The Concept Of Leadership Across Cultures

The concept of leadership across cultures
1. Introduction
As introduction we shall consider a definition of leadership:
“The process where a person exerts influence over the others and inspires, motivates and directs their activities to achieve goals.”
There are many studies that have shown up the importance of an effective leadership to increase the firm´s ability to meet new challenges.There are certain sources of power that allow certain persons act as a leader:
• Legitimate power: Based only on the position in the firm
• Reward power: Based on the ability to give or withhold rewards
• Coercive power: Ability to punish others
• Referent power: A result of personal characteristics of the leader which earn worker´s respect, admiration and loyalty.
• Expert power: It is basedon the special skills of the leader.
There are different styles where we can situate the different cultures in terms of leadership styles. To illustrate this we are going to use this classification:
• Autocratic: The obligation of the employees is only to fulfill orders, there is a strict control and the performance is usually poor. Useful on crisis situations as firefighters.
• Paternalistic:The leader also gives orders and also takes care of the situation of their employees by taking care of their benefits. It reduces the frustration and insecurity of the first style but achieves a passive collaboration by the employees.
• Supporting: The leader supports the labor performance of their employees, not only the benefits. It makes the employees feel a sense of participation, implicationand status which motivates them.
• Collegiate: The leader delegates responsibilities to the employees, this leads on an auto discipline of the employees. Also the motivation use to be bigger than on the previous style.
• Systemic: The leader guides the employees to search the significance of their work with an ethic and trustful context to make a sense of community in the job.

Now we aregoing to classify and analyze the different cultural clusters

1. South and East Asia
The first two traits characteristic of the leadership styles of these countries are collective oriented and long-term focused.
Due to the special value given to the human being by the Confucius, the managers in these countries focus on the cooperation of the working groups and its results, not paying muchattention to individual functionality.
The way the individual performance is evaluated is quite peculiar; “The functionality of Japanese staff is controlled by their own colleagues in the working groups”
Some positive characteristics for a leader in South and East Asia could be to be seriousness very related with the necessary ability in these countries to control demands and personal feelings. Alsoself discipline and the ability to make the work groups to cooperate and coordinate in a smooth way can be considered as good features to manage Asian corporations.
There are also differences between some regions of this cluster. For example in China we can find a little bit more autocratic style of leadership unlike in Japan where a benevolent collegiate (paternalistic) style is more regular.To summarize the leadership specifications in this cluster:
• The leaders focus on the task of dealing with the oppositions, conflicts and anxieties of their subordinates.
• The efficient leaders must be able to understand the subordinates and attract their attentions
• The fidelity of the subordinates to the superior is considered a virtue

2. America
On the contrary the main twocharacteristics that describe the leaders in this cluster are; profitability oriented and short-term focused.
The choice of a good leader in America is much more individualist and based on professional achievements rather than on family ties.
There are different styles that can be found in the American cluster:
• Empowering leadership: Much delegation of responsibility to subordinates and very useful...