Difference in the Leadership Styles Between Japan and America - Essay Example

Reflective Essay We were asked to give a presentation for the semester and each of the group members had to discuss a different topic with the Our first presenter Yousef Al-Awadhi, he discussed about the difference in the leadership styles between Japan and America. There were disagreements and agreements in the topic and most of them agreed on the fact that Japanese leadership was more cultural in nature compared to that of Americans. Bdoor discussed an interesting saying which was the simple idea of “Think global act global”. Most of the class member disagreed to this statement saying that it was easy to think so was very difficult to implement it in the real world scenario. Mohammed Behlim had an interesting topic to discuss which said that Consumers are very keen to know the place of manufacturing of the product in order to judge its quality. If they are paying for the product, they want to ensure that the quality is worth it. Roudan Al-Roudan discussed Levitt’s prediction and most of the class disagreed to his ideas. Each of the topics were discussed after doing substantial research with the help online sources as well as books and journals. Let us now look into their topic individually for a better understanding. Yousef Al-Awadhi started his topic with the idea that there is no clear definition of leadership in particular. It is unpredictable and considered to be very diverse and each of the different forms has very distinctive definitions (Achua and Lussier, 2000). Leadership is determined with the help of various attributes such as quality, effectiveness, behaviour, connection designs and ofcourse the position of the leaders (Yukl, 1998). In most of the cases, a leader can simply be defined as a person who guides his or her subordinates towards a particular pre-defined objective for the welfare of an organisation. Likewise, there are various definitions and each of them is different to one another in terms of the leadership styles and recognition. Researchers have used many methods to determine each of these leadership styles and their outcome in the long run (Yukl, 1998). There are many studies which discusses about the link between leadership styles and culture. In the similar manner, the researchers found out that leadership styles vary from culture to culture (Han et al., 1996). He then went on the take the example of two countries, Japan and USA. Both of the countries have distinctively different leadership styles and culture. The earlier researches done by several writers gives us the idea that leadership styles also differ with respect to the organisation and its religious differences. Besides, society furthermore chooses leadership styles. Case in point, ordinary impact in which criticalness and veritable speculation are given to requests, and illuminations of what can anybody do why are furnished; and gathering in which the supporters are incorporated at present masterminding or settling on a decision are inclined to achieve target obligation in US society (Yukl et al., 1996). Based on the above findings, numerous studies have been conducted to demonstrate the various leadership styles to understand how they work in a common environment. Schmidt and Yeh (1992) showed the readers a variety of technique which impacts the different leadership styles among various regions such as USA, Korea, Japan, UK, etc. Similarities were found between the leaders of Australia and USA in handling stressful situations and the way of thinking. Bdoors theme was the idea of "think global go global". He started his topic by saying the globalization has almost been unstoppable for the last 10 years. Today, the scenario has changed altogether. In fact Coca-Cola, which is known for its constant globalization initiatives, has had its inquiries regarding a thought it once disparaged. The late CEO, Roberta Goizueta has earlier said that the terms manager and training do not have much significance anymore. He had also designed a globalization program which had the similar idea of “Think global, act global”. The program was utilized to alter the operations at Coke to give the organisation a more global approach. After he passed away in the year 1997, his changes in the company made them incur huge profits especially from the regions in North America. Later on, the program designed by the late CEO did face problems in the Asian regions due to the sudden dip in the economy. Later on in the year 1999, Douglas Daft was named as the new CEO of the company after the company had suffered huge losses and almost one third of its market share due to the disaster in Asian regions. Douglas took a different approach and made improvement in the technological advancements in the company to achieve a lower cost of production. This was his way to reduce the losses faced by the company. So it is evident from the above example that it is not always easy to achieve globalization. The reason behind this is the fact that each and every region has a different culture and the approach. The firm needs to adapt to the local culture before going in the country. The people need to accept the organisation in order for it to be successful. Companies think on a different that globalization is the means and ways to expand the organisation and hence increase their profit and market share (Ghemawat, 