Diversity in leadership
Introduction
The literature review of this article tends to look at the impact that various cultural differences have on leadership. The need to create a sustainable leadership framework designed to cater to the interests of all every business stakeholder has sparked the development of several controversial debates across several dimensions (Javidan & House, 2001). The integration of a diverse array of critical factors increasingly plays a more significant role when it comes to the prospects of facilitating the subsequent incorporation of a legitimate business framework designed to aid in the creation of a sound platform for leadership.
There tend to be cultural differences in leadership in the increasingly global world, whereby Hofstede’s cultural dimension tool has been vital in analyzing different cultures and values. The GLOBE study borrowed several concepts from Hofstede’s cultural dimension. Various organizations have different lifestyles, which include espoused values, norms, shared perceptions, goals, and objectives. Much of the literature review offers the idea that the national culture influences organizational leadership styles, whereby corporate culture and management style influences employees’ attitudes towards work. Effective leadership plays a vital role in employee productivity (Chhokar, Brodbeck, & House, 2007). This chapter represents the theoretical literature review forming the basis of formulation, which reviews the two leading theories supporting the study.
This research aims to analyze the GLOBE project’s cultural dimension while comparing and contrasting from ten other research articles. The primary concept designed at is the effect of a different culture on leadership and how it affects leadership roles. This excerpt will focus on five main sections, analysis of the GLOBE projects cultural dimension, its advantages, and disadvantages, the use of different leadership styles based on respective cultures, the effect of culture on organizational leadership then later the summary.
Analysis of the GLOBE projects cultural dimension
The GLOBE study’s primary goal is to understand the effectiveness of organizational and societal leadership (House et al., 2004). The study has nine distinct dimensions that seek to understand regulatory and societal practices and values while borrowing concepts from Hofstede and McClelland, among others, works. Besides, the globe study identified leadership behaviors and their relationships with the dimensions of the GLOBE study. The leadership behaviors include charismatic, humane, participative, as well as team-oriented leadership (Hanges, & Dickson, 2004).
Compare and contrast cultural dimension between GLOBE and the Hofstede
There tend to be significant anomalies and inconsistencies in the two studies, particularly the uncertainty and avoidance dimension. There exists a negative correlation between the two studies on this dimension, which may have a negative impact on the researchers who base their research foundations on the two studies. GLOBE and Hofstede’s contradictions in national culture are prevalent in the analysis. Hofstede’s dimensions include power distance, individualism, uncertainty avoidance, long term orientation, and masculinity. One can understand cultural differences between groups by drawing on dimension measures of various groups, and his work has been cited and used among several scholars making it a dominant model for cross-cultural research.
The GLOBE study, on the other hand, develops nine cultural dimensions, including performance orientation, assertiveness, uncertainty avoidance, power distance, gender egalitarianism, future orientation, institutional collectivism, humane orientation, and in-group collectivism. Several similarities and differences exist in the way of measurement of national culture between these studies. Both studies include power distance, uncertainty avoidance, and future orientation (Hanges, & Dickson, 2004). Hofstede’s collectivism exists in two constructs in the GLOBE, institutional collectivism and in-group collectivism, masculinity exits as gender egalitarianism and assertiveness in GLOBE. GLOBE further contains two additional dimensions, humane and performance orientation.
The two differ on the dimension of uncertainty avoidance whereby Hofstede describes it as “on the national cultural level, tendencies toward prejudice, rigidity, and dogmatism, intolerance of different opinions, traditionalism, superstition, racism, and ethnocentrism all relate to a norm for intolerance of ambiguity that I have measured and expressed in a national Uncertainty Avoidance Index” (p.146). GLOBE defines uncertainty avoidance as “the extent to which members of collectives seek orderliness, consistency, structure, formalized procedures, and laws to cover ten situations in their daily lives) (p.603).
Hofstede (1980) embraced leadership concepts, particularly cross-cultural management, whereby his work-related values have been pivotal in the study of national cultures. His objectives remain to be the recognition as well as comprehension of the impact that national culture has on organizations, mainly how cultural knowledge can be utilized in effective management. Based on the main dimensions, masculinity remains a preference in most societies as well as international organizations for the assertion, heroism, and achievement. On the other hand, the femininity dimension presents to care for the weaker sex, modesty as well as corporation. The dimension of masculinity-femininity defines values to which masculinity and femininity are associated.
