a person who is constantly training, studying … is brilliant and has a prominent
career.”
The leader’s credibility refers to the leader’s ability to fulfill promises and a genuine
desire to help followers. A frontline worker said his leaders “really want all the employees to be
happy, to be well. The company’s leaders are reenfocados [laser focused] on each having room
to grow. They feel good that each one feels fulfilled.” Finally, a top manager commented leaders
are “people who care first about the person and then about the results. People who are
transparent and sincere. People with whom you can reach an agreement at any point.”
With accessibility and transparency, participants referred to leaders expressing their
genuine emotions and clearly and honestly describing what is happening in a company. A
frontline worker said she trusted her leader because he “always tells us everything that is
happening transparently.” Likewise, a manager explained she had a leader who did not explain
things to the team. When one day she decided to “open up and explain why each person was
assigned with specific tasks and the process behind that role distribution, it was astonishing. …
That process design  would have never occurred to us.”
Accessibility refers to leaders being available to clarify doubts and to have casual
conversations about personal lives, without regard to their hierarchy. A frontline worker said that
his supervisor
is Divino [lovely, charismatic]. You drink a whiskey or a Mate [popular type of tea in
Argentina] with him while chatting. He is a person who seems super nice, super
permissive, and super open. As a leader, he is amazing.
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Resilience was defined as the constant leader’s desire to progress professionally,
financially, and personally. A top manager said his company’s leaders “are always working on
themselves, on being better leaders and being better people, which inspires and leads to an
increasingly better environment in which to develop a business, which ultimately leads to good
results.”
The perceived characteristics of the leader are not the company’s epicenter of change.
The leader is a facilitator of the leadership process, facilitating the development of the
employees’ human capital, aligning with the literature that views leadership as a process rather
than an individual’s personality traits (Day, 2011; Day & Liu, 2019).
The archetype of role model leaders can moderate the effects of the low-trust culture that
can impede Latino companies’ performance. The role model leader, according to the perception
of the participants, is a standard of what proper leader conduct means. van den Akker et al.
(2009) said the more the leader behaves in a way that employees feel is appropriate and ethical,
the more trust they generate in followers and the company. A lack of confidence is a major
obstacles to the performance of Latino companies (Neace, 2004), and the role model leader can
assist the employee trust rehabilitation. This standard of leader conduct can be a helpful
framework for designing leadership training programs to increase employee and team confidence
versus creating rigid control systems.
Emotionally Intelligent Leaders
All 15 participants mentioned the relevance of the emotional intelligence of leaders. This
facilitator relates to the first and the second research question. Six participants related this
facilitator to productivity and five to human capital.
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According to the 15 participants, a leader is emotionally intelligent when they can self-
regulate their emotions, regulate the emotions of their followers, and empower their followers. A
frontline worker said the leader who had the most negatively affected her “did not know how to
handle anxiety and made you and the rest of the team feel anxious and pressured. It was tough to
deal with that person.” She explained, on the contrary, “a good leader has to convey confidence
and tranquility to her employees and not anxiety, despair, problems. A good leader does not let
her problems affect her job or her team.”
Another characteristic of emotionally intelligent leaders is humility. The participants’
first definition of humility was the leader’s ability to be vulnerable. A manager said, “A good
leader shows his vulnerability. He has like an ability to show his vulnerability but at the same
time does not make it look like a weakness.” A humble leader’s second characteristic is listening
and receiving feedback, without wanting to be correct. A humble leader can learn from new
points of view. A top manager described his peers and said, “Although the top managers are the
ones who respond for their department, they have the humility to be able to ask, to be able to ask
for advice, to be able to take opinions from others.”
A third characteristic of the humble leader is they know their responsibility toward their
teams and the tremendous impact they can generate in the company. A top manager said, “for
me, the leader is the one who is most responsible … because he is the one who makes the drastic
decisions, he is the one who proposes the strategies, he is the one who transmits calm to his team
in times of crisis.” This significantly aligns with what Higgs and Rowland (2010) share that
conscious leaders are fully aware of their role in change processes in the company.
All 15 participants referenced the emotionally intelligent leader as a PCPL facilitator,
indicating the importance of this skill for Latino company leaders. The emotionally intelligent
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leader archetype and the role model leader archetype could help Latino companies outline their
leaders’ job profiles. This profile can be a reference for several vital company processes (e.g.,
recruitment, selection, promotion, development, and evaluation).
These findings the paradigm that paternalistic leadership is an effective style in Latin-
American, regardless of company culture (Martinez, 2003). According to the participants, the
characteristics of the leader that most facilitate PCPL involve the abilities to be vulnerable and to
receive feedback. Vulnerability and openness to feedback openness are the opposite of
authoritarianism and overprotection, which are often paternalistic leaders’ strategies to gain
followers’ loyalty (Castaño et al., 2015; Pellegrini & Scandura, 2008).
Finally, this finding of the emotionally intelligent leader affirms Pellegrini and Scandura
(2006)’s claim that paternalism tends to exist when the company has an equity gap. Promoting
emotional intelligence offers an alternative to paternalism and can be a strategy to reduce the
equity gap in Latino companies and Latino society.
Training
All participants, without exception, mentioned the training is essential for constructing
the PCPL, and 12 related this resource to developing human capital. What varied in participants’
responses was the type of training that each level perceived as ideal. For example, all five top
managers emphasized that one-on-one coaching was the training that was helping them most
develop their skills. One top manager said, “One-on-one coaching is basically the best tool” for
developing their skills. A top manager said coaching allowed him to see a circumstance and see
himself from different perspectives: “It’s like looking at a tree and suddenly being able to see the
whole forest.” Likewise, all top managers stressed the importance of the company providing
technical and socioemotional training to all employees. A top manager said it “seems extremely
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important to do training in the company. It is a win-win for both parties, for the company and the
employee, and motivates the person.”
Different than the top managers, one manager explained the most important thing to learn
was that the leader gave her tools to develop skills and encouraged her to apply said tools, later
evaluating whether the application was effective. She said it was important that leaders “give you
those tools that would be good for you to know … give you access to courses … give you some
exercise to practice and give you feedback of how well was your implementation.”
A frontline worker explained the training she found most effective helped her understand
the principles of crucial processes. She said, “For all of us to become managers, we must fully
