Global Leadership Assignment Sample

Global Leadership Assignment

This report will discuss the four different culture models and their influence on the organisation. It will also discuss different definitions of leaders provided by the sources, such as Hofstede, Trompenaars, and the GLOBE. Moreover, the report will talk about how an organisation transforms into a multicultural organisation. In addition to this, impacts of group memberships on leader will be elaborated along with a discussion on obstacle new leadership styles face in traditional companies.

1. Four Models of Culture and Their Effects on Leadership

The concept of organisational culture was introduced in the 1970s and they got popularised in the late 1990s. The four models of culture that got developed with time are: Hofstede, Trompenaars, GLOBE, and Edgar Schein’s culture model.

Hofstede Culture Model: This is one of the most comprehensive models that studied the role of culture in influencing the values at workplace. According to Hofstede, culture is defined as “the collective programming of the mind that distinguishes the members of a particular team from others.”In his culture model, he determined five dimensions of culture: power distance, masculinity-femininity, individualism-collectivism, uncertainty avoidance, indulgence and long-term orientation. (Schneider, et.al, 2013).

• Individualism – collectivism. The extent up to which an individual is taking care of himself and his family.
• Power distance: This dimension reflects the degree to which power is distributed unequally among people.
• Uncertainty avoidance: This dimension measures the comfort of people while dealing with uncertainties and ambiguity.
• Masculinity-femininity: This dimension measures people’s preference for assertiveness, achievement, heroism, assertiveness, and material award (Magnusson et al., 2012).
• Long-term orientation: This dimension measures the ability to deal with the past while handling the present and future.

Trompenaars’s culture model

Trompenaar introduced a seven dimensional model to distinguish people from one culture from another. The model is used to understand the individuals belonging to different culture in a better way. This way one can easily avoid misunderstanding(Hughes, 1993). The seven dimensions are:-

• Universalism versus particularism: In universalism, people emphasise highly on rules, values, laws, and obligation over relationships. In particularism, people believes that relationship and circumstance dictates the rule they follow.
• Individualism versus communitarianism: In individualism, people emphasise on personal freedom and success. They make decisions individually. On the other hand, communitarianism is all about preferring the group over individual choices.
• Specific versus diffuse: Specific people keep their personal lives separate from their professional lives. They avoid their relationship affecting their work. Diffuse person mix the two and as a result of which always unfocused.
• Neutral versus emotional: Neutral people have a strong control over their emotions and they never let their feelings affect others.On the other hand, emotional people keep mixing their emotions spontaneously with their work which affects their performance.
• Achievement versus ascription: Achievement culture give more importance to the performance irrespective of persona of an individual. In ascription cultures, people are valued for their personas and characteristics.
• Sequential time versus synchronous time: In sequential time, people like events to take place orderly and they value punctuality. In synchronous time, people try to work on more than project at one time.
• Internal direction versus outer direction: In internal directions, people try to control their working environment in order to achieve their goals. They set objectives that team members agree with. In outer direction, people believe that they are being controlled by the environment while achieving their goals.

GLOBE Culture Model: GLOBE

GLOBE study is developed to conceptualise the long-term multi-facet program that validates the cultural dimensions and their linkage with leadership. GLOBE utilises the inferences of the Hofstede's research of organisational culture and elaborates it further in order to relate it with the leadership concept in culture. GLOBE defined culture as shared values, motives, identities, and beliefs and envisaging important events that result from collective experiences of the employees that are passed on to the future generation. (Goetsch& Davis, 2014).  GLOBE has added four dimensions to the Hofstede’s theory which are:-

• In-group collectivism: This dimension measures the degree of extent of how people encourages cohesiveness in the society.
• Gender egalitarianism:This dimension measures the extent of society’s effort to minimise the gender differences.
• Assertiveness:This measures the degree a person is confrontational, assertive, and aggressive towards his social relationships.
• Humane orientation:The degree the society put efforts in future planning and investment.

Edgar Schein Organisational Culture Model

Edgar Schein believed that organisations takes time to adopt culture. Changes cannot be implemented in just a single day. It takes place gradually as the employees have to undergo various changes. They learn from the experience and mistakes and start implementing them in their modus operandi. According to Schein, there are 3 levels in an organisation (Hughes, 1993).

