Global leadership

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Global leadership is the interdisciplinary study of the key elements that future leaders in all realms of the personal experience should acquire to effectively familiarize themselves with the psychological, physiological, geographical, geopolitical, anthropological and sociological effects of globalization. Global leadership occurs when an individual or individuals navigate collaborative efforts of different stakeholders through environmental complexity towards a vision by leveraging a global mindset. Today, global leaders must be capable of connecting "people across countries and engage them to global team collaboration in order to facilitate complex processes of knowledge sharing across the globe" [1] Personality characteristics, as well as a cross-cultural experience, appear to influence effectiveness in global leaders. [2]

Contents

As a result of trends, starting with colonialism and perpetuated by the increase in mass media, innovation, (brought about by the Internet and other forms of human interaction based on the speed of computer-mediation) and a host of meaningful new concerns face mankind; consisting of but not limited to: human enterprises toward peace, international business design, and significant shifts in geopolitical paradigms. The talent and insight it will take leaders to successfully navigate humanity through these developments have been collectively focused on the phenomenon of globalization [3] in order to embrace and effectively guide the evolution of mankind through the continued blurring and integration of national, economic and social strategies.

Cross-cultural competence (3C)

Daniel P. McDonald, executive director of Research, Development and Strategic Initiatives at the Defense Equal Opportunity Management Institute and his team established for the U.S. Department of Defense a set of 40 general cross-cultural learning statements (knowledge, skills, and personal characteristics) were recommended by a DoD focus group in order to foster the career development of cross-cultural competence in military and civilian personnel. [4] The roles of aptitude and appropriate training components in the development of global leadership were reviewed by Caligiuri in 2006. [5]

Geert Hofstede

Geert Hofstede has performed research for several decades that continues to impact research in global and international arenas of global leadership. Hofstede's research is primarily focused on how values in the workplace are influenced by culture. According to him, all behaviours are determined by culture. In his definition; culture is ‘the collective programming of the mind distinguishing the members of one group or category of people from others.’ To conduct his research, he analyzed a large database of employee value scores collected within IBM between the years 1967 and 1973. There are over 70 countries in the data. Hofstede's primary tenants of culture differentiation are summed up through his research more elaborately but primarily consist of [6] In his model, he identified six dimensions of national culture based on his research. Those dimensions are also used to differentiate countries from each other, based on how countries score on the six dimensions. The scale of scores ranges from 0 to 100. If a score is below 50 it is considered Low and if it is higher than 50 it is considered High in that dimension. Here, although countries are represented with a score, the scores are relative and cannot represent unique individuals. In other words, ‘culture can be only used meaningfully by comparison.’ The relevant scores are proven to be stable over time. Forces that cause cultures to shift are global and therefore there is something affecting the culture in a country, it actually affects many countries at the same time in the world. The model consists of six dimensions; which are Power Distance, Individualism, Masculinity vs Femininity, Uncertainty Avoidance, Long Term Orientation vs Short Term Normative Orientation and Indulgence vs Restraint. Furthermore, he has published several books and academic articles on the subject in order to light the way for global business leaders as well as academic researchers.

Hofstede's cultural dimensions

Project GLOBE

The GLOBE (Global Leadership and Organizational Behavior Effectiveness) research project took Hofstede's original 1980 research findings (Hofstede, 1980) and dedicated an entire academic effort to exploring the differences between cultures (Hofstede, 1980). “Conceived in 1991 by Robert J. House of the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, and led by Professor House, the GLOBE Project directly involved 170 “country co-investigators” based in 62 of the world's cultures as well as a 14-member group of coordinators and research associates. This international team collected data from 17,300 middle managers in 951 organizations. They used qualitative methods to assist their development of quantitative instruments. [13] ” The research identified nine cultural competencies and grouped the 62 countries into ten convenient societal clusters (Javidan & Dastmalchian, 2009).

Globe cultural clusters

The GLOBE researchers used acquired data to put nations into cultural clusters that are grouped based upon cultural similarities due to shared geography and climate conditions, which all influence perceptions and behavior:

Anglo Cultures England, Australia, South Africa (white sample), Canada, New Zealand, Ireland, United States

Arab Cultures Algeria, Qatar, Morocco, Egypt, Kuwait, Libya, Tunisia, Lebanon, Syria, Yemen, Jordan, Iraq, UAE, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, Oman

Confucian Asia Taiwan, Singapore, Hong Kong, South Korea, China, Japan, Vietnam

Eastern Europe Hungary, Bulgaria, Romania, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Poland, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Serbia, Greece, Slovenia, Albania, Russia

