Northouse: Leadership
Chapter 15: Culture and Leadership
Globalization has created a need to understand how cultural differences affect leadership
performance.
- need for leaders to become competent in cross-cultural awareness and practice.
Adler & Bartholomew (1992): leaders need to develop 5 cross-cultural competencies:
1. understand business, political, cultural environments worldwide
2. learn the tastes, trends, technologies of other cultures
3. need to work simultaneously with people from other cultures
4. be able to adapt to living and communicating in other cultures
5. need to relate to people from other cultures as equals
definition:
culturethe learned beliefs, values, norms, rules, symbols, traditions common to a group of people
ethnocentrism: placing one's own group at center of one's observations of others and the
world
- leaders need to be aware of their own and others' ethnocentrism
prejudice: fixed attitude, belief, emotion about another individual based on unsubstantial
data
- we all hold prejudices to some degree
- leaders face the challenge of dealing with the prejudice of followers
dimensions of culture:
many well-known studies have addressed question of characterizing cultures
Trompenaars: egalitatiran vs. hierarchical
Hofstede: five dimensions of culture:
- power, distance, uncertainty avoidance, individualism-collectivism, masculinityfemininity, long-term short-term orientation.
Northouse: Leadership
GLOBE research program (House), to increase understanding of cross-cultural interactions
and impact of culture on leadership effectiveness.
Developed classification of cultural dimensions:
Uncertainty Avoidance: extent to which society relies on established norms to avoid
uncertainty. (rules, structures, laws.. make things more predictable and less uncertain)
Power Distance: the way cultures are stratified; levels between people based on power,
authority, prestige..
Institutional Collectivism: degree to which organization or society encourages
institutional or societal collective action. whether cultures identify with broader societal
interests
In-Group Collectivism: degree to which people express pride, loyalty in their orgs and
families.
Gender Egalitarianism: degree to which org or society minimizes gender role differences
and promotes gender equality.
Assertiveness: degree to which people are determined, assertive, aggressive..
Future Orientation: extent to which people engage in future-oriented behaviors such as
planning..
Performance Orientation: extent to which org or society encourages and rewards group
members for improved performance
Humane Orientation: degree to which culture encourages and rewards people for being
fair, generous, caring
GLOBE divided the countries into regional clusters
-analyze similarities and differences between cultural groups
Anglo- high in performance, low in in-group collectivism
Confucian Asia- high in performance, institutional collectivism, in-group collectivism
Eastern Europe: high assertiveness, in-group collectivism, gender egalitarianism, low
performance, future, uncertainty avoidance
Germanic Europe: high performance, assertiveness, future, uncertainty; low humane,
institutional collectivism, in-group collectivism
Latin America: high in-group collectivism; low performance, future, institutional
collectivism, uncertainty avoidance
Latin Europe: moderate, few high; low human and institutional
Middle East: high in-group collectivism; low future, gender, uncertainty avoidance
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Nordic Europe: high future, gender, institutional, uncertainty; low assertiveness, in-group
collectivism, power distance
southern Asia: high humane, in-group
Sub-Saharan Africa: high human orientation