Cultural Perspectives on Leadership - Essay Example

Cultural Perspectives on Leadership--Chapter 4 Dickson, Den Hartog and Mitchelson, 2003. (pp. 61-81) Article II Cultural Perspective on Leadership (Dickson, Den Hartog and Mitchelson, 2003, is a chapter of a book. This chapter describes the important of multi-cultural considerations when working with a diverse group of employees. The chapter points out that there are several theories that are important in studying how to work within cultures. The chapter is basically a discussion of different theories that they find important to this study. The point of the chapter seems to be to show how leadership is different in different contexts. When they speak of contexts, it seems that the best meaning for what they are describing is "the conditions and circumstances that are relevant to an event, fact, etc." (p. 62). The first part of the article talks about how to put culture into context and is largely based on the work created by Geert Hofstede, described as a "Dutch academic". Hofstede believed that culture is "learned and not inherited" and that it is "somewhere between an individuals unique personality and human nature" (p. 63). Hofstede saw that there were several layers where culture is related to other people in a "mental programming activity". He describes the inner layer as the organization where an individual works, and an outer layer that is the countries or country where an individual lives or has lived. These factors create the first aspects of how people will get along in a leadership capacity. Social class, gender, age, ethnicity and religion are factors that will influence leadership in addition to the others. From this standpoint, the chapter begins to define "organizational culture" and how peel are more apt to define this as "the way we do things around here." (p. 64). There are several theories within this process. Schien suggests that leadership is responsible for the creation, management and sometimes destruction of organizational culture (p. 65). This section of the chapter describes how organizational culture is molded and shaped by different leaders as they also explore culture in the context of what Hofstede sees culture and they attempt to merge the two. The next part of the chapter explores the concept of how organizational culture relates to individuals versus groups in lieu of their own ethnic culture. They begin with a study of individualism and collectivism that explains the difference between groups who only are concerned with the individual versus those who are more socially oriented. They suggest that they way that these two differ may be due to how an individual or group perceives themselves in cultural context. They describe power and distance as another aspect of culture because each individual may have a different way of seeing power and distance which can be dependent on factors like masculine/feminine, linguistic/emotional, ideas of control and assumptions and so forth. They make the point that it is difficult for a leader to bring together all these factors at once if they do not understand how culture plays a part in their organizational culture; for them, culture can either hold them back or move them forward, depending on the perception of their employees to their leadership style. As this chapter moved into the study of theories, the Hofstede research studies were the most prominent in the chapter. These studies received some criticism because they were based on attitude survey questionnaires and critics said that the factors he found "were not well grounded in theory" (p. 74) and the researchers did not talk to employers. Other theories are considered as the chapter moved into a discussion of leadership on a global level. They looked towards personality theories and the idea of the "charismatic leader" as one way to explain how leaders and employees get along in the organizational environment. In some situations, the leader had to have traits that were in some ways the same as their employees so that the employees would accept them as the leader. Traits such as independence, collaboration, discipline and confidence helped employees perceive that the leader is capable of leadership. "If someone looks, acts and sounds like a leader, then they must be a leader!" (p. 75) was a concept that was interesting in this section. Another program, the GLOBE Leadership and Organizational Behaviour Effectiveness research program was to study whether charismatic leadership was a universally understood concept, that had relevance across cultures. This research used a sample of 17,300 middle managers within a total of 951 organizations. They used 127 investigated from 62 cultures. The study found that there were a variety of factors that were used by people, e.g. values and practices, that determined for people a "effective" vs. an "ineffective" leader. The research also showed that vision, values and confidence were behaviors that were seen most prominent for effective leadership behavior across any culture. The point of this chapter seemed to be to show a variety of theories and different thoughts from experts about leadership in organizations. It was difficult in some of the reading to understand what culture they were talking about -- it seemed that they were using organizational culture and ethnic culture interchangeably. I have worked in a variety of organizations where all types of cultures worked together on teas. I saw that a strong leader who is a bit charismatic and has a high level of confidence will make employees accept them as the leader of the group. I have also seen that when a leader does not show strength and confidence that they are perceived as "weak" or ineffective leaders. I also see that those organizations that bring into the workplace a way for people to understand the cultures that relate to male/female, linguistic/emotional and issues of control and power will help a team work more creatively together. I believe that when an organzaiton focuses on promoting a positivue, multi-cultural environment on many levels that they tend to be more opent to change and to the opinions of others to assist with that change. I agree with the GL:OBE study beuase I think that employees work better together when they can respect their leader. This also means that besides competence, the leader has to show strong confidence. Cultures will construct their ways of being if left to a weak leader. As an example, this chapter points out that there needs to be an understanding when the western culture and eastern cultures come together as to how they are different and how they relate to each other. 