Globe (Global Leadership and Organizational

¶ … GLOBE (Global Leadership and Organizational Behavior Effectiveness) project has extended national cultural dimensions

According to its official website, the GLOBE Research Project was "a multi-phase, multi-method project in which investigators examined "the inter-relationships between societal culture, organizational culture, and organizational leadership" to promote understanding and tolerance in the business world ("Globe," Home Page, 2009). While cultural biases can limit the ability to study leadership cross-culturally, the GLOBE project used a wide range of researchers from many nations to create as broad a perspective as possible on concepts of leadership. Ultimately, GLOBE used 170 researchers from 62 nations over the course of its 11-year study to identify specific leadership attributes that are culturally endorsed within specific cultural contexts. Its methodology was to create culture dimension scales and subject the scales to a variety of statistical analyses "to determine whether people from organizations or societies agreed in terms of their rating of leadership attributes" ("Guidelines, 2006).

GLOBE identified certain attributes that seemed to be universally associated with effective or ineffective leadership (Grove 2005). These were consolidated into six key "culturally-endorsed leadership theory dimensions" (CLT)s: 22 universally effective leadership attributes such as being "trustworthy," a "motive arouser," and "excellence oriented" (Grove 2005). The GLOBE Project also discovered that 35 leadership attributes seemed to be "culturally contingent," or dependant upon cultural context (Grove 2005). This confirmed the overall hypothesis of GLOBE researchers "that possessing an implicit leadership theory is true of groups as well as of individuals. The researchers' main hypothesis was that each organizational or societal culture will be associated with a specific set of beliefs about leadership. Put another way, the researchers wanted to show that societal and organizational culture influences the kind of leadership found to be acceptable and effective by people within that culture" (Grove 2005). Leadership, in other words, was not an objectively determined attribute, as it is often portrayed in managerial, motivational literature -- leadership is a subjective and culturally-bound construction. Some of these culturally 'bound' attributes were being a risk-taker and provocateur. They were found to be more positive in highly individualistic cultures such as the United States. In contrast, being evasive was judged to be a positive, diplomatic quality in some cultures but negative in Anglo cultures.

While charisma and value-based leadership was associated with positive types of leadership cross-culturally, team-based and participative leadership qualities were far more variable in their ratings, as were humaneness and self-protectiveness. Also, cultures that value independence tend to value charisma more, while more conciliatory cultures, such as the Middle East, judge it as less important. Team leadership was associated with outstanding leadership in the Middle East, in contrast to Anglo cultures, which gave this quality far less priority. However, participative leadership was rated highly in Anglo cultures. This type of democratic leadership style stands in profound contrast to the cultural emphasis on strong, more autocratic leadership styles in the Middle East.