Cross-cultural Leadership: Communication And Negotiation In International Setting

Background and Significance

The title of the research is, “Cross-cultural leadership: communication and negotiation in international setting”

Since the past few years, the multinational business organizations have become a global phenomenon as the companies are expanding into foreign markets to increase their revenue. There have been significant challenges in managing the people in national and international boundaries. The cross-culture difference accommodates the difference in the culture, behavior and attitude of the people in foreign countries.  The cross-culture research has risen with the development of multinational companies. Although there are several pieces of research focusing on the cross-culture management, further research is needed to explore the complex ways, through which the research might impact on the ways of thinking of different people. The globalization has transformed the manner in which the managers and the business organizations operate. Therefore, there is further need to research in the area. 

The primary aim of the research is to identify the impact of the culture on the organization behavior. The objectives of the research can be represented as:

• To analyze the impact of cross-culture communication on the communication style of managers and employees
• To analyze the impact of cross-culture communication on the negotiation style of managers
• To analyze the change in leadership style in an international setting

The research questions formed for the present research are:

• What is the impact on cross-culture difference on leadership style of managers?
• What is the approach of the managers regarding internal communication and negotiation in an international setting?

In the present section, a comprehensive literature review is conducted to analyze the current information in the cross-culture setting.

• Bird & Mendenhall (2015) have analyzed the historical research in the evolution of global leadership. The researchers have analyzed the evolutionary trends in the cross-culture management and the impact of cultural difference between the native and the host country on the leadership style of the customers. The literature has analyzed the leadership through multiple perspectives such as complexity leadership theory, shared leadership theory, relational leadership theory and collaborative leadership theory. The literature has highlighted various tactics, which can be used in the management of the global management teams. These approaches can also be used by the HR executives in the selection and development of the global leaders. Further, the research highlights that all the leaders are trained in the same manner for different international deployment. However, this approach is not efficient as there are different global leadership contexts and; therefore, they should be provided specialized training.
• In the views of Groves, Feyerherm & Gu (2015), the cross-culture management has become a significant issue because of the incompatibilities between the people from different geographical locations.
• Vogel et al. (2015) have conducted a research to analyze the impact of cross-culture differences in the perception of leadership in the organization. The literature has highlighted that in Confucian leadership, abusive leadership is considered more positively than in the Anglo culture. The culture influences the perception of the followers regarding the abusive supervision and the interpersonal leadership. It also impacts the trust for the supervisors and efforts towards work.
• The study by Ogliastri & Quintanilla (2015) has stated that the negotiation in the cross-culture setting is challenging due to the negotiation culture in different cultures. In most of the cultures, two types of negotiators are present, namely, an emotionally centered negotiators and rational or professional negotiators. In the present professional world, the business professionals are using rational approach and objectivity in negotiations. However, in most of the countries with ancient culture, the business negotiations revolve around emotions and sentiments.
• In the perspective of Gelfard ey al. (2017), the cross-culture psychology or management techniques impacts on the organization behavior.
• The research article (Javidam et al., 2006) has provided action-based and context-specific advice so that the leaders can interact with the people from different cultures.
• House et al. (2002) have analyzed the leadership and culture in different countries. The culture along with its impact on the performance is analyzed through different dimensions, namely, performance orientation, future orientation, power distance, gender egalitarianism, human orientation and uncertainty avoidance. The research article has proposed a theory, which explores the impact of various culture variables on the leadership of the organization. This theory is named as GLOBE.
• Other research articles will also be selected in the research. The present table discusses all these articles:  

Name of the Article	Authors	Brief Summary
Cross-National, Cross-Cultural Organizational Behavior Research: Advances, gaps and recommendations	Anne S. Tsui, Sushil S. Nifadkar and Amy Yi Ou (2007)	Several recommendations are suggested to deal with the challenges in the international environment.
Gupta, V., MacMillan, I. C., & Surie, G. (2004)	Entrepreneurial leadership: developing and measuring a cross-cultural construct.	The research article has constructed the theory of entrepreneurial leadership in international construct
Dickson, M. W., Den Hartog, D. N., & Mitchelson, J. K. (2003).	Research on leadership in a cross-cultural context: Making progress, and raising new questions	According to the research article, the establishment of long-term leadership in multinational construct is dependent on the focused research in the field
Alon, I., & Higgins, J. M. (2005)	Global leadership success through emotional and cultural intelligences.	According to the research article, the business organizations should focus on developing emotionally –sensitive and culturally attuned leaders.
Resick, C. J., Hanges, P. J., Dickson, M. W., & Mitchelson, J. K. (2006)	A cross-cultural examination of the endorsement of ethical leadership.	The research article has highlighted that in multinational setting, ethical leadership is crucial
Grisham, T., & Walker, D. H. (2008	Cross-cultural leadership. International Journal of Managing Projects in Business	The research article has highlighted the importance of cross-culture awareness in international setting
Walumbwa, F. O., Lawler, J. J., & Avolio, B. J. (2007).	2007). Leadership, individual differences, and work?related attitudes: A cross?culture investigation.	According to the literature, work-related attitude is influenced by the cultural upbringing

In the present, a research is proposed to understand the impact of cross-culture communication on the leadership style and the internal communication of the organization. In the present business environment, the employees, teams and organizations are operating in an international environment. In this situation, physical distance or time difference becomes nothing and people work in international complex environment. The present marketplace is becoming more competitive, complex, and dynamic as the companies are operating in an international environment. The business organizations are exploring different ways to develop and deploy the employees in an international setting. The business leaders not only have to go for international assignments, but they also need to engage in communication and negotiation with business personnel of different cultural backgrounds (Caliguri & Tarique, 2012). The global leadership is a significant success factor in the growth and progress of multinational leadership.

