GLOBE Research Project: Cross-Cultural Leadership Explained

Introduction

As the process of globalization erodes trade barriers, heightens multinational corporate activity, and creates ever more culturally diverse organizations, it is incumbent upon businesses to adapt. How this adaptation takes place, however, is highly contingent upon dimensions of national culture, meaning that each nation involved in the process of economic globalization will face its own distinct opportunities, challenges, strengths, and weaknesses as it makes room for and optimizes the presence of multinational and multicultural businesses. In many instances, the success with which a nation integrates multiculturalism into its corporate identity is tantamount to the economic success that nation is likely to experience as the scope of globalization continues to widen. There is, thus, a particular value to an endeavor that seeks to provide metrics for — and consequently seeks to measure the progress of — individual nations in managing the cultural implications of globalization in the context of organizational behavior. For the purposes of the research conducted hereafter, the Global Leadership and Organizational Behavior Effectiveness Research Project (GLOBE) will serve as such an endeavor.

The research conducted hereafter will examine the role played by the GLOBE project in measuring cross-cultural leadership as it exists in 62 distinct nations. This will include consideration of the importance of this role to business practices in each context, the value of this role where the furthering of investigation in the social sciences is concerned, and the implications of this role where such correlated matters as international labor rights, human rights, and environmental standards are involved. Consequently, the study will give some consideration to the impact that the GLOBE project may have on the future of cross-cultural leadership and of organizational behavior in multinational, multicultural contexts.

What Is Global Leadership?

The process of globalization is not just changing the way that nations interact or the way that firms prospect growth. It is also having a dramatic transformative impact on the way that leadership must be oriented both within nations and within firms. This is a central premise in defining the concept of "global leadership" — a notion which scarcely existed in the context of business just a few decades ago, yet has proven increasingly important as a way of ensuring that business practices align with the cultural needs of the countries that host them. With the list of potential host nations expanding substantially with the ratification of every international free trade agreement, the need to achieve a clear understanding of global leadership has become ever greater.

According to Goldsmith et al. (2003), catalyzing changes are now occurring which are diminishing the relevance of many historical leadership theories — particularly those that make no account for the implications of cross-cultural interaction. As Goldsmith et al. explain:

"Traditional business patterns are changing as globalism spreads. Convergence within industries, marked by the mergers of the 1980s and 1990s, has been compounded by convergence between industries. Alliances, partnerships, and strategic outsourcing create new global models, never experienced before, which give access to the full range of skills, resources, and market offerings that success now demands. Executive leadership models of the past provide little guidance for creating models of the future. In a complex global business environment, no specific, single model will fit the broad range of situations that leaders will encounter." (Goldsmith, p. 1)

This passage may offer the single most instructive feature by which to define global leadership. The fact that no singular approach to leadership is sufficient to account for the cultural needs of the whole global community has significant implications for how we define and pursue the concept. Most importantly, without acknowledgement of the cultural diversity that so often dictates the expectations of leadership, the label "global" will not meaningfully apply. This provides the appropriate segue into a discussion of how culture functions to determine leadership effectiveness in a globalizing business environment.

The Interrelation of Culture and Leadership Effectiveness

In the simplest terms, House et al. (2002) introduce the idea of culture into this discussion by observing that geographical differences have contributed to a wide variance of concurrently evolving but wholly distinct cultural histories. They also note that within today's business world, these distinct cultural histories are undergoing a dramatic coalescence unlike anything previously experienced by humankind. As House et al. explain, "throughout mankind's history, geography, ethnicity, and political boundaries have helped create distinctions and differences among different peoples. Over time, societies have evolved into groups of people with distinguishable characteristics that set them apart from other human communities. It is only in the latter part of the 20th century that advances in technology and improvements in telecommunication and transportation have enabled societies to quickly and easily learn about and from others." (House et al., p. 3)

This has placed a number of challenges before us as we attempt to navigate multicultural endeavors while still conditioned by many of the geographical factors that have distinguished us along cultural features such as ethnicity, gender dynamics, family dynamics, and power dynamics. ITAP International (2011) points out that as we attempt to navigate these cultural differences, we come face to face with a wide spectrum of behavioral expectations. Within the context of organizational dynamics, these expectations will especially influence the ways in which leadership structures are formed and sustained. The result is a highly complex set of layered perceptions of leadership that differ as a function of culture. As ITAP International notes, "in order to develop leaders who can effectively lead global operations, it is important to understand what makes leaders effective across cultures. Culture shapes how we think about what is good leadership, and the definitions of an 'effective leader' vary from one culture to another. In fact, effective leadership behavior in one culture could (and will) be completely ineffective in others." (ITAP International, p. 1)

Here, we can see that the interrelation of culture and leadership effectiveness is one of relativity. Leadership effectiveness will be substantially shaped by how well leaders are equipped to manage cross-cultural expectations and perceptions of authority.

