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Cultural Influences on Leadership and Organizations: Project Globe

by various Authors

GLOBE is both a research program and a social entity. The GLOBE social entity is a network of 170 social scientists and management scholars from 61 cultures throughout the world, working in a coordinated long-term effort to examine the interrelationships between societal culture, organizational culture and practices, and organizational leadership. The meta-goal of the Global Leadership and Organizational Effectiveness (GLOBE) Research Program is to develop an empirically based theory to describe, understand, and predict the impact of cultural variables on leadership and organizational processes and the effectiveness of these processes.

This monograph presents a description of the GLOBE research program and some initial empirical findings resulting from GLOBE research. A central question in this part of the research concerns the extent to which specific leadership attributes and behaviors are universally endorsed as contributing to effective leadership and the extent to which the endorsement of leader attributes and behaviors is culturally contingent.

We identified six global leadership dimensions of culturally endorsed implicit theories of leadership (CLTs). Preliminary evidence indicates that these dimensions are significantly correlated with isomorphic dimensions of societal and organizational culture. These findings are consistent with the hypothesis that selected cultural differences strongly influence important ways in which people think about leaders and norms concerning the status, influence, and privileges granted to leaders.

The hypothesis that charismatic/value-based leadership would be universally endorsed is strongly supported. Team-oriented leadership is strongly correlated with charismatic/value-based leadership, and also universally endorsed. Humane and participative leadership dimensions are nearly universally endorsed. The endorsement of the remaining global leadership dimensions -- self-protective and autonomous leadership vary by culture.

We identified 21 specific leader attributes and behaviors that are universally viewed as contributing to leadership effectiveness. Eleven of the specific leader characteristics composing the global charismatic/value-based leadership dimension were among these 21 attributes. Eight specific leader characteristics were universally viewed as impediments to leader effectiveness. We also identified 35 specific leader characteristics that are viewed as contributors in some cultures and impediments in other cultures. We present these, as well as other findings, in more detail in this monograph.

A particular strength of the GLOBE research design is the combination of quantitative and qualitative data. Elimination of common method and common source variance is also a strength of the design strategy. Future directions, research strategies, and anticipated contributions are presented in anticipation of continued GLOBE efforts.

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