The Way That Leadership Has Changed Within the Context of a Globalized Environment - Literature review Example

The Impacts of globalization on leadership xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx Name xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx Course xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx Lecturer xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx Date The impacts of Globalization on leadership Introduction Globalization has virtually changed all aspects of our livens starting from the food we eat, the music we listen to, the way we dress and the kind of equipment we use in our day-to-day lives. Although the concept is still evolving and quite complicated, it can be regarded as a blessing in disguise as it has produced many positive results. Globalization is inevitable, whether in the cultural, social, business, education, political and economic context. It is what Ronald Steel (1999) aptly described as “You can shut the door and it comes through the window”. Held et al (1999) defines globalization as the process which basically transforms spatial social and organization transactions and relations, which are assessed in terms of their impacts, velocity, intensity and extensity and they ultimately lead to the generation of interregional and intercontinental flow and networks of the exercise of power, interactions and activity. In simpler words, globalization is the process of increasing economic integration and growing economic interdependence between countries in the global economy which has essentially turned the world into a global village. Unlike the unbounded world, the global world demands for different sets of leadership skills as the needs and challenges of the new world are totally different. This is because even the word global intrinsically connotes diversity (Litz, 2011). Diversity is a huge challenge and hence, contemporary leaders ought to have a broadened mind that will view the world as an enveloping culture so as to operate effectively in diverse communities. Leaders of today face a special challenge of trying to interact and communicate with their followers, which is a result of three main factors globalization, ethical issues and human diversity. Leaders should be aware that globalization can take diverse forms, and hence fundamental for them to use several dimensions with which to frame the nature of their work in the coming years. This article will basically tackle several dimensions of globalization - political, socio-cultural, economic, technological, linguistic and environmental as out forwards by theorists such as Bootery (2006) and Berger (2007). Economic globalization Humans have a long standing history of economic trade of barter system. However, the modern day form of neo-liberal economic globalization, which has gradually evolved over the 20th century, has produced enormous positive and negative effects on everyone’s lives. One of the major reasons why the neo-liberal form of economic globalization has predominated is due to amalgamated marketization. According to Mortmore (2001), amalgamated marketization refers to the governmental and corporate search for highly extensive markets; they often leads to a shift from nationally imposed regulations to broader international focus on free markets and integrations agendas. Another contributing factor to the sudden emergence of the neo-liberal states is the collapse of the Marxist or communist domains. Mortmore (2001) also states that extensive and rapid technological advancements, and more specifically expanding role of the internet, have profound role in facilitating the transfer of money, ideas and information to virtually all corners of the globe. There are many ways in which neo-liberal economic globalization has affected leadership across organizations and governments agencies in the world. First, many organizations have been locked into the free market arrangements as a result of intensified marketization. Under the leadership of multinational financial institutions such as the Internationla Monetary Fund and the World Bank, nations are required to dismantle their trade barriers and have free entry into the global system of free markets if they intend to benefit from financial assistance from these organizations. This basically means that all nations have to play by the same rules; a commodity has to be sold at the minimum price fixed by the market irrespective of the cost of production. Second, companies can now easily transfer their facilities, workforce, service centers and capital around the globe in search for low-priced costs of production, cheap labor and worldwide recruitment. What this means is an intensification of competition as governments seek to find the most appropriate locations for their investments. Third, the neo-liberal economic globalization has enabled organizations to do business through the internet thereby reducing or avoiding the expense of taxes. This has subsequently affected the amount of money available for governments’ investment in infrastructure and public services. Lastly, economic globalization has led to an expanded interest of the private sector into the public domain. The private sector is increasingly directing its productivity, effectiveness and efficiency towards many aspects of the society. Notably, economic globalization has led to drastic shift in the traditional roles and powers of national leaderships to an increasing influence of leadership from multinational corporations. The effect is profound among developing nations. This is because developed nations have devised strategies of skewing the global trade to their favor and thus continue to get richer while developing nations become poorer. This has been reflected in decreasing supply of resources in many sectors in such nations prompting leaders to establish substantive development policies and increasing need for translation of these policies into practice. Even so, multinational agencies such as the IMF, World Bank and UNESCO are still the most potent candidates to play the role of implementing the policies and thus the role of national leaderships among developing nations continues to diminish. Political globalization Historically, the modern day nations are essentially the end products of industrialization and the gradual development of modern socialist economies and neo-liberal economics (Frank, 2002). Franks also asserts that the succesful conception of these industrialized nations was partly contributed by the administrative structures and institutions of the respective nations. These industrial expansions in turn led to various forms of social disarray including population dislocations and the sudden need for expansion of social services such as public education, housing and healthcare. It is therefore, worth noting that the great wars, colonization, inter- state alliances and nationalism were results of fairly significant political influence in global structure of economic production. Another crucial aspects of political globalization were the ideological