Defining the GLOBE Study

What Is GLOBE?

Before entering into a more extensive analysis of the role and future of GLOBE, it is necessary to provide some basic background on the project's founding and primary initiatives. According to Knowledge @ Wharton (1999), GLOBE was founded by its first director, Robert J. House — a social scientist conducting research primarily at the Wharton School — who was engaged in a decade-long study of how different world cultures define and formulate organizational leadership. In doing so, House became increasingly convinced that the definitions and perceptions of leadership were fundamentally different from one culture and country to the next. He thus identified the need, especially in the face of globalization's mounting influence on international business, to find a singular lens through which to understand these differing conceptions. In response, Knowledge @ Wharton reports that "in 1993 House launched The Global Leadership and Organizational Behavior Effectiveness Research Program (GLOBE) to test leadership hypotheses in various cultures. Over the past six years GLOBE has evolved into a multi-phase, multi-method research project in which some 170 investigators from over 60 cultures representing all major regions of the world collaborate to examine the interrelationships among societal culture, organizational culture and practices and organizational leadership." (Knowledge @ Wharton, p. 1)

The investigators called upon for involvement in the project were generally drawn from the ranks of social scientists representing each of the countries involved. Using four distinct phases, GLOBE would set out across its first 15 years in operation to develop metrics for universal leadership attributes that could be used to identify common ground between the organizational cultures of various participant nations. In addition, these phases were designed to identify common stumbling blocks that nations and their corporations face as they attempt to adapt to more universal leadership standards. According to Knowledge @ Wharton, Phase II of the study, completed in 1998, found that "there are attributes that are universally seen as impediments to outstanding leadership. The most important finding, however, is that there are culturally-contingent attributes that can help or hinder leadership." (Knowledge @ Wharton, p. 1)

This denotes that at its core, the GLOBE project was established to help decipher between those attributes which may be valued as universal and those which are culturally contingent. Moreover, GLOBE attempts to bring nuance to this discussion by deconstructing culturally contingent values so as to determine which dimensions of these values might be universal and which might remain culturally relative. The result is a set of metrics that can be directly applied by individuals facing leadership challenges compounded by cross-cultural impediments. Knowledge @ Wharton provides a useful example from the qualitative results of Phase II: "Several attributes reflecting charismatic/transformational leadership are universally endorsed as contributing to outstanding leadership. These attributes include: foresight, a willingness to encourage colleagues and staff, communicativeness, trustworthiness, a dynamic presence, a positive attitude, and being seen as a confidence builder. Certain charismatic attributes are perceived to be culturally contingent. These include enthusiasm, risk-taking, ambition, humility, sincerity, sensitivity, and compassion." (Knowledge @ Wharton, p. 2)

From the outset, GLOBE received endorsement and support from several U.S. public agencies. According to a progress report by GLOBE founder Robert J. House (1999), the project was launched with a $625,000 grant from the U.S. Department of Education and an additional $100,000 grant from the National Science Foundation. These were granted in response to a proposal that pooled together 753 questionnaire items to demonstrate the project's intended scope (House, p. 2). House also reported that the leadership structure at GLOBE centered around several key units, noting that "the activities of the project as a whole are coordinated by the GLOBE Coordinating Team (GCT). The Principal Investigator and the Co-Principal Investigators are members of the GCT," along with social scientists representing universities in the U.S., Sweden, Germany, India, Canada, Colombia, and South Africa (House, p. 3).

The Present Condition of World Trends

For a concise demonstration of the way that GLOBE's evaluation tools produce indexes relating to distinct Culture Clusters, we consider some of the world trends in leadership values as reported by House et al. (2004). In a published report following up on the survey measurement of Cultural Dimensions of leadership, House et al. demonstrate the specific connections between cultures and leadership values.

For instance, House et al. report that Anglo cultures — such as the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom — place a high level of emphasis on Performance Orientation, In-Group Collectivism, and, to a slightly lesser extent, Gender Egalitarianism. Anglo cultures place a comparatively lesser emphasis on Power Distance or Uncertainty Avoidance (House et al., p. 32).

Confucian Asian cultures, including China, Japan, and South Korea, by contrast place higher emphasis on Future Orientation and Human Orientation while placing lower emphases on Gender Egalitarianism or Institutional Collectivism. This demonstrates that the GLOBE evaluation tool allows for observations in trends according to individual clusters, while also enabling inter-cultural comparison. Using the GLOBE instrument, it is possible to observe certain commonalities across otherwise distinct clusters. Accordingly, Future Orientation and Human Orientation — identified as high in Confucian cultures — are found to be roughly equivalent in the Latin Europe and Latin American clusters as well, suggesting a certain potential for compatibility in terms of business coalescence (House et al., pp. 33–37).

