Gender Diversity

The business world of today is very different from the business world of years past. It is ever changing and we need to know what changes are going to take place and how to keep up with this evolution process. Researchers have completed studies on leadership and leadership theories to find the trends that are happening in leadership roles. “Most of the research on leadership during the past half century was conducted in the United States, Canada, and Western Europe. However, during the past decade interest in studying leadership in non-Western cultures has increased rapidly” (Yukl, pg 436). With a peaked interest in new leadership theories, we need to ask ourselves why the sudden interest? What is the benefit of studying other cultures? Why do we need to understand the problems that may come up in regards to gender differences? What is the importance of being a diverse organization? The answers to these questions will help us to improve our organizations.
There are other looming issues other than the previous questions. One major issue is “the extent to which leadership theories developed and tested in one culture can be generalized to different cultures” (Yukl, pg 436). Each culture is very different from the next, so how can we rely on theories that have been developed and tested on one specific culture to apply to everyone? The answer is we cannot! Many organizations have grown and expanded overseas. The globalization of these growing organizations has called for a need to understand other cultures. It is important for companies to have an understanding of cross-cultural leadership. It is vital to having a business relationship in other parts of the world. We need to understand how cultural values can influence leader behavior and what are other cultures beliefs about effective leadership.
Another hurdle we must leap onto is the issue of gender. The businesswomen of today are much stronger than one might think. Women have been fighting

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