Cross-cultural issues have also resulted in challenge in international negotiation. There are significant challenges such as issues in understanding the differences between different cultures involved in a transaction, inability to communicate with people from different cultural backgrounds, and lack of adaptability between different cultures. In the recent years, there has been growing awareness regarding the impact of cross-culture awareness in the management style of the people. In the globalization, cross-cultural training is important in cross-culture adaptation.  The human resource managers have to understand the impact of difference in culture on the human resource in developing training programs, leadership programs and other initiatives. The cross-culture literature states that there is strong connection between the culture and the leadership style of a person. The researchers have argued that the culture has a direct impact on the leadership styles, culture, tradition, value and ideologies of a person. It impacts on the interpersonal skills of a person.  Other than that, the interview will also be conducted with the senior managers of the organization, deported on foreign missions. The interview will be taken with two HR managers and two senior managers of the organization.

Literature Review

In the present, an interview will be conducted with the HR managers of different companies. The research questions will revolve around the impact of cross-culture approaches on the internal communication and negotiation techniques of the leaders. The HR managers of the organization will be familiar with the approaches used in the training and development, while deporting the senior managers on international assignments (Flick, 2015). The business managers deported on foreign missions can explain the struggle they face, while communicating to the foreign clients. 

In the present, the data collection method of interview is discussed. Interview is the most common method for the exploring new information. It is used to identify noel information regarding the research topic. The research aims and objectives suggest that the researcher will explore new information regarding the impact of difference in culture in the international management of business organizations. Therefore, the research is presented in such a manner that it will explore new information. Therefore, the interview is the most appropriate method for the present research context. In the interview will be taken in a detailed one-to-one session with the interview participants. The interview will provide detailed theoretical information for the research. The interview is a qualitative research method. It is the process of eliciting qualitative information from the interviewees (Mackey and Gass, 2015). The qualitative interviewing has several benefits. It provides in-depth information regarding the research participants. The provide insight of the person, their intimate or personal experiences. However, there are certain complications of the research process as well. The planning for meeting is difficult to decide and the research participants can cancel the meeting at the last minute. Effective interview requires that the researcher makes the research participants comfortable. Therefore, they need to multitask in the interview process.

In the interview, a structured questionnaire will be used so that the researcher does not deviate from the research topic. There are three types of interview questionnaires, namely, structured questionnaire, unstructured questionnaire and semi-structured questionnaire. In the structured questionnaire, the interview questions are already formed. On the other hand, in unstructured questionnaire, the interview questions are not previously formed and the interviewer asks leading questions according to the answers that he receives. Firstly, the interviewees will be needed to fill a consent form. The researcher will protect the personal information and identity of the research participants (Tietenberg, and Lewis, 2016). 

The data will be analyzed through thematic analysis technique. It is the most common and the simplest form of qualitative data analysis. It is the approach of developing themes according to the content obtained from the data collection. All the data collected from the interviewees will be analyzed to develop common themes. These themes are developed by pinpointing, examining, and recording similar patterns in the data. The thematic analysis is used to understand different approaches, which can be used to describe a phenomenon. There are six phases of the research, namely, familiarization with the data, generating thematic codes, searching for themes in the data, reviewing the final themes, naming the themes and producing the final thematic analysis (Silverman, 2016). The researcher will form common themes and the content under each theme will be accumulated under a single area. Afterwards, the data in a single theme will be further analyzed for obtaining beneficial information.

Research Objectives and Questions

The thematic analysis is based on examining themes within the data. It should emphasize the description of data set. In the thematic analysis, coding is considered as the most crucial method in developing themes. The themes are the patterned response to the research questions. The research themes can be analyzed through two methods, namely, semantic and latent method. The semantic theme is the process, in which explicit meaning is given to the data. In the latent method, the underlying ideas, patterns and assumptions should be analyzed. It requires interpretation of the data in a comprehensive manner. 

In the research, the ethical consideration of the research is critical. The ethics means the standards or the norms, which are needed to be followed by the researcher. It differentiates between the acceptable and the unacceptable behavior in the research. In the research, the researcher should abide by the ethical norms, which are mainly reliability, integrity and validity of the research. These codes are dependent upon several issues such as honesty, objectivity, intellectual property, social responsibility, confidentiality and non-discrimination (Lewis, 2015). The ethical issues are important in all aspects of the research. In the qualitative research, the ethical guidelines prevent the fabrications or falsifying the data and promoting the knowledge as the primary goal of the research. There are several ethical principles such as respect for persons, beneficence, justice and respect for communities. In the present research, human subjects are used, which is an important ethical consideration (Smith, 2015). In the research, the human subjects increase the consideration of ethical research. Another issue in the research is the issue of voluntary participation and informed consent. It means that the human subjects should participate at their will and they should be fully informed about the potential risk and the details of the research project. In the research, the participants must be able to take any decision regarding participation in the research and they should be coerced to participate in the research. The consent should be given in ethical and written form (Taylor, Bogdan, and DeVault, 2015). The ethical standards of the organization should follow the confidentiality and anonymity of the subjects.