understand all the platforms we run in the company.” She added she had not known how to give
adequate attention to her clients for 4 weeks, and she solved it when she first learned how to
classify them according to their behavior patterns. She said,
The clients hadn’t paid attention to me for a month, so I made a list and said, okay, I’ll
start with this client, then this client, because I know he answers late … and so I went
with all of them, and the truth is that I finished everything perfectly. … Everything that
weighed me down in a month, if I had done it that way, maybe I would have gotten it
done a long time ago.
This finding highlights the importance of training for developing Latino employees’
human capital. Of the facilitators, all 15 participants only agreed on training and emotional
intelligence; however, there were differences in expectations of training between hierarchical
level. The higher in the hierarchy the employee was, the more abstract the expected knowledge
was, and the lower the hierarchy, the more concrete. For example, the top manager who said he
learned to “see the forest” said that one-on-one coaching helped him develop metacognitive
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learning. Metacognitive knowledge involves self-knowledge, strategic knowledge, and
knowledge about cognitive tasks (Anderson et al., 2001). The managers agreed ideal training
would provide them with procedural and conceptual knowledge. According to Anderson et al.
(2001), procedural knowledge involves learning how to do something and the criteria for
effectively using a tool or skill. The conceptual knowledge has to do with how the elements of a
process are interrelated. Lastly, frontline workers hoped training would help them develop
factual knowledge that has to do with identifying the essential elements to build a skill.
Accountability System
The accountability system, according to the participants, is a work process and an
organizational structure that makes it possible to clarify the company’s vision and individual
objectives, receive systematic feedback, and have performance evaluations. Although 13 of the
15 participants mentioned this system as an essential enabler of PCPL, nine indicated
accountability is a driver of company productivity. Perceptions of the accountability system
varied according to the hierarchy.
A top manager highlighted that accountability for productivity
has to do with having an efficient organizational structure in which the accountability
system is very clear and in which the processes flow to avoid that if “someone leaves the
company  they leave a big hole in the organizational structure . It is to think more about
the organization than the individual being.
Three other top managers mentioned the importance of performance assessments, especially
leadership assessments, to increase productivity. Three others highlighted an accountability
system that must be standardized in all areas to be effective. A top manager said, “The
standardization of an accountability system can help us grow the company’s productivity.” Two
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mentioned the importance of having a clear vision: “In my case [productivity] is understanding
the north, the vision,” allowing career plans to be designed to stimulate productivity.
Emphasizing vision, a manager also commented productivity is achieved “by motivating
yourself with a more 360 vision of the company and knowing where it is headed. Like making
the company’s objectives very clear to you, where it is going.” In this same vain, a frontline
worker also added, “If it’s not clear what you’re looking for, it’s like you start to lose a lot of
productivity because you waste time thinking about where you want to go.” As can be seen, for
the three levels, top managers, managers, and frontline workers, having a clear vision is essential
for productivity.
For some frontline workers, productivity had more to do with “clarity in the specific
objectives of the day.” “I believe that the most important thing to achieve productivity is clarity
of objectives. But not long-term goals, but daily goals.” Other participants added that support
and clarity of objectives are required for productivity. One frontline worker said productivity “is
somewhere between support and clarity of objectives. For me, it is about creating the neatest
environment so that the person can be as productive as possible.” Other frontline workers added
that productivity was directly related to feedback:
I would not want to continue to be proactive if there is no feedback. Feedback empowers
me to want to continue growing and to improve the company because I know that on the
other side, there will always be a good answer, even if it is yes or no.
Another participant added, “Each feedback motivates me. If you are improving the things that
[the leader] marked you, it means that you listened to him and were able to make a change.”
One last aspect highlighted by one manager and one frontline worker to increase
productivity is that the accountability system must measure the employee’s results and not work
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hours. A manager commented, “Even before the pandemic, in the digital marketing field, we
worked all remotely, demanding a certain minimum amount of work hours has not been valid for
a long time. We work for goals.” Three frontline workers emphasized that it was vital for them to
receive constant feedback on their performance.
The first important thing about this finding is that Latin companies are aligned with
several U.S. studies about the effectiveness of accountability systems in promoting company
performance. For example, Kirkpatrick and Kirkpatrick (2016) said processes that reinforce,
monitor, encourage, and reward performance increase behaviors that connect to productivity.
Likewise, Kluger and DeNisi (1996) stated systematic and concrete feedback and clear and
challenging objectives facilitate outstanding employee performance.
The accountability system described by the participants could be another critical
instrument for increasing the company’s productivity and acting as a social rehabilitation in
Latin American. According to Dubnick (2003) and Biesta (2004), there is a close relationship
between accountability and ethics. Creating an accountability system with the features that the
participants pointed out could serve, together with the role model leaders, as an essential vehicle
to counteract the trend of unethical practices in the company due to corruption, common in the
Latino context (Lord et al., 2017).
This finding is another challenge to the paradigm of paternalistic leadership as an
efficient approach for Latino companies. Participants in this study had expectations of
accountability. They underlined that their participation in an efficient accountability system
would help them be productive. On the contrary, the employees participating in the paternalistic
process are looking for their leader to obviate their inefficiency.
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Conclusion
The following section discusses how the main findings of this study and informs answers
to the two research questions.
Leadership Process to Enhance the Productivity of Latino Companies
As seen in Table 7, the leadership process that most increases the productivity of Latino
companies is made up of three subprocesses and two facilitators.
The productivity of Latino companies is facilitated when the leadership process has a
PCA which, among other things, implies the employee has an ecosystem to develop self-agency.
Self-agency usually occurs when the employee feels seen, heard, and validated. In this sense, the
unconditional nature of the PCA is an essential type of relationship that can help employees
reach their full potential.
The company’s productivity is positively affected when the leadership process eases the
employee’s experience of being emotionally contained. This finding highlights the role of
employees’ emotions in company productivity and underlines the importance of Latino
companies developing the internal capacity to contain the feelings of their employees. According
to the participants, one way to develop the emotional containment company faculty is through
leadership programs that facilitate the development of empathy.

