ADM 612 - LeadershipADM 612 - Leadership

Lecture 23 – Culture and Leadership

Description

• No unified theory for culture and leadership.

• We can only discuss culture and talk about its impact on leadership.

Description

• Globalization is central to the discussion of culture and leadership.

– The increased interdependence (economic, social, and political) between nations.

Description

• Globalization has created three challenges:– The design of effective multinational

organizations.– The identification and selection of leaders for

these organizations.– The management of organizations with culturally

diverse employees.

Description

• The development of leadership competence in cross-cultural awareness and practice.

• Leaders must develop five cross-cultural competences.

Six Cross-Cultural Competencies

• Leaders must understand business, political, and cultural environments worldwide.

• Leaders must learn the perspectives, tastes, trends, and technologies of many other cultures.

• Leaders must be able to work simultaneously with people from many cultures.

Six Cross-Cultural Competencies

• Leaders must be able to adapt to living and communicating in other cultures.

• Leaders must learn to relate to people from other cultures from a position of equality.

• Leaders must be skilled in creating transcultural visions.

Culture Defined

• The learned beliefs, values, rules, norms, symbols, and traditions that are common to a group of people.

• Shared qualities make a group unique.• Culture is dynamic and transmitted to

others.

Culture Defined• Multicultural implies an approach or system that

takes more than one culture into account.• Multicultural can also refer to a set of subcultures

defined by race, gender, ethnicity, sexual orientation, and age.

• Diversity refers to the existence of different cultures or ethnicities within a group or organization.

Related Concepts• Ethnocentrism is the tendency for individuals to

place their own group (ethnic, racial, or cultural) at the center of their observations of others and the world, that their own culture is better or more natural than others.

• Ethnocentrism is an obstacle to effective leadership because it prevents people from fully understanding or respecting the world view of others.

Related Concepts• Prejudice is a largely fixed attitude, belief, or

emotion held by an individual about another individual or group based on faulty or unsubstantiated data.

• Prejudices are based on previous decisions and experiences, and involve inflexible generalizations that are resistant to change or evidence to the contrary.

Related Concepts• Prejudice creates leadership problems by

being self-oriented, rather than other-oriented, and by limiting the leader’s ability to see multiple perspectives.

• Prejudice also limits the leader’s ability to manage followers by requiring negotiation across follower’s prejudices.

Dimensions of Culture

• GLOBE Study of 62 Societies.• Global Leadership and Organizational

Behavioral Effectiveness.• Responses of 17,000 managers in 950

organizations representing 62 different cultures.

Nine Dimensions of Culture

• Uncertainty avoidance—The use of rules, structures, and laws to make things more predictable.

• Power distance—The degree to which power is stratified.

Nine Dimensions of Culture• Institutional collectivism—The degree to

which an organization or society encourages collective action.

• In-group collectivism—The degree to which people express pride, loyalty, and cohesiveness in their organizations and families.

Nine Dimensions of Culture

• Gender egalitarianism—Degree to which organization or society minimizes gender role differences.

• Assertiveness—Degree to which individuals are determined and assertive in their social relationships.

Nine Dimensions of Culture

• Future orientation—Degree to which individuals in a culture engage in planning, investing, and delaying gratification.

• Performance orientation—Degree to which organization or society rewards group members for improved performance.

Nine Dimensions of Culture

• Humane orientation—Degree to which a culture rewards people for being altruistic.

Country Clusters -

GLOBE

Cultural Clusters -

GLOBE

Leadership Behavior and Culture Clusters

• Charismatic/value-based leadership.• Team-oriented leadership.• Participative leadership.• Humane-oriented leadership.• Autonomous leadership.• Self-protective leadership.

Leadership Behavior and Culture Clusters

Leadership Behavior and Culture Clusters

Leadership Behavior and Culture Clusters

Leadership Behavior and Culture Clusters

Leadership Behavior and Culture Clusters

Universally Desirable Leadership Attributes

Universally Undesirable Leadership Attributes

Strengths of Model

• GLOBE study is a major study with broad applicability.

• Findings emerge from a well-developed research design.

Strengths of Model• Cultural classification broader than previous

models.• Model provides information on what is

universally accepted as good and bad leadership.

• Model underscores complexity of leadership process and how culture influences it.

Weaknesses of Model

• Does not provide a basis for a single theory of how culture relates to leadership.

• Cultural terms are unnecessarily vague.• Model based on perceptions of leadership

rather than leadership actions.

Weaknesses of Model

• The six leadership behaviors are built on subscales that model very different behaviors.

• The desirable and undesirable traits have the same problems of context as trait theory.

Applications

• Help understand own cultural biases.• Help understand what it means to be a

good leader.• Help communication across cultural

and geographic boundaries.