Predicting Effectiveness In Global Leadership

Evolution of Business Management and Global Managements

Discuss About The Predicting Effectiveness In Global Leadership.

Over the last few decades, business management has tremendously evolved. More scholars have taken an interest in carrying international business researches, which have contributed on knowledge and understanding of how culture and business are related in the forms of global managements (Allan, & Mendenhall, 2015). The challenges and returns of studying business management across national boundaries and cultural boundaries, the global business has come to evolve. In the study and analysis of global business, global management gain prominence as the researchers explain the importance of competent global leadership (Bird and Mendenhall, 2016). They have come up with theories on culture and business to bridge the gap that many organizations have looked to understand.

In a broader sense, culture is how and why people do, think and live together (Carpenter & Dunung, 2012). Everything that people do encompasses their culture; eating habits, dressing, work, interaction, and communication to name a few. In business perspectives, culture influence how people think and communicate and how this is importantly integrated into different fields in organization management.

According to Mohammadian, (2017), culture is seen from the following perspectives:

1. Power distribution-explain the approach used in the hierarchy of power-sharing
2. Social relationships-whether people are individualistic or collectivism

• Uncertainty and social control-members of the society tend to avoid uncertainty or whether they are relationship-based and deal with uncertainty when they come.

1. Work patterns-how people go about their work. The methods they use in performing their duties
2. Environmental relationship-explain how people live with what surrounds them and the effect of their socioeconomic effects on the environment

According to Allan & Mendenhall, (2015) to understand culture and business, it is important to understand cross-cultural management issues and how it is evolving to usher global management and leadership. Cross-cultural management is dependent on cross-cultural communication issues, in other words, to manage cultural differences first have to understand cultural communications. Cross-cultural communications are communication styles, attitudes towards conflicts, the styles of making decisions, and approaches to knowledge. They defined cross-cultural management regarding managing and accommodating cultural practice variances in international management undertaking. In their journal, culture is seen as a fundamental part of business management with must need to understand the environmental culture of an organization.

Globalization has created market liberalization with people and resources becoming more mobile. These have also enabled a wide range of cultural mobility with their host agents. That means there is a higher contact of cultures between nations and countries which increase cross-cultural communications. These cultural differences in communication have to be studied critically and how they influence organization management. For instance, the cultural practices in China exhibited in their ways of doing business, a partner or manager need to understand them and have better perspectives on adjusting while maintaining management competency. Failure to learn these cultural differences have undercutting effects on the success of a global subsidiary manager.

Culture and Business

Allan & Mendenhall categorized cross-cultural management research into three parts: Unicultural research – which focuses on managing a business in a particular single country. Comparative research – which examines organizational management between two or more countries but does not give a comparison on them. Finally, intercultural study how employees interact with each other from two or more countries. In this context of cross-cultural management, the global leadership emerges. Whereby, global leaders have to be well acquainted with these intercultural dynamics of management. (Advance Systems, 2017). They outline how research has been done to explain the meaning and scope of global leadership.

1. Knowing the team members
2. Step ahead in creating and maintaining culturally diverse human resource

• Well-structured cross-cultural management

1. Understanding cultural teams’ cultural differences
2. Creating a clear work style and sticking to it
3. Creating lasting personal strong bonds

• An effective cultural conflict management system

Global leadership is multi-dimensional composite research and experiments results from the expatriate, intercultural communication, and global management research. The three are interrelated as they have an element of culture. Global leadership features are well captured from the three components.

Though the term “global leader” is widely used in Allan & Mendenhall journal, there is no universally accepted concise definition which completely explains the term. A wide array of papers has tried to define it in differing perspectives. (Ready & Conger 2007, Caligiuri 2006, Caligiuri & Tarique 2009). Further, the term includes persons of different trades, talents, responsibilities and managerial positions, which has resulted in fragmented definitions. The definition is broad to elicit various perspectives on how the researchers explain the term in every context.

Caligiuri & Tarique (2009) described global leader as a high ranked personality in an organization such chief executive officer, chairman, directors, and senior managers working at global levels of organizational management. They portrayed global leader as one with global responsibilities. This description was supported by Harzing & Pinnington (2011). However, the fact remains that these definitions remain broad.

In trying to understand global leadership, various research on different streams is analyzed.

1. Expatriation
2. Intercultural communication
3. Comparative leadership
4. Expatriation

Allan & Mendenhall defined expatriate as where the employees are given job assignment to work in a foreign nation for a specified period. Depending on the scope of their work in a foreign country, the period of their stay will vary and so the experience gained in that period. Those experiences of an expatriate, preferably long enough for adjustments and response, form the foundation on which the global leadership research carried. Expatriate contribute to the understanding of the global leadership through work experience, cultural adjustments and growth gained over time outside their countries working for a subsidiary of their organization. We can, therefore, say that expatriate managers lead to the emergence of global managers.

Cross-cultural Management and Communications

Selection of expatriates is better established, yet not a complete consideration, when there is will to shift location and work in unfamiliar cultures. Though it is important, is not a predictor of success. They further stated that personality traits are more successful in identifying superior expatriate. According to them, factors impacting to successful adjustment and performance are the stability of expatriate emotions, extraversion, being open, and person to engage with through communication. Expatriates need three types of adjustments; work adjustment, interaction adjustment, and general adjustments. Work adjustment is how well he is adaptive to the newly assigned task, duties, and context, etc. Interaction adjustment is blending well with new cultural variances, set rules and ways of relations. Finally, an overall adjustment which focuses broadly on how expatriate generally adjusts to ways of life in a foreign nation. Global leaders need to adjust to the new environment to successfully undertake their international duties.

