Assignment 1: Reflective Essay- How can leaders adapt leadership approaches to differing global contexts?
Introduction
This work provides an analysis of the different cultures and the leadership approaches which are used in these cultures from the global context. This involves the utilization of the cultural dimensions theory of Hofstede, traditional leadership approaches, and the modern leadership approach where 4 organisations are selected to study the leadership approaches in the global context. This involves Russia, China, Vietnam, and Japan. This work also provides the reflection of the link between leadership and the cultural aspects like the power, influence, and team collaboration with the personal experiences.
Impact of National Culture on Leadership Approaches
There are 5 major dimensions that are being summarised by Hofstede for the explanation of cultural differences between the countries. The dimensions involve Long-Term Short-term Orientation, uncertainty avoidance, power distance, masculinity, and individualism. The cultural background has a distinct impact on the style of leadership. For instance, in collectivist cultures, there is the existence of shared and homogeneous responsibilities among the group members which results in follow up of the trust and rules of the leader. Hence in these cultures, the tasks should be defined by the leader on the basis of preferences of the group and the team performance appraisal programs as well as the rewards should be used in increasing the performance and motivation (Budur, 2020). From this, it can be said that the style of leadership is required to be changed according to the culture followed in the nation. Here I can say that the 5 dimensions of Hofstede provide the characteristics of culture being followed in the country were reflecting on my personal experience it was found that the culture in India is oriented to the group while in the United Kingdom individualistic culture can be seen.
On the other hand, the work of Lee, et. al. (2020) states that power distance and individualism-collectivism are the two major predictors of the outcomes range at the level of the society. These 2 dimensions of national culture provided by Hofstede are strongly linked to the cross-cultural leadership examination. Individualism-collectivism is linked to the personal view associated with collective while power distance is concerned with the extent where unequal distribution and social stratification are accepted by an individual. I agree with this study as according to me these two dimensions form the major characters on which leadership in any organisation around the world is based.
Differing Business Leadership Approach for Differing Global Cultural Context
China
The culture of China is of collectivism and high power distance where the directive leadership plays have a significant role in comparison to other kinds of western cultures. For instance, the employee of China responds less negatively to the condition where there is low autonomy. The visionary leadership style is specifically favored for enhancing the creativity of the employees in Chinese organisations. The visionary leaders represent several characteristics of transformation and charismatic leaders while they also display the behaviour and characteristics which assists the followers in the achievement of the organisational goals like organizational capabilities, pro-social utilisation of power, and confidence (Zhou, et. al., 2018). Here the application of the new leadership style can be seen which is visionary leadership. This is being experienced while working in a team with one of the friends belonging to Chinese culture. During the project, we were focusing on the other aspects like the models to be used and the delivery of the work on time while my friend was working and giving more ideas related to creativity. This gives me insights into the importance of creativity followed in the culture and the leadership style related to it.
Vietnam
The culture of Vietnam can be defined as a culture involving high power distance, high collectivism, and medium uncertainty avoidance. The hierarchies of organisations in this culture recommend vertical coordination for confronting the social pressure, conformity, and face culture. The people of Vietnam think of themselves as a group. The state sector of Vietnam highlights the bureaucratic leadership behaviour involving low relationship orientation and low task orientation (Tran, 2020). This highlights the use of traditional leadership styles based on behaviour (Buchanan and Huczynski, 2017). The personal experience related to this is during one of my internships where there was one Vietnamese colleague who was working with me in the team. That person was a good team player, however, he use to limit the work according to what is said to be done and not make extra effort or initiatives to improve that work. In my opinion, this could have been changed if modern styles of leadership were followed.
Japan
In Japan masculine and high-power-distance culture is followed whereas the organisations in Japan are structured hierarchically. The consensus-based and collectivist culture of Japan highlights the endeavors inhibitive for embracing the styles of leadership that originate from the western context. Hence the leadership styles like relation-oriented leadership styles are recognized as effective leadership styles in Japan. The top leader in Japan is the one who interconnects the people and coordinates the circumstances (Kim and Toya, 2018). On the other hand, the work of Andriani, et. al. (2018) states that the transformation leadership style motivates and awakes the employees for growing and achieving high-performance levels which are beyond the expectations. Hence the leadership style followed and the culture of Japan can be connected to transformational leadership based on the characteristics (Cripps, n.d.). There has been no realistic experience related to the culture of Japan however, I have done a number of case studies which are based on Japan and its organizational practices where I found out that the companies in this country believe in maintaining proper communication channels and working in coordination for the achievement of the work.
Russia
In Russia, there is a high concentration of power with rigid hierarchies and coercive powers. The practicality of the employee in Russian culture is low while huge importance is given to the status and rank of the employee. This reflects the authoritarian leadership among the leaders of Russia (Koveshnikov, et. al., 2020). Hence, it can be said that Russia follows a traditional leadership style where the leadership is based on leadership styles developed by Lewin in accordance with behavioural theory. Similar to Japan, I have never come across real experience with the organisations or the people of Russia but I have studied new articles and culture of Russian companies where I have read about the rigid structure followed by the companies regarding the tasks given to their employees. Here I would suggest that the organisations in Russia should work on lowering the power distance and enhancing the communication among the people for effective results.