struggle between the gradual decolonization of Africa, Latin America and Asia and the western nations together Eastern Bloc. While many of these developing nations were seeking after liberty, justice and freedom, their colonizers found a crucial foothold in terms of political, economic and social aspects of these newly independent nations. These conflicts have in the long run produced the unfortunate effects of exacerbating disparity of wealth between developed and developing nations. Additionally, it has led to a backlash of imperial powers, emergence of religious fundamentalism, continuation of despotic and corrupt governments as well as incessant cycles of conflicts and violence. The demise of the Soveit Union and the Eastern bloc are another striking feature of political globalization that has subsequently affected the nature of political leadership. The demise of these political powers meant acceleration of increased openness to nations into the world market. Since the introduction of the free markets, nations have dismissed politics of containment and have now embraced policies in favor of free trade. With such increasing focus on worldwide openness, we have seen increasing absorption of nations into international entities such as the North America Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). Bootery (2006) states that rather than focusing on maintaining power balance between the east and the west, multinational companies are focusing their attention on building peace, environmental protection, protection of human rights and adherence to the rule of law internationally. Demographic globalization Bootery (2006) notes that more people in developed nations are living longer which in essence means that governments have to increase social assistance to elderly people more so in placing more investment schemes and governmental pensions. At the same time, mortality rate is decreasing implying that the number of people paying taxes required to fund public institutions and projects will reduce significantly. Ageing people are usually politically wired which means that they might influence public resources to suit their needs rather than invest in projects that will help the general population. Nations, especially the developing ones, have devised several strategies of dealing with demographic crisis. One of these potent solutions is immigration geared towards maintaining the levels of the population. This will help people in developing nations to improve the quality of their lives while working in developed nations. Even so, this solution does not solve other complex issues related to socio-political and cultural issues. Therefore, Robertson et al (2007)propose other solutions including increasing the age of retirement, increasing the workers productivity, reducing state benefits and encouraging less reliance on state pension while encouraging private schemes. Environmental globalization According to Bottery (2006), environmental globalization refers to the general concern over environmental issues that are now pertinent concerns over humanity. Examples of these environmental issues include desertification, global warming, pollution, habitat destruction nad resource depletion. The issue of changing environmental trends is no longer a concern for scientists and policy makers but has been extended to leaders across all types of organizations. As such, leaders are taking the front seat to encourage responsible behavior towards the environment. In fact, they have become real examples of stewardship, practically taking the mantle to lead people in environmental conservation such as in planting of trees. Socio-cultural globalization A concrete understanding of the ways globalization has changed the social and cultural aspects of people is important as it will guide leaders to understanding the kind of leadership styles and in which contexts. In this regard, it is worth noting that globalization has led to cultural diversity whereby people can now watch anything, eat any type of food and even attend religion from any location in the world. This has the direct impact of allowing people to gain new and useful insights and perspectives on a variety of worldviews, lifestyles and issues. Another notable feature of globalization is cultural standardization. Smith (2002) posits that the standardization of culture occurs when there is the imposition of a one-window view of the world. For instance, aspects of predominant cultures like that of America are extracted, reconfigured, packaged and marketed to generate profits from consumption by other people and cultures. Although this process has been hailed for enabling uniformity, its quite complicated and involves serious ramifications that leaders need to be fully aware of. Technological globalization The past two decades have been polarized bty increasing internationalization of information services involving exponential growth of information technology and computer-based communication through mobile phones, the internet, email and other computer systems. Technology on one hand has led to economic breakthrough as well as diversification and democratization of communication thus allowing people to communicate and carry out businesses over remote locations (Fullan, 2005). On the other hand, technology in developing nations has not been fully exploited as it controlled by the state and thus available to a minority of the population. With technology being the ultimate solution to many problems, it is expected that most of the fields of human endeavour in relation to culture, manufacturing, science, politics and financial services will be left untouched. This is because te marketplace has become overly competitive forcing individuals and firms to adapt new and improve their existing skills and knowledge in order to compete effectively. Another way in which globalization had impacted information technology is the revolutionized reporting and transformation of world news with the drastic rise of global news services. Infusion of ICT into firms therefore, should be a matter of agency if leaders expect to accrue the benefits of technological globalization (Held & McGrew, 2007). In terms of leadership practices, technology is an open window that brings along enormous innovation possibilities in all sectors of the economy. Leaders will be required to be more technologically-savvy facilitators of the technology and less disseminators. This will in turn call for new managerial strategies and styles. With an inherent danger of creating of a division between technological provision between the rich and the poor, leaders need to reconcile this gap hence ensure that all individuals benefits from technology equally. Emerging global trends in leadership In light of the aforementioned dimensions of globalization, leadership is expected to take a completely different perspective. Leaders will be expected to demonstrate in entreprenuerialism, boundary breaking, visionary capacity, new professional skills and crisis management (Scott & Webber, 2008). The section below gives