Organizational Leadership

Answer

Organizational Leadership

            Organizational culture entails the regulations, rules, mission, and behavior associated with a given firm. Cultural competence, on the other hand, is the ability of an organization to understand and incorporate employees from diverse ethnicities, cultural characteristics, and races (Ferdman, 2014). Various tools are used for cultural assessment in terms of organizational culture and cultural competence. This paper seeks to evaluate various foundational leadership concerns involved in the creation of the global employee group for the United States Corporation seeking expansion in Greece, Germany, Singapore, and Iran.

            According to Thomas (2013), cultural assessment tools that can be used in this case are unlimited in number but the most common ones are the Organizational Cultural Assessment Instrument (OCAI), Beliefs, Events, and Values Inventory (BEVI), and Cross-Cultural Adaptability Inventory. The CCAI addresses the ability of an individual to easily adapt to any culture and is widely used in program evaluation, consulting, and training. The tool is designed to address various practical concerns and needs that cross-culturally oriented and culturally diverse populations express as well as issues raised by professionals and trainers that work with them. BEVI is a powerful, adaptable, and accessible tool of analysis that is applicable in evaluative, research projects and other application contexts. BEVI enables individuals to gain an in-depth understanding of the beliefs and values they harbor towards themselves, others, and other people and their effect on life goals, relationship, personal growth, and learning. OCAI, on the other hand, is an effective tool that enables organizations to identify the organizational perceptions of the day. The major objective of the tool is to aid in the creation of a conducive environment for leadership goals to be reached. The tool strives to eliminate any gaps that prevent the organization from exploiting full potential. The tool therefore enhances the organization’s strategic planning by introducing a cultural competence clause in its mission and vision statements.

            Leadership calls for profound cultural intelligence and the local culture greatly impacts the leadership style used. Cultural intelligence is a requisite tool to address recruiting, developing and retaining talent across cultures. According to Ferdman (2014), many individuals in management positions are given good expatriates for various roles but because of cultural differences, they are terminated early. This is costly for the organization in terms of indirect and direct costs, downtime, and moving expenses involved. For instance, in the United States where the leadership focuses more on rewarding success and hard work and people are highly assertive, the leadership styles adopted are highly democratic. However, from the data provided, Germany, Greece, Iran, and Singapore rank low on the scale in terms of assertiveness and humane orientation. Therefore, a more direct approach to leadership is required. Thus, to blend with all cultures involved, the leadership style adopted should incorporate both diplomatic and authoritarian styles. Therefore, leadership style is affected when leading across the cultures. Individuals have varying beliefs and values about their leadership styles of preference and leadership approaches vary across cultures. The implication is that as recorded under individualism and collectivism for a flat hierarchical pyramid such as in Singapore based organizations, a participative leadership style is adopted. In this case, everybody is involved in decision making. However, for countries like Iran where employee involvement is considered a weakness on the part of the leader, the authoritative approach is used when the leader states what is required and all employees have to follow the directive. The leader, in this case, must fully understand their role and be acquainted with the organization’s business well enough to make all decisions and ensuring that they are viable.

            Diversity can affect the functionality of a group either positively or negatively. This implies that diversity can act as a source of collective insight or incapacitate the group operation depending on how it is handled and the conditions under which these outcomes are experienced. Productivity refers to the ability to deliver the products and services of a company to the consumer at the lowest cost possible (Thomas, 2013). However, productivity also includes performance in terms of labor relations, customer needs, and quality which require good management. Social culture impacts the organizational clarity and the structure of decision making. The degree to which members of an organization perceive its plans and goals greatly impacts its productivity. For instance, the countries presented have a high power distance which implies that the distribution of authority between the organization and the society is unequal. Therefore the leadership should focus on the internal organization performance when operating in these regions. Besides, the regions rank low in collectivism meaning that the leader is responsible for all decision making in the organization. This deters new ideas that could sprout innovation and improve the company performance. Thus, the organizational integration in these regions is incapacitated and productivity is also affected. As a result, the culture may impede the ability to achieve the goals and objectives set by the company. Therefore, employees should be mentored on how to gain insight into processes involved in teamwork, understand the virtual interactions of diverse backgrounds and use the differences as an opportunity to utilize cross-cultural decision-making methods.

            According to Ferdman (2014), diversity inclusion improves the organizational culture and creates a brand image that relevant stakeholders and customers will desire to invest in. However, if the organization does not embrace diversity, it will be tagged as a homophobic, racist, sexist and anti-any group which evokes negative repercussions on the business objectives. Thus, the aspect of diversity makes the organization acceptable globally. Diversity inclusion in the organization plays a key role in the expansion of the business and generation of teams with better performance. Since the company is going global, diversity improves its competitive edge since it will have individuals who can relate to various client perspectives and meet their needs. Also, the diversity of culture will improve team performance and increase their swiftness and efficiency. Due to varying ideas, rich innovative solutions are found and creative strategies are developed. The limited potential of seeing an issue from a single perspective is enhanced by the broad array of angles which diversity introduces.

            In conclusion, organizations face various challenges in the changing internal context and from the external environment. Various tools are used to research on the cultural behavior of various people to enable leaders to understand the employee values and beliefs. Thus, leaders are expected to tailor their behavior to align with these environmental changes with the aim of meeting their organizational goals. Ultimately, the changes in leadership styles impact the employee behavior and consequently their contribution to the success of the firm. Therefore, the company leaders, in this case, should adopt a combination of participative and authoritarian leadership to create a particular organizational culture that meets its diversity inclusion and cultural integration goals without compromising its business objectives.