The impacts of different cultures on leadership effectiveness

Abstract

The objective of this research is to find out the main impacts of cultural differences and how they affect the process of doing business and managing in terms of leading. Describing the characteristics of leadership, leadership styles, cultural differences, identifying the factors that affect leading style and defining the difficulties of working within another culture also come under the scope of the study. Leadership is an important issue in any organization and various studies have demonstrated the increasing importance of leadership. According to many authors (Harris, 2004, Schein, 2004 and Adair, 1999) the first step in managing cultural differences effectively is increasing one’s general cultural awareness and leaders must understand the concept of culture and its characteristics before they can fully benefit from the study of cultural specifics. A vast number of businesses and companies work outside their country of origin and must therefore take into consideration the views, ideas and culture of foreign employees, suppliers and clients. Leadership is related to motivating, interpersonal behaviour and the process of communication (Mullins, 2007). This highlights the, critical need for leaders in international organisations to use their leadership skills to transform any differences in the cultures of their employees towards the benefit of their organisations. This study includes a review of literature and a field survey. With regard to the field survey, a sixth of the interviewees conducted face to face and a quarter was e-mailed directly to managers who are working outside their home cultures in an overseas market. Field surveys also covered questionnaires which conducted by these managers employees. Ninety two employees questioned in order to analyzing research questions. A third of the questionnaires were conducted face to face and two thirds were e-mailed directly to managers who are working outside their home cultures in an overseas market. The study will assess the level of understanding of cross-cultural leadership and examine the main impacts on a number of specific cultures of leadership effectiveness.