Global Business Leadership

E.S. Wibbeke, Sarah McArthur

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9781135035853
• Edition: 2
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Business General
• Index: Business

The second edition of this bestselling textbook has been fully updated with a synopsis of the latest changes in the fields of intercultural communication and leadership development. This includes new benchmark interviews from some of the world's foremost companies; a wealth of proven guidelines, tools, and models, including Wibbeke's own Geoleadership Model and two new chapters focusing on the influence of gender and technology on culture and leadership.

This new edition also emphasizes practical examples of individuals and organizations that have utilized the core concept of "geoleadership"—including updated research from those at the forefront of various industries, including finance, healthcare, and manufacturing.

With contributions and endorsements from some of the most important thought leaders in leadership development and intercultural communication, this edition offers a resource for designing, delivering, and evaluating successful leadership theories and practices to both students and practitioners.

1 Geoleadership challenges

“You don’t develop courage by being happy in your relationships every day. You develop it by surviving difficult times and challenging adversity.”

—Epicurus¹

Failure to survive

It may be a small world but are we worlds apart? Today’s organizational leaders are faced with a fast-paced marketplace operating within a context of multicultural, paradoxical complexity to achieve results.² More accurately, globalization has created an awareness of this complexity that was always there but not recognized. Now, there is no choice. Leaders at all levels of organizations, and especially those at higher levels, must work across national and cultural boundaries to achieve goals and objectives. While corporations have been expanding across international boundaries for some time, the rapid global advance of technology, as well as changes in investment processes and trade relationships, has eliminated previous barriers, thereby opening markets and necessitating an even greater level of competence. The risk of not possessing the appropriate global mindset, specifically in leadership, is enormous. How big is the problem?

Corporations have been building leadership models that dismiss multicultural competencies. Fewer than 10 percent of the models examined over the past several years contained any language alluding to global work.³

There must be an integration of both multicultural and performance dimensions in constructing global leadership competency models.⁴ In order to remain competitive, global business leaders need to be able to adapt to diverse national, organizational, and professional cultures.⁵ What is more, leaders must be aware of the pitfalls of working in global contexts and the potential risk of lost opportunities.

New challenges for leaders

Leaders of today are faced with global opportunities and challenges. In recent years, global business has grown beyond economic exchanges between nations to include cultural engagements, thus weaving a complex social component into global business practices.⁶ The challenge is how to manage our multiple simultaneous cultural identities. A leader who can accommodate and master these challenges practices what we refer to as Geoleadership™.

Interpersonal communication and interaction pose several leadership challenges for intercultural leaders and managers. Differences in language, in cultural preferences for pace, social penetration, intonation, spatial distance, implicit versus explicit styles and more, play a role in the success or failure of any intercultural communication.

Communication technology presents challenges for leaders working in intercultural contexts. Instant communication technology connects the globe providing businesspersons with unprecedented opportunities. Consultants can log on and instantly connect with clients in London, Paris, or Istanbul. Managers can videoconference on the spot with counterparts in South Africa and can transfer documents around the world in seconds. Workers know when they send a PowerPoint presentation to Saudi Arabia their counterparts will be able to open it with a simple keystroke. The seemingly worldwide acceptance and use of “common” technologies, both hardware and software, create an illusion of familiarity.

However, it does not follow that, because a significant proportion of people worldwide run on Windows software, they think the same, have the same values, or face the same issues. In reality, our computer operating systems may be one of the few things that humanity has in common. There is a risk in our over-reliance on technology to solve all of our problems. After all, more plumbing does not increase the quality of our water.

Reflect for a minute about the variety of cultures there are just within the United States, sometimes within the same city. Los Angeles has a different feel about it from New York. In San Francisco, North Beach (the Italian quarter) is quite different from Chinatown. For example, is it not noticeable that the suburbs are different from urban centers? These settings are different because they make up what are referred to as subcultures: cultures within cultures. Some of these subcultures are ethnic-based; others are professional or economy-based differences. Ethnographic, demographic (age, gender, residence), status (educational, social, economic), and affiliation (formal and informal) all are combined in our cultural identity.

