CULTURAL MANAGEMENT THEORIES

Cultural Management Theories



Cultural Management Theories

Leadership and Culture

Leadership appears to be a universal phenomenon. There has been no society found where it is completely absent or where cultural norms have completely substituted for it. A variety of definitions for leadership accommodates the diversity of appearances that leadership may take among and within cultures and organizations. (Bass, 1990, 90)

Furthermore, cultures are not static; they are dynamic and continually evolving. This evolution varies from culture to culture and from time to time within the same culture. The associated beliefs, values, and other elements of culture at a single point in time may not necessarily be the same at a later time in the same culture; hence the immensely complicated task of examining leadership across different cultures.

Moreover, they underscored the importance of understanding cultural differences between countries. Studies have borne out Bass's attention to cultural analysis at the national level: The interdependence of global economic, social, and political arrangements requires citizens of one nation to collaborate with citizens of another. Since Bass's comments, further study has shown that the success of the work of one nation's citizens in another culture is dependent upon understanding cultural differences, including the variations among attitudes toward and the practice of leadership. (Adler, 2008, 56)

Yet there are rewards for this effort to understand a changing phenomenon from different and conflicting perspectives. Bass posed intriguing questions for the effort to determine the cultural components of leadership: How much can we generalize about leadership from one culture to another? Are some elements of leadership universal while others are culturally relative? The internationalization of business and the global village prompt these questions, for managers educated and experienced in one country and culture must know what decision-making practices and leadership styles are best suited for another country and culture.

Nongovernmental organizations and international government agencies are multinational organizations as much as some corporations are. International understanding and cooperation as well as misunderstanding and war may depend, in part, on how well we understand our similarities and differences.

Knowing the cultural expectations that group members have themselves, and person in authority provides one avenue of understanding the leadership. While the scholarship of leadership and authority within a particular culture continues, other research looks for patterns among national cultures or common patterns that may be used to analyze, compare, and differentiate national cultures. Associating countries by cultural affinities permits the creation of clusters, thus reducing the number of units to analyze.

The clusters permit a summary that displays cross-cultural similarities and differences and allows for a preliminary sketch of leadership patterns found among a group of nations. History, geography, language, religion, the stage of technological development, and related factors contribute to the formation of these clusters. In addition, countries are clustered according to factors such as leadership style preferences, autocratic or democratic, interpersonal values— conformity, recognition, and benevolence and the like (Bass, 1990, p. 84).

One early synthesis of cross-cultural leadership studies found eight clusters roughly corresponding to geographic proximity— Arab, Near Eastern, Far Eastern, ...