Global Leadership

Cross-Cultural Competency (C3)

A set of 40 general cross-cultural learning statements (knowledge, skills, and personal characteristics) were recommended by a DoD focus group in order to foster the career development of cross-cultural competence in military and civilian personnel.

Geert Hofstede

Hofstede has performed research for several decades that continues to impact research in global and international arenas of global leadership. Hofstede’s research is primarily focused on how values in the workplace are influenced by culture. According to him, all behaviors are determined by culture. In his definition; culture is ‘the collective programming of the mind distinguishing the members of one group or category of people from others.’ To conduct his research, he analyzed a large database of employee value scores collected within IBM between years 1967 and 1973. There is over 70 countries in the data. Hofstede’s primary tenants of culture differentiation are summed up through his research more elaborately, but primarily consist of: In his model, he identified six dimensions of national culture based on his research. Those dimensions are also used to differentiate countries from each other, based on how countries score on the six dimensions. The scale of scores range from 0 – 100. If a score is below 50 it is considered as Low and if it is higher than 50 it is considered as High in that dimension. Here, although countries are represented with a score, the scores are relative and cannot represent unique individuals. In other words, ‘culture can be only used meaningfully by comparison.’ The relevant scores are proven to be stable over time. Forces that cause cultures to shift are global and therefore is there is something effecting the culture in a country, it actually effects many countries at the same time in the world. The model consists of six dimensions; which are Power Distance, Individualism, Masculinity vs Femininity, Uncertainty Avoidance, Long Term Orientation vs Short Term Normative Orientation and Indulgence vs Restraint. Furthermore, he has published several books and academic articles on the subject in order to light the way for global business leaders as well as academic researchers.

Hofstede's Cultural Dimensions

Project GLOBE

The GLOBE (Global Leadership and Organizational Behavior Effectiveness Research) project took Hofstede’s original 1980 research findings (Hofstede, 1980) and dedicated an entire academic effort into exploring the differences of cultures (Hofstede, 1980). “Conceived in 1991 by Robert J. House of the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, and led by Professor House, the GLOBE Project directly involved 170 “country co-investigators” based in 62 of the world’s cultures as well as a 14-member group of coordinators and research associates. This international team collected data from 17,300 middle managers in 951 organizations. They used qualitative methods to assist their development of quantitative instruments.” The research identified nine cultural competencies and grouped the 62 countries into ten convenient societal clusters (Javidan & Dastmalchian, 2009).

Globe cultural clusters

The GLOBE researchers used acquired data to put nations into cultural clusters that are grouped based upon cultural similarities due to shared geography and climate conditions, which all influence perceptions and behavior:

Anglo Cultures England, Australia, South Africa (white sample), Canada, New Zealand, Ireland, United States

Arab Cultures Algeria, Qatar, Morocco, Egypt, Kuwait, Libya, Tunisia, Lebanon, Syria, Yemen, Jordan, Iraq, UAE, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, Oman

Confucian Asia Taiwan, Singapore, Hong Kong, South Korea, China, Japan, Vietnam

Eastern Europe Hungary, Bulgaria, Romania, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Poland, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Serbia, Greece, Slovenia, Albania, Russia

Germanic Europe Dutch-speaking (Netherlands, Belgium and Dutch-speaking France) German-speaking (Austria, German-speaking Switzerland, Germany, South Tyrol, Liechtenstein)

Latin America Costa Rica, Venezuela, Ecuador, Mexico, El Salvador, Colombia, Guatemala, Bolivia, Brazil, Argentina

Latin Europe Italy, Portugal, Spain, France, Switzerland (French and Italian speaking)

Nordic Europe Finland, Sweden, Denmark

Southern Asia Pakistan, India, Bangladesh, Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, Iran, Philippines, Turkey

Sub-Sahara Africa Namibia, Zambia, Zimbabwe, South Africa (Black Sample), Nigeria

GLOBE cultural competencies

The nine GLOBE cultural competencies are:

1. Performance orientation - refers to the extent to which an organization or society encourages and rewards group members for performance improvement and excellence.
2. Assertiveness orientation - is the degree to which individuals in organizations or societies are assertive, confrontational, and aggressive in social relationships.
3. Future orientation - is the degree to which individuals in organizations or societies engage in future-oriented behaviors such as planning, investing in the future, and delaying gratification.
4. Humane orientation - is the degree to which individuals in organizations or societies encourage and reward individuals for being fair, altruistic, friendly, generous, caring, and kind to others.
5. Collectivism I: Institutional collectivism - reflects the degree to which organizational and societal institutional practices encourage and reward collective distribution of resources and collective action.
6. Collectivism II: In-group collectivism - reflects the degree to which individuals express pride, loyalty and cohesiveness in their organizations or families.
7. Gender egalitarianism - is the extent to which an organization or a society minimizes gender role differences and gender discrimination.
8. Power distance - is defined as the degree to which members of an organization or society expect and agree that power should be unequally shared.
9. Uncertainty avoidance - is defined as the extent to which members of an organization or society strive to avoid uncertainty by reliance on social norms, rituals, and bureaucratic practices to alleviate the unpredictability of future events.

After extensive review of the research the GLOBE strategically grouped over 21 primary leadership dimensions into six encompassing dimensions of global leadership and made recommendation about how the dimensions of culture and leadership could distinguish influences of one country from another.

Culturally endorsed implicit leadership (CLT)

The six Globe dimensions of culturally endorsed implicit leadership (CLT) are:

1. Charismatic/value based – characterized by demonstrating integrity, decisiveness, and performance oriented by appearing visionary, inspirational and self-sacrificing, but can also be toxic and allow for autocratic commanding.
2. Team oriented – characterized by diplomatic, administratively competent, team collaboration and integration. A Toxic leader would be malevolent alienating the team, but driving cohesion
3. Self-protective – characterized by self-centered, face saving, procedural behavior capable of inducing conflict when necessary while being conscious of status
4. Participative – characterized by (non-autocratic) participative behavior that is supportive of those who are being led
5. Human orientation – characterized by modesty and compassion for others in an altruistic fashion
6. Autonomous – being able to function without constant consultation

As globalization continues to thrive and change, the concept of global leadership will adapt to serve the best interest of a world being made incrementally smaller.