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Table 7
Characteristics of the Leadership Process That Most Increases the Productivity of Latino Companies
PCPL components How the PCPL component enhances company productivity
RQ1. How is the perception of
leadership increases Latino
companies’ productivity?

Employees perceive that the leadership that most increases the productivity of
Latin American companies is the Person-Centered-Leadership-Process (PCPL),
which is a dynamic, complex and independent ecosystem of social influence that
occurs in the company and that makes it easier for employees reach their full
potential. It consists of three main processes and is moderated by two facilitators.
Key
processes
Validating space It is a process that allows them to feel that their emotions are validated, in which
they recognize their capacity, in which they consider it important, in which they
are interested in their personal life, listen to them and attend to their needs. The
level that best facilitates this process is the Company for Top Managers and
Managers and the dyad for Frontline workers.
Emotional
containment space
It is a process that allows them to feel that they contain their fears and in which
they receive support to work on their personal issues.
The level that best facilitates this process is the Company for Top Managers and
the dyad for Managers and Frontline workers.
Work-life balance
space
It is a process that allows them to have the resources to combine e-work with
face-to-face work, which allows them to have the flexibility to choose their hours
and location and have time for their personal life. The level that best facilitates
this process is the company for managers.
Facilitators Emotional
intelligent leaders
People who can self-regulate emotionally and who can be humble; that is, that
they can be violated and be open to feedback.
Accountability
system
System that allows having a clear structure, vision, general and specific
objectives and systematic feedback.

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The leadership process that facilitates a satisfactory experience of remote work and work-
life balance promotes company productivity, especially for employees with self-management
capacities. Leaders act as models and mentors in this leadership process, and the company
provides remote work and work-life balance resources (e.g., employee self-regulating skill
assessment, work-life balance satisfaction monitoring, a physical office, and financial aids to
help with personal chores).
Finally, the leader’s emotional intelligence and effective accountability moderates the
leadership process that promotes the company’s productivity. Each participant agreed the
leader’s ability to emotionally self-regulate and regulate others is instrumental for productivity.
The leader’s emotional intelligence is so crucial in the PLCP that the company’s central
operations must align with this competence.
Participants perceived the leadership process for productivity is facilitated by an
accountability system that allows for a clear organizational structure, vision, business and
performance objectives, and systematic feedback. The accountability system can also serve as a
company trust rehabilitator and questions paternalism’s effectiveness.
Leadership Processes to Enhances the Development of the Human Capital of Latino
Employees
As shown in Table 8, the leadership process that most help the development of human
capital is made up of three subprocesses and three facilitators.

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Table 8
Characteristics of the Leadership Process That Most Develop Latino Employees’ Human Capital
PCPL Components How the PCPL Component Enhances Employee Human Capital
RQ2. How is the perception of
leadership that most develops
employees’ human capital?
Employees perceive that the leadership that most develops the human capital of Latino employees is
the Person-Centered-Leadership-Process (PCPL), which is a dynamic, complex, and independent
ecosystem of social influence that occurs in the company to facilitate employees to reach their full
potential. It consists of three main processes and is moderated by three facilitators.
Key
processes
Iteration space It is a process that allows them to feel confident enough to increase the sense of agency of their
mistakes and their learning.
The level that best facilitates this process is the Company for Top Managers and Managers and the
dyad for Frontline workers.
Emotional
containment space
It is a process that allows them to feel that they contain their fears and in which they receive support to
work on their personal issues.
The level that best facilitates this process is the Company for Top Managers and the dyad for
Managers and Frontline workers.
Affective
connection space
It is a decentralized process, mostly of an informal nature that allows the employee to feel high contact
and affect with their peers.
The level that best facilitates this process is the Team for Frontline workers.
Facilitators Role model leaders People who, due to their credibility, generated inspiration and confidence in their followers. They have
four characteristics: they have knowledge, intelligence and experience, credibility, accessibility and
transparency, and resilience.
Emotionally
intelligent leaders
People who can self-regulate emotionally and who can be humble; that is, that they can be violated and
be open to feedback.
Training The higher the hierarchy, the more abstract the expected knowledge, and the lower the hierarchy,
the more concrete the expected knowledge.
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The leadership process that most facilitates the development of the human capital of
Latino employees is an environment for employees to iterate. In this environment, led by the
dyad and the company, employees feel free and confident to make mistakes and learn from them,
propelling employees’ senses of agency. This environment where it is safe to iterate represents
an effective and economical alternative to rigid and bureaucratic control systems, typically used
in Latin companies. Companies use these control systems to compensate for the ineptitude and
dishonesty that companies believe their employees have.
Employee human capital is potentiated when the leadership process prepares the dyad and
the company to function as employee’s emotional containment agents. Based on the perception
of the participants, emotional containment, among other things, is an instrument to increase
equity and inclusion in the company because it helps the employee to see in their leader (or to
find in a company process) a friendly companion who helps them connect with their inner
experience and navigate life.
Thirdly, the leadership process increases employee human capital when it allows teams,
predominantly frontline workers, to self-manage the development of their soft skills through
informal, affective, and high-contact interaction inside and outside the company. Because
affection and high contact provide the trust and flexibility required to perform in Latin America
efficiently, this environment could serve as another trust rehabilitator company device.
Lastly, three factors moderate employee human capital’s optimal leadership process. The
first two are leader standards of conduct: (a) role models and (b) emotionally intelligent leaders.
These archetypes guide how the leader should participate in the leadership process to promote
the employees’ human capital. A leader does not contribute to the effective leadership process
unless, according to the participants, they have these two characteristics. The role model standard
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of conduct suggests leaders be resilient, seek constant training, and seek to impact the industry
positively. Further, the ethically intelligent leader’s behavior standard means that leaders self-
regulate their emotions and be humble. Consequently, these behavioral patterns can serve as
guidelines for key company processes (e.g., leadership development programs, career path
design, performance assessments, etc.).
Finally, training is the third facilitator, and all the participants agreed it affects the
leadership process that develops human capital. The training efficiency depends on the type of
knowledge each hierarchical level needs. The higher the employee is in the hierarchy, the more
abstract the expected knowledge, and the lower the hierarchy, the more concrete the expected
knowledge. Thus, it is crucial to design training programs by levels that develop different
knowledge types.

