What is Culture and Leadership?

Описание: Since World War II, there has been a dramatic increase in globalization throughout the world. Globalization has created a need for leaders with greater understanding of cultural differences and increased competencies in cross-cultural communication and practice.

In the past 30 years, many studies have focused on identifying various dimensions of culture. The best known is the work of Hofstede, who identified five major dimensions: power distance, uncertainty avoidance, individualism–collectivism, masculinity–femininity, and long-term–short-term orientation. The GLOBE studies offer the strongest body of findings to date on culture and leadership. Using established quantitative research methods, GLOBE researchers studied how 17,000 managers from 62 different countries viewed leadership.

In addition, GLOBE researchers identified six global leadership behaviors that could be used to characterize how different cultural groups view leadership: charismatic/value-based, team-oriented, participative, humane-oriented, autonomous, and self-protective leadership. One outcome of the GLOBE project was the identification of a list of leadership attributes that were universally endorsed as positive and negative attributes of leadership.

The scope of the GLOBE project is its main strength. The findings from this project make a major statement about how cultures around the world view leadership. Regardless of these limitations, the GLOBE studies stand out because they offer so much valuable information about the unique ways culture influences the leadership process.