1,082 Fantasies of Leadership: Identity Work Sveningsson and Larsson, 2006 (pp. 203-219) Fantasies of Leadership: Identity Work (Sveningsson and Larsson 2006) is an article that explores how middle managers talk about and practice leadership. The articles find a discrepancy in that leaders talk differently about leadership than what they actually practice. The premise of the article is that they are different because of the individual leaders personality and how they identify themselves as leaders. The authors point out that there is a large body of information about leadership that comes through the media. In fact, the media tells people what a leader looks like and the characteristics that an individual must adopt in order to call themselves leaders. This information has an effect on most organizations because it helps them to shape the leadership information they need in their organizations. This means that organizations will spend money in brining their leaders into line with what they believe leaders should be. In so doing, this action is supposed make leaders "more effective in the 21st Century" (p. 203). This information has given way to a type of fantasy that leaders engage in which has created images of the "charismatic" leader who is "romanticized or heroic" in their approach to leading people. This sets the stage for leaders to step in and run their departments and organizations in the way that this particular fantasy projects. Within this article, several theories are presented about the concept of leadership and the authors offer a wide array of concepts. One distinction presents that leadership is different than management and creates a distinct set of differences between the two concepts. In this theory, management is seen as the person who watchers over their employees and makes sure that they are doing their work. This idea is implied by the fact that a manager will control, coordinate and direct their employees. The theory suggests that this is more formal or scientific way of dealing with employees. When there is a need for someone to inspire employees and move them into a transformation process, a leader is given this task. The leader is able to, with their personality and charismatic nature, make employees see the vision of the organization and lead them to the fulfillment of objectives. A New Leadership Approach is another theoretical framework that was discussed in this article. This theory says that management and leadership are distinct but that leadership is "transformational" and "transactional" in nature which brings the focus onto the charismatic leader. According to Steyrer (1998 as quoted in Sveningsson and Larsson, 2006), charismatic leadership is brought together because of communication and inspiration. In other words, a leader is able to communicate well with their employees and inspire them to action. This theory also suggests that the most important characteristics and skills that a leader must have are "cooperation, networking, teamwork, creativity and inspiration" (p. 205). The authors point out that identity work and fantasy is another way to look at leadership. This is actually a set of theories that promote the idea that identities can change depending on each situation that the leader finds themselves within. Their personalities are always changing and they are "regularly, constituted, negotiated and reproduced in various social interactions" (p. 206). In a sense, this suggests that the identity theories promote a kind of chameleon effect for the leader in that they are skilled at using different personalities for different situations to benefit them within the structure of the environment. Identity work helps a leader to look at their own self-identity and can answer the questions: "who am I, what do I stand for and how should I act?" (p. 206). This work is more about achieving a state of well-being, success, and a stronger self-image. Fantasies are used in various concepts in this theory. For leaders, the fantasy is about how they project themselves to their employees. This fantasy shows the leader with a sense of grandiosity that relates to narcissism, and therefore creates a strong self-esteem and a sense of well-being (p. 207). The authors believe that an individual can fantasize like this without experiencing a behavior change. This was the process that was involved in the first half of this article. In the second half of the article, the authors looked at a particular case study in which a middle manager was doing a workshop. The point was to discover whether the manager showed a difference between what he said during the workshop and what he believed outside the workshop. What they found was that in this particular case, the manager did not talk and act the same but he talked much about himself being the leader and doing leadership; it was apparent that he had an idea of what this meant for himself. This was a lengthy reading and it was difficult to totally understand what the authors wanted to do. I agree that each manager has a different style and therefore will see himself or herself differently in whatever situation they are in. I also agree with the fact that the identify of a manager inside a training or when they are in the process of doing leadership, may have a different way of talking about it versus what they believe in just talking about it. The way that managers use fantasy was an interesting concept to me because I am not sure that managers actually fantasize about their jobs; at least I would not think about it in that way. But I do see the challenge of finding an identity that works well for them and that it would be something they would have to discover over a period of time. I think that each leader must find their own way of leading their employees. I also found it interesting that the authors, after developing their own hypothesis, took their ideas into a workshop. I thought this was a very important way to test out what they had learned. One insight I had was that it may be important to note that "leaders" may have a different idea of leadership than "managers" who see themselves as leaders. In the case of Ace, the individual that they watched, he saw that the formulation of goals, the fact that he had led his employees with meetings on accomplishments and the fact that he wanted everyone to see the whole picture of the organization made him a leader. It was not justified to say that this is not a part of leadership, although the media and our society have made the leader the person who is able to charismatically move a business forward. Although Ace did not seem to have charisma, he did seem to have an understanding that being at the helm of his group meant that he had an obligation to make sure that the employees he taught understood the mission, vision and strategic plan of his organization. 1,154 Read More