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Chapter Five: Discussion and Recommendations
This study was an exploration of how employees’ perceptions of the leadership process
relate to productivity and human capital in Latino companies. The first section of this chapter
discusses the findings presented in Chapter 4. The second and third sections describe
recommendations for practice and research. The last section is the conclusion.
Discussion of Findings
As presented in Chapter 4, the leadership that positively affects the Latin American
company’s productivity and the employee’s human capital is the PCPL, which is an ecosystem
of social influence dynamic, complex, and independent that occurs in the company and enables
employees to reach their full potential. The PCPL is comprised of five subprocesses—(a)
iteration space, (b) validation space, (c) emotional containment space, (d) effective connection
space, and (e) work-life balance space—moderated by four facilitators: (a) role model leaders,
(b) emotionally intelligent leaders, (c) accountability, and (d) training.
This study aligns with the critical literature that explains leadership is not a set of
personality characteristics of an individual but rather a complex and independent process, with
multiple elements interacting at multiple levels. In this sense, the two types of leaders (i.e., role
model and emotionally intelligent) whom participants described are not the direct triggers of
productivity or human capital but moderators of the leadership process. They positively affect
the productivity of the company and the human capital of the employees in interrelation with the
other factors of the leadership process.
Just as leaders do not have linear relationships with the productivity of Latino companies
or with the human capital of employees, no other element of the leadership process has a direct
effect if it operates in isolation. For example, the effectiveness of a new training program or
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accountability system depends on its prior existence and alignment with the dynamic and
complex PCPL ecosystem. For this reason, it is unsurprising that, as Holland (2016) mentioned,
only 10% of corporate training is effective. Holland explained the inefficiency of corporate
training has nothing to do with the quality of the content of the training programs if not with the
lack of organizational conditions to ease the application of the new learning.
As observed in the findings, the accountability system, training, and physical resources
for work-life balance (e.g., work-office and benefits) are the only three “hard” PCPL
components: (a) resources, (b) systems, or (c) structures of the company. The other six
components are forms of (a) interpersonal relationships, (b) identities, and (c) behaviors. This is
perhaps one of the most critical findings because it aligns with studies that explain Latino
companies need to be social rehabilitation centers to operate efficiently (Pirson & Lawrence,
2010) and implies the leadership process that increases productivity and human capital in Latin
America is mainly a socioaffective process that allows, above all, improvement in the person’s
sense of agency. The sense of agency, in this context and based on Bandura’s (2006) definition,
is the ability felt by the Latino employee to effectively self-manage their performance and
learning.
These findings affirm levels of analysis are essential for research and the practice of
leadership (Dhin et al., 2014; Gronn, 2011; Yammarino & Dionne, 2019) in Latino companies.
As was observed throughout the findings, the subprocesses and the facilitators of the PCPL were
perceived differently at each level of the hierarchy.
Recommendations for Practice
The following section presents the recommendations of this study. It is essential to make
two clarifications before presenting the recommendations. The first recommendation is the
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person-centered leadership program, which is an organizational change program to develop the
PCPL. This leadership program has a considerable degree of complexity because it responds to
the PCPL, which is a highly complex ecosystem. Because the PCPL operates at multiple levels
of the organization, with multiple processes and facilitators, the organizational change program
recommended in this study also performs at multiple levels and responds to the multiple
processes and facilitators, which participants indicated.
The recommendation will be presented in seven sections. The first section is the general
description of the program. The second section describes the internal department that will lead
the program. The third represents the programs accountability and evaluation system. The fourth
is the program’s philosophical and theoretical framework. The fifth presents the leadership style
the program seeks to develop. The next section is about the general guidelines of the program
training. The last section concerns the skills the program aims to expand, to build the capacity for
change.
The second clarification is that due to the program’s complexity, this study relied on the
McKinsey 7S model of Peters and Waterman (1980) for the design and presentation of the
recommendations. In two principal ways, this model aligns with the findings. First, the
McKinsey 7S model has based on the premise that a company’s capacity to navigate through
change successfully depends on the alignment of seven dynamic, simultaneous hard and soft
processes. The model’s multiplicity and alignment of dynamic processes echo the PCPL nature;
both imply the interaction and alignment of interdependent, dynamic, and complex processes that
enable company change.
As can be seen in Table 9, the seven elements of the McKinsey 7S model are (a) the
organizational change strategy, (b) adequate organizational structure, (c) the required systems to
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implement the strategy, (d) shared values, (e) style, (f) staff, and (g) skills. The hard components
are strategy, structure, and systems. Shared values refer to the company’s principles that guide
the change process. The soft components—style, staff, and skills—have to do with which
leadership style will achieve the strategy and how best to develop and manage the employees and
the critical skills to execute the strategy.
Table 9
Elements of the McKinsey 7S Model and Critical Questions
McKensey 7S Components Key Questions for the Design of Each Element
Hard
Components
Strategy What do we need to do to solve the business problems?
What does the company have to do to achieve the
business objectives?
Structure What structure do we need to execute the strategy?
How is the company organized?
Systems What systems, processes and workflows are needed to
invent or execute the strategy?
What resources does the company have?
Central
Element
Shared
Value
Which of our principles helps us?
Why do we do what we do the way we do it?
What is the reputation of the company in the market?
What are our standards and expected behaviors?
Soft
Components
Style What leadership style and cultural qualities help us
achieve the strategy?
What is the company culture like?
Staff How can we help managers in their growth?
How is talent managed? How do they relate to each
other?
How to hire, train and retain our employees?
Skills What specific skills do we need to develop to achieve the
strategy?
What skills are valued most?
In which situations is it better to upskill, or in which
cases is it preferable to hire new talent?
Note. Adapted from In Search of Excellence: Lessons From America’s Best-Run Companies by
T. J. Peters & R. H. Waterman, 1982. Harper & Row. Copyright 1982 by T. J. Peters & R. H.
Waterman.
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The second central alignment between the PCPL and the McKensey 7S model is the
iterative nature of the model: the organizational change strategy requires constant updates, based
on the movements and responses that occur inside and outside the organization, to remain
effective. This is highly relevant because, the PCPL is a living leadership process—where all
processes are constantly changing—and the recommendations of this study are aimed at the
mobile digital marketing startup, in which this research was conducted. This company’s agility
and speed of change are at a high level for a startup, being in the digital marketing industry, and
operating in the socioeconomic context of Latin America, requiring a recommendation adjusted
to this dynamism and complexity.
General Recommendation: Person-Centered Leadership Program
The principal recommendation of this study is the person-centered leadership program.
The program’s central purpose is to increase the company’s productivity and develop the
employees’ human capital through a leadership process, including the five processes and the four
facilitators of the PCPL. The reason why the main recommendation is a leadership program and
not, for example, training, is because leadership development, from the points of view of the
participants in this study and from of many academics, a program implies the construction of a
system (Salas et al., 2012). As one frontline worker said, it means the structure of a “breeding
ground,” or a multifactorial, multilevel ecosystem. Latshaw and Shannon (2020) explained three
factors are required to achieve leadership maturity in a company: (a) organizational culture (e.g.,
knowledge-sharing, communication of the leadership model, exercising values), (b) leadership
design (e.g., the collaboration between HR and the business, retention of high potentials,
integration of career management), and (c) the design of the organization (e.g., team networks,
clarity in decision making).
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Strategy: Person-Centered Leadership Program
As Table 10 shows, the person-centered leadership program will have six main
characteristics. The first aspect of the program is that it will modify the structure of the company
by creating a People Department in charge of designing, implementing, and monitoring the
program’s effectiveness. Second, the program will design, implement, and monitor two systems:
(a) an accountability system called the enterprise operating system (EOS) and (b) Kirkpatrick’s
and Kirkpatrick four-level evaluation system. Third, the program must be aligned with the
business goals, company values, and PCA principles. Fourth, the leadership styles that the
program will seek to develop are emotionally intelligent and role model. Fifth, the training
design is based on the type of knowledge each hierarchical level requires. Sixth, the initial skills
to build the company’s capacity for change should be self-awareness in leaders and self-agency
in managers and frontline workers. Each item is explained in the following sections.
Structure: People Department
The person-centered leadership program involves creating an internal department that
effectively implements and monitors the program. One frontline worker explained, “An internal
team can greatly strengthen the work and also help us get to know each other better as people.”
Along the same lines, a top manager explained how an internal team for human development, led
by an expert, “in 4 or 5 months, would make a difference.” Eight out of 15 participants agreed
creating an internal human development team would allow them to manage the resources that
enhance the development space.
Griffiths et al. (2018) explained the world is increasingly digital, requiring organizations
to be agile and adaptable. They said to efficiently achieve this flexibility, simply improving a
training program or designing better life and career plans is not enough. They developed an
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entire ecosystem that stimulates learning on the flow composed of strategies, processes, and tools
integrated into business processes. In addition, that the department supports the creation of the
ecosystem, today, a People division plays a fundamental role in companies.
Table 10
Person-Centered Leadership Program Explained Through the McKinsey 7S Model
McKinsey 7S Components Key questions for the design of each element
Hard
components
Strategy Person-centered leadership program that implements the
PCPL to increase both the productivity of the
company and the human capital of the employees.
Structure People department that designs, implements and
monitors that the program increases productivity and
human capital, is aligned with the values and business
objectives of the company.
Systems EOS accountability system
Central
element
Shared
Value
Business goals
Company’s values
Person-centered approach
Soft
components
Style 1. Leader role model
2. Emotionally intelligent leader
Staff Training designed by type of knowledge for different
levels.
Space for affective connection led by Frontline workers.
Skills Leadership Skills
Soft Skills: Self-awareness
Hard Skills: Management of the EOS Accountability
System.
Management Skills
Soft Skills: Self-agency as managers and for work-life
balance.
Hard Skills: Management of the EOS Accountability
System.
Frontline Workers
Soft Skills: Self-agency
Hard Skills: Active participation in the EOS
Accountability System.

