Leadership and Management Behavior in Multinational Companies

Lisa Smirnova

Lisa Consulting

INTRODUCTION

  • Leadership: influencing group members to achieve goals
  • Excellent leaders: motivate their employees to achieve more than minimal requirements
  • The challenges of leadership in a multinational company

GLOBAL LEADERS

  • Have skills and abilities to manage people from diverse backgrounds
  • Cosmopolitan
  • Skilled at intercultural communication
  • Rapid acculturators
  • Know local cultures and social institutions
  • Facilitate subordinates’ intercultural performance
  • Use cultural synergy
  • Promote and use the growing world culture

THREE CLASSIC MODELS: A VOCABULARY OF LEADERSHIP
  • Leadership traits

  • Leader behavior
  • Contingency leadership models

    • LEADERSHIP TRAITS

    • Trait models of leadership: Are leaders born or made?
    • Motivation
    • The great person theory

    TRAITS OF SUCCESSFUL U.S. LEADERS

    • Higher intelligence/self confidence
    • More initiative/assertiveness/ persistence
    • Greater desire for responsibility and influence
    • Greater awareness of the needs of others

    U.S. PERSPECTIVES ON LEADERSHIP BEHAVIORS

    Two major types of leadership behaviors

    1. Initiating structure: task-centered leaders

      2. Give directions, establish standards

    2. Focus on social and emotional needs of employees:

      3. consideration or person - centered leaders

    LEADER DECISION MAKING STYLES

    • Autocratic
    • Benevolent
    • Democratic
    • Consultative or participative leadership style

    WHICH STYLE OF LEADER BEHAVIOR IS BEST?

    • It all depends
    • Contemporary views: challenge the assumption that one style of leadership behavior fits all situations

    JAPANESE LEADERSHIP Performance-Maintenance (PM) Theory

    Performance function (P)

    • Similar to task-centered

    The maintenance function (M)

    • Similar to person-centered

    PM leader focuses on influencing groups

    CONTINGENCY THEORIES

    Assumption:

    • Different styles and different leaders are more appropriate for different situations

    PATH-GOAL THEORY

    Identifies four types of leadership styles

    • Directive
    • Supportive
    • Participative
    • Achievement-oriented

    PATH-GOAL THEORY FITS

    Subordinates

    • High achievement needs = achievement-oriented leadership
    • High social needs = supportive leadership

    Job unstructured = directive or achievement-oriented leadership

    THE NATIONAL CONTEXT CONTINGENCY MODEL

    PREFERRED LEADERSHIP TRAITS

    NATIONAL CONTEXT AND LEADER BEHAVIORS

    • Regardless of cultural background, leaders use both person and task-centered behaviors
    • Different behaviors communicate leadership style
    • Different tactics preferred
    PREFERRED LEADERSHIP TRAITS

    NATIONAL CONTEXT AND SUBORDINATE EXPECTATIONS

    • Differences in legitimate prerogatives of leadership
    • High power distance - autocratic leadership
    • Low power-distance - leader be more like them
    • Strong masculinity norms - more authoritarian leadership
    • Strong uncertainty avoidance norms - subordinates expect the leader to provide more direction

    TRANSFORMATIONAL LEADERSHIP

    Two basic forms of leadership

    • Transactional
    • Transformational

    TRANSFORMATIONAL LEADERSHIP

    • Articulates a vision
    • Breaks from the status quo
    • Provide goals and a plan
    • Gives meanings/purpose to goals
    • Take risks/motivated to lead
    • Builds a power base
    • Demonstrates high ethical/moral standards

    ATTRIBUTIONS AND LEADERSHIP

    • Leaders make attributions regarding subordinates
    • If internal attribution - leader tends to correct or reward the worker
    • If external attribution, the leader modifies the work environment
    PREFERRED LEADERSHIP TRAITS
    PREFERRED LEADERSHIP TRAITS

    Some Leadership Competencies for the 21st Century

    Market Driven:

    • Strategic opportunist
    • Globally aware
    • Capable of managing in highly decentralized organizations

    Some Leadership Competencies for the 21st Century - 2

    Workforce Driven:

    • Interpersonal competence
    • Community builders

    CONCLUSIONS

    • Multinational managers strive to become global leaders
    • A complex array of cultural, social, and institutional issues face the global leaders of today

    Managing Mobility

    • Getting talented managers off ‘the local leash’ - requires appropriate management development and reward systems
    • Coping with increased resistance to mobility - compensation and reward systems
    • Preventing failure in international assignments.
    • Coping with re-entry - need for career planning
    • and possibly shorter deployments

    Meeting Conflicting Needs: Centralization v. Decentralization

    • Internationalization accentuates the centralization-decentralization problem
    • Challenge is to provide the necessary corporate integration so that it does not compromise the local responsiveness of the national business
    • Use “Glue” technology or vertical or formal integration along with horizontal or informal integration

    Concluding Remarks

    • Strategic importance of IHR management
    • Crucial link between line managers and the HR function
    • Developing tomorrows managers
    • Increasing dependence on international management skills and competences
    • The future?