Accounting for Culture in the Development of Global Leaders

Abstract

Understanding why organizations fail or succeed typically requires, among other things, an assessment of leadership behaviors and contexts. Some experts, mostly those with a stronger psychological inclination, emphasize the figure of those in charge, their personality traits and habits, their charisma and style, their personal or task orientations, and so on. It is then the behavior displayed by specific individuals, particularly those at the top, which accounts for the performance of the firm. Other pundits, however, favor a sociological bias and explain performance less in terms of the behavior of the leader, and more as a function of the organizational leadership context, including here processes and systems, policies and practises orienting the final behavior of people in the organization. Of course, nobody will seriously disregard that both context and behaviors matter, but the fact is that scholars have traditionally felt more comfortable choosing one alternative viewpoint than trying to integrate both of them. As a result, traditional approaches to leadership in organizations suffer from partiality and excessive simplification. Consider the following scenario.