The Influence of Culture on the Leadership Behaviors of German Expatriates in Thailand - Research Paper Example

The paper "The Influence of Culture on the Leadership Behaviors of German Expatriates in Thailand" is a perfect example of a management research paper. How much is the leadership of Multinational Corporations (MNCs) culturally contingent? MNCs are always seeking a competitive gain in the leadership of their firms and they rely on the selection of expatriate managers to implement the policies of the company in the host countries. Nevertheless, most of the expatriate managers do not succeed in the implementation of the “headquarter” policies. One of the major reasons behind this failure is might be cultural differences. Because of the differences in cultural practices, the question of whether the expatriates should change their styles of leadership arises in order to conform to the cultural conditions of the employees in the host country. Due to this, it is believed that the leadership behaviors of expatriate managers should be specific to a given cultural environment (House, Wright, & Aditya, 1997). Other researchers still argue that the foundations of efficient leadership tend to be the same across nationalities and cultures (Levitt, 2005). For example, German companies regard Thailand as one of their most important bases of investment which is evidenced by the continued development of trade between the two economies.

However, there are still a few studies of German expatriates working in Thailand. Up to now, the most informative studies are those by Schein (2002) and Smith, et al (2007). Even though both types of research used German expatriates as the population of the study, they were limited by their effort to provide directions for effective leadership behavior for German expatriates. They did not, however, focus on most of the MNCs like Stiebel Eltron. Every person working on whatever personality working in Thailand has a unique cultural history depending on the country of origin. Nevertheless, we all share a common culture of human nature. Our common human nature is extremely social. We employ empathy and language while practicing collaboration and inter-group competitions.