Culture and Leadership Across the World

The GLOBE Book of In-Depth Studies of 25 Societies

Jagdeep S. Chhokar, Felix C. Brodbeck, Robert J. House, Jagdeep S. Chhokar, Felix C. Brodbeck, Robert J. House

• Publisher: Psychology Press
• Year: 2007
• Topic: Business
• eBook ISBN:
  9781135703790
• Subtopic: Business General
• Index: Business

Culture and Leadership Across the World: The GLOBE Book of In-Depth Studies of 25 Societies is the second major publication of GLOBE (Global Leadership and Organizational Behavior Effectiveness), a groundbreaking, large-scale project on international management research featuring contributions from nearly 18,000 middle managers from 1,000 organizat

1

Introduction

Jagdeep S. Chhokar
Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad

Felix C. Brodbeck
Aston Business School, Aston University, Birmingham, England

Robert J. House
Wharton School of Management, University of Pennsylvania

Culture and leadership are probably among the most written about and the least understood topics in the social sciences. This is not only because social scientists find these two topics very challenging, even seductive, but also because these two seem necessary for satisfying human existence. The Global Leadership and Organizational Behavior Effectiveness (GLOBE) Research Project has studied these popular topics afresh and in a simultaneous breadth and depth that has never before been attempted. The comprehensive quantitative findings of all the 61 countries studied are described in an earlier volume (House, Hanges, Javidan, Dorfman, Gupta, & GLOBE Associates, 2004). This book reports the results of the in-depth analyses of culture and leadership in 25 of the 61 countries, each of which is presented by scholars and researchers from those countries, who integrated the quantitative and qualitative GLOBE findings.

This book is addressed to both university teachers and researchers on the one side and practicing managers on the other side. For the former, it provides in-depth understanding of 25 cultures from multiple perspectives and suggestions for further research in each of these cultures. Reading all the chapters, together with the last chapter of this volume (“Integration, Conclusions, and Future Directions”), will provide a detailed understanding of the similarities and differences of cultural and leadership practices and values in a broad range of countries across major regions of the world. For the latter, for example, managers who are planning to work, or who are already working, in cross-cultural environments (which we believe, more and more managers will have to do in the coming years) will find each country chapter to be a source for developing a thorough understanding of the culture and leadership practices of that country. In addition, they will find practical suggestions, based on rigorous research and experience rooted in that country, about how to deal with managers of and situations in that country. Information contained in this book will also be a valuable resource for senior managers planning to do business with other countries or to set up offices or operations in other countries. Taken together, the comparative study of 61 countries presented in House et al. (2004) and the in-depth reports about each of a sample of 25 countries from the present book, constitute a rich source of information for anyone interested in understanding the culture and leadership of countries and organizations across the world.

This chapter starts by explaining the need for country-specific understanding of culture and leadership, goes on to define the constructs used in the research, and is followed by an overview of the history and a description of the GLOBE project. The general structure of country chapters is then described, followed by the plan of the book itself. It closes with a brief comment on the unique contribution the content of this book makes to the domain.

1. COUNTRY-SPECIFIC UNDERSTANDING

This book focuses on detailed and specific understanding of culture and leadership in the 25 countries represented here. Although there is a need for theories about leadership and organization that transcend cultural boundaries because the goal of science is to discover and construct universally valid theories, laws, and principles, there are however inherent limitations in transferring theories across widely varying cultures. What works in one culture may not work in another culture. As Triandis (1993) suggests, leadership researchers will be able to “fine-tune” theories by investigating cultural variations as parameters of those theories. In addition, a focus on cross-cultural issues can help researchers discover new relationships by suggesting that investigators include a much more encompassing range of variables usually not considered in contemporary theories, such as the prominence of religion, language, ethnicity, history, and political systems (Dorfman, 1996).

Although the quantitative data of the GLOBE research program allow comparisons and contrasts among cultures, they do not allow for culture-specific descriptions of the societies studied. That is why the authors of the 25 country chapters represented here have described selected culture-specific attributes and entities of the national setting in which the middle-management informants are embedded. The attributes and entities are those that the authors have judged as having nontrivial influences on the interpretation and practice of leadership and organizational practices of the cultures studied. Although the authors were given a suggested overall structure for country chapters, they were also free to decide how best to present the specific information pertaining to the country about which they were writing. On the one hand, this gave them the freedom to deviate from the set structure in order to represent cultural and leadership peculiarities more adequately. On the other side, this freedom resulted in chapters where the structure and presentation style differs to some extent. The structure suggested to the authors and that has generally been followed in several, but not all, chapters is described in a later section of this chapter.

