Globe Summary: Culture and Leader Effectiveness
Culture and Leader Effectiveness: The GLOBE Study
Background: The "Global Leadership and Organizational Behavior Effectiveness"
(GLOBE) Research Program was conceived in 1991 by Robert J. House of the Wharton
School of Business, University of Pennsylvania. In 2004, its first comprehensive volume on "Culture, Leadership, and Organizations: The GLOBE Study of 62 Societies" was published, based on results from about 17,300 middle managers from 951 organizations in the food processing, financial services, and telecommunications services industries.
A second major volume, "Culture and Leadership across the World: The GLOBE Book of In-Depth Studies of 25 Societies" became available in early 2007. It complements the findings from the first volume with in-country leadership literature analyses, interview data, focus group discussions, and formal analyses of printed media to provide in-depth descriptions of leadership theory and leader behavior in those 25 cultures.
Cultural Dimensions and Culture Clusters: GLOBE 's major premise (and finding) is that leader effectiveness is contextual, that is, it is embedded in the societal and organizational norms, values, and beliefs of the people being led. In other words, to be seen as effective, the time-tested adage continues to apply: "When in Rome do as the Romans do."
As a first step to gauge leader effectiveness across cultures, GLOBE empirically established nine cultural dimensions that make it possible to capture the similarities and/or differences in norms, values, beliefs –and practices—among societies. They build on findings by Hofstede (1980), Schwartz (1994), Smith (1995), Inglehart (1997), and others. They are:
Power Distance:
Uncertainty Avoidance:
Humane Orientation:
Collectivism I: (Institutional)
Collectivism II: (In-Group)
Assertiveness:
Gender Egalitarianism:
The degree to which members of a collective expect power to be distributed equally.
The extent to which a society,
Background: The "Global Leadership and Organizational Behavior Effectiveness"
(GLOBE) Research Program was conceived in 1991 by Robert J. House of the Wharton
School of Business, University of Pennsylvania. In 2004, its first comprehensive volume on "Culture, Leadership, and Organizations: The GLOBE Study of 62 Societies" was published, based on results from about 17,300 middle managers from 951 organizations in the food processing, financial services, and telecommunications services industries.
A second major volume, "Culture and Leadership across the World: The GLOBE Book of In-Depth Studies of 25 Societies" became available in early 2007. It complements the findings from the first volume with in-country leadership literature analyses, interview data, focus group discussions, and formal analyses of printed media to provide in-depth descriptions of leadership theory and leader behavior in those 25 cultures.
Cultural Dimensions and Culture Clusters: GLOBE 's major premise (and finding) is that leader effectiveness is contextual, that is, it is embedded in the societal and organizational norms, values, and beliefs of the people being led. In other words, to be seen as effective, the time-tested adage continues to apply: "When in Rome do as the Romans do."
As a first step to gauge leader effectiveness across cultures, GLOBE empirically established nine cultural dimensions that make it possible to capture the similarities and/or differences in norms, values, beliefs –and practices—among societies. They build on findings by Hofstede (1980), Schwartz (1994), Smith (1995), Inglehart (1997), and others. They are:
Power Distance:
Uncertainty Avoidance:
Humane Orientation:
Collectivism I: (Institutional)
Collectivism II: (In-Group)
Assertiveness:
Gender Egalitarianism:
The degree to which members of a collective expect power to be distributed equally.
The extent to which a society,
References: Hofstede, G.H., Culture 's Consequences: International Differences in Work-Related Values. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 1980 (revised and expanded in 2001). House R.J. et al. (eds.), Culture, Leadership, and Organizations: The GLOBE Study of 62 Societies. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 2004. Chhokar, J.S. et al (eds.), "Culture and Leadership across the World: The GLOBE Book of In-Depth Studies of 25 Societies." Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum, 2007. Inglehart, R., Modernization and Post-Modernization: Cultural, Economic, and Political Change in 43 Societies. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1997. Ronen, S. and Shenkar, O., "Clustering Countries on Attitudinal Dimensions: A Review and Synthesis." Academy of Management Review, 1985, 10(3), 435-454. Schwartz, S.H., "A Theory of Cultural Values and Some Implications for Work." Applied Psychology, 1999, 48(1), 23-47.