Germanic EuropeDutch-speaking (Netherlands, Belgium and Dutch-speaking France) German-speaking (Austria, German-speaking Switzerland, Germany, South Tyrol, Liechtenstein)

Latin America Costa Rica, Venezuela, Ecuador, Mexico, El Salvador, Colombia, Guatemala, Bolivia, Brazil, Argentina

Latin Europe Italy, Portugal, Spain, France, Switzerland (French and Italian speaking)

Nordic Europe Finland, Sweden, Denmark, Norway

Southern Asia India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, Iran, Philippines, Turkey

Sub-Sahara Africa Namibia, Zambia, Zimbabwe, South Africa (Black Sample), Nigeria

GLOBE cultural competencies

The nine GLOBE cultural competencies are:

  1. Performance orientation - refers to the extent to which an organization or society encourages and rewards group members for performance improvement and excellence.
  2. Assertiveness orientation - is the degree to which individuals in organizations or societies are assertive, confrontational, and aggressive in social relationships.
  3. Future orientation - is the degree to which individuals in organizations or societies engage in future-oriented behaviours such as planning, investing in the future, and delaying gratification.
  4. Humane orientation - is the degree to which individuals in organizations or societies encourage and reward individuals for being fair, altruistic, friendly, generous, caring, and kind to others.
  5. Bureaucratic collectivism I: Institutional collectivism - reflects the degree to which organizational and societal institutional practices encourage and reward collective distribution of resources and collective action.
  6. Collectivism II: In-group collectivism - reflects the degree to which individuals express pride, loyalty and cohesiveness in their organizations or families.
  7. Gender egalitarianism - is the extent to which an organization or a society minimizes gender role differences and gender discrimination.
  8. Power distance - is defined as the degree to which members of an organization or society expect and agree that power should be unequally shared.
  9. Uncertainty avoidance - is defined as the extent to which members of an organization or society strive to avoid uncertainty by reliance on social norms, rituals, and bureaucratic practices to alleviate the unpredictability of future events.

After an extensive review of the research, the GLOBE strategically grouped over 21 primary leadership dimensions into six encompassing dimensions of global leadership and made a recommendation about how the dimensions of culture and leadership could distinguish the influences of one country from another.

Culturally endorsed implicit leadership (CLT)

The six Globe dimensions of culturally endorsed implicit leadership (CLT) are:

  1. Charismatic/value-based – characterized by demonstrating integrity, decisiveness, and performance-oriented by appearing visionary, inspirational and self-sacrificing, but can also be toxic and allow for autocratic commanding.
  2. Team-oriented – characterized by diplomatic, administratively competent, team collaboration and integration. A toxic leader would be malevolent alienating the team, but driving cohesion
  3. Self-protective – characterized by self-centred, face-saving, procedural behaviour capable of inducing conflict when necessary while being conscious of status
  4. Participative – characterized by (non-autocratic) participative behaviour that is supportive of those who are being led.
  5. Human orientation – characterized by modesty and compassion for others in an altruistic fashion
  6. Autonomous – being able to function without constant consultations.

Globalization continues to thrive and change, and the concept of global leadership will adapt to serve the best interest of a world being made incrementally smaller.

Related Research Articles

Historically there have been differences among investigators regarding the definition of organizational culture. Edgar Schein, a leading researcher in this field, defined "organizational culture" as comprising a number of features, including a shared "pattern of basic assumptions" which group members have acquired over time as they learn to successfully cope with internal and external organizationally relevant problems. Elliott Jaques first introduced the concept of culture in the organizational context in his 1951 book The Changing Culture of a Factory. The book was a published report of "a case study of developments in the social life of one industrial community between April, 1948 and November 1950". The "case" involved a publicly-held British company engaged principally in the manufacture, sale, and servicing of metal bearings. The study concerned itself with the description, analysis, and development of corporate group behaviours.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Femininity</span> Attributes associated with women

Femininity is a set of attributes, behaviors, and roles generally associated with women and girls. Femininity can be understood as socially constructed, and there is also some evidence that some behaviors considered feminine are influenced by both cultural factors and biological factors. To what extent femininity is biologically or socially influenced is subject to debate. It is conceptually distinct from both the female biological sex and from womanhood, as all humans can exhibit feminine and masculine traits, regardless of sex and gender.

Gerard Hendrik (Geert) Hofstede was a Dutch social psychologist, IBM employee, and Professor Emeritus of Organizational Anthropology and International Management at Maastricht University in the Netherlands, well known for his pioneering research on cross-cultural groups and organizations.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Fons Trompenaars</span>

Alfonsus (Fons) Trompenaars is a Dutch organizational theorist, management consultant, and author in the field of cross-cultural communication. known for the development of Trompenaars' model of national culture differences.

