Global Leadership and Influence - Essay Example

 Global leadership is a by-product of extended once geographically-constrained boundaries that have extended into the international community. Goneare the old, traditional method of managing a business where employees were subjected to rigid control systems and where decision-making is always top-down and forced downward throughout the lower levels of the organisation. Global leadership requires having skills necessary for effective communication in order to motivate employees to achieve short- and long-term strategic goals, especially when working with employees and managers that hail from diverse cultural backgrounds. Globalisation has created the need for much more group methodology in order to attain goals, thus a need has been created to understand elements of culture, human resources, employee relations and creating an entirely new set of organisational values to drive the business forward successfully. One method of improving global leadership effectiveness is to restructure the organisation to include more employee empowerment and autonomy in their individual job roles. This process is known as decentralisation where lower-level employees are free to express their opinions and innovations to assist in achieving business success. “Decentralised companies result in empowerment, provide more procedural fairness to employees and provide faster decision-making” (Carpenter, Bauer & Erdogan, 2010, p.1). This type of organisation is most effective over rigidly-controlled business environments as it provides more stability for teamworking and allows individuals from diverse cultures to work together effectively even if their beliefs and values are significantly different. In order for this to be successful, there must be a stronger emphasis placed on the human resources function to provide cultural training and awareness and promote a culture of unity that is focused on a singular set of beliefs and values. These are requirements, today, for a global leader in order to build better human capital and remain competitive in a complex global marketplace. Part of this global leadership imperative is recognising what drives motivation to perform based on unique employee and manager cultural backgrounds. Under Hofstede’s model of cultural dimensions, there are collectivists and individualists who have radically different values. Collectivists value group loyalty and generally view themselves and the organisation as a family-oriented environment (Blodgett, Bakir & Rose, 2008). Human resources leadership in the global environment must recognise this fact when dealing with workers from this type of cultural background and develop group focus and group rewards to fit these cultural expectations. In a more individualistic society or when dealing with employees from this type of background, there must be a system in place that recognises individual accomplishment, such as through the annual performance appraisal and allow more room for self-expression in day-to-day business operations. A global leader cannot be effective without recognising these social and cultural norms and identify diversity initiatives to assist in building more competent staff. Also under Hofstede’s model of cultural dimensions is an element of culture known as uncertainty avoidance, or the level to which an individual or group is willing to accept risk and the unknown. “People in uncertainty accepting cultures are more tolerant of conflicting opinions and try to have fewer rules” (Donnison, 2008, p.17). In opposite accord, people hailing from cultures with a more risk-averse mentality avoid unstructured decision-making and generally demand contingency plans before accepting risk. A global leadership regime must recognise these differences and develop an organisational structure to fit these attitudes and build human resources-backed policies to assist in promoting or accepting these varying values. A business culture with a high dimension of uncertainty avoidance would find efficiency in a structured, centralized hierarchy with many rules and guidelines. However, if an employee from a culture that accepts more risk is forced to work in this environment, the global leader must give these workers opportunities to express their own, unique innovations if they want to achieve motivational outcomes and loyalty to the business’ goals. In Arabic nations, as one example, employees define themselves based on cultural symbols that drive their heritage, such as rituals and heroes that make up their historical belief systems (Askary, Pounder & Yazdifar, 2008). When a global leader is working with Arabic cultures, even if these social artefacts conflict with the predominant organisational culture, these must be respected and identified. This can be accomplished through training others to recognise these differences or by presenting knowledge associated with these symbols during meetings where people representative of Arabic cultures are expected to work in special group projects. An effective global leader must bridge the gaps between cultural traditions and general worker knowledge. Global leaders must also be transformational, avoiding rigid controls in order to avoid conflict. A transformational leader looks for the best in employees, through the promotion of charity, harmony and ethical programming (Bass & Steidlmeier, 1999). Transformational leaders use their own behaviours related to ethical business decision-making in order to promote employee modelling of these behaviours to create a unified business culture. Where once businesses were driven by senior management opinion and values, a transformational leader now must step beyond these restrictions and become more of a coach or mentor in order to gain long-term commitment to achieving organisational goals. Values and beliefs are difficult to define as the globalised workplace environment now consists of expatriate employees and managers from vastly-different cultures with completely different, long-standing value systems. However, a global leader can be effective in these efforts by promoting team philosophy and creating an environment where conflict is minimized and where diverse employee profiles can work together efficiently and harmoniously. This can be accomplished by developing cultural profile surveys targeted at the whole employee population so that human resources leaders understand the elements of culture that thrive within the modern business environment. The goal is to break down senior-level rigidity and provide employees with more empowerment. The end result of these efforts is better skills development, the ability to compete more effectively with other global organisations and an internal organisational culture consisting of a mixture of cultural awareness and employees who are motivated by acknowledging their diverse differences in many different psychological and social arenas. References Askary, S., Pounder, J. & Yazdifar, H. (2008). Influence of culture on accounting uniformity among Arabic nations, Education, Business and Society: Contemporary Middle Eastern Issues. 1(2), p.145. Bass, B. & Steidlmeier, P. (1999). Ethics, character and authentic transformational leadership behaviour, Leadership Quarterly. 10(2), p.188. Blodgett, J., Bakir, A. & Rose, G. (2008). A test of the validity of Hofstede’s cultural framework, The Journal of Consumer Marketing. 25(6), p.339. Carpenter, M., Bauer, T. & Erdogan, B. (2010). [internet] Principles of management [accessed 3.9.2011 at http://www.flatworldknowledge.com/pub/1.0/principles-management/29065] Donnison, P. (2008). Executive coaching across cultural boundaries: an interesting challenge facing coaches today, Development and Learning in Organizations, Bradford. 22(4), p.17. Read More