• Artefacts:This includes the characteristics of the organisation that can be easily viewed and felt by the workers collectively. These can be clearly mentioned in the vision and mission statement of the organisation.
• Values:The second stage is characterised by the values of the staff members. The values influence the organisational culture significantly. The thought attitude and thought process of the employees defines the culture of organisation.
• Assumed Values: The third level is characterised by the employees’ assumed values that cannot be measured but they are significant for the organisation. For instance, in female dominating firms, late night working culture is not encouraged as female are not very much comfortable in that.

2. Meaning of Leaders Based on the cultural values given by Hofstede, Trompenaars, and the GLOBE

Hofstede, Trompenaars, and GLOBE analysed various employees and leaders across the world. Theyhave developed certain dimensions that they have used to define the culture of firms and countries. In his research, Hofstede determined four dimensions that characterise the culture: power distance, individualism-collectivism, masculinity-femininity, and uncertainty avoidance.Hofstede laid the groundwork in the research work for organisational culture. The. GLOBE project research is all about how traits are perceived in effective leadership across the globe (Chhokar, et.al, 2013). It was founded to analyse the organisational values, norms, and leader’s beliefs in various societies. GLOBE has identified six leadership styles (House, et.al, 2013) :-

• Performance-oriented:These leaders emphasizes more on vision and innovation. These leaders always encourage others to create new ideas, perform well and learn.
• Team-oriented:Such leaders are loyal to their team and feel proud to be a part of it. They promote the cohesive group to get the work done.
• Participative:This style of leadership promotes everyone’s participation. The decision-making is done after considering people’s suggestions.
• Humane:Such leaders tend to be more empathetic towards other instead of authoritative. They are kind, modest, supportive, and patient.
• Autonomous: Such leaders work independently and do not require any assistance. They never consider the input from another individual in decision-making.
• Self-protective: Such leaders can go to any extent in order to safeguard their team or themselves. This may be about protecting one’s reputation or rights.

3. An organisation to become Multicultural

A multicultural organisation can be defined as the firm that consists of people from different origin, culture, race, and demography who are integrated across the organisational structure. Such employees have different ethnicities and background. Such organisations discourage any kind of discrimination and aptitude, skills, and talent are the only criteria to get success in such firms. For a company that is aiming at becoming the multicultural organisations, some important points are provided below (Chemers, 2014).:-

• The management of the company should commit itself to establish the multiculturalism and the same should be reflecting in the mission, vision, objectives, and the organisational strategy.
• The organisation should have the zeal and courage to make changes in the management practices and the leadership styles. In addition to this, they should support the orderly development of the multicultural processes within the firm
• The managers and leaders should set clear and well-defined targets in order to establish the multiculturalism. In addition to this, they must control and monitor the implementation plans regularly.
• The approach towards the multiculturalism should be holistic and the whole organisation should make efforts to implement it. The employees should be motivated to develop and reflect multicultural skills and explore their benefits (Paulienė,2012).
• Good orientation and special attention should be provided to overseas workers in order to make them feel at home. The managers should make sure that there is no communication gap between the foreigners and the employees. For this purpose, the good quality material in their mother tongue language should be developed.
• The staff working on global projects should be provided with proper training, education, and manners.

4. Effects of Group Memberships on Leaders and Leadership

Group membership can be defined as the association of two or more individuals working together. In an organisation, leadership and its effectiveness can be affected by a number of factors. Group membership is one such factor that can have direct impacts on the leaders, his/her leadership styles and its effectiveness. Talking about the impact on the leadership style, the membership can influence the choice of selection of the leadership style in an organisation. For instance, participative leadership style is all about putting attention on each and every member of the group and discussing the problem with them before making the final decision (Verba, 2015). The larger the size of the group the lesser attention will be given to the member and more time will be consumed in the decision-making. Groups with a large number of members are often chaotic, unorganised, less educated, and have low productivity. Therefore, in order to handle them, the autocratic leadership style is adopted out of compulsion. These issues have been seen in the areas like political parties, assembly line plant, etc. If the number of members in the group is less and servant leadership style is chosen, then this may result in better efficiency. On the other hand, if the same is implemented in the large groups, then there would be a widespread hold-up and chaos. Apart from this, the situational leadership style is suitable for groups of all size. This is due to the fact that leaders make decisions based on the abilities of the employees or followers.