Personal Reflection on Power, Influence, and Team collaboration
There is a need to be engaged in effective practices of leadership with the proper understanding of the flow of power in the different contexts and how it influences relationships. Power conceptualization as the relation among the institution and the people can assist in the leadership development programs (Barnes, et. al., 2018). This can also be reflected from Hofstede’s dimensions where it is regarded as one of the major dimensions of the study. There is one of my experiences related to power where I was working as a trainee in an organisation which was of Asian origin where there is high power distance. During the work, I realized that there is a rigid hierarchy followed in the organisation for which even the smaller tasks were needed to be approved by the supervisor of the team. Due to this my creativity, as well as the creativity of the team, was lowered as lesser flexibility was given to us by the supervisor regarding the tasks to be performed.
Transformational leadership includes the 4 sub-dimensions. Under this, the idealized influence is the one that can be defined as the capability of a leader for enhancing the loyalty level, identification level, and level of dedication without giving much importance to the personal interest (Alqatawenh, 2018). Hence, in my opinion, influence has a crucial role in getting things done in an organisation. There are leaders who influence the work and the perspective of the employees through their charisma which is a modern style of leadership. This happened to me when I was studying in the school where I was highly influenced by my teacher of mathematics due to their way of teaching and guiding during the project works. This made me work harder in the subject and for the achievement of higher grades. I think this goes in a similar way with the organisations where leaders like Elon Musk influences their employee to work harder towards their goal with their charisma.
Regarding team collaboration, I would state that power and influence both are linked with the collaboration of the team where it is also identified from the leadership approaches followed in the different cultures. There is an incident regarding this that perfectly provides an example of this. Under this, I was working on a project where there were 6 members in the team and I was appointed as the leader of the team. There was another group involving the same number of team members however, the other team failed to deliver the project on the planned time of submission. The major reasons for this were the clashes among the team which could be related to the traits of the person leading the team. In my team, I considered the ideas and opinions of each and every team member for the preparation of the projects. This highlights the low power distance. Due to this the team member were influenced as I was concerned about each and every person working in the team. This further led to the completion of the project with zero crashes. While it was heard that in another team the leader was imposing his thought and opinions on the teammates which resulted in standing them against the decision of the leader. Here the high power distance and the lower influence can be related to the autocratic leadership style.
Here I can relate that my transformational leadership characteristics helped in managing the group effectively and efficiently. Besides this on the basis of the analysis of different leadership approaches of different countries, it can be stated that Russia and Vietnam can be more effective in their organizational performance through the involvement of transformational leadership or any other kind of modern leadership as it provides flexibility to the people.
Conclusion
It can be concluded from the work that different culture requires different leadership styles where on the basis of culture there can be the deployment of the traditional leadership style of the modern leadership style. Leadership approaches can be related to the cultural dimensions of Hofstede where there are five dimensions that result in the follow up of a particular kind of leadership in the organisation. After analyzing the cultures and the leadership style of Russia, Japan, China, and Vietnam it was identified that their leadership style is major based on two out of the 5 cultural dimensions proposed by Hofstede that are power and individualism, and collectivism. On the basis of this, it was found out that Russia and Vietnam are following traditional leadership styles based on the culture of hierarchy and high power distance while in China and Japan modern styles of leadership are followed where there is a human-oriented approach and the focus is on creativity rather than followup of the rigid instruction. The personal reflection in the work agrees with these were the personal experiences and the through in the past while working in the team or while studying can be related to these aspects. Based on this it was decided that the modern leadership styles are more effective than the traditional styles where transformational leadership is the style that can be selected for all kinds of culture. It was also planned that the future action will be based on enhancing the traits of the transformational leader.
References
Alqatawenh, A.S. (2018) Transformational leadership style and its relationship with change management. Verslas: teorija ir praktika 19, (1) pp.17-24. https://www.econstor.eu/bitstream/10419/247923/1/1667895761.pdf [Accessed March 10, 2022]
Andriani, S., Kesumawati, N. and Kristiawan, M. (2018) The influence of the transformational leadership and work motivation on teachers performance. International Journal of Scientific & Technology Research 7, (7) 19-29. https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Manajemen-Pendidikan/publication/332264353_The_Influence_Of_The_Transformational_Leadership_And_Work_Motivation_On_Teachers_Performance/links/5caad57d92851c64bd57b83b/The-Influence-Of-The-Transformational-Leadership-And-Work-Motivation-On-Teachers-Performance.pdf [Accessed March 10, 2022]
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Budur, T. (2020) Effectiveness of transformational leadership among different cultures. International Journal of Social Sciences & Educational Studies 7, (3) 119-129. http://eprints.tiu.edu.iq/390/1/ijsses.v7i3p119.pdf [Accessed March 10, 2022]
Cripps, K. (n.d.) Transactional versus Transformational, leadership styles & influences. https://winchester.instructure.com/courses/16071/modules/items/927570 [Accessed March 10, 2022]
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Koveshnikov, A., Ehrnrooth, M. and Wechtler, H. (2020) The three graces of leadership: Untangling the relative importance and the mediating mechanisms of three leadership styles in Russia. Management and Organization Review 16, (4) 791-824. https://helda.helsinki.fi/dhanken/bitstream/handle/10227/346810/Three_Graces_main_file_final.pdf?sequence=1[Accessed March 10, 2022]
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Zhou, L., Zhao, S., Tian, F., Zhang, X. and Chen, S. (2018) Visionary leadership and employee creativity in China. International Journal of Manpower. https://e-tarjome.com/storage/btn_uploaded/2019-12-28/1577508501_362-etarjome%20English.pdf [Accessed March 10, 2022]
