Chapter 12

Human values, integrity, and innovation drive us. . . . I win when my team wins; my team wins when Wipro wins; Wipro

wins when its customers and stakeholders win.

-- Azim H. PremjiCEO, Wipro Technologies, India

(p. 242)

Getting Americans and Japanese to work together is like mixing hamburger

with sushi.

-- Atsushi KagayamaVice president, Panasonic Corporation, Japan

President, American Kotobuki, USA

(p. 242)

Opening question:

What advice follows from these two different observations that can help you personally become a more effective leader in multicultural environments?

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Consider: Carlos Ghosn

1. Carlos Ghosn has become widely recognized as the quintessential global executive. Why? What did he accomplish?

2. Are there lessons here for other global leaders? If so, what?

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(p. 243)

Topic for today: Leadership and global teams

• What is leadership, east and west? • GLOBE leadership study • Culture and leadership: A model• Global teams• Working with global teams

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Leadership is like beauty; it’s hard to define, but you know it when you see it.

-- Warren BennisLeadership expert

Consider: Do you agree or disagree with this statement?

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(p. 242)

What is leadership?

• In Mexico, everything is a personal matter. To get anything done here, the leader must be more of an instructor, teacher, and father figure than a boss.

• Malaysians expect their leaders to behave in a manner that is humble, modest, and dignified.

• Peruvian employees look for decisiveness and authority in their leaders, even to the point of easily resisting attempts to introduce employee participation programs.

• Egyptians threat their leaders as heroes and worship them so long as they remain in power.

(p. 247)

What is leadership?/2

• Chinese leaders are expected to establish and nurture personal relationships, practice benevolence towards subordinates, be dignified and aloof but sympathetic, and treat the interests of employees like their own.

• Nigerians expect leaders to replicate within their organizations the same social patterns that are found in local villages and tribes.

• The French expect their leaders to be cultivated—highly educated in the arts and mathematics.

What is leadership?/3

• Japanese leaders are expected to focus on developing a healthy relationship with their employees where employees and managers share the same fate. Top managers must have an ability to manage people by leading them. In addition, symbolic leadership is also frequently seen in Japan, where an executive or manager will take public responsibility for the failures or inadequacies of the group or company (as when a CEO resigns over a corporate scandal).

What is leadership?/4

• Americans are generally schizophrenic in their choice of leaders; some like leaders who empower and encourage their subordinates, while others prefer leaders who are bold, forceful, confidant, and risk-oriented.

• The Dutch stress egalitarianism and are skeptical about the value and status of leaders. Terms like ‘leader’ and ‘manager’ can carry a stigma to the point that Dutch children will sometimes refuse to tell their schoolmates if their father or mother works as a manager.

Origins of leadership, east and west

• Ancient Greeks saw leadership as a process of bridging a gap between an ideal state and reality. Good leaders coordinate members’ efforts towards the achievement of organizational objectives.

• Ancient Chinese saw leadership as a balancing process between opposing and complementary forces (yin and yang). Rather than establish a set of objectives, good leaders help position the group within the flow of reality in a passive way to catch opportunities.

• Current management thought as taught in most business schools takes a decidedly Greek approach to leadership and, as a result, misses some basic premises of leadership in the remainder of the world. (p. 249)

Sun Tzu on leadership

Great leaders must:

• Have moral influence over their followers, influencing their hearts, not just their bodies;

• Be well rounded and not just technical experts; and

• Understand that everyone—both colleagues and strangers—has strengths and weaknesses.

(p. 251)

Logic of leadership: East meets west

• While Western views on leadership begin by delineating an action plan based on a set of agreed upon objectives (logic of application), Chinese tradition views leaders as assessing the favorable and unfavorable elements in the surrounding situation so that the favorable elements can be appropriated as the situation evolves (logic of exploitation).

• While Western leaders often follow a logic of means and ends hierarchically arranged through an action plan, Chinese leaders tend to follow a logic of process where the evolution of the situation leads naturally to the desired end state, practically without a need for action.

(p. 251)

West meets west

Finally, even within the West, monolithic leadership patterns are difficult to find (e.g., Tintin).

Consider: Once again, what is a leader?

