THE IMPACT OF CULTURE ON CROSS-CULTURAL LEADERSHIP

Phuoc D. Nguyen

A global leader who leads as a cross-cultural leader in diverse cultural business environments that have close correlations between the culture and cross-cultural leadership, then to lead cross-cultural effectively that a cross-cultural leader needs to develop or improve his/her competency across cultures. The cross-cultural leader usually faces barriers, challenges, and obstacles in his cross-cultural leadership because he/she has not identified and understood correlations between the culture and cross-cultural leadership, the cross-cultural impact on his/her cross-cultural leadership. Additionally, he/she is missing necessary cross-cultural leadership competency. Subsequently, a cross-cultural leader needs to acquire cross-cultural leadership competency first to understand correlations between culture and cross-cultural leadership and the cross-cultural impact on cross-cultural leadership. Ultimately, culture has an impact significantly on cross-cultural leadership from many angles, and cross-cultural leadership competency development and improvement is a long learning and practice journey/process that needs the active support of his/her superior, peers, subordinates, customers, partners; especially, it requires his/her great effort and long-life learning himself/herself.

There are significant impacts of culture on cross-cultural leadership from many angles. We should understand the fundamentals of culture and cross-cultural leadership notions.

Defining Culture

For the GLOBE research program, House defines culture as shared motives, values, beliefs, identities, and interpretations or meanings of significant events that result from common experiences of members of collectives and are transmitted across age generations. The culture is filtered through many generations of a country, it is spread and shown the combination of shared values, beliefs, customs, religions, and lifestyles to create motives aimed at generating and representing the cultural values of a nation.

Defining Cross-cultural Leadership

Hudea defines cross-cultural leadership as reflecting the capacity of a leader to accept others as they are, to accept their culture, and to be open-minded and flexible when making decisions and acting as such. Cross-cultural leadership may be defined as differences in leadership styles, manifested across various cultures. Every national culture has its leadership styles which fit with Hofstede’ cultural dimensions evaluation results; the cross-cultural leader accepts a system of values, beliefs, and customs of different countries in cross-cultural environments.

The Impact of Culture on Cross-cultural Leadership

Based on Hofstede’s cultural dimensions understand how the culture has impacted significantly on cross-cultural leadership. Hofstede’s cultural dimensions show different cross-cultural leadership styles such as individualistic/collectivistic, masculinity/feminine, uncertainty avoidance, power distance, and time perspective. More than 50 nations’ cultural dimensions were evaluated by Hofstede. As a result, every nation received different assessment results for their leadership styles which were high, low, strong, or weak compared with cultural dimensions; specific cultural dimensions of every nation affect directly cross-cultural leadership outcomes. According to Hanges, Aiken, and Su, cross-cultural leadership research has demonstrated that societal culture affects leader behavior and the effectiveness of different leadership styles when followers are relatively culturally homogenous. Contrary, Mihaela proposes national culture has not only a huge impact on leadership style but also the leadership style influences the organizational culture of a company; it is about cross-cultural challenges and know-how managerial transfer. Cross-cultural leaders based on national culture adapt and follow desired leadership styles and their leadership style aims to assess organizational culture; based on organizational culture assessment results to drive their appropriate leadership style. Therefore, their appropriate leadership style will influence the organizational culture. Danuser indicates national culture affects the behavior of individual leaders and subordinates as they interact one with another. National culture also influences how employees perceive their leaders.

The lower power distance has a huge impact on the behavior of individuals, thus leaders in high power distance societies should decrease power distance and drive their organizational culture towards low power distance regardless of national culture. Mittal and Elias demonstrate power distance affects the behavior of individuals regardless of the extent to which they have power. Managers in low power distance societies would be more apt to choose influence attempts that utilize soft bases of power. In high power distance societies, there would be minimal need for the manager and/or leader to prepare for an influence attempt. To decrease power distance global leaders should fix root causes such as notions of national, regional, local, organizational, and group cultures; national educators should improve leadership and management education in the education system, and global leaders should establish and improve effective internal communication systems/channels continually.

In the global culturally diverse business environments, organizations need leaders and staff who focus on teamwork, process management, cross-cultural teams, and organizational and team objectives, thus collectivism is an advantage. Organizations need to train their leaders and employees who have teamwork, management by process, and intercultural skills. According to Mittal and Elias, managers in individualistic societies could be expected to employ a variety of power bases, using a rational approach for their influence attempts. In collectivistic societies, the leader or manager is not simply a boss to extricate performance from the subordinate but is also expected to form and maintain a holistic relationship, including social ties, with his or her followers.