How expatriates transform through experiences in the external environment was found to be important for their success in the international subsidiaries of their organization. Transformation involves five phases: interaction with new culture, breakdown, recovery, self-sufficiency, and independence. Herman & Zaccaro, (2014) stated transformation through analysis of shifts from old personality and thinking and the way experience in global jobs, and responsibilities point to personal complexities, which the expatriate react by being responsive to those complexities inherent in global work.

Global leadership involves managing cultural differences. Therefore, it is important to study intercultural communication competence of a global leader. Inter-cultural competence is how a global leader is capable of handling communications in the culturally diverse environment. The most important skills needed in inter-cultural competencies are: thinking of others person, intellectual flexibility, behavioral flexibility, open-mindedness and multicultural understanding.

Being able to listen, is being open to new knowledge, new categories, and multiple viewpoints. This is a way of being attentive to prejudgments, cognitions, and reactions to which communication is made. Cognitive flexibility is the ability to view things to in different dimensions. Behavioral flexibility is being adaptable, and you are capable of responding situationally appropriately. Further, according to them being open-minded perceives uncertainty of situation as desirable. And finally, multi-cultural understanding as being the ability to experience some aspect of reality different from own culture.

1. Comparative Leadership

Comparative studies on global leadership involve more than one culture with the conclusion that culture influences how groups interact, therefore, affecting the behavior of a global leader. The research has established the behavior of follows in different leaderships between one or more cultures. In this regard, leaders in high power distance cultures are more likely to be tyrannical than their counterparts in low power distance cultures.

1. Global Management

Globalization and Cultural Communication Differences

In the modern day understanding of international trade and issues influencing global trade is better than before (Mohammadian, 2017).

Because global leadership involves oversea duties and often requires balancing of competing and contradictory demands in different regions and countries, research on global managers is grounded to domestic managers. A starting point in examining managerial roles is using seven roles: monitor, spokesperson, leader, liaison, decision maker, innovator, and negotiator, keeping in mind that these roles have variations in manners managers perform these roles moderated by the environment, job, situation, and person. The studies have proven that there is the difference between domestic managers and global manager regarding personality characteristics, work roles, and skill requirements. The studies help in understanding how to improve and grow global management skills in managers.

The authors seek to understand the various roles and competency demands of leading at global management. They argue that findings from different studies show that, some were extending domestic leadership ideas to global settings which did not solve the problem of inter-cultural differences. Later studies drew their finding from experiences of global managers. They were able to get key competent global leaders.

The following are the competencies held by the global leaders:

1. Visioning
2. Global business expertise

• Global organizing savvy

1. Traits and values
2. Cognitive orientation
3. Cross-cultural relationship skills.

They pointed out that scholars have questioned how best they can develop global leaders. Developing global leadership involve creating programs which focus on business and culture and international management. Publications have also been made on how global leadership can be developed, and many global leaders have taken interests on these findings.

Developing global leadership also involve growing key talent and competencies that are inherent to the adaptability in the global management. To better understand these development needs, it is important to investigate personality traits required and the existing global competencies.

Conclusion

The author’s research and explanations on the global management, intercultural management, cross-cultural management and global leadership, came out clearly. They have used different scholarly studies on culture and business to get interconnections that existed in global management. They also established the need for global businesses to manage both intercultural and cross-cultural differences as critical ingredients of the success.

However, they duos did not account for modernization and civilization which has eroded much of the cultural practices in the contemporary global market. It is clear that what was being practiced in the 20^th century has changed or evolved. Culture is not merely people’s way of life; it is what surrounds them and makes them act or respond in a particular manner. The transformation that has taken place over time constitute the environment from which culture will be derived over time. For instance, way dressing, music, language, habits, and traditional values continue to diminish and lack meaning to the majority of modern communities. These variations in culture should be factored when researching on intercultural management as a subset of business and culture.

References

Advance Systems. (2017) Seven effective ways of successful cross-cultural management. [blog] Employees Self-Service. Available at: https://www.advancesystermsinc.com (Accessed 1^st April 2018)

Bird, A. and Mendenhall, M.E., 2016. From cross-cultural management to global leadership. Pearson.

Caligiuri, P., & Tarique, I. (2009) Predicting effectiveness in global leadership activities. Journal of World Business, 44(3), 336-346.

Carpenter, M., Dunung, S. (2011) International business. Saylor foundation publishers

Cligiuri, P. (2006) Developing global leaders. Human Resource Management Review, 16(2), 219-228

Harzing, A. W., & Pinnington, A. (2011) International human resource management. Sage.

Herman J. L., Zaccaro, S. J. (2014), The Complex Self-Concept of the Global Leader, in Joyce S. Osland, Ming Li, Ying Wang (ed.) Advances in Global Leadership (Advances in Global Leadership, Volume 8) Emerald Group Publishing Limited, pp.93 – 111

Mohammadian, H. D. (2017) An overview of international cross-cultural management. Web: Retrieved from www.fh-mittelsland.de (Accessed 1^st April 2018)

Ready, D. A., & Conger, J.A. (2007) Make your company a talent factory. Harvard business review, 85(6), 68.