(p. 252)

GLOBE Leadership Study

(p. 256)

Consider:Richard Branson and Konosuke Matsushita

1. What are the differences in leadership styles of Richard Branson and Konosuke Matsushita?

2. What is the relationship between culture and leadership style in these two examples?

3. How might the GLOBE leadership model help highlight or explain these differences?

(pp. 256-257)

Cultural influences on leadership: a model

Culture 1: Manager’s normative beliefs about power distribution and

social control (e.g., belief in relationship-

based, egalitarian organizations)

Culturally compatible leadership style

(e.g., preference for team-oriented or participative

leadership)

Other influences on leadership style(e.g., previous experiences with each other; contractual limitations; managerial and employee preparedness for

leadership responsibilities; mutual trust between parties, personal and situational differences)

Culture 2: Employees’ normative beliefs about power distribution and

social control (e.g., belief in rule-based,

hierarchical organizations)

Culturally compatible leadership style

(e.g., preference for strong autocratic leadership

Employee response(e.g., resist

involvement or responsibility; loss of

respect of leader; foot-dragging and

social loafing)

Manager’s leadership style

(e.g., use of participative

methods; encourage employees to

become involved and accept responsibility

for results)

(p. 258)

Consider: Sony’s Howard Stringer

“Look, in America, I was told to cut costs, but in Japan, I was told not to cut costs. Two different worlds. In this country (Japan), you can’t lay people off very easily. In America, you can.”

(p. 260)

Global teams

A group of employees selected from two or more cultural contexts and sometimes two of more companies who work together to coordinate, develop, or manage some aspect of a firm’s global operations.

(p. 262)

Global Teams: Functions, advantages, and drawbacks

(p. 263)

Challenges to global team effectiveness: Managing tasks

• Mission and goal setting

• Task structuring

• Roles and responsibilities

• Decision Making

• Accountability

(pp. 263-264)

Challenges to global team effectiveness: Managing group processes

• Team building

• Communication patterns

• Participation

• Conflict resolution

• Performance evaluation

(pp. 263-264)

Types of teams

Dispersed

Co-located

Homogeneous Multicultural

Geographic

Heterogeneity

Geographic dispersion

(p. 265)

Characteristics of co-located and virtual teams/1

(p. 266)

Characteristics of co-located and virtual teams/2

Special challenges working with virtual global teams

• Lack of mutual knowledge among members.

• Lack of common contextual information.

• Over-dependence on technology as a substitute for lack of a common native language.

• Loss of details due to possible brevity of messages.

• Lack of shared understanding or oversimplification of messages.

(pp. 265-270)

MANAGER’S NOTEBOOK:Leadership and logic

1. Leadership often means different things to different people. The trick for global managers is to understand this and look for the underlying meaning of leadership in various locations. Investigate, don’t evaluate.

2. Similarly, there is often a different logic underling leadership practices tied to geographic regions (e.g., logic of application vs. logic of exploitation). Once again, observe and learn before acting.

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MANAGER’S NOTEBOOK:Leadership and individual differences

Don’t forget individual and group differences. Leadership styles can differ within a single country or region.

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MANAGER’S NOTEBOOK:What is “acceptable” leadership?

• An acceptable leadership style in one culture may be unacceptable in another.

• Acceptable leadership styles are often influenced by a local society’s normative beliefs about the bases of power distribution and social control.

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MANAGER’S NOTEBOOK:Substitutes for leadership

• When two societies differ in their beliefs about what constitutes acceptable leadership, managers are presented with a challenge that requires far more than an official title.

• It also requires a knowledge of how to negotiate mutual arrangements between disparate groups to accomplish basic tasks, plus an ability to find alternative means—substitutes for leadership—to achieve organizational goals that bypass interpersonal or intergroup conflicts over leadership style.

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MANAGER’S NOTEBOOK:Leading global teams

1.Provide clear, engaging group goals.

2.Provide specific and measurable performance goals.

3.To the extent possible, recruit team members that complement, but support, one another.

4.Focus on result-driven processes.

5.Stress continual learning and continual improvement.

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(p. 273)

MANAGER’S NOTEBOOK:Leading virtual global teams/1

1. People• Selection of members with right skills, abilities, and motivation.

• Provide training on technology use, virtual communication, and cultural sensitivity.

• Align reward systems with nature of distributed work.

• Set clear expectations and measurable goals for performance appraisal purposes.

2. Tasks• Select tasks that are appropriate for virtual work.

• Use richer media for complex problems.

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(p. 276)

MANAGER’S NOTEBOOK:Leading virtual global teams/2

3. Processes• Disseminate information among team members.

• Arrange periodic face-to-face meetings when possible.

• Allow time for information sharing in video and teleconferences.

• Make communication norms explicit.

• Provide intercultural communication training.

• Develop team building interventions.

• Make sure individuals do not feel isolated.

• Communicate frequently with all members.

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Application:Two leaders

1. As a group, identify two leaders from two different cultures or countries, and list the qualities and characteristics, as well as situational characteristics, that make each of them successful.

2. Next, consider how effective each of these leaders might be if they exchanged places (and cultures).

3. Based on this comparison, what leadership traits, if any, can you identify that you believe to be universal across cultures?

Think about it: Your leadership skills

Suppose you have been assigned to lead a new multicultural team of regional managers who are collectively responsible for developing a long-term business strategy for your firm.

1. What might be your biggest anxieties about accepting this leadership assignment?

2. How would you deal with these anxieties?

3. How would you know if your leadership efforts were successful?

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