Cross-cultural studies, sometimes called holocultural studies or comparative studies, is a specialization in anthropology and sister sciences such as sociology, psychology, economics, political science that uses field data from many societies through comparative research to examine the scope of human behavior and test hypotheses about human behavior and culture.

Organizational behavior or organisational behaviour is the: "study of human behavior in organizational settings, the interface between human behavior and the organization, and the organization itself". Organizational behavioral research can be categorized in at least three ways:

In cross-cultural psychology, uncertainty avoidance is how cultures differ on the amount of tolerance they have of unpredictability. Uncertainty avoidance is one of five key qualities or dimensions measured by the researchers who developed the Hofstede model of cultural dimensions to quantify cultural differences across international lines and better understand why some ideas and business practices work better in some countries than in others.According to Geert Hofstede, "The fundamental issue here is how a society deals with the fact that the future can never be known: Should we try to control it or just let it happen?"

Power distance refers to the unequal distribution of power between parties, and the level of acceptance of that inequality; whether it is in the family, workplace, or other organizations.

Japanese values are cultural goals, beliefs and behaviors that are considered important in Japanese culture. From a global perspective, Japanese culture stands out for its higher scores in emancipative values, individualism, and flexibility compared to many other cultures around the world. There is a similar level of emphasis on these values in the cultures of the United States and Japan. However cultures from Western Europe surpass it in these aspects. Overall, Japanese society exhibits unique characteristics influenced by personal connections, consensus building, and a strong sense of community consciousness. These features have deep historical roots and reflect the values ingrained in Japanese society.

Cultural competence, also known as intercultural competence, is a range of cognitive, affective, behavioural, and linguistic skills that lead to effective and appropriate communication with people of other cultures. Intercultural or cross-cultural education are terms used for the training to achieve cultural competence.

Cross-cultural psychology is the scientific study of human behavior and mental processes, including both their variability and invariance, under diverse cultural conditions. Through expanding research methodologies to recognize cultural variance in behavior, language, and meaning it seeks to extend and develop psychology. Since psychology as an academic discipline was developed largely in North America and Europe, some psychologists became concerned that constructs and phenomena accepted as universal were not as invariant as previously assumed, especially since many attempts to replicate notable experiments in other cultures had varying success. Since there are questions as to whether theories dealing with central themes, such as affect, cognition, conceptions of the self, and issues such as psychopathology, anxiety, and depression, may lack external validity when "exported" to other cultural contexts, cross-cultural psychology re-examines them using methodologies designed to factor in cultural differences so as to account for cultural variance. Some critics have pointed to methodological flaws in cross-cultural psychological research, and claim that serious shortcomings in the theoretical and methodological bases used impede, rather than help the scientific search for universal principles in psychology. Cross-cultural psychologists are turning more to the study of how differences (variance) occur, rather than searching for universals in the style of physics or chemistry.

Incentivisation or incentivization is the practice of building incentives into an arrangement or system in order to motivate the actors within it. It is based on the idea that individuals within such systems can perform better not only when they are coerced but also when they are given rewards.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Face negotiation theory</span>

Face-Negotiation Theory is a theory conceived by Stella Ting-Toomey in 1985, to understand how people from different cultures manage rapport and disagreements. The theory posited "face", or self-image when communicating with others, as a universal phenomenon that pervades across cultures. In conflicts, one's face is threatened; and thus the person tends to save or restore his or her face. This set of communicative behaviors, according to the theory, is called "facework". Since people frame the situated meaning of "face" and enact "facework" differently from one culture to the next, the theory poses a cross-cultural framework to examine facework negotiation. It is important to note that the definition of face varies depending on the people and their culture and the same can be said for the proficiency of facework. According to Ting-Toomey's theory, most cultural differences can be divided by Eastern and Western cultures, and her theory accounts for these differences.

Philippe d’Iribarne is a French author and director of research at CNRS. He works within a research centre called LISE.

Cross-cultural psychology attempts to understand how individuals of different cultures interact with each other. Along these lines, cross-cultural leadership has developed as a way to understand leaders who work in the newly globalized market. Today's international organizations require leaders who can adjust to different environments quickly and work with partners and employees of other cultures. It cannot be assumed that a manager who is successful in one country will be successful in another.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Hofstede's cultural dimensions theory</span> Framework for cross-cultural communication

Hofstede's cultural dimensions theory is a framework for cross-cultural psychology, developed by Geert Hofstede. It shows the effects of a society's culture on the values of its members, and how these values relate to behavior, using a structure derived from factor analysis.