Yet, the issue is much broader than just the diversity encountered in today’s domestic workforce. In organizations today, workforce diversity means working across national and geographic boundaries, with employees from various countries reporting to a manager in yet another country. The business leader of today is dealing with the world. The tendency of American business leaders to emphasize getting to “back-end” results quickly while most of the world’s cultures emphasize “front-end” loading has proved costly.

Someone once quipped that the “only good change, is the change rattling in your pocket.”⁷ Amusing as that statement is, the implicit message is that change is okay when it belongs to you as an individual, when it is your idea; however, when change happens to you, it is not as easy a proposition. The cliché of the early 1990s that “change is constant” is now passé.

In this global business marketplace, gone is the illusion of certainty. Organizational life for leaders and managers is fraught with ambiguity. There are no cradle-to-tomb employment agreements. Technologies become obsolete and replace each other minute by minute rather than year by year, or decade by decade. Industries long considered stable are no longer so. The entire life cycle of a single economy can elapse before your child reaches preschool. Leaders do not have the luxury of taking for granted anything once thought of as material. Please see Exhibit 1.1 as an example of the dynamic workplaces in the new millennium.

Exhibit 1.1 Dynamic workplaces in the new millennium

The perception from outside the cubicle

You understand that our concept of time has changed if you manage a global team of workers with reports in Tokyo, Rome, Munich, Paris, Dublin, Manila, Mumbai, Beijing, and Abu Dhabi, who interact with a business partner in Bangkok. You have a weekly teleconference on Monday morning; but, when is Monday morning?

You are past “change as a constant” when you have been hired by one megacorporation, survived a company split, a merger (that was really an acquisition), led a divisional downsizing, were spun-off, then became an allied business, were promoted four times, reported to twelve different executives, had your office relocated five times, lived on two continents simultaneously, all within 30 months. You are also past the old “change management” models.

One only needs to look at the recent history of Yahoo!. There have been five different CEOs in as many years. One of the founders of the Internet pioneering firm, Jerry Yang, steps down as CEO, with a refusal to be bought by Microsoft, and the stock falling to record lows. In 2009, Carol Bartz, former CEO of Autodesk, replaces Yang, and within three years and many job and cost cuts throughout the company, Bartz is fired. Scott Thompson, president of eBay’s PayPal division, becomes Yahoo!’s new CEO, its fourth within five years. After laying off 14 percent of the workforce in April 2012, Thompson then is fired due to misrepresentation of his educational background, and former Google executive, Marissa Mayer, becomes the new Yahoo! CEO.

(Information accessed at the following link, http://www.globalnews.ca/timeline+key+events+involving+yahoo+and+its+performance/6442680644/story.html)

Source: Global News. (2012) Timeline: Key events in Yahoo and its performance. http://www.globalnews.ca/timeline+key+events+involving+yahoo+and+its+performance/6442680644/story.html

Learning how to interact with other cultures takes effort beyond superciliously learning another culture’s language. For the American business leader operating in another culture, business interaction requires a deeper cultural understanding about how things are done. Additionally, there are certain leader roles that, by themselves, require a high level of skill. One such skill is negotiating. The fact is cultures vary in perceptions about negotiating; some frown upon it, especially in certain situations, while other cultures rely on it as an integral aspect of any business exchange. Mismatches commonly occur between culturally different individuals due to misunderstandings about discretionary power, about what is and is not negotiable.

Another issue frequently blocking negotiations between culturally different individuals is approach. For example, cultures that adopt “positive face” will display sociability and solidarity in their interaction style, often using informality, friendliness, and use of first names to show “inclusiveness” or lack of distance. This approach may create a sense of uneasiness for members of a culture whose approach is to adopt a position of “negative face,” showing deference and distance to other parties for fear of offending them or threatening their face. The concept of “face” refers to a person’s public self-image, that which they desire to present to others. Positive face comes from a desire for appreciation and approval from others. Negative face is the desire to not be imposed on or to impose upon others.⁸ The concept of “face” as a projected public image can be found across most cultures.

