As a global leader, under­standing that soci­etal behav­iors and expec­ta­tions across cultures influ­ence a CEO’s perfor­mance and lead­er­ship success are vital for doing busi­ness. On some basic level, any leader worth their salt under­stands this — but there are studies that take the guess­work out of global busi­ness lead­er­ship efforts and offer unmatched educa­tional oppor­tu­ni­ties for the global busi­ness sector. 

The GLOBE (Global Lead­er­ship and Orga­ni­za­tional Behavior Effec­tive­ness) research program exam­ines the rela­tion­ships between soci­etal culture and orga­ni­za­tional lead­er­ship around the world. Initi­ated in 1991, the team has conducted two major studies, in 2004 and 2014 respec­tively, that have produced unprece­dented results in the field of social science.

In 2004, the objec­tive was culture-focused. Researchers aimed to iden­tify, observe and under­stand how different soci­eties around the world define cultural values, and how those values affect rela­tion­ships in business.

The 2014 study honed in on how soci­etal behav­iors and expec­ta­tions across cultures influ­ence a CEO’s perfor­mance and lead­er­ship success, and if they feel the need to alter manage­rial styles due to cultural demands. 

Because of these studies, global leaders now have the chance to analyze real data to opti­mize lead­er­ship efforts in both the society they’re based in and the soci­eties they do busi­ness with on a regular basis. 

2004 Study: Under­standing the Rela­tion­ship Between National Culture, Soci­etal Effec­tive­ness and Desir­able Lead­er­ship Attributes

The goal of the 2004 project was twofold: 

1. to iden­tify how soci­eties defined culture, and 
2. to assess how those varied defi­n­i­tions affected busi­ness interactions. 

Over 17,000 middle managers across 62 cultures partic­i­pated in the study.

Exam­ining Culture Across Distinct Global Societies

Project GLOBE set out on a mission to measure and define what culture looks like across many soci­eties. To do this, the research team created hundreds of items to test and assess across middle managers in different cultures. These items ranged from prac­tices such as order­li­ness and consis­tency to values such as aggres­sion vs. non-aggression. 

The pilot study results were analyzed and converted into nine dimen­sions of soci­etal culture, which are:

Perfor­mance Orien­ta­tion: The degree to which a collec­tive encour­ages and rewards (and should encourage and reward) group members for performance.

Assertive­ness: The degree to which indi­vid­uals are (and should be) assertive in their rela­tion­ship with others.

Future Orien­ta­tion: The extent to which indi­vid­uals engage (and should engage) in future-oriented behav­iors such as investing in the future.

Humane Orien­ta­tion: The degree to which a collec­tive encour­ages and rewards (and should encourage and reward) indi­vid­uals for being fair and kind to others.

Insti­tu­tional Collec­tivism: The degree to which orga­ni­za­tional and soci­etal insti­tu­tional prac­tices encourage and reward (and should encourage and reward) collec­tive distri­b­u­tion of resources and collec­tive action.

In-Group Collec­tivism: The degree to which indi­vid­uals express (and should express) pride in their orga­ni­za­tions or families.

Gender Egal­i­tar­i­anism: The degree to which a collec­tive mini­mizes (and should mini­mize) gender inequality.

Power Distance: The extent to which the commu­nity accepts and endorses authority, power differ­ences, and status privileges.

Uncer­tainty Avoid­ance: The extent to which a society, orga­ni­za­tion, or group relies on (and should rely on) social norms and rules to alle­viate unpre­dictability of future events. 

These dimen­sions allowed the GLOBE team to group coun­tries into clus­ters orga­nized by cultural simi­lar­i­ties. The less one culture had in common with another, the farther apart they were in the delin­eated clusters. 

Lead­er­ship and GLOBE’s Cultur­ally Endorsed Lead­er­ship Theory (CLT)

With clus­ters in hand, the team set out to under­stand how lead­er­ship styles and success were affected by these cultural deviations.

Exam­ining Lead­er­ship Across Distinct Global Societies

The hypoth­esis was that members of different soci­eties most likely have varying expec­ta­tions of their leaders, and these expec­ta­tions are gleaned from cultural attitudes. 

To test this theory, researchers surveyed the 17,000 middle managers with a ques­tion­naire made up of 112 leader attrib­utes and behavior items. The results produced 21 primary lead­er­ship dimen­sions consti­tuting the Cultur­ally Endorsed Lead­er­ship Theory (CLT). 

The CLT was further broad­ened to six global lead­er­ship dimen­sions, which are: 

1. Charis­mat­ic/­Value-Based Leadership 
2. Team-Oriented Lead­er­ship
3. Partic­i­pa­tive Leadership
4. Humane-Oriented Lead­er­ship
5. Autonomous Lead­er­ship
6. Self-Protec­tive Leadership

The team could now combine the soci­etal clus­ters with the CLT dimen­sions to analyze and produce detailed results.

2004 Results — The differ­ences in expec­ta­tions lie in exactly how trust­wor­thi­ness is displayed and communicated. 

The team found that different cultures gener­ally have different expec­ta­tions of leaders. As predicted, leaders do often act in styles that are consis­tent and endorsed within the society they are leading in. However, while some aspects of lead­er­ship are cultur­ally depen­dent, other lead­er­ship expec­ta­tions were found to be universal. 

