Culture and Leader Effectiveness: The GLOBE Study, Summaries of Literature

Download Culture and Leader Effectiveness: The GLOBE Study and more Summaries Literature in PDF only on Docsity! Culture and Leader Effectiveness: The GLOBE Study Background: The "Global Leadership and Organizational Behavior Effectiveness" (GLOBE) Research Program was conceived in 1991 by Robert J. House of the Wharton School of Business, University of Pennsylvania. In 2004, its first comprehensive volume on "Culture, Leadership, and Organizations: The GLOBE Study of 62 Societies" was published, based on results from about 17,300 middle managers from 951 organizations in the food processing, financial services, and telecommunications services industries. A second major volume, "Culture and Leadership across the World: The GLOBE Book of In-Depth Studies of 25 Societies" became available in early 2007. It complements the findings from the first volume with in-country leadership literature analyses, interview data, focus group discussions, and formal analyses of printed media to provide in-depth descriptions of leadership theory and leader behavior in those 25 cultures. Cultural Dimensions and Culture Clusters: GLOBE's major premise (and finding) is that leader effectiveness is contextual, that is, it is embedded in the societal and organizational norms, values, and beliefs of the people being led. In other words, to be seen as effective, the time-tested adage continues to apply: "When in Rome do as the Romans do." As a first step to gauge leader effectiveness across cultures, GLOBE empirically established nine cultural dimensions that make it possible to capture the similarities and/or differences in norms, values, beliefs –and practices—among societies. They build on findings by Hofstede (1980), Schwartz (1994), Smith (1995), Inglehart (1997), and others. They are: Power Distance: The degree to which members of a collective expect power to be distributed equally. Uncertainty Avoidance: The extent to which a society, organization, or group relies on social norms, rules, and procedures to alleviate unpredictability of future events. Humane Orientation: The degree to which a collective encourages and rewards individuals for being fair, altruistic, generous, caring, and kind to others. Collectivism I: (Institutional) The degree to which organizational and societal institutional practices encourage and reward collective distribution of resources and collective action. Collectivism II: (In-Group) The degree to which individuals express pride, loyalty, and cohesiveness in their organizations or families. Assertiveness: The degree to which individuals are assertive, confrontational, and aggressive in their relationships with others. Gender Egalitarianism: The degree to which a collective minimizes gender inequality. Future Orientation: The extent to which individuals engage in future-oriented behaviors such as delaying gratification, planning, and investing in the future. Performance Orientation: The degree to which a collective encourages and rewards group members for performance improvement and excellence. This first step allowed GLOBE (see Figure 1) to place 60 of the 62 countries into country clusters, similar to those by Ronen and Shenkar (1985), Inglehart (1997), and Schwartz (1999). Cultural similarity is greatest among societies that constitute a cluster; cultural difference increases the farther clusters are apart. For example, the Nordic cluster is most dissimilar from the Eastern European. Nordic Anglo Germanic La tin E ur op ea n Af ric an Eastern EuropeanMiddle Eastern Confucian So ut he as t A si an La tin A mer ica n Ph ili pp in es In do ne si a M al ay si a In di a Th ai la nd Ir an Ec ua do r El S alv ad or Co lu m bia Bo liv ia Br az il Gua tem ala Arg en tin a Co sta R ica Ven ez ue la M ex ico Denmark Finland Sweden Canada U.S.A.Australia IrelandEnglandSouth Africa(White Sample)New Zealand Austria The Netherlands Switzerland (German Speaking) Germany Is ra el Ita ly Sw itz er la nd (F re nc h Sp ea ki ng ) Sp ai n Po rtu ga l Fr an ce Zi m ba bw e Na m ib ia Za m bi a Ni ge ria So ut h Af ric a (B lac k Sa m pl e) Greece Hungary Albania Slovenia Poland Russia Georgia Kazakhstan TurkeyKuwaitEgyptMoroccoQatar Singapore Hong Kong Taiwan China South Korea Japan Figure 1: Country Clusters According to GLOBE Source: Adapted from House et al., 2004. Country Clusters and Leader Styles: GLOBE next analyzed the responses of the ca. 17,300 middle managers from 61 of the 62 countries to 112 leader characteristics, such as modest, decisive, autonomous, and trustworthy, based on the following definition of leadership: an outstanding leader is a person in an organization or industry who is "exceptionally skilled at motivating, influencing, or enabling you, others, or groups to contribute to the success of the organization or task." The analysis generated 21 leadership scales. Based on a 7-point scale and the "world mean" of each scale (i.e., the average of 61 country