2003). From this perspective, the key indispensable test is basically to evaluate what add up to modify the arrangement of movement what add up to regulate from country to country versus what add up to farthest point to respond to neighborhood contrasts. Starting late, like Coke, various organizations have moved to more constrainment and less systematization. However paying little respect to how they conform impediment and regulation, all organizations that view worldwide system along these lines focus on comparable qualities transversely over different regions and the economy around those places also plays an important role that such imparted characteristics open, as their crucial wellspring of included quality (Ghemawat, 2003) Mohammed Behlim began his issue with a substantial overview of consumers and makers from as far and wide as possible has discovered various intriguing facts, however some are fascinating not all by themselves, yet in what they suggest about those reviewed (Coldewey, 2011). A survey conducted revealed that most of the consumers are very particular to know about the manufacturing origin of the product. According to them, this gives them an idea of the quality of the product. A very common example prevalent in support of this argument is that ‘made in Japan’ products are considered to have better quality than the products that are ‘made in China’. There was another interesting result of the survey which said that the consumers think that the products manufactured presently have better quality that those that were made five years back (Coldewey, 2011). Maybe most entertainingly, 97% of makers view themselves as "on top of things" in security and unwavering quality, and almost that numerous think the same in regards to supportability and advancement. They cant all be above normal. The full study was published in the New York Times and it speaks about the global issue of the product quality. The expenses incurred during the manufacturing of a product have made the process whole lot faster which the customers do not try to understand. They feel that since the products are being manufactured faster at the cost of its quality. The result of the unique and faster manufacturing process is the state of products such as mobile phones, televisions and tablets for example with exciting technologies integrated into them (Coldewey, 2011). As he contended, it’s unrealistic that individuals will consent to an expansion in cost for "moral" gadgets, to the extent that we might want to think so. Whats more despite the fact that marking and regulation ought to be created with respect to the nation of assembling, segment production, and material sourcing, that is as of now something of a dream. Be that as it may it really is great that consumer enthusiasm toward such things is developing. Roudan Al-Roudan talked about the Levitts predictions. Theodore Levitt was one of the first researchers to compose a high-effect article on globalization pointed at business managers. Notwithstanding, two decades later, "The Globalization of Markets" is still broadly perused (Levitt, 1991). As opposed to concurring with Levitt, be that as it may, most eyewitnesses today accept that his contentions were imperfect and his predictions have not been borne out. To make certain, we concur that not the sum of Levitts predictions worked out. All things considered, his article does offer persisting bits of knowledge; and those are what we need to investigate. To be sure, Levitts focal understanding - that "inclination are continually molded and reshaped" - is significant for both managers and researchers. What constitutes globalization, in Levitts (and our) method for thinking, is communication that changes things, as opposed to abandoning them the same. Effective firms and the managers who run them dont leave the world as they discovered it. As opposed to taking consumer inclination as a given, fruitful managers have treated them as results. Emulating Levitt, then, we can see that the global business is not exclusively what firms’ find. The business sector is, to some paramount degree, what firms make of it. References Achua, C., and Lussier, R., 2000. Leadership: Theory, Application and Skill Development, United States of America: South-Western College Publishing. Coldewey, D., 2011. Survey: Consumers Increasingly Concerned With Products’ Origins And Rate Of Release | TechCrunch [online]. Available from: http://techcrunch.com/2011/12/12/survey-consumers-increasingly-concerned-with-products-origins-and-rate-of-release/ [Accessed 28 April 2014] Ghemawat, P., 2003. Globalization: The Strategy of Differences — HBS Working Knowledge [online]. Available from: http://hbswk.hbs.edu/item/3773.html [Accessed 28 April 2014] Han, D.C., Kwon, I.W., Stoeberl, P.A., and Kim, J.H., 1996. ‘The relationship between leadership and power among Korean and United States business students’, International Journal of Management, Vol. 13, No. 2, pp. 135-47. Levitt, T., 1991. Thinking about management. 1st ed. New York: Free Press Schmidt, S., and Yeh, R-S., 1992. ‘The structure of leader influence’, Journal of Cross-cultural Psychology, Vol. 23, N0. 2, pp. 251-64. Yukl, G., 1998. Leadership in Organizations, Fourth edition, New Jersey, Prentice Hall. Yukl, G., Kim, H., and Falbe, C.M., 1996. ‘Antecedents of influence outcomes’, Journal of Applied Psychology, Vol. 81, pp. 309-17. Read More