Nordic cultures may seem very similar, but their organizational cultures are different even within the same company. Others are often frustrated about Swedes and their endless meetings. Finns in the meeting are 'OK. lets do this.' and Swedes reply 'But Jan-Erik has not shared his point of view yet.'
What you're feeling is the difference between a collectivist leadership culture and an individualist leadership culture. Collectivist cultures value leaders who generate power through _maintaining relationships_, whereas individualist leaders prioritise leadership via _authority_. Think of it as accruing power in the edges vs the nodes of the social graph.
Fun fact: countries whose leader cultures are more individualist (e.g. America) are MUCH more likely to have whole populations who agree highly with "economic growth is important above all else", whereas collectivist leader nations (e.g., Taiwan, Finland) have a general populace who agree less highly with that phrase, but MORE highly with "ecological sustainability and environmental stewardship are important".
So while correlation doesn't prove causation, it may be the case that American-style individualist leadership culture is in opposition to our shared goals of non extinction :) but that's maybe a leap.
The whole study is really rad. Oh, and more bonus: collectivist leadership style correlates highly with feminine leadership style (another axes of Hofstede study)
EDIT: a-ha! Found the source: https://www.jstor.org/stable/40836056?seq=1#page_scan_tab_co...
Here's the source data updated.
How does that work ? do people get a say regardless of their status ? do good ideas really rise up ?
Or does it just become a different type of political game ?
I was recently working on an infrastructure deployment with a team in Sweden and those of us from the US could not understand why everything took a commitee to do anything outside the norm.
Like, no individual would just do a task or make a command decision unless a broader team was engaged.
The work got done but, yeesh.