Individualistic cultures are characterized by individualism, which is the prioritization or emphasis of the individual over the entire group. In individualistic cultures people are motivated by their own preference and viewpoints. Individualistic cultures focus on abstract thinking, privacy, self-dependence, uniqueness, and personal goals. The term individualistic culture was first used in the 1980s by Dutch social psychologist Geert Hofstede to describe countries and cultures that are not collectivist, Hofstede created the term individualistic culture when he created a measurement for the five dimensions of cultural values.

Cultural communication is the practice and study of how different cultures communicate within their community by verbal and nonverbal means. Cultural communication can also be referred to as intercultural communication and cross-cultural communication. Cultures are grouped together by a set of similar beliefs, values, traditions, and expectations which call all contribute to differences in communication between individuals of different cultures. Cultural communication is a practice and a field of study for many psychologists, anthropologists, and scholars. The study of cultural communication is used to study the interactions of individuals between different cultures. Studies done on cultural communication are utilized in ways to improve communication between international exchanges, businesses, employees, and corporations. Two major scholars who have influenced cultural communication studies are Edward T. Hall and Geert Hofstede. Edward T. Hall, who was an American anthropologist, is considered to be the founder of cultural communication and the theory of proxemics. The theory of proxemics focuses on how individuals use space while communicating depending on cultural backgrounds or social settings. The space in between individuals can be identified in four different ranges. For example, 0 inches signifies intimate space while 12 feet signifies public space. Geert Hofstede was a social psychologist who founded the theory of cultural dimension. In his theory, there are five dimensions that aim to measure differences between different cultures. The five dimensions are power distance, uncertainty avoidance, individualism versus collectivism, masculinity versus femininity, and Chronemics.

Robert Roger McCrae is a personality psychologist. He earned his Ph.D. in 1976, and worked at the National Institute of Aging. He is associated with the Five Factor Theory of personality. He has spent his career studying the stability of personality across age and culture. Along with Paul Costa, he is a co-author of the Revised NEO Personality Inventory. He has served on the editorial boards of many scholarly journals, including the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, the Journal of Research in Personality, the Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology, and the Journal of Individual Differences.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Impact of culture on aviation safety</span>

Culture can affect aviation safety through its effect on how the flight crew deals with difficult situations; cultures with lower power distances and higher levels of individuality can result in better aviation safety outcomes. In higher power cultures subordinates are less likely to question their superiors. The crash of Korean Air Flight 801 in 1997 was attributed to the pilot's decision to land despite the junior officer's disagreement, while the crash of Avianca Flight 52 was caused by the failure to communicate critical low-fuel data between pilots and controllers, and by the failure of the controllers to ask the pilots if they were declaring an emergency and assist the pilots in landing the aircraft. The crashes have been blamed on aspects of the national cultures of the crews.

References

Notes

  1. Gehrke, B., Claes, M.-T. (2017). Leadership and global understanding in J. Marques & S.-G. D'himan, Norma (Eds.), Leadership today: Practices for personal and professional performance (pp. 371-385). Switzerland: Springer International Publishing.
  2. Caligiuri, PM; Tarique, I (2012-10-01). "Dynamic cross-cultural competencies and global leadership effectiveness". Journal of World Business. 47 (4): 612–622. doi:10.1016/j.jwb.2012.01.014. ISSN   1090-9516.
  3. Hayes, P. (2011). Global Leadership and Human Systems IntegrationGlobal Leadership. Indiana Institute of Technology. Fort Wayne, IN. Retrieved from www.paulhayesjr.com or https://www.academia.edu/4122423/Global_virtual_leadership_and_avatars
  4. McDonald, D. P., McGuire, G., Johnston, J., Selmeski, B., & Abbe, A. (2008). Developing and managing cross-cultural competence within the department of defense: Recommendations for learning and assessment (C.-C. F. T. R. W. S. 2, Trans.) (pp. 44): Department of Equal Opportunity Management Institute
  5. Caligiuri, PM (2006-06-01). "Developing global leaders". Human Resource Management Review. 16 (2): 219–228. doi:10.1016/j.hrmr.2006.03.009. ISSN   1053-4822.
  6. Hofstede, G., & Hofstede, G. J. (1967-2009). itim international Retrieved November 3, 2010, from http://www.geert-hofstede.com/
  7. "Home". geert-hofstede.com.
  8. "Home". geert-hofstede.com.
  9. "National Culture".
  10. "Home". geert-hofstede.com.
  11. "Home". geert-hofstede.com.
  12. "Home". geert-hofstede.com.
  13. Grove, C. (2005). Introduction to the GLOBE Research Project on Leadership Worldwide from http://www.grovewell.com/pub-GLOBE-intro.html

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