Similarly, German Europe and Latin Europe share the Anglo cluster's emphasis on Performance Orientation, and all three clusters place a low emphasis on Power Distance. This low emphasis is also shared by Nordic Europe, Latin American, and Confucian Asian cultures, suggesting that the world trend is largely toward a diminished emphasis on power distance and more egalitarian distributions of authority and engagement (House et al., pp. 33–37). The finding also highlights the power of the GLOBE instrument to uncover such parallels — of use in determining the compatibility of intercultural business endeavors and in predicting the level of cultural adjustment likely required by engaging parties.

GLOBE as a Policy Framework

The notion of using GLOBE as a policy framework has particular value to the international trade groups and world governing agencies attempting to bring a leveling effect to the developing and developed spheres through the process of globalization. There may be a distinct usefulness for such agencies in employing GLOBE's findings to develop legislation on matters of increasing importance, such as gender equality, protection of workers' rights, or responsibility for environmental degradation. Where dimensions of corporate behavior represent challenges to the progress of the collective global community — and where imperatives exist for the intervention of the World Trade Organization, the International Monetary Fund, and the United Nations — GLOBE's identification of leadership values as they differ from one nation to another can help point to specific nations and specific areas where change can be sought.

As House et al. (2002) report, "besides practical needs, there are important reasons to examine the impact of culture on leadership. There is a need for leadership and organizational theories that transcend cultures to understand what works and what does not work in different cultural settings (Triandis, 1993). Furthermore, a focus on cross-cultural issues can help researchers uncover new relationships by forcing investigators to include a much broader range of variables often not considered in contemporary leadership theories, such as the importance of religion, language, ethnic background, history, or political systems." (House et al., p. 3) From this perspective, there is a direct connection between many dimensions of culturally relative leadership and the presence or absence of certain human rights protections, meaning that policy development in contexts where such protections are absent may benefit significantly from the revelations offered by GLOBE's evaluation framework.

Conclusion

The research presented here describes the Global Leadership and Organizational Behavior Effectiveness Research Project in extensive detail in order to evaluate the role and future of this project within the context of a globalizing world economy. In addition to its description of these features of GLOBE, the research also explores the nature of leadership in a global community where a wide variance of cultural expectations helps to define that nature. The convergence between the description of GLOBE and the exploration of global leadership from a multicultural perspective reveals that today, in spite of the significant transformation of the global economy, there exists a meaningful lag in the leadership qualifications of those who are in positions of cross-cultural management. As the research also demonstrates, there is a direct connection between the leadership qualifications of those in cross-cultural management positions and the presence of effective knowledge and training where culturally relative leadership perceptions are concerned.

At the center of this research is the finding that there remains a substantial need for wider distribution of the findings produced by the GLOBE project and for consultation on the actionable response to those findings. GLOBE has already taken key formative steps in improving global leadership orientation at the individual business level by offering an easily interpreted but sufficiently nuanced way of evaluating the complex set of dimensions by which cultures and leadership styles may be linked. A greater understanding of this amongst business leaders of all cultural contexts will, on the whole, lead to a better-performing global economy. Thus, GLOBE may yet play an instrumental role in contributing to the refinement of our collective ability to achieve the positive aims of globalization — not only improving business practices and leadership orientation, but also addressing shortcomings such as gender inequality, labor abuses, and environmental degradation in cross-cultural business contexts.

Works Cited

Goldsmith, M. (2009). Being an Effective Global Leader. Harvard Business Review.

Goldsmith, M.; Greenberg, C.; Robertson, A. & Hu-Chan, M. (2003). Global Leadership: The Next Generation. FT Press, 1st Edition.

Grove, C.N. (2005). Introduction to the GLOBE Research Project on Leadership Worldwide. Grovewell.com.

Hoppe, M.H. (2007). Culture and Leader Effectiveness: The GLOBE Study. GLOBE.

House, R.J. (1999). GLOBE Research Project: Progress Report. Wharton School of Business.

House, R.J.; Hanges, P.J.; Javidan, M. & Dorfman, P.W. (2002). Understanding Cultures and Implicit Leadership Theories Across the Globe: An Introduction to Project GLOBE. Journal of World Business, 37, 3–10.

House, R.J.; Hanges, P.J.; Javidan, M.; Dorfman, P.W. & Gupta, V. (2004). Culture, Leadership, and Organizations: The GLOBE Study of 62 Societies. Sage Publications.

ITAP International. (2011). Global Leadership Development. Itapinti.com.

Knowledge @ Wharton. (1999). How Cultural Factors Affect Leadership. Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania.

Training; AMA & i4cp. (2011). Developing Successful Global Leaders. Trainingmag.com.