Global LeadershipRESEARCH, PRACTICE, AND DEVELOPMENT (2ND ED.)

MENDENHALL, M. E., OSLAND, J. S., BIRD, A., ODDOU, G. R., MAZNEVSKI, M. L., STEVENS, M. J., & STAHL, G. K. (2013)

Chapter 1: Leadership and the Birth of Global Leadership

MENDENHALL, M. E.

Approaches to the Study of Leadership

The Traits Approach: Early studies of leadership from the 1900s through the 1940s focused primarily on the discovery of key traits that separated leaders from their peers.

The Behavior Approach: In partial reaction to the general failure of the trait approach as a singular method for understanding leadership dynamics, many scholars began instead to focus on the study actual leadership behavior. What do effective leaders do?

The Situational Approach: The decades of the 1960s and 1970s saw an increase in scholars who were interested in how the situation (the context, environment) influenced leadership effectiveness.

Approaches to the Study of Leadership

The Power-influence Approach: This research seeks to explain leadership effectiveness in terms of the amount and type of power possessed by a leader and how power is exercised. French and Raven (1959) delineated five types or sources of

power: expert, referent, reward, coercive, and legitimate. The Integrative Approach: The usage of the previous four

approaches in any combination with a single research study. According to Yukl (2002) this is still the exception in the field.

Leadership Theories

Leader vs Follower-centered Theories: Some scholars have focused mostly on theories that describe and delineate behaviors associated with leaders, as opposed to followers. This has been the traditional approach, but more recent theories have given more attention to the followers in the leadership effectiveness equation.

Descriptive vs Prescriptive Theories: A descriptive theory attempts to describe the typical activities of leaders and explain why certain behaviors occurs in particular situation. On the other hand, some theories are prescriptive, in that, they prescribe the leadership behavior leaders should take to be effective in a given situation.

Leadership Theories

Universal vs Contingency Theories: Universal theories are constructed to apply leadership issues in and across all contexts, and can be either prescriptive or descriptive in nature. Contingency theories set forth the various conditions that can intervene in leadership attempts that can influence their success or failure and map the relationships between the variable at play in such situations.

Problems in the Field of Leadership

Problems of Definition: There is no one standardized definition of leadership, in as much as, what constitutes leadership may vary from one context to another. Further, many theories endeavor to differentiate sharply between leadership and management, while others see an overlap.

Problems of Balkanization: Balkanization refers to the process of fragmentation or division of a region or state into smaller regions or states. With respect to leadership, it refers to the division of leadership into specific fields of study: anthropology, history, law, military, political science, psychology, religion, etc.0

Problems in the Field of Leadership

The Problem of Zeitgeist: How scholars study leadership often reflects the popular views, cultural mindset, and innovative ideas regarding what constitutes good or ideal leadership during the time period in which the studies take place.

Defining Leader Effectiveness: How does one measure an effective leader? There are many approaches and the aspect of leadership effectiveness that is most important to the researcher often drives how leadership is defined, and the interpretation of the research findings.

Willingness to Follow vs Gaining Compliance: Is influencing followers the sine qua non of leadership, or is gaining compliance of subordinates enough to constitute effective leadership?

Global Leadership: Where Did It Come From?

In the 1950s and 60s international business as a separate filed of study emerged. This motivated scholars working in that area to consider how leadership operated in other cultures and implications of cross-cultural leadership differences.

In the 1960s some scholars studying business management began to look at the challenges associated with managing multinational corporations (MNCs), and a better understanding of the effect of national cultures on management approaches on a country by country basis.

Global Leadership: Where Did It Come From?

The 1970s saw in increase in the number of studies done on expatriate managers (a person working abroad) and the challenges associate with managing subordinates from national cultures other than their own.

The studies of expatriates in the 1980s and 90s raised awareness and insight regarding the role that culture plays as a significant variable in cross-cultural managerial leadership effectiveness.

Much of this research was driven by the advent of globalization as a new reality in international business.

Four Dimensions of Complexity in the Global Context

Multiplicity: This reflects the geometric increase in the number and type of issues that global leaders must deal with compared to domestic leaders. It reflects the necessity of global leaders having to deal with more and different competitors, customers, governments, stakeholders, and non-governmental organizations (NGOs).

Interdependence: Interdependencies generate complexity that global leaders must be able to attend to. The increase of interdependencies in economies, ventures, virtual teamwork, etc., all create a higher bar for leaders in terms of performance and skill set acquisition.

Four Dimensions of Complexity in the Global Context

Ambiguity: Lack of information clarity, unclear cause and effect relationships, and equivocality regarding information (multiple interpretations of the same facts) is increased in global work settings. Cross-cultural differences in norms in the interpretation of both qualitative and quantitative information add to the challenge of managing across borders.

And if multiplicity, interdependence, and ambiguity were not enough, the whole system is always in motion, always changing. And it seems to be changing at a faster rate all the time.

Global Leadership

The field of global leadership began with a small cadre of scholars who were:

1) Determined to map the phenomenon in order to assist firms in their global leadership development efforts.

2) Eager to explore the empirical and theoretical dimensions of leadership as it applied to globalization.

What is the difference between “global” leadership and “regular” leadership?

What is the difference?

The global context places high demands on leadership competencies. The skill level and deployment demands render the phenomenon to be so different in degree that it makes sense to address it as being different in kind to traditional leadership.

The global context significantly increases for leaders the valence, intensity, and complexity of key contextual dimensions that also exist for those leading in a domestic context.

There is a difference in the nature of the outcomes, including transformational crucible experiences that produce new mental models in the individual.

Global Leadership Defined

Global leaders are individuals who effect significant positive change in organizations by building communities through the development of trust and arrangement of organizational structures and processes in a context involving multiple cross-boundary stakeholders, multiple sources of external cross-boundary authority, and multiple cultures under conditions of temporal, geographical, and cultural complexity. (Mendenhall, et al., 2013, p.20)