2. DEFINITIONS OF CONSTRUCTS

The three major constructs of interest in GLOBE are culture, organizational practices and values, and leadership. Definitions of these, as used in GLOBE, are given in the next subsections, along with those of the dimensions that form or contribute to these constructs. These are described here in this chapter to avoid the need for repeatedly defining them in every country chapter. It is recommended that readers refer to this section as they come across these constructs in the country chapters.

Culture

There is no universally agreed-upon definition of culture among social scientists. Social scientists generally use the term to refer to a set of parameters of collectivities that differentiate the collectivities from each other in meaningful ways. The focus is on the “sharedness” of cultural indicators among members of the collectivity. The specific criteria used to differentiate cultures usually depend on the preferences of the investigator and the issues under investigation, and tend to reflect the discipline of the investigator. It was also decided to develop a GLOBE definition of culture.

In August 1994, the first GLOBE research conference was held at the University of Calgary in Canada. The participants consisted of 54 researchers from 38 countries. They met to develop a collective understanding of the project and to initiate its implementation. Time was spent generating definitions of leadership that reflected the diverse viewpoints held by GLOBE researchers; time was also spent defining and describing culture. Culture was defined 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” (House & Javidan, 2004, p. 15). It is worth noting that these are psychological attributes and that the definition can be applied at both the societal and organizational levels of analysis.

GLOBE Dimensions of Societal Culture. Culture, being one of the major phenomena of interest in GLOBE, was operationalized at multiple levels. First, cultures were operationalized in terms of quantitative dimensions: (a) Assertiveness, (b) Future Orientation, (c) Gender Egalitarianism, (d) Humane Orientation, (e) Institutional Collectivism (Collectivism I), (f) In-Group Collectivism (Collectivism II), (g) Performance Orientation, (h) Power Distance, and (i) Uncertainty Avoidance. These dimensions were selected on the basis of a review of the literature relevant to the measurement of culture in prior large-sample studies and on the basis of existing cross-culture theory, such as the works of Hofstede (1980), Hofstede and Bond (1988), Kluckhohn and Strodtbeck (1961), McClelland (1961, 1985), and Putman (1993) among others. The definitions of these dimensions adopted by GLOBE are as follows:

1. Assertiveness is the degree to which individuals in organizations or societies are assertive, confrontational, and aggressive in social relationships.

2. 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 individual or collective gratification.

3. Gender Egalitarianism is the extent to which an organization or a society minimizes gender role differences while promoting gender equity and the equality of genders.

4. Humane Orientation is the degree to which individuals in organizations or societies encourage and reward individuals for being fair, altruistic, friendly, generous, caring, kind to others, and exhibiting and promoting altruistic ideals.

5. Institutional Collectivism (Collectivism I) reflects the degree to which organizational and societal institutional practices encourage and reward collective distribution of resources and collective action.

6. In-Group Collectivism (Collectivism II) reflects the degree to which individuals express pride, loyalty, and cohesiveness in their organizations, families, circle of close friends, or other such small groups.

7. Performance Orientation refers to the extent to which high level membe...

Table of contents

• Front Cover
• Culture and Leadership Across the World
• Lea’s Organization and Management Series
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Series Foreword
• Dedication
• Foreword
• About the Authors
• Preface
• 1 Introduction
• 2 Methodology
• I Nordic Europe Cluster
• II Germanic Europe Cluster
• III Anglo Cluster
• IV Latin Europe Cluster
• V Latin America Cluster
• VI Eastern Europe Cluster
• VII Middle East Cluster
• VIII Confucian Asia Cluster
• IX Southern Asia Cluster
• X Sub-Saharan Africa Cluster
• Appendix A: Societal Culture “As Is” and “Should Be” in 25/61 Globe Countries
• Appendix B: Culturally Endorsed Leadership Theories (CLTs) in 25/61 Globe Countries
• Authors Index
• Subject Index