MANAGEMENT CHALLENGE
Despite the plethora of books on leadership, we still know very little about how or why leadership efforts succeed or fail. And we know even less about how to train leaders, global or otherwise, despite the innumerable training programs available. One thing is clear, however: leadership is not a quality or skill that can be easily replicated around the world. Leadership in Singapore, for example, is based on fundamentally different traditions and assumptions from those in the Netherlands, and these differences cannot be ignored. As a result, the challenge for global managers is to develop a sensitivity and understanding of how leadership efforts play out across countries and cultures, as well as how to behave when placed in or near such responsibilities. We explore this topic in this chapter, looking at the topic from different angles. We also discuss what is probably the most comprehensive study of global leadership (called GLOBE). Throughout, examples are used to illustrate the different faces of leadership across both cultures and organisations.
A recent World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, brought together over 1,000 corporate executives, 50 heads of state, and 300 cabinet ministers to discuss world challenges ranging from deficits to competitiveness to deadly diseases. At the conclusion of the conference, an observer from The Economist characterised the meeting as having one overriding theme: the importance of developing global leaders – in corporations, nation states, and NGOs. “The two most popular words in the business lexicon today are ‘global’ and ‘leadership.’ Put them together and people in suits start to salivate.” Indeed, global leadership is both an important topic and a topic about which we understand far less than we pretend.
More books have been written about leadership than any other topic in the field of management. Many of these books examine various theories of leadership, comparing the relative advantages and disadvantages of each. Other books represent serious empirical studies of actual leader behaviour. Still others are popular books that seem to offer a secret elixir designed to transform ordinary managers into extraordinary leaders. What most of these books fail to do, however, is to recognise that leadership processes can vary significantly across geographic regions.
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