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Barber and Strack (2005) explained it is essential to have a People Team because human
resource management in humanistic companies is no longer a support unit and is instead a
central business process. These companies have people-oriented metrics, instead of capital-
oriented metrics (e.g., return on assets or equity), to measure productivity. Thus, the critical
resource of the company is no longer capital; it is the employee. Barber and Strack concluded
because companies do not own employees, another crucial function of humanistic companies is
to retain and motivate employees.
This recommendation includes creating the chief people officer (CPO) position, one
human resources manager, and one learning and development manager. In the first 6 months, the
company should hire three frontline employees to makeup the staff of the People Team.
This study suggests a CPO because it combines information from academic and
practitioner realms. According to the meta-analysis that Lacerenza et al. (2017) conducted,
combining academics with practitioners is highly effective because they can draw on science and
practice to make the best training and leadership decisions. In this sense, this study suggests
hiring a person with more than 10 years of experience in humanistic leadership consulting and
training and a doctorate in the field. This study also indicates that the CPO should be a
Millennial or have vast experience with Millennial leadership because more than 80% of the
company are from this generation.
Then, the suggestion is to hire a human resources manager to manage all the complex
processes of the program and align them with the hiring and personnel administration processes.
The development and learning manager would streamline operations of the program.
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Systems: Enterprise Operating System Accountability
The next aspect of the person-centered leadership program is that it involves the
implementation of an accountability system. As the participants and some studies pointed out, an
effective accountability system significantly enhances the productivity of companies (Burke,
2004). It is recommended that the accountability system for the person-centered leadership
program be the EOS. According to Wickman and Bower (2018), the EOS is an operating system
used by more than 50,000 companies and is designed explicitly for startups with 10 to 250
employees. The startup company in which this study was conducted had 65 employees.
Wickman and Bower explained this operating system is effective in startups because it facilitates
the alignment between business objectives, processes, data, and people, with simple and agile
methods.
The EOS is made up of six key components, and each of these components is executed
through different tools. As can be seen in Table 11, the key components are (a) vision, (b) data,
(c) processes, (d) traction, (e) issues, and (f) people, and each component is implemented through
one or two tools.
One of the first essential tools of the EOS for the person-centered leadership program is
the vision/traction organizer (V/TO), which clarifies, among other things, the values of the
company, its purpose, its goals, and its challenges in 1-, 3-, and 10-year increments. This tool is
essential for the program because, according to one participant, the company’s productivity has
to do with “understanding the north, the vision” and “making the company’s objectives very
clear.”
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Table 11
Components and Tools of the EOS Accountability System
Key component goals Implementation tools
Vision Ensure that the entire
company works to
achieve the same goals.
Vision/traction
organizer
(VT/O)

A document that allows the
definition of the values and goals of
the company.
People Ensuring you have the
right people in the right
job.
Accountability
organizational
chart
Organization chart that defines the
roles and the five most important
responsibilities of the position.
People analyzer: A quarterly
evaluation of performance and
alignment with the company’s
values.
Data Have visibility of the
progress of the company
and of the people with
quantifiable information.
Scorecard

It is a dashboard that contains
quantifiable information on how the
progress of each employee has been
week after week.
Issues Facilitate the
identification and joint
resolution of challenges
and internal or external
problems that arise in the
organization.
Issue list

List of the challenges to be analyzed
and resolved with the identify,
discuss, and solve (IDS)
methodology.
Processes Document the core
processes of the company
to ensure that they are
done in the best way.
Registration of
key processes

Explanatory diagrams of the
department workflow
Traction Implement discipline,
execution and
accountability
Rocks Priorities to 90 days.

L10 weekly
meetings
90-minute meeting that follows an
agenda that allows you to resolve
issues, connect the team and report
on the progress of the week’s tasks.

