Cross-cultural leadership

Cross-Cultural leadership under a globalization era.

Cross-cultural psychology attempts to understand how individuals of different cultures interact with each other.[1] 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.[2] It cannot be assumed that a manager who is successful in one country will be successful in another.[3][4]

Implicit Leadership Theory

The Implicit Leadership Theory (ILT) asserts that people’s underlying assumptions, stereotypes, beliefs and schemas influence the extent to which they view someone as a good leader. Since people across cultures tend to hold different implicit beliefs, schemas and stereotypes, it would seem only natural that their underlying beliefs in what makes a good leader differ across cultures.[3][4]

Hofstede’s Cultural Dimensions

One of the most prominent and influential studies to date regarding leadership in a globalized world is the Hofstede dimensions of culture. The study reveals similarities as well as differences across cultures and emphasizes the need to be open-minded to understand the differences in other cultures. Hofstede utilizes six dimensions of culture to compare cultures to give leaders an understanding of how to adjust their leadership styles accordingly. These dimensions include individualism/collectivism, feminine/masculine, power distance, uncertainty avoidance, long-term/short-term orientation, and indulgence/restraint. [5]

GLOBE

The Global Leadership and Organizational Behavior Effectiveness Research Project (GLOBE) study incorporated both the ILT and Hofstede's dimensions into one unique research study. The GLOBE study extended the ILT to include individuals of a common culture maintaining a relatively stable common belief about leaders, which varies from culture to culture. They labeled this the Culturally Endorsed Implicit Leadership Theory (CLT).[3] The GLOBE study came up with the nine dimensions of uncertainty avoidance, power distance, collectivism I: societal collectivism, collectivism II: in-group collectivism, gender egalitarianism, assertiveness, future orientation, performance orientation and humane orientation.[2] Some of those dimensions correlate with the respective dimension from Hofstede. However, they differ since the GLOBE dimensions distinguish between cultural values and cultural practices, as opposed to Hofstede.

Leadership styles

Paternalistic leadership

Paternalistic leadership “combines strong discipline and authority with fatherly benevolence and moral integrity couched in a ‘personalistic’ atmosphere”.[6]:94 Paternalistic leadership is composed of three main elements: authoritarianism, benevolence, and moral leadership.[6] At its roots, paternalistic leadership refers to a hierarchical relationship in which the leader takes personal interest in the workers’ professional and personal lives in a manner resembling a parent, and expects loyalty and respect in return.[7] These leaders want to transform a team into a family-like group. They would like to know employees' quality of the life overall such as hobbies, parents' health condition, and children's education.[8]

A great deal of research has been conducted on the prevalence of this leadership style in non-Western business organizations, indicating the prevalence of paternalistic leadership in countries like mainland China and Taiwan.[9] However, considerably less research has been done on whether paternalistic leadership exists in Western cultures. Recently, there has been an increase in the amount of attention placed on paternalistic leadership in non-Western cultures. Although it is a relatively new area of focus in leadership research, evidence has been found supporting the relationship between paternalism and positive work attitudes in numerous cultures, including those of the Middle East, Latin America, and Pacific Asia.[9] Paternalistic leadership has been found to be positively associated with job satisfaction in India but not in the United States. In both countries, paternalistic leadership was positively related to leader-member exchange and organizational commitment.[10]

Transformational & transactional leadership

Transformational leadership is loosely defined as a charismatic leadership style that rallies subordinates around a common goal with enthusiasm and support. Transactional leadership is characterized by a give-and-take relationship using rewards as an incentive.[11]

In a 2004 questionnaire study of employees at 10 different banks, responses indicated that only 3 of the 7 factors that were found in the ideal leadership style in Egypt corresponded with the US factors. The other 4 were unique to Egypt or perhaps the Middle East in general. These results indicate an inability to assume that transactional and transformational leadership will succeed in non-western cultures.[12] In a study of transactional and transformational leadership in China and Australia, transformational leadership predicted performance and trust in the Australian population, but only predicted trust, not performance, in the Chinese population. Transactional leadership did not predict trust or performance in either population.[13]

Other findings, however, saw a strong presence of transformational and/or transactional leadership in China, India, Kenya, and the U.S.[14] Allocentrists, similar to collectivists, respond more positively to transformational leadership because they unite individuals around a common goal. Idiocentrists (individuals found in individualistic cultures) are more amenable to transactional leaders who reward individuals for hard work and success and less amenable to leaders who encourage group work and reduce individual identity.