It is considered that interview is an intrusion to the personal lives of the respondent in accordance to the dedicated time and level of sensitivity of the questions. Therefore, in interview, ethical issues should be considered at all the stages of the interview process. In interview, there is an ethical challenge that due to the intimacy and openness of the interview setting, the interview respondents might reveal any information, which they might regret later. The research participant should assure that all the information included in the research is confidential and anonymous (Brinkmann, 2014). The interviewer should also assure that the participation in the research is voluntary and the consent forms are filled by each research participant.

Data Collection Methods

The data collection is the most integral part of the research process. There are several aspects of the data collection process, which impacts on the integrity and credibility of the research. In the present research, the data collection method of interview is selected. However, there are certain limitations of the interview method (Smith, 2015). Firstly, the cost of face-to-face interview is very high. It is a major disadvantage of the research. It is difficult to reduce the cost of the interview. Another major challenge in research is the quality of data provided to the customers. It is possible that several interviewees have bias, which can impact the response of the researchers. There are interviewers, which do not possess proper interviewing skills, which impact the overall solutions to the research. Another challenge in the research is that is the limitation in the sample size (Panneerselvam, 2014). The sample size is limited according to the size of the interviewing staff and qualified respondents in the area.

In the research, the validity and reliability poses great significance in the findings of the scientific research. In the research, two types of validity are measures, namely, internal validity and external validity. The internal validity analyzes whether the interview questions are investigating, what they were intended to research. The external validity analyzes whether the findings of the research can be generalized to higher extent (Mackey & Gass, 2015). The reliability refers to the process that the repeated application of the research instrument will provide the sale results. It is argued that the interviews have poor reliability.

In the figure, the flow of research sections has been mentioned. The research study will have five chapters. The first chapter of the research will introduce the research topic and subject. This chapter will also provide the research aims and the scope of the research. Further, the research questions, which will be needed to answer, will be discussed in the chapter. The second chapter of the research is literature review. The literature review discusses the prior information regarding the research. It discusses the ideas and research of the past research. The next chapter of the research is research methodology. In this chapter, the researcher analyzes different research methods and the research design, which will be finally used in the research. It describes different research methods and the justification of selection of the most appropriate research method for the research. In the next chapter, the data findings are discussed. It is the most crucial chapter of the research. The last chapter of the research is the conclusion. It answers the research questions and concludes the overall research.  

Analysis Techniques

Reference

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Bird, A., & Mendenhall, M. E. (2015). From cross-cultural management to global leadership: Evolution and adaptation. Journal of World Business.

Brinkmann, S. (2014). Interview. In Encyclopedia of critical psychology (pp. 1008-1010). Springer New York.

Caligiuri, P., & Tarique, I. (2012). Dynamic cross-cultural competencies and global leadership effectiveness. Journal of World Business, 47(4), 612-622.

Dickson, M. W., Den Hartog, D. N., & Mitchelson, J. K. (2003). Research on leadership in a cross-cultural context: Making progress, and raising new questions. The leadership quarterly, 14(6), 729-768.

Flick, U., 2015. Introducing research methodology: A beginner’s guide to doing a research project. London: Sage.

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Grisham, T., & Walker, D. H. (2008). Cross-cultural leadership. International Journal of Managing Projects in Business, 1(3), 439-445.

Groves, K. S., Feyerherm, A., & Gu, M. (2015). Examining cultural intelligence and cross-cultural negotiation effectiveness. Journal of Management Education, 39(2), 209-243.

Gupta, V., MacMillan, I. C., & Surie, G. (2004). Entrepreneurial leadership: developing and measuring a cross-cultural construct. Journal of business venturing, 19(2), 241-260.

House, R., Javidan, M., Hanges, P., & Dorfman, P. (2002). Understanding cultures and implicit leadership theories across the globe: an introduction to project GLOBE. Journal of world business, 37(1), 3-10.

Javidan, M., Dorfman, P. W., De Luque, M. S., & House, R. J. (2006). In the eye of the beholder: Cross cultural lessons in leadership from project GLOBE. The academy of management perspectives, 20(1), 67-90.

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Resick, C. J., Hanges, P. J., Dickson, M. W., & Mitchelson, J. K. (2006). A cross-cultural examination of the endorsement of ethical leadership. Journal of Business Ethics, 63(4), 345-359.

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Vogel, R. M., Mitchell, M. S., Tepper, B. J., Restubog, S. L., Hu, C., Hua, W., & Huang, J. C. (2015). A cross?cultural examination of subordinates’ perceptions of and reactions to abusive supervision. Journal of Organizational Behavior, 36(5), 720-745.

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