When people do not have a common frame of reference—as is found within a culture—misunderstandings, conflict, and productivity problems tend to arise. A manager described a situation within his team: individual members tend to support members from their own culture and consistently clash with team members from other cultures. An atmosphere of tension and hostility pervaded the team and without intervention resulted in business loss. Conflict resolution is yet another aspect of intercultural business relationships, as with negotiating, that requires a high level of knowledge. The majority of intercultural conflicts are caused by misunderstandings about different norms, styles, communication rhythms, values, and approaches.

Motivation presents a dual challenge for intercultural business leaders. On one level, motive, which is directly linked with values, presents a test of a leader’s ability to understand what causes someone to do what they do. On a related level, providing a motivational work environment for employees who are different in their needs and expectations requires that a leader accurately interpret situations and respond in a culturally acceptable manner. The leader who assumes that what worked wonderfully to provide a motivational work environment in their native culture will also work to motivate a division of employees in Taiwan will experience a serious problem.

The strategy of sending U.S. corporate leaders and managers abroad for foreign assignments is not new. However, increasingly, corporations recruit leaders and managers to take foreign assignments to solve dicey business problems in their overseas locations. An entire consulting industry has sprung up in the U.S. to serve organizations that need to maximize the success of these personnel decisions because the success rate in the recent past has been poor. The chief reason for the lack of success is culture clash—rigid American managers sent to foreign cultures with a mandate to “fix the problem” encountering a culture with a different mindset.⁹ If you can experience culture shock, as an American, traveling two states over, or from one telephone interaction to another, imagine what you would feel, as a unilingual American manager with no previous travel outside the U.S., when your corporation transfers you to an overseas assignment in Taiwan. For example, when different student exchange programs select high school students to go abroad, it selects students who have (1) the ability to fail, (2) a sense of humor, (3) a low goal–task orientation. Task-oriented people tend to have more difficulty adjusting in an unfamiliar culture.

New challenges for organizations

In an increasingly competitive global marketplace, organizational leaders must believe that they can make a positive impact on others. This self-confidence leads to credibility being the foundation of leadership, so that followers will be apt to comply. The values of the leader drive the commitment to the organization from both followers and leaders. In the dynamic marketplace of today, leaders who focus on the future set themselves apart, while still realizing that leaders are not alone—leadership is indeed a team effort. In regards to teamwork, trust is crucial. Leaders must lead by example and face change head on by viewing challenges as opportunities, and not as obstacles. Modern leaders also need to be strong learners and provide an atmosphere of learning agility. Most companies realize that the ability to create or acquire human capital or talent assets can provide a singular competitive advantage. Leadership talent may be the critical driver of corporate performance and a company’s ability to maintain competitive advantage far into the future.¹⁰

Read any respected business magazine, business journal, or website sponsored by a respected business school producing MBA graduates, and what you will find is a phenomenal level of agreement on two things related to global business: (competent) leaders, in general, are in short supply, and intercultural leaders require an entirely new and broader set of skills.

Competent leaders are in short supply chiefly because of demographic trends and because the job demands and requirements have expanded.¹¹ Currently, the United States is producing too few leaders with comprehensive international perspectives and experiences to meet the demands.¹² With current demographic trends, including the upcoming retirements of many “baby boomers” (i.e., people born between 1946 and 1964), the U.S. leadership talent shortage is projected to continue into the next several decades. Susan Lund, James M...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• List of exhibits
• List of figures and tables
• Acknowledgments
• Foreword by Warren Bennis
• Preface
• 1 Geoleadership challenges
• 2 Culture and leadership
• 3 The principle of “Care”
• 4 The principle of “Communication”
• 5 The principle of “Consciousness”
• 6 The principle of “Contrasts”
• 7 The principle of “Context”
• 8 The principle of “Change”
• 9 The principle of “Capability”
• 10 Gender and leadership
• 11 Technology and leadership
• 12 Geoleadership and the community
• Appendix A: The research behind the Geoleadership Model
• About the Authors
• Notes
• Index