A second EOS tool relevant to the leadership program is the accountability organizational
chart. As a top manager said, the company’s productivity is increased with “an efficient
organizational structure, in which the accountability system is obvious.” Wickman and Bower
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(2018) explained that differently than an organizational chart, the accountability organization
chart defines the roles and the five most important responsibilities of the position, creates clear
lines of reporting and communication, helps people understand with whom they must work to
carry out tasks, and facilitates decision-making. of decisions.
The third relevant EOS tool is the people analyzer. According to Wickman and Bower
(2018), this tool unites the company’s values with the functions of each position. It is a tool used
by leaders and followers to assess, every 3 months, if the employee is a sponsor of the
company’s values and if they understand, want to, and can do their job. The people analyzer
responds to employees’ need for a performance assessment and a feedback system that allows
them to know “if you are improving the things that [the leader] marked you.”
The scorecard is recommended, so that frontline workers have “clarity in the specific
objectives of the day.” The Wickman and Bower (2018) explained the scorecard is a report that
includes three to five quantifiable measures of the fulfillment of the activities of the position.
Some typical metrics are numbers of sales appointments, frequencies of website visits, accounts
receivable balances, etc.
The fifth EOS tool recommended is weekly L10 meetings, 90-minute meetings the leader
conducts with their direct reports. This meeting has seven stages. The first stage is called
transition and lasts 5 minutes. The purpose of this section is to make personal contact. This space
can facilitate the emotional containment that one top manager defined as “having spaces in
meetings in which, even if it’s only 5 minutes, we express how we feel.”
Another relevant aspect of the L10 is that in the sixth stage, the employees identify,
discuss, and solve (IDS) the challenges or problems that arose during the week. In this space, the
team has 60 minutes to express their ideas and make decisions together. This section allows a
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weekly iteration space that responds to the need for “a space in which I can contribute my ideas,
and we also make decisions together.”
Shared Values
The fourth characteristic of the person-centered leadership program is that Rogers’
(1951) PCA will guide it the response to business objectives and company values. The principles
of PCA should guide the design and implementation of the program because PCA is the theory
that frames this study and because the findings frequently aligned with the principles of this
theory. For example, the first four PCPL subprocesses (i.e., iteration space, emotionally
containment space, validation space, and affective connection space) correspond to several usual
effects of PCA therapy and facilitation. According to Rogers (1961), several common effects of
PCA interventions are that the person can understand aspects of themself that they had
previously repressed, feel they can function more effectively, feel more like a person in the who
wants to convert, feel more self-confident, feel more authentic, have greater power of expression,
feel more understanding, and adapt well to problems.
The relationship between the findings and PCA also includes two facilitators highlighted
by the participants: the role model leader and the emotionally intelligent leader. Participants
explained role model leaders had the characteristic of being open and transparent and genuinely
wanting “everyone to have a place to grow” and to “feel fulfilled.” Rogers (1961) explained a
relationship, whether personal or professional, that liberates human potential is one in which one
of the parties has three characteristics: (a) genuineness and transparency, (b) unconditionality,
defined by the author as a “warm acceptance of and prizing of the other person as a separate
individual” (p. 186) and (c) empathy, which implies “a sensitive ability to see his world and
himself as he sees them” (p. 205). Numerous studies agree the PCA is a framework that helps
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organizations effectively develop person-centered leadership processes, coaching programs for
leaders, conflict management, managing resistance to change, and aligning employees with the
teams and the company (Joseph, 2020).
Another reason why PCA is recommended as the philosophical framework of the person-
centered leadership program is that it is based on peopling reach their full potential, when they
find a space of psychological safety to release their biases (Joseph, 2013). Rogers (1963) defined
the tendency to improve oneself as the inherent inertia of all living beings toward growth and
development. PCA interventions do not seek to impose or teach any knowledge or skill for the
person to achieve their goals. PCA interventions create a space in which the person feels
confident in learning and acting independently to reach their full potential.
The grand alignment of the PCA with the PCPL lies in that the five central components
of the PCPL are spaces: (a) iteration space, (b) emotional containment space, (c) validation
space, (d) affective connection space, and (e) work-life balance space. They are called spaces
because the participants described them as conditions, whether of the company, the team, or the
dyad, that allowed them to feel safe in iterating, handling their emotions, expressing themselves,
effectively connecting, and working at the same time as enjoying their personal lives.
Style: Role Model Leadership and Emotionally Intelligent Leadership
In the facilitator’s section of the PCPL, the participants explained leaders who
contributed to the company’s productivity and human capital were a source of trust and
inspiration (i.e., role model leaders) and emotionally intelligent. Several participants stressed the
importance of role model leaders having credibility. Li (2005) said employees depend on the
leader’s integrity in times of crisis to adapt and perform effectively. As Latin America is a
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permanent context (Neace, 2004; Pirson & Lawrence, 2010), the leader’s integrity and credibility
are essential for employees’ performance and learning (Sharif & Scandura, 2017).
Participants pointed to one main characteristic of emotionally intelligent leaders:
knowing how to self-regulate emotionally. In alignment with this finding, Nesbit (2011)
explained how leaders regulate their emotions significantly affects the learning of their
followers. The leader’s emotional self-regulation is a crucial skill for effective performance,
especially in companies that operate in contexts with constant crises (Zaidi & Bellack, 2019).
The credibility and emotional regulation highlighted by the participants coincide with the
profile of leaders operating in crises and highly complex contexts. Zaidi and Bellack (2019) said
what usually diminishes the performance of leaders who deal with highly complex challenges is
not a lack of knowledge or skills but their belief system if they cannot adapt and deal with
ambiguity. These researchers suggested a central mechanism for developing the ability to deal
with ambiguity is the development of self-awareness. The leader’s self-awareness is the primary
skill recommended to be developed in the PCA leadership program.
Staff: Training
Zacceheaus and Oluwatobi (2020) reviewed six studies with more than 900 people from
hospitals, universities, manufacturers, and private banks in Nigeria and India. They found a
significant correlation between human capital, employee performance, and employee training. If
firms do not manage human capital strategically, they cannot identify skills, attitudes, and
knowledge gaps.
Bapna et al. (2013) agreed with Zacceheaus and Oluwatobi (2020). They collected data
from 2002 to 2007 on the training and performance of 7,918 employees of an information
technology company in India. They found investing in training optimizes employee performance.
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They showed additional training increased employee performance by 2.1%. For example, the
average employee who takes a 9.6-hour course annually has a 1.4% higher performance in
comparison with the performance of peers.
Participants perceived training as “extremely important” in developing human capital.
Furthermore, the participants described types of training provided them, with differences in
indications of the most value according to their place in the hierarchy. One top managers
explained what helped them most to develop human capital was the training “to see themselves
from different perspectives.” A managers shared their expectation that the leader would tell them
“how to do things.” Frontline workers discussed their expectations to understand concepts and
their classifications.
Krathwohl’s (2002) knowledge classification coincides with what participants explained.
Krathwohl said four types of knowledge are necessary for optimal performance: (a) factual, (b)
conceptual, (c) procedural, and (d) metacognitive. The first two types of knowledge have to do
with declarative knowledge, which generally answers the question: “What?” (e.g., what elements
are necessary for a process and each element’s meaning). The third type is procedural
knowledge, which is the knowledge that answers the question: “How?”—knowing how to do
things. The fourth type, metacognitive, is self-knowledge. For this reason, the person-centered
leadership program is recommended to use the Krathwohl classification to design and measure
the training programs for each level of the hierarchy.
One recommended training program in the person-centered leadership program is a one-
on-one coaching program for top managers. García et al. (2021) studied how executive coaching
increased productivity in Colombian and Venezuelan companies because it makes it easier for
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the top manager, among other things, to solve complex problems, optimally and quickly, with
more resources.
Herrera and Vázquez (2021) emphasized coaching is essential for mediating conflicts in
Latin companies. The authors explained most Latino companies are family owned or maintain a
family culture, which is why there are possibilities of internal conflicts as a result of previous
conflicts in the family relationship.
One-on-one coaching is recommended because all five top managers noted, as one
described, as “the best tool I have today” to develop their metacognition. This type of knowledge
develops the capacity for self-regulation (Krathwohl, 2002). Self-regulation is a critical skill in
the person-centered leadership program because several common characteristics (e.g., space to
iterate, space to be emotionally contained, role modeling, and emotional intelligence) depend on
leaders who can self-regulate.
The effective development of self-regulation requires the establishment of clear goals and
self-observation (Seli, 2022). The top manager, in the coaching sessions, actively participate in
defining their person-centered leadership development goals and reflect on their progress.