Different leadership styles based on respective cultures
Role of humor in leadership effectiveness
Priest & Swain (2002) offers a different perspective on humor is an essential component of ineffective leadership. Humor is a multifaceted construct that reflects a behavioral condition that intends to amuse through verbal and non-verbal means. Leaders who use humor have been regarded to be successful in their reign in most sectors. Humor in military academy camps has helped the cadets to cope with the demanding nature of the tasks easily, thus acclimatize to the harsh conditions (Priest & Swain, 2002). On the other hand, humor has been successful in the integration of interns in an organization. Most leaders have used humor effectively at almost every stage of employment or leadership in the society, which enables these politicians or leaders to gain popularity, thus success in their respective endeavors. Humor is considered an interpersonal concept and can be divided into positive and negative and their effect.
Positive humor includes affiliative and self-enhancing, while negative humor includes aggressive and self-defeating humor. This study is interested in humor and its effects on leadership, we focus on the positive humor that most leaders have used to build and enhance interpersonal relationships through witty comments, jokes, stories, among many more. On the other hand, negative humor involves ridicule, irony, sarcasm as well as other demeaning humor, which have adverse effects on the targets. Affiliate humor has been effectively used by leaders to establish interpersonal relationships with the followers and enhance positive communication and work-related interactions, which reduces hierarchical salience fostering quality relationships between leaders and followers (Priest & Swain, 2002). Humor leads to a positive atmosphere that enhances creativity, productivity, as well as effectiveness in several subsidiary units. Humor is essential in relaying information, which may be difficult to express directly.
In contrast, the aggressive humor tends to be hurtful, maladaptive to others, and tends to be dysfunctional in fostering healthy leader-follower relationships since it increases perceived social distance between followers and leaders. Besides, aggressive humor can be used to sabotage and undermine organizational objectives, which may have detrimental effects in society or organizations by sparking organizational stress and anxiety. They may also unintentionally hurt individuals as what others might find funny may be hurtful to the receiver. Humor plays a relational and informational role in communication and helps leaders within organizations to achieve their respective goals and objectives.
According to a recent study in Brazil, optimism and ac sense of humor have proved to be relevant competencies within modern leaders. Transformational leadership is an essential facet in society, thus the need for aligning affiliate humor with transformational leadership since this helps the followers develop a special bond with followers. On organizational leadership, transformational leadership and affiliate humor have proved to facilitate a positive working environment between the executives and the subordinates. This fosters corporations, employee satisfaction as well as morale to work with limited stressors. Besides, transformational supervisors foster trust and emotional dependence with positive humor, but inconsistent behaviors among leaders’ trustworthiness and intentions, including aggressive or mocking humor, tend to undermine positive relationships (Tremblay & Gibson, 2016). On the other hand, a mixture of constructive leadership and negative humor proves to be detrimental to employees’ feelings and moods while at work leading to an ambivalent condition that proves to be aversive and stressful for most employees, which may adversely affect some staff thus resulting to adverse outcomes.
Laissez-faire leadership style is characterized by irresponsibility, failure to assist followers as well as hesitation in acting on an important issue. Laissez-faire behaviors are detrimental to employee learning ability, cause dissatisfaction and stress as well as negative results from jobs. Such effects propelled by a lack of clear guidelines and directions under Laissez-faire leadership, which fails to fulfill employee psychological needs and leads to distrust. Having such leadership style in tandem with affiliative humor contributes to conflicting and contradictory relationships among staff, which may lead to ambivalent feelings as well as reduced satisfaction among members of a task force. On the other hand, this negative leadership style, together with aggressive humor among leaders, tends to predictable and consistent, which indicates a high level of disinterest among the executives and the subordinate staff, which may bring negative relationships between members of a task force (Tremblay & Gibson, 2016). The leadership style further diminishes the credibility of a leader, and continued exercise of this style of leadership and aggressive humor promotes negative attributes among employees affecting their commitment to respective organizations.
Several studies conducted to explore the effectiveness of the different types of humor. Results indicate inconsistent leadership behaviors prove to be detrimental to the outcomes of the subordinates as well as other followers. Besides, simultaneous experiences of two contradictory behaviors from leaders that signals both positive and negative often triggers negative experiences as well as adverse behavioral reactions. Also, inconsistent behaviors among leaders tend to have adverse effects than the consistent ones o the subordinates. It is worth noting that leaders’ combination of consistent leadership behaviors as well as the use of humor results in positive, but when the humor is inconsistent with the leadership style, it tends to impair the attitudes of the subordinates and the followers.
