Understanding Cultures and Implicit Leadership Theories across the Globe: an Introduction to Project Globe

GLOBE (Global Leadership and Organizational Behavior Effectiveness) is a research program focusing on culture and leadership in 61 nations. National cultures are examined in terms of nine dimensions: performance orientation, future orientation, assertiveness, power distance, humane orientation, institutional collectivism, in-group collectivism, uncertainty avoidance, and gender egalitarianism. In a survey of thousands of middle managers in food processing, ®nance, and telecommunications industries in these countries, GLOBE compares their cultures and attributes of effective leadership. Six global leadership attributes are identi®ed and discussed. 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 telecom-munication and transportation have enabled societies to quickly and easily learn about and from others. Marco Polo, the great Italian world traveler would have marveled at the speed and ease with which his adventures can be replicated today. One of the consequences of stronger connections among different cultures is increasing interest in two fundamental questions: ®rst, in what way are human communities different or similar? Secondly, why? Psychologists, sociologists , economists, management scholars, as well as many researchers from other disciplines have been attempting to ®nd the answers to these two questions. GLOBE (Global Leadership and Organizational Behavior Effectiveness) is one such endeavor. Its intent is to explore the cultural values and practices in a wide variety of countries, and to identify their impact on organizational practices and leadership attributes. 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 (Dorfman, 1996). The cross-cultural literature has generally stressed a strong connection between culture and leadership styles. There has been a plethora of country-speci®c and cross-cultural comparative studies to examine the relationship between culture and management styles, including leadership (House, Wright, & Aditya, 1997). The literature on this topic …