Global Leadership

About: Global Leadership is a research topic. Over the lifetime, 1598 publications have been published within this topic receiving 29200 citations.

Leadership made in Germany: Low on compassion, high on performance

Abstract: Executive Overview As part of the GLOBE project, we collected data on culture and leadership in Germany from 457 middle managers in the telecommunications, food processing, and finance industries. The most pronounced German cultural value is performance orientation. The hallmark of German cultural practices is high levels of uncertainty avoidance and assertiveness, along with low levels of humane orientation. At work, compassion is low and interpersonal relations are straightforward and stern. It seems that conflict and controversy are built into the German societal culture. As bas been shown in the GLOBE project by using data from 61 countries, characteristics attributed to a country's outstanding leaders match closely with its cultural values and practices. This holds true for Germany. Effective German leaders are characterized by high performance orientation, low compassion, low self-protection, low team orientation, high autonomy, and high participation. Conflict and controversy seem to be built into ...

Global Leadership: Women Leaders

Abstract: Global Leadership and the Twenty-first Century In his speech accepting the Philadelphia Liberty Medal, Vaclav Havel (1994, p. A27), President of the Czech Republic, eloquently explained that: There are good reasons for suggesting that the modern age has ended. Many things indicate that we are going through a transitional period, when it seems that something is on the way out and something else is painfully being born. It is as if something were crumbling, decaying and exhausting itself, while something else, still indistinct, were arising from the rubble. Havel's appreciation of the transition that the world is now experiencing is certainly important to each of us as human beings. None of us can claim that the twentieth century is exiting on an impressive note, on a note imbued with wisdom. As we ask ourselves which of the twentieth century's legacies we wish to pass on to the children of the twenty-first century, we are humbled into shameful silence. Yes we have advanced science and technology, but at the price of a world torn asunder by a polluted environment, by cities infested with social chaos and physical decay, by an increasingly skewed income distribution that condemns large proportions of the population to poverty (including people living in the world's most affluent societies), and by rampant physical violence continuing to kill people in titulary limited wars and seemingly random acts of violence. No, we do not exit the twentieth century with pride. Unless we can learn to treat each other and our planet in a more civilized way, is it not blasphemy to continue to consider ourselves a civilization (Rechtschaffen 1996)?(1) The dynamics of the twenty-first century will not look like those of the twentieth century; to survive as a civilization, twenty-first century society must not look like the twentieth century. For a positive transition to take place, the world needs a new type of leadership. Where will society find wise leaders to guide it toward a civilization that differs so markedly from that of the twentieth century? While many people continue to review men's historic patterns of success in search of models for twenty-first century global leadership, few have even begun to appreciate the equivalent patterns of historic and potential contributions of women leaders (Adler 1996). My personal search for leaders who are outside of traditional twentieth century paradigms has led me to review the voice that the world's women leaders are bringing to society. This article looks at the nature of global leadership and the role that women will play at the most senior levels of world leadership. Leadership: A Long History To lead comes from the latin verb "agere" meaning to set into motion (Jennings 1960). The Anglo-Saxon origins of the word to lead come from "laedere", meaning people on a journey (Boman/Deal 1991). Today's meaning of the word leader therefore has the sense of someone who sets ideas, people, organizations, and societies in motion; someone who takes the worlds of ideas, people, organizations, and societies on a journey. To lead such a journey requires vision, courage, and influence. According to U.S. Senator Barbara Mikulski, leadership involves "creating a state of mind in others" (Cantor/Bernay 1992, p. 59). Leaders, therefore, are "individuals who significantly influence the thoughts, behaviors, and/or feelings of others" (Gardner 1995, p. 6). Beyond strictly focusing on the role of the leader, leadership should also be thought of as interactive, as "an influence relationship among leaders and followers who intend real changes ... [reflecting] their mutual purposes" (Rost 1991, p. 102). In addition, according to Bolman and Deal (1995, p. 5), true leadership also includes a spiritual dimension: Two images dominate [concepts of leadership]: one of the heroic champion with extraordinary stature and vision, the other of the policy wonk, the skilled analyst who solves pressing problems with information, programs, and policies. …

National Culture and Leadership Profiles in Europe: Some Results From the GLOBE Study

Abstract: Different cultural groups may have different conceptions of what leadership should entail, i.e. different leadership prototypes. Several earlier studies revealed that within Europe various cultural clusters can be distinguished (Hofstede, 1991; Ronen & Shenkar, 1985). Using recent data from the GLOBE project, this article discusses similarities and differences on culture and leadership dimensions among 21 European countries. The results show that two broad clusters or patterns of cultural values can be distinguished, contrasting the North-Western and South-Eastern part of Europe. Within these clusters, differences in leadership prototypes to a certain extent mirror differences in culture. On the basis of these results it is hardly possible to speak of a single typically European culture or one distinct European management style. However, on some dimensions European scores are different from at least some other regions in the world.

When Do Global Leaders Learn Best to Develop Cultural Intelligence? An Investigation of the Moderating Role of Experiential Learning Style

Abstract: Cultural intelligence is believed to be an important quality for global leaders To understand how this quality can be developed from international experience, our study employs experiential learning theory to analyze the learning process We hypothesize that the extent to which the length of overseas work experience contributes to the development of cultural intelligence varies depending on the executives' learning styles Analyses of data collected from 294 international executives and graduate business students in China and Ireland indicated that the positive relationship between the length of overseas experience and cultural intelligence is strengthened when global executives have a divergent learning style, not when they have an assimilative, convergent, or accommodative learning style