details of some of the leaders theories that have evolved over the last decade as a result of globalization. Transformative leadership Essentially, transformative leadership emerged as a result of neo-liberal economics and socio-political ethos as well as the ongoing notion that leadership plays a vital role in the processes of improvements and change which are inevitable and continual in nature. Leithwood (2005) has designed a framework to conceptualize transformative leadership. The framework comprises of four major dimensions, each containing subsets that specify underlying practices. Building collaborative culture (building productive relationships with the community and stakeholders); developing people (redesigning the organization, providing an appropriate model, intellectual stimulation and providing individual consideration and support); setting directions (through teamwork, building shared visions and high performance expectations); staffing the program (monitoring progress and results, buffering staff from distractions during work and providing instructional support). In essence, transformative leadership, like most of the traditional leadership styles in concerned with the people carrying out a specific task. It entails developing sustainable relationships and making deliberate efforts ensure commitment and cooperation as well as actively influencing the culture of an organization to stimulate its independence, coherence and collaboration during processes and operations. According to Mulford (2008), transformative leadership involves thinking more about the organization's leadership and not just on the competing approaches. It is not just pedagogic (involving strategies) but involves thorough investigation of workplace conditions that influence outcomes. Furthermore, transformative leadership is a good strategy of surviving globalization challenges since it emphasizes in visionary leadership which seeks to generate first order effects (i.e. Valued employees and their positive outcomes) as well as second generation effects which seek to increase the capacity of first order effects such as training and engagement of employees. Distributed leadership With increasing challenges of globalization in terms of economic, political, social and cultural aspects, there is a need for distributed leadership/ ‘communities of leaders’. Distributed leadership view leadership as an aggregate of dynamics of interpersonal relationships and not individual actions. Openness and trust are the building blocks for this kind of relationships as well as engagement of juniors/ followers in the decision making processes. Besides that, it stresses on the importance of extending boundaries of leadership roles; not simply occasional delegation but rather letting go some senior roles to juniors thus creating a team culture throughout the organization (Bennett et al, 2003). In this respect, leadership becomes a fluid that flows throughout the organization thereby blurring the differences between followers and leaders. This has proven helpful in modern organizations as there are enhanced opportunities for growth and developement through integration of ideas, knowledge and skills of each member. Even with these emergent theories of leadership in the wake of increasing globalization, developing nations have demonstrated totally different forms of leadership styles which include hierarchal, autocratic and autonomy leaderships styles. Besides that, they lack critical functions of distributed or transformational leaderships and low lack of change initiations. Conclusion Globalization indeed has complex, far-reaching and interconnected dimensions (technological, economical, socio-cultural, environmental and demographic that have tremendously leadership across all walks of life. Some of the positive results of globalization, in sum, include dissemination of ideas and knowledge, expansion of democracy, social and political intergration, technological advancements and economic growth. Its has however, not been without its share of shortcomings including increased disparity of wealth, rampant consumerism, environmental degradation and general inequalities between developing and developed countries. As such, there is increasing need for retraining of leaders across the board in order to keep them abreast with the multi- faceted worldwide trends. Transformative and distribution leadership styles are the notable changes with regard to leadership styles that have been experienced in the wake of globalization. Transformative leadership basically concerns enhancing the roles and capabilities of people carrying out specific tasks so as to influence the end results. Distributed leadership ,on the other hand stresses on the power of teamwork so as to achieve stipulated goals. In order to overcome the enormous challenges of globalization, leaders need to be adaptable to and flexible to the flow and ebb of the dynamic forces of globalization. References Bennett, N., Wise, C., Wood, P., & Harvey, J. (2003). Distributed leadership. Nottingham: NCSL. Berger, P. (2007). Many organizations: Cultural dynamics of globalization. In H. W. (Eds), Globalization, universal trends, regional implications (pp. 23-36). Boston: Northeastern University Press/ UNiversity press of New England. Bootery, M. (2006). Educational leaders in a globalizing world: A new set of priorities? School leadership and management, 26(1) , 5-22. Frank, T. (2002). One markte under God. Extreme capitalism, market populasm and the end of democracy. London: Vintage. Fullan, M. (2005). Leadership and sustainability: System thinkers in action. Thousand Oaks: Corwin Press. Held, D., & McGrew, A. (2007). Introduction; Globalization at risk? . In D. Held, & A. M. (Eds), Globalization theory: Approaches and controversies. Malden: Polity press. Held, D., McGrew, G. D., & Perraton, J. (1999). Global transformation: Politics, economics, culture. Cambridge: Polity. Leithwood, K. (2005). A review of transformative school leadership research: 1996-2005. Leadership and policy in schools, 6(1) , 177-199. Litz, D. (2011). Globalization and the changing faces of educational leadership: Current trends and emerging dilemmas. International education studies, 4(3) . Mortmore, P. (2001). Globalization, effectiveness and improvement. School effectiveness and improvement, 12(1) , 229-249. Mulford, W. (2008). The leadership challenge: Improving learning in schools. Melbourne: Australian Council for educational research. Australian Education review. Robertson, S., Novelli, M., Dale, R., Tikly, L., Dachi, H., & Alphonce, N. (2007). Globalization, education and development: Ideas, actors and dynamics. London: Department for international development. Scott, S., & Webber, c. (2008). Evidence-based leadership development: The 4L framework. Journal of educational administration, 46(6) , 726-776. Smith, M. (2002). Globalization and the incorporation of education. The encyclopedia of informal education. Retrieved September 18, 2012, from Infed website: http://www.infed.org/biblio/globalization.html Read More