Definitions

Organizational leadership and culture

In the leadership literature, there is a lack of consensus over how to define and refer to cross-cultural leadership. In the GLOBE study, researchers don’t specifically define cross-cultural leadership; rather they outline it in two components; organizational leadership and culture. The authors describe organizational leadership as “the ability of an individual to influence, motivate, and enable others to contribute toward the effectiveness and success of the organizations of which they are members”.[2]:494 The authors note that there is no universal definition for culture, but GLOBE’s definition includes “shared motives, values, beliefs, identities, and interpretations or meanings of significant events that result from common experiences of members of collectives and are transmitted across age generations”.[2]:494–495

International executive

Another term for a cross-cultural leader is "international executive", defined as “an executive who is in a job with some international scope, whether in an expatriate assignment or in a job dealing with international issues more generally”.[15]:7

Global Leadership

Global leadership has been defined as “a process of influencing the thoughts, attitudes, and behaviors of a global community to work together synergistically toward a common vision and common goals”.[16]:204 Six core dimensions of competencies of a global leader have been identified: cross-cultural relationship skills, traits and values, cognitive orientation, global business expertise, global organizing expertise, and visioning.[16]

Operationalizations

In researching the international executive, Spreitzer et al. (1997) found that general intelligence, business knowledge, interpersonal skills, commitment, courage and ease in dealing with cross-cultural issues are traits that resonate throughout the literature in illustrating a successful international executive. They indicated a lack of academic research predictors of “international executive” success, but agree that open personality, flexibility, drive and language skills all contribute to a successful international executive.[15]

Rather than delineating a term for the leader, Rentsch, Mot, and Abbe (2009) describe a specific trait that is attributed to multicultural leadership known as multicultural perspective-taking: the ability of such leaders to “take the perspective of another within the cultural context, to apply cultural lenses, and to adapt quickly when encountering individuals or groups from unfamiliar cultures”.[17]

Cross-cultural organizational behavior refers to the overall behaviors that a cross-cultural leader should embody; that is, “cross-cultural similarities and differences in processes and behaviors at work, and the dynamics of cross-cultural interfaces in multicultural domestic and international contexts”.[7]:480 In international business, cross-cultural competence refers to “an individual’s effectiveness in drawing upon a set of knowledge, skills, and personal attributes in order to work successfully with people from different national cultural backgrounds at home or abroad”.[18]:530 The focus here is not on acquiring knowledge, but rather on how the individual uses knowledge they already have acquired.

In a similar study conducted by Abbe, et al. (2007), this same concept of cross-cultural competence (here referred to as 3C), was found to enable leaders to interact in any culture, as opposed to language and regional knowledge, which only work in specific cultures. 3C is dynamic and subject to develop over time. The authors established three components of cross-cultural competence, which include knowledge and cognition, cultural awareness, cross-cultural schema, and cognitive complexity. Abbe et al. (2007) found that a leader will be successful working in another culture if personal, work, and interpersonal domains are met.[1]

Implications for practice

Implications of this need for cross-cultural leaders can be seen in the human resource departments within these global organizations. There is a strong agreement across the literature that the selection process plays a key role in hiring the people who will be most effective cross-cultural leaders. The articles detail specific personality traits and individual differences that promote quality cross-cultural leadership for multicultural settings. They also all emphasize across the board the need to hire individuals who already have prior extensive international experience, beyond vacationing in a given country.[1][15][16][18][19][20][21]

Additionally, there have been many studies published regarding the effect of intercultural training on expatriate success. While some disagree and question the effectiveness of training, most authors indicate that there is some, if only minor, success factor in intercultural training. There is no disagreement about the need for intercultural sensitivities and communication skills; it is the process of attaining these skills that is in question.[15][20][19][22]