The primary shared universal value is trust. No matter what culture or country they are from, people want their leaders to be honest and trust­worthy. The differ­ences in expec­ta­tions lie in exactly how trust­wor­thi­ness is displayed and communicated.

For example, trust­worthy leaders in the U.S. are inter­preted as quick deci­sion-makers, even if those deci­sions are approx­i­ma­tive. In France and Germany, however, in order to be consid­ered deci­sive, leaders are expected to make slower, more calcu­lated choices. 

Another note­worthy result is that perfor­mance orien­ta­tion — the degree to which rewards are and should be encour­aged based on employee conduct — is an impor­tant cultural driver across all soci­eties. This is espe­cially true in soci­eties with high perfor­mance-oriented values, as they prefer leaders who are charis­matic and participative.

2014 Study: Globe CEO Study

The 2014 study kept the influ­ence of soci­etal culture front and center, with a focus on CEO lead­er­ship as opposed to middle manage­ment roles. 

Inter­ac­tions between CEOs and their Top Manage­ment Team (TMT) are recog­nized as being incred­ibly impor­tant to a firm’s success. But what does this rela­tion­ship look like across many cultures and how does it work if one CEO is managing a TMT span­ning the globe?

GLOBE set out to find the answers to these ques­tions as well as eval­u­ating whether CEOs matched their lead­er­ship styles with the expected lead­er­ship values discov­ered in the 2004 study. If so, they wondered if matching lead­er­ship styles to cultural expec­ta­tions lead to more success as a CEO, and vice versa.

CEO Research Study

GLOBE researchers collected data from over 1,000 CEOs and over 5,000 senior exec­u­tives in corpo­ra­tions in a variety of indus­tries across 24 countries. 

The studies focused on four key questions:

1. How does national culture influ­ence the kinds of lead­er­ship behav­iors expected in a society?
2. What CEO behav­iors gener­ally lead to success?
3. What are some distinc­tions between the high-performing and under­per­forming CEOs?
4. How impor­tant is it that CEO lead­er­ship behav­iors match the lead­er­ship expec­ta­tions within a society?

2014 Results

The following results are based on find­ings in regards to the above-mentioned four key questions. 

1. How national culture influ­ences the kinds of lead­er­ship behav­iors expected in a society

The team found that cultural values do, in fact, play a subcon­scious part in how employees view their leader. While the values them­selves may not be obvious to the employees, the under­lying expec­ta­tions are there.

Leaders, in return, often learn what is cultur­ally conven­tional and skew their behavior to posi­tion them­selves in a better light in that society.

2. The CEO behav­iors that gener­ally lead to success

The GLOBE team gener­ated six global lead­er­ship behav­iors and 21 primary lead­er­ship behav­iors that combined to make up six global lead­er­ship behaviors.

The six behav­iors are: 

1. Charis­matic
2. Team Oriented
3. Partic­i­pa­tive
4. Humane Oriented
5. Autonomous
6. Self-Protec­tive 

A key finding was that among these six behav­iors, charis­matic lead­er­ship is consis­tently the most impactful regarding TMT dedi­ca­tion and Firm Perfor­mance. A leader that has a clear vision and is excited about bringing that vision to life often subcon­sciously influ­ences team members to feel the same. Team members that feel part of a commu­nity working towards a common goal are more likely to align their personal goals with the charis­matic CEO’s vision.

3. The distinc­tions between high-performing and under­per­forming CEOs

In line with the results from ques­tion 2, the more charis­matic and visionary leaders outper­form the autonomous and self-protected ones.

CEOs with high-perfor­mance orien­ta­tion also outper­form those who don’t focus on encour­aging and rewarding team members for their performance. 

Another inter­esting outcome is that both the high-performing and less successful CEOs performed crit­ical behav­iors, but the high-performing CEOs executed them at a far higher level than the rest. Consis­tently oper­ating at a high-level is key.

4. The impor­tance of CEO lead­er­ship behav­iors matching lead­er­ship expec­ta­tions within a society

The results matched the hypoth­esis: CEO behavior that emulates cultural lead­er­ship expec­ta­tions produce better TMT and Firm Compet­i­tive Perfor­mance results. 

Supe­rior CEOs exceed soci­etal expec­ta­tions regarding charis­matic and team-oriented lead­er­ship. Infe­rior CEOs fall short on expec­ta­tions throughout all dimen­sions, are less visionary and less admin­is­tra­tively competent. 

Conclu­sion

GLOBE set out to under­stand how soci­eties throughout the world varied in their cultural defi­n­i­tions and lead­er­ship expec­ta­tions. They also ques­tioned how these lead­er­ship expec­ta­tions trans­lated to CEOs, and if CEO perfor­mance behav­iors changed based on cultural influence.

Their 2004 and 2014 studies were unprece­dented in the world of global lead­er­ship research. The studies provide invalu­able devel­op­ments in social sciences that help global leaders enhance their lead­er­ship style and opti­mize their business.

GLOBE’s newest 2020 is now underway and is sure to provide even more distin­guished data about cultural dimen­sion and lead­er­ship throughout the world.

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