means), the 21 leadership scales ranked from the "most universally desirable" to "the least universally desirable" as follows: Table 2: Universal and Culturally Contingent Leader Characteristics ‘Universal’ Leader Characteristics Contribute to a Person Being Seen as an Outstanding Leader Trustworthy Just Honest Foresight Plans ahead Encouraging Positive Dynamic Motive arouser Confidence builder Motivational Decisive Excellence-oriented Dependable Intelligent Effective bargainer Win-win problem solver Administratively skilled Communicative Informed Coordinator Team builder Inhibit a Person from Being Seen as an Outstanding Leader Loner Asocial Indirect/Non-explicit Non-cooperative Irritable Egocentric Ruthless Dictatorial Culturally Contingent Leader Characteristics Anticipatory Ambitious Autonomous Cautious Class conscious Compassionate Cunning Domineering Elitist Enthusiastic Evasive Formal Habitual Independent Indirect Individualistic Intra-group competitor Intra-group conflict avoider Intuitive Logical Micro-manager Orderly Procedural Provocateur Risk taker Ruler Self-effacing Self-sacrificial Sensitive Sincere Status-conscious Subdued Unique Willful Worldly Source: Adapted from House et al., 2004. That is, across all 61 countries in the GLOBE leadership study, people want their leaders to be trustworthy, just, honest, decisive, and so forth. However, how these traits are expressed and enacted may still noticeably differ from society to society. For example, for a leader to be described as decisive in the U.S., he or she is expected to make quick and approximate decisions. In contrast, in France or Germany, being decisive tends to mean a more deliberate and precise approach to decision-making. The same caution applies to the universally undesirable leader traits. Culturally contingent leader characteristics, such as ambitious, enthusiastic, formal, logical, or risk taker are valued differently around the world. For example, on GLOBE's 7-point scale to measure a society's view of these leader traits, ranging from 1 (greatly inhibits) to 7 (contributes greatly) to being seen as an outstanding leader, the country means for risk taker range from 2 to 6. This is in line with the extent to which countries tolerate uncertainty, as measured by GLOBE's uncertainty avoidance dimension, as described above. GLOBE's Significance: Harry Triandis, one of the giants in cross-cultural research, calls the GLOBE research "the Manhattan Project of the study of the relationship of culture to conceptions of leadership" (2004). There are a number of reasons for this assessment. GLOBE is the most comprehensive study to date that empirically researched the relationship between culture and leader behavior in so many societies, with so many different quantitative and qualitative measures and methods, and in so many different organizations. It did so by engaging more than 170 collaborators from around the world who brought to the project an in-depth understanding of their own culture and its notion and practice of leadership. Perhaps most importantly, and in the words of its principal investigator, Robert J. House, "[M]y final conclusion is that we are in a position to make a major contribution to the organizational behavior and leadership literature. To date more than 90% of the organizational behavior literature reflects U.S.-based research and theory. Hopefully GLOBE will be able to liberate organizational behavior from the U.S. hegemony" (2004). Michael H. Hoppe (9/18/2007) References: Hofstede, G.H., Culture's Consequences: International Differences in Work-Related Values. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 1980 (revised and expanded in 2001). House R.J. et al. (eds.), Culture, Leadership, and Organizations: The GLOBE Study of 62 Societies. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 2004. Chhokar, J.S. et al (eds.), "Culture and Leadership across the World: The GLOBE Book of In-Depth Studies of 25 Societies." Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum, 2007. Inglehart, R., Modernization and Post-Modernization: Cultural, Economic, and Political Change in 43 Societies. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1997. Ronen, S. and Shenkar, O., "Clustering Countries on Attitudinal Dimensions: A Review and Synthesis." Academy of Management Review, 1985, 10(3), 435-454. Schwartz, S. H., "Beyond Individualism/Collectivism: New Cultural Dimensions of Values." In U. Kim et al. (eds.), Individualism and Collectivism: Theory, Methods, and Applications. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 1994. Schwartz, S.H., "A Theory of Cultural Values and Some Implications for Work." Applied Psychology, 1999, 48(1), 23-47. Smith, P.B. and Peterson, M.F., "Beyond Value Comparisons: Sources Used to Give Meaning to Management Work Events in Twenty-Nine Countries." Paper presented at the annual meeting of the Academy of Management, Vancouver, Canada, August 1995. Triandis, H.C. in the Foreward to the first GLOBE volume.