Spreitzer, McCall Jr., Mahoney (1997) believe that executives attain these skills through continuous learning, and an array of differentiated projects and experiences which all lead to an accumulated knowledge.[15] Mintzberg and Gosling (2002) agree that executives learn through experience and note that they get to their level because of those experiences. They add that it would be detrimental to the executives to remove them from their experiential learning to sit them in a classroom and instead encourage a learning technique that incorporates classroom learning during short breaks from their job, roughly two weeks of every sixteen months.[20] Hechanova et al. (2003) add that in effective cross-cultural training that is provided by many organizations is actually more detrimental than none at all.[22]

According to Kealey and Protheroe (1996), the three most important ingredients to successful work overseas include the aptitudes and motivations of the expatriate and his immediate family, the aptitudes and motivation of the local counterparts and the overall organization of the project.[19]:144 Therefore, while training is important, only a piece of one of the three aspects, expatriate’s personal aptitudes, can be altered by training.

Notes

  1. 1 2 3 Abbe, Allison; Gulick, Lisa M. V.; Herman, Jeffrey L. (2007). Cross-cultural competence in Army leaders: a conceptual and empirical foundation (PDF). U.S. Army Research Institute for the Behavioral and Social Sciences.
  2. 1 2 3 4 House, Robert; Javidan, Mansour; Dorfman, Peter (1 October 2001). "Project GLOBE: An Introduction". Applied Psychology. 50 (4): 489–505. doi:10.1111/1464-0597.00070. ISSN 1464-0597.
  3. 1 2 3 Javidan, Mansour; Dorfman, Peter W.; Luque, Mary Sully de; House, Robert J. (2006-02-01). "In the Eye of the Beholder: Cross Cultural Lessons in Leadership from Project GLOBE" (PDF). The Academy of Management Perspectives. 20 (1): 67–90. doi:10.5465/amp.2006.19873410. ISSN 1558-9080.
  4. 1 2 Brodbeck, Felix C.; Frese, Michael; Akerblom, Staffan; Audia, Giuseppe; Bakacsi, Gyula; Bendova, Helena; Bodega, Domenico; Bodur, Muzaffer; Booth, Simon (2000). "Cultural variation of leadership prototypes across 22 European countries". Journal of Occupational and Organizational Psychology. 73 (1): 1–29. doi:10.1348/096317900166859. ISSN 2044-8325.
  5. ↑ Hofstede, Geert H.; Hofstede, Gert Jan (2005). Cultures and organizations: software of the mind (2nd ed.). New York: McGraw-Hill. ISBN 978-0-07-143959-6. OCLC 964793633.
  6. 1 2 Farh, Jiing-Lih; Cheng, Bor-Shiuan (2000). "A Cultural Analysis of Paternalistic Leadership in Chinese Organizations". Management and Organizations in the Chinese Context. Palgrave Macmillan, London. pp. 84–130. doi:10.1057/9780230511590_5. ISBN 978-1-349-41020-0.
  7. 1 2 Gelfand, Michele J.; Erez, Miriam; Aycan, Zeynep (2007). "Cross-Cultural Organizational Behavior". Annual Review of Psychology. 58 (1): 479–514. doi:10.1146/annurev.psych.58.110405.085559. PMID 17044797.
  8. ↑ Mingzheng, Xiao; Xinhui, Wu (2014-03-21). "Chinese Leadership". Public Integrity. 16 (2): 165–172. doi:10.2753/pin1099-9922160204. ISSN 1099-9922.
  9. 1 2 Pellegrini, Ekin K.; Scandura, Terri A. (June 2008). "Paternalistic Leadership: A Review and Agenda for Future Research" (PDF). Journal of Management. 34 (3): 566–593. doi:10.1177/0149206308316063. ISSN 0149-2063.
  10. ↑ Pellegrini, Ekin K.; Scandura, Terri A.; Jayaraman, Vaidyanathan (1 August 2010). "Cross-Cultural Generalizability of Paternalistic Leadership: An Expansion of Leader-Member Exchange Theory" (PDF). Group & Organization Management. 35 (4): 391–420. doi:10.1177/1059601110378456. ISSN 1059-6011.