The impact of group membership on the group effectiveness is also quite significant. The lesser the number of members in a team, lesser will be the distractions and more will be the productivity and better performance of the members. In small groups, the leader's actions are considered to the scrutiny of member's action. This raises the standards of the leaders and his leadership style. The effectiveness of the leadership can be judged based on the dimension, such as stability, communication, problem-solving, skills set, interactions, etc. Some leaders believe in the concept of ‘leading by example'. However, this strategy loses its effectiveness when applies to a larger group. In large groups, the leader starts to participate and the followers take everything for granted. This demotivates the leaders. The size of the group has a significant role in the effectiveness of the leadership style (Bealer&Bhanugopan, 2014).

5. Obstacles New Leaderships Styles Face in Traditional Organisation

There are many leadership challenges that new leadership often face in traditional firms (Scott, 2015). These are explained below:-

• Technological Advancement: The major traditional organisations around the world suffer from lack of greatest tech tools. Their culture and ways of operations cannot match with the current technology. The new leadership styles are based on modern technology and therefore applying those styles to the traditional organisation may not be the right option to do.
• Globalisation:The liberalisation has removed the trade barriers and opened up the gates for the global business. This has triggered the growth of businesses in the global market. New firms from overseas countries started penetrating the local market and with their huge resources, they are killing the traditional and under-resourced firms. Even if the new leadership styles can help in managing the risks associated with the globalisation, they are not efficient enough due to the poor performance of traditional firms (Politis, 2014).
• Demographic shifts:After the globalisation, the traditional business world is undergoing a major shift in demography. Organisations are hiring people from different countries, races, age groups, and genders. This might increase the conflicts between the old employees and the newly hired within the organisation. The new leadership styles do not emphasise on this.
• Outdated or Lack of information: The leaders working in such organisation are often found to be having either outdated information or lack of information. The internet has changed the workplace dynamics of various organisations but some traditional organisations have not fully realised or utilised it.
• Customer needs and motivations: In order to cater to the ever-changing demands of the customers, the services offered by the traditional organisation are quite outdated. The new leadership style would try to implement some alteration in the organisational structure and the services it offers. This may consume some funds and the organisation's time. In addition to this, the staff may need some sort of training to learn that operation. Therefore, most of the organisation become reluctant to undergo change (Renko, et.al, 2015).

Conclusion

The following report highlighted the leadership and some aspects related to it. There were five questions that were answered thoroughly. The first question discussed the four different culture models and their influence on the organisation. The second talked about different types of leadership provided by the sources, such as Hofstede, Trompenaars, and the GLOBE. Moreover, the third question explained how an organisation transforms into a multicultural organisation. The last and the fourth elaborated impacts of group memberships on the leader.

References

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• Chemers, M. (2014).  An integrative theory of leadership. Psychology Press.
• Chhokar, J. S., Brodbeck, F. C., & House, R. J. (Eds.). (2013).  Culture and leadership across the world: The GLOBE book of in-depth studies of 25 societies. Routledge.
• Goetsch, D. L., & Davis, S. B. (2014).  Quality management for organizational excellence. Upper Saddle River, NJ: pearson.
• House, R. J., Dorfman, P. W., Javidan, M., Hanges, P. J., & de Luque, M. F. S. (2013).  Strategic leadership across cultures: GLOBE study of CEO leadership behavior and effectiveness in 24 countries. Sage Publications.
• Paulienė, R. (2012). Transforming leadership styles and knowledge sharing in a multicultural context.  Business, Management, and Education,  10(1), 91-109.
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• Verba, S. (2015).  Small groups and political behavior: A study of leadership(Vol. 1289). Princeton University Press.
• Hughes, R. L. (1993).  Leadership: Enhancing the lessons of experience. Richard D. Irwin, Inc., 1333 Burridge Parkway, Burridge, IL 60521.