Nesbit (2011) explained evaluations of leadership style and expected behaviors essential
for leaders to learn how to develop their leadership. Nesbit said evaluations of these behaviors
must be part of a formal institutional program, which led to the recommendation the executive
coaching program include an annual pre and postleadership assessment. Zaidi and Bellak (2019)
suggested, due to its validity, the Meta-Cognitive Awareness Inventory (Schraw & Denninson,
1994) stimulates metacognition and the Mayer-Salovey-Caruso Emotional Intelligence Test
(Mayer et al., 2002) can be used to monitor the emotional intelligence of the leader.
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Regarding training for managers, according to the findings of this study, a design that
develops procedural knowledge is recommended. One effective way to facilitate procedural
knowledge is with on-the-job training, which is interwoven with real-time workflow (Lutin,
2020). On-the-job training significantly impacts business results (Aragon-Sánchez et al., 2003;
Lacerenza et al., 2017; Latshaw & Shannon, 2020; Salas et al., 2012). Thus, it is recommended
manager training have an on-the-job design, specifically, using the EOS accountability system
and developing self-agency for life and career balance.
Based on the findings related to the iteration and validation subspaces and the training
facilitator, the recommendation is for the training program aimed at frontline workers to include
two conditions: (a) stimulation of declarative knowledge (factual and conceptual) and (b) having
the main objective of developing the personal agency of the frontline worker. According to
Bandura (2006), human agency is the ability of a person to affect their environment. The primary
mechanism that develops a person’s agency is self-efficacy, the expectation that a person has of
achieving a particular result.
One strategy to develop self-efficacy, suggested by Sinatra (2022), is to provide models
that make the expected result credible. The person-centered leadership program should launch a
mentoring program in which role model leaders voluntarily accompany frontline workers to
develop their personal and professional skills. Sinatra also suggested training sessions include
practices with specific objectives, accompanied by feedback and instructional support. The
support is withdrawn, as the employee develops skills, until they can do it on their own. The
EOS scorecard, used for measuring progress, should be adjusted, as the frontline worker
increases their sense of agency, and the leader should use the section of the IDS in the EOS L10
meetings to give feedback and support of the employee’s weekly activities.
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Skills
When participants described PCPL, they described soft and hard skills needed to sustain
the leadership process. Skills included emotional containment, self-regulation, emotional
regulation of others, affective connection, listening, giving and receiving feedback, open and
transparent communication, vulnerability, joint decision making, establishing long-term and
short-term objectives, and managing an accountability system.
Though this program would include multiple training programs over time, the
recommendation is the first stage of training focuses on the development of two critical skills: (a)
self-awareness for top managers and (b) self-agency for managers and frontline workers. As
explained in the Style section of this chapter, self-awareness is a crucial skill for leaders
operating in highly complex and crisis contexts and is one of the skills that most strengthens the
company’s capacity for change (Higgs & Rowland, 2010; Jamroz, 2019; Showry & Manasa,
2014).
Conscious leaders are “extremely self-aware and conscious of how to use their presence
in a change process” ((Higgs & Rowland, 2010, p. 382). They remain present, willing to work
with challenges in the moment, and focused on the “big picture,” leading the organization as a
whole and recognizing their impulses, their limitations, and how they can improve them (Higgs
& Rowland, 2010). According to Higgs and Rowland (2010), the opposite of a self-aware leader
is a person who feels they are the main or only agents of change in the organization, rescues and
protects others from their incompetence or weakness, and is focused on their interests and
seeking attention.
Self-awareness is developed through systematic feedback, self-monitoring, and
assessment of belief and leadership systems (Caldwell, 2010; Higgs & Rowland, 2010; Showry
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& Manasa, 2014; Zaidi & Bellack, 2019). The training section explains that the coaching
program will include assessments and self-reflection exercises.
It is recommended to develop personal agency for managers and frontline workers.
Personal agency is a skill fully aligned with Rogers’s (YEAR) work. As explained in the training
section, personal agency is the degree to which a person experiences themselves as the primary
agent of the results that occur in their life (Joseph, 2020), and the primary metric is the rate of
self-efficacy.
For managers, it is recommended the program develop personal agency for the
management of work-life balance because this group was the one that most emphasized the space
for work-life balance and its impact on the company’s productivity. As Chapter 4 explains, the
key to effective remote work management and work-life balance is self-management to work for
goals and meet them. The leadership program should stimulate the EOS system for clarifying
objectives and include procedural training on self-managing a work schedule by objectives.
For the frontline workers, as explained in the previous section, it is recommended to
develop their self-agency in the sixth section of the L10 meetings and in quarterly meetings,
where the frontline worker uses the people analyzer as a starting point to, together with their
leader, design of their development plan. Lastly, the People Team needs to monitor and maintain
the space for affective connection, the space where frontline workers develop their self-agency to
connect effectively. Thus, the People Team can allocate a monthly budget frontline workers
manage to continue with activities outside the company.
Finally, the initial hard skills of top managers, managers, and frontline workers have to
do with managing the accountability EOS system. For this, a training program adapted to the
appropriate levels of knowledge for each hierarchy is recommended. Although initially, all levels
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require learning the EOS with declarative knowledge, it is recommended that the training of top
managers and managers be in the on-the-job format: the People Team should instruct, in real-
time accountability meetings, the application of the L10, the people analyzer, and the CDI, then
only being a mediator and finally being an observer.
For the top managers, the EOS training will include reflective sessions. Some
recommended reflections are how each manager might change their leadership style to
effectively implement the EOS, how the EOS system helps to develop person-centered
leadership, and how this has repercussions on business results.
Recommendations for Future Research
To expand on the research that has already been conducted, future studies related to Latino
corporate leadership should consider exploring the perceptions of large Latino companies and
other industries’ employees. This study was implemented in a 45-employees-family startup
because, as explained in Chapter 1, according to the Banco de Desarrollo de Amércia Latina
(2020), this type of company represents 60% of the Latin economy. However, it would be
relevant to explore how employees of large or multi-Latin companies perceive leadership.
Employees who work in large companies with control-oriented cultures, such as the banking
industry, or employees of a multi-Latina (large Latino company in international markets) with a
culture of competitiveness, such as food or cement manufacturers, may have differing
perceptions of leadership. This would broaden the exploration of the leadership process that most
catalyzes the productivity of companies and the human capital of employees.
Conclusion
The PCPL is a leadership process that, from the points of view of the 15 Latino
employees who participated in this study, increases the productivity of the Latino company and
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develops the employee’s human capital. Participants described the PCLP as an independent and
dynamic ecosystem of social influence that operates at different levels of the organization and
comprises multiple interconnected processes and facilitators. The five main processes that make
up the PCPL are (a) iteration space, (b) validation space, (c) affective connection space, (d)
emotional containment space, and (e) work-life balance space. These processes are moderated by
four facilitators: (a) role model leaders, (b) emotionally intelligent leaders, (c) training, and (d)
an accountability system.
This study offers leadership alternative to paternalism, usually the most studied
leadership style in corporate research in Latin America. It is essential to have an alternative for
several reasons. First, paternalistic leadership is not typically effective (Chou et al., 2015).
Second, as Rodriguez and Ríos (2009) explained, most of the time, paternalism is subject to
asymmetric power relations and often normalizes coercion. Third, paternalistic leadership is
usually associated with employee burnout and anxiety (Rodriguez & Ríos, 2009).
The PCPL is a person-centered alternative that increases company productivity and
empowers Latino employees. Contrary to expecting to be protected due to their inefficiency—a
typical characteristic of the paternalistic style (Osland et al., 1999; Rodriguez & Ríos, 2009)—
participants expressed the expectation of participating in a system of accountability and having
systematic feedback to improve performance, make decisions for themselves, contribute their
ideas, and have accessible and transparent leaders.
Because the PCPL triggers employees’ senses of agency and, therefore, their
empowerment, this leadership process can serve as a vehicle to counteract, in the company,
adverse effects of the context and the Latin culture: historical mistrust due to the inefficiency of
public institutions and pseudo-collectivism (Neace, 2004), inherent corruption, and tolerance of
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coercion (Lord et al., 2017; Rodriguez & Ríos, 2008). These aspects of the Latino environment,
in addition to seriously compromising the competitiveness of Latino companies, maintain
asymmetric power relations. The PCPL can be a vehicle for social rehabilitation and inclusion in
Latino companies.
Finally, this research supports leadership development in Latin America because, as
explained in Chapter 1, one of the first detractors of development has been the lack of research
(Aravena-Castillo & Hallinger, 2018; Olavarrieta & Villena, 2014; Ronda-Pupo, 2016). Another
detractor explained in Chapter 1 is that in addition to the lack of research, Latino publications are
often based on U.S. or European approaches (Hino, 2019). This study expands on the Latino
research from the perspectives of Latino employees.