  11. ↑ Bass, Bernard M (1985). Leadership and Performance Beyond Expectations. New York: Free Press. ISBN 978-0-02-901810-1. OCLC 318324450.
  12. ↑ Shahin, Amany I.; Wright, Peter L. (1 September 2004). "Leadership in the context of culture: An Egyptian perspective". Leadership & Organization Development Journal. 25 (6): 499–511. doi:10.1108/01437730410556743. ISSN 0143-7739.
  13. ↑ Casimir, Gian; Waldman, David A.; Bartram, Timothy; Yang, Sarah (1 March 2006). "Trust and the Relationship Between Leadership and Follower Performance: Opening the Black Box in Australia and China". Journal of Leadership & Organizational Studies. 12 (3): 68–84. doi:10.1177/107179190601200305. ISSN 1548-0518.
  14. ↑ Walumbwa, Fred O.; Lawler, John J.; Avolio, Bruce J. (1 April 2007). "Leadership, Individual Differences, and Work-related Attitudes: A Cross-Culture Investigation" (PDF). Applied Psychology. 56 (2): 212–230. doi:10.1111/j.1464-0597.2006.00241.x. ISSN 1464-0597.
  15. 1 2 3 4 5 Spreitzer, Gretchen; W. McCall, Morgan; D. Mahoney, Joan (1 February 1997). "Early Identification of International Executive Potential". Journal of Applied Psychology. 82: 6–29. doi:10.1037/0021-9010.82.1.6.
  16. 1 2 3 Osland, Joyce; Bird, Allan; Mendenhall, Mark; Osland, Asbjorn (1 January 2006). "Developing global leadership capabilities and global mindset: A review". International Human Resources Handbook. doi:10.4337/9781845428235.00017.
  17. ↑ Rentsch, J.R.; Mot, I.; Abbe, A. (2009). Identifying the core content and structure of a schema for cultural understanding (Report). Technical Report. 1256. Arlington, Virginia: U.S. Army Research Institute for the Behavioral and Social Sciences. p. 1.
  18. 1 2 Johnson, James P.; Lenartowicz, Tomasz; Apud, Salvador (1 July 2006). "Cross-cultural competence in international business: toward a definition and a model" (PDF). Journal of International Business Studies. 37 (4): 525–543. doi:10.1057/palgrave.jibs.8400205. ISSN 0047-2506.
  19. 1 2 3 Kealey, Daniel J.; Protheroe, David R. (1 March 1996). "The effectiveness of cross-cultural training for expatriates: An assessment of the literature on the issue". International Journal of Intercultural Relations. 20 (2): 141–165. doi:10.1016/0147-1767(96)00001-6. ISSN 0147-1767.
  20. 1 2 3 Mintzberg, Henry; Gosling, Jonathan (1 September 2002). "Educating Managers Beyond Borders". Academy of Management Learning & Education. 1 (1): 64–76. doi:10.5465/AMLE.2002.7373654. ISSN 1537-260X.
  21. ↑ Yamazaki, Yoshitaka; Kayes, D. Christopher (1 December 2004). "An Experiential Approach to Cross-Cultural Learning: A Review and Integration of Competencies for Successful Expatriate Adaptation". Academy of Management Learning & Education. 3 (4): 362–379. doi:10.5465/AMLE.2004.15112543. ISSN 1537-260X.
  22. 1 2 Hechanova, Regina; Beehr, Terry A.; Christiansen, Neil D. (1 April 2003). "Antecedents and Consequences of Employees' Adjustment to Overseas Assignment: A Meta-analytic Review" (PDF). Applied Psychology. 52 (2): 213–236. doi:10.1111/1464-0597.00132. ISSN 1464-0597.

References

  • Bass, Bernard M.; Avolio, Bruce J. (1994). Improving Organizational Effectiveness Through Transformational Leadership. SAGE. ISBN 978-0-8039-5236-2.
  • Bass, Bernard M. (1 February 1997). "Does the Transactional-Transformational Leadership Paradigm Transcend Organizational and National Boundaries?". American Psychologist. 52: 130–139. doi:10.1037/0003-066X.52.2.130.
  • Zweifel, Thomas D. (2003). Culture Clash: Managing the Global High-performance Team. Swiss Consulting Group, Inc. ISBN 978-1-59079-051-9.

See also

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