To decrease high-uncertainty avoidance, organizations need to project corporate, business, and functional plans and strategies globally and locally with goals, SMART objectives, targets, and KPIs; they establish, implement, control, and improve an integrated management system continually including corporate, business, functional policies, innovative programs, rules, regulations, manuals, handbooks, procedures, and business processes. Additionally, leaders project, implement, and control change plans and strategies on culture, methods, processes, and technology. Importantly, leaders create a sense of peace of mind for employees. Mittal and Elias propose in an organizational context, uncertainty in a high-uncertainty avoidance setting would be sought to be resolved through elaborate procedures, rules, and norms. Consequently, managers should prefer to adopt a task orientation and use influence tactics that ensure compliance and conformity with rules. In contrast, low-uncertainty avoidance societies would be more encouraging of risk-taking and innovative behaviors and more tolerant of non-conformity.

To shift from a high degree of masculinity to a high degree of femininity leaders need to suggest equality rules between males and females; he/she adopts a process-oriented style and control process and procedures implementation to achieve compliance; responsibility and authority are regulated in governance manuals and job descriptions for every position in business processes aim to avoid the abuse of harsh power bases to give employees feeling comfortable and exciting in the change process. Mittal and Elias demonstrate leaders who in societies with a high degree of masculinity, managers are more likely to adopt a task-oriented style, and the consequent use of harsh power bases, to gain compliance. On the contrary, in societies with a high degree of femininity, managers are apt to adopt a more relationship-oriented style that draws on soft bases of power such as positive referent, personal reward, or legitimate dependence.

A global leader should always focus on a long-term orientation vision with strategic thinking to drive his/her organization to achieve strategic goals globally and locally. Moreover, cross-cultural integration also requires a long-term orientation. According to Mittal and Elias generally prevalent in East Asian countries, long-term orientation stands for a society fostering virtues of personal steadiness and stability, protecting the face, and respect for tradition. These societies place value on building relationships and market positions in business contexts. In contrast, societies characterized by short-term orientation place value on meritocracy, separation of family and business, and expect immediate gratification of needs.

Develop Intercultural Skills Across Cultures

Luinen suggests a roadmap to develop intercultural skills respectively, including intercultural skills executive coaching – leadership consulting companies play a very important role in intercultural skills executive coaching, this approach saves time and money to achieve quick objectives of intercultural skills training and development for global leaders. According to Luinen, executive coaching is a key component of and support to global leader development. Based upon theories of andragogy, executive coaching focuses on extrapolating experience and measured reflection with leaders who, agnostic of the organization, have the same objectives. Intercultural skills development in the role – international assignments with different positions across countries, territories, and geographical areas are chances to develop intercultural skills effectively. During their assignments, they will observe, learn, compare, analyze, integrate diverse cultures, practice foreign languages, and apply their global and cross-cultural leadership knowledge. Luinen suggests global business leaders opting for expatriation or significant global travel can be afforded an important opportunity to develop intercultural skills while performing their job roles. Intercultural Professional Training Skills – According to Luinen, the evolution of global business leadership effectiveness has influenced intercultural development strategies, practices, and tools for learning through on-the-job, relationship-oriented, and formal training methodologies.

To implement global leaders’ training and development programs effectively, multinational companies need to project a global leader training and development plan that belongs to their HR development strategy. First, the company promotes potential global leaders from internal performance appraisal outcomes; at the same time, it recruits global leaders from sources around the world and uses head-hunting firms. Second, in the training stage, the company trains to follow Caligiuri’s KSAOs (knowledge, skill, ability, and other personality characteristics), including knowledge of cross-cultural awareness, global mindset, culture, international business, and trade; constructs of cultural desire, cultural awareness, cultural knowledge, cultural skill, and cultural encounters. Furthermore, it trains skills and abilities to follow Caligiuri’s KSAOs, including reasoning ability, verbal ability, cognitive ability, intercultural interaction skills, foreign language skills, and cognitive ability. Moreover, it trains personality characteristics to include extroverts; agreeableness; conscientiousness; emotions; and openness or intellect; further, it has also trained Czarnecka and Szymura-Tyc’s GLOBE universal leadership positive qualities, including trustworthiness, just, honesty, foresight, plans ahead, inspiring, with a vision, to be encouraging to action, positive, dynamic, a motive arouser, a confidence builder, motivational, dependable, intelligent, decisive, effective bargainer, win-win problem solver, administratively skilled, communicative, informed, coordinator, team builder, excellence oriented. Afterward, it implements Caligiuri’s didactic learning programs, including foundational knowledge such as international finance, project management software, and cultural dimensions; culture-specific cross-cultural training, general cross-cultural training, diversity training, and language training. The HR department assesses global leaders’ training program outcomes at the end of the training stage. Learners who are unsatisfied with program requirements will re-enter one of the phases of the training program.

At last, learners who have satisfied global leader training and development program requirements will receive rotational international assignments programs to live and work abroad in cross-cultural assigned diverse geographical areas; they must always self-study, self-train and receive on-the-job leadership coaching continually. HR Department and experienced global leaders who will implement periodic performance appraisals to leaders in training to recommend opportunities for improvement of leaders’ KSAOs. Additionally, the HR Department and experienced global leaders conduct to assessment of multicultural leaders’ training and development programs’ effectiveness to improve programs continually.