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Asset Metadata

Creator Barrios, Maria Eugenia (author)

Core Title Latino corporate leadership for human capital and productivity

School Rossier School of Education

Degree Doctor of Education

Degree Program Organizational Change and Leadership (On Line)

Degree Conferral Date 2022-08

Publication Date 08/03/2022

Defense Date 07/11/2022

Publisher University of Southern California (original), University of Southern California. Libraries (digital)

Tag company productivity,emotional intelligence,human capital,humanistic leadership,Latin America,leadership,OAI-PMH Harvest,Person-Centered Approach

Format application/pdf (imt)

Language English

Contributor Electronically uploaded by the author (provenance)

Advisor Lynch, Douglas (committee chair), Davila, Annabella (committee member), Picus, Lawrence (committee member)

Creator Email maru@ddrmaru.com,mebarrio@usc.edu

Permanent Link (DOI) https://doi.org/10.25549/usctheses-oUC111376108

Unique identifier UC111376108

Legacy Identifier etd-BarriosMar-11094

Document Type Dissertation

Format application/pdf (imt)

Rights Barrios, Maria Eugenia

Type texts

Source 20220804-usctheses-batch-969 (batch), University of Southern California (contributing entity), University of Southern California Dissertations and Theses (collection)

Access Conditions The author retains rights to his/her dissertation, thesis or other graduate work according to U.S. copyright law. Electronic access is being provided by the USC Libraries in agreement with the author, as the original true and official version of the work, but does not grant the reader permission to use the work if the desired use is covered by copyright. It is the author, as rights holder, who must provide use permission if such use is covered by copyright. The original signature page accompanying the original submission of the work to the USC Libraries is retained by the USC Libraries and a copy of it may be obtained by authorized requesters contacting the repository e-mail address given.

Repository Name University of Southern California Digital Library

Repository Location USC Digital Library, University of Southern California, University Park Campus MC 2810, 3434 South Grand Avenue, 2nd Floor, Los Angeles, California 90089-2810, USA

Repository Email cisadmin@lib.usc.edu