TY - JOUR
T1 - GLOBE
T2 - A twenty year journey into the intriguing world of culture and leadership
AU - Dorfman, Peter
AU - Javidan, Mansour
AU - Hanges, Paul
AU - Dastmalchian, Ali
AU - House, Robert
N1 - Funding Information:
As noted by Triandis (2004) , the process through which the GLOBE questionnaires were developed demonstrates a collaborative and internationally inclusive exercise in cross-cultural research. Robert J. House conceptualized the methodology and research agenda in 1991. By 1993 the project received initial funding from the Dwight D. Eisenhower Leadership Education Program of the Department of Education. With this initial funding, the recruitment of country co-investigators (CCIs) began. The multinational team that we describe in this chapter is the GLOBE community of scholars which grew over the years to include a network of approximately 200 or more CCIs representing all continents in the world. The 62 societies reported on in the first phases of the GLOBE project were sampled from 59 different nations. Two samples were collected from three nations because these nations (e.g., South Africa) were comprised of large, distinctively different cultures, hence the nomenclature to describe the GLOBE sample as 62 societal cultures. Forty additional CCIs were recruited for the third phase of GLOBE which resulted in obtaining data from 17 of the original 62 countries and 7 new countries. The overlap of the 17 countries is particularly important for our third GLOBE phase as was discussed earlier in the article.
Copyright:
Copyright 2012 Elsevier B.V., All rights reserved.
PY - 2012/10
Y1 - 2012/10
N2 - Since its inception in the early 1990s, the Global Leadership and Organizational Behavior Effectiveness (GLOBE) project has investigated the complex relationship between societal culture and organizational behavior. The focus of this paper is on leadership, specifically what we know and have learned from the GLOBE project so far. Among other findings, we demonstrate that national culture indirectly influences leadership behaviors through the leadership expectations of societies. In other words, executives tend to lead in a manner more or less consistent with the leadership prototypes endorsed within their particular culture. In turn, leaders who behave according to expectations are most effective. We also found that some leadership behaviors are universally effective such as charismatic/value-based leadership; others are much more culturally sensitive such as participative leadership. Finally, we identified truly superior (and also truly inferior) CEOs by the degree to which their behaviors exceed (or fail to meet) their society's expectations. All in all, understanding national culture gives us a heads-up as to which kinds of leadership will likely be enacted and effective in each society. We believe that the GLOBE journey has helped us understand the complex, tricky, and fascinating relationships among societal culture, organizational behavior, and leadership processes.
AB - Since its inception in the early 1990s, the Global Leadership and Organizational Behavior Effectiveness (GLOBE) project has investigated the complex relationship between societal culture and organizational behavior. The focus of this paper is on leadership, specifically what we know and have learned from the GLOBE project so far. Among other findings, we demonstrate that national culture indirectly influences leadership behaviors through the leadership expectations of societies. In other words, executives tend to lead in a manner more or less consistent with the leadership prototypes endorsed within their particular culture. In turn, leaders who behave according to expectations are most effective. We also found that some leadership behaviors are universally effective such as charismatic/value-based leadership; others are much more culturally sensitive such as participative leadership. Finally, we identified truly superior (and also truly inferior) CEOs by the degree to which their behaviors exceed (or fail to meet) their society's expectations. All in all, understanding national culture gives us a heads-up as to which kinds of leadership will likely be enacted and effective in each society. We believe that the GLOBE journey has helped us understand the complex, tricky, and fascinating relationships among societal culture, organizational behavior, and leadership processes.
KW - Cross-cultural
KW - Culture
KW - Executive leadership
KW - GLOBE
KW - Leadership
KW - Multinational
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U2 - 10.1016/j.jwb.2012.01.004
DO - 10.1016/j.jwb.2012.01.004
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:84866142587
SN - 1090-9516
VL - 47
SP - 504
EP - 518
JO - Journal of World Business
JF - Journal of World Business
IS - 4
ER -