African leadership based on the different cultures, there are various leadership approaches and their applications in the study of leadership and management across cultures. GLOBE (house et al., 20004) and Hofstede’s (2000) works have been used to compare various societies against several cultural indices. According to Hofstede (1980), the variations in employee motivations, management styles, as well as organizational structures, differ globally due to the various national cultures. Hofstede’s research utilized quantitative approaches in recording participants’ value orientation from multiple countries through different dimensions of masculinity/femininity, uncertainty avoidance, power distance, and individualism/ collectivism. On the other hand, the GLOBE researchers approach tends to be comparable utilizing similar cultural dimensions alongside assertiveness, humane orientation, and long versus short term orientation (Wanasika, Howell, Littrell, & Dorfman, 2011).
Hofstede’s theory has been criticized such that the surveys have not been done suitably to measure cultural differences, and different nations have been considered unsuitable entities to study cultures. The Schwartz values framework theory-based dimension offers a broader cultural range compared to the Hofstede frameworks in discussing values on more expansive levels amongst individuals and nationally. This provides additional insights into the differences existing between cultures on an international scope.
Effect of culture on organizational leadership
Organizational culture and leadership affect leadership. Culture entails practices, norms, and values, and all impacts leadership. It requires more than the ability to influence, goal, and vision as well as willingness to follow vision among followers to practice effective leadership. A culture with the right norms, practices, and values would be easily manageable, thus effective leadership. It is imperative to note that no effective leadership can thrive in a society with the wrong culture. Local cultures play a vital role in determining the leadership style across the globe in several countries. For instance, the leadership style valued in the Netherlands may be considered a weakness in Romania, while authoritative leadership may be deemed favorable in some countries, while others prefer the democratic leadership style.
Cultural intelligence is a vital component among leaders to effect effective leadership across various cultures since individuals tend to have varied beliefs and views concerning preferred leadership styles (Bochner, & Hesketh, 2004). For instance, most Dutch organizations and leaders preferred participative leadership with flat hierarchical pyramids whereby decision making is distributed to include the subordinate staff in organizations. On the other hand, Romania reports preferring the authoritative leadership style. It remains to be a challenge to manage a diversified taskforce or individuals whereby almost 90% of leading executives from 62 countries suggested cross-cultural leadership as a significant challenge in management for the next century. Building trust as well as fostering excellent communication skills remain essential issues in leadership, and it continues to be a challenge among the culturally diverse populations. Thus it is vital to promote cultural intelligence among leaders to adapt to an effective leadership style, proper communication as well as understanding the beliefs and values of individuals from different cultures.
Advantages and disadvantages of the GLOBE study
The globe study presents various strengths in the study of culture and leadership effectiveness based on the cultures. Up to date, globe study stands out in the study of the analysis of how cultures worldwide view leadership, and these findings remain valuable as they result from well-developed quantitative research study designs. Also, the study offers a more expansive classification of cultural dimensions than the Hofstede’s classification system while providing useful information concerning a universally accepted concept of bad and good leadership. According to Northouse (2007, p 322), the study of culture and leadership emphasizes leadership process complexity as well as how culture influences it.
However, the study has its limitations. According to Northouse (2007, p 3224), the globe study tends to isolate attributes characteristic of effective leaders failing to consider the influence of situational effects. Besides, researchers used subscales representing a broad range of behaviors to measure leadership, thus compromising the validity and precision measures of leadership. Besides, cultural dimensions and leadership behaviors definitions and labels tend to be vague, making it hard to comprehend the findings of leadership and culture. Moreover, the research tends to provide unclear propositions and assumptions that can form a single theory concerning how culture influences or relates to leadership processes.
In conclusion, leadership styles vary across the world owing to the different cultural values in respective nations. The Hofstede theory has played an essential role in exploring different cultural dimensions that affect leadership in various nations and put forth the different scores from multiple countries to help learn of the cultures, which entails the values, norms, and attitudes. It is worth noting that cultural intelligence is vital to facilitate transformational leadership in various cultures in societies. Positive humor has been noted to have beneficial effects on the leadership styles as it promotes contentedness and satisfaction among the members of the subordinate staff. Besides, it helps them to cope with extreme environments as well as easily acclimatize to the new environments, thus boosts their productivity. Findings from the several research reports indicated in this article suggest countries that require to review their cultures to ensure equality and equity.
References
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