How Culture Affects Leadership - Paper Example

In pursuit of business success, the companys culture is an inevitable factor. Leaders can form a companys culture through their conduct. Every organization has a culture, which affects the way things are done. It is an informally shared pattern of norms, which a group invents to deal with either internal or external problems that occur. Organizational culture comprises the values, norms, and practices of the organization (Edgar Schein, 2016).

Values

Values involve a leader instilling a certain driving factor into a group. For example, in a financial institution, a leader pushes for sales and marketing. Most leaders tend to focus on one particular aspect of the company such as sales and marketing. In the end these business leaders are judged based on the success of the strategies implemented. Every employee at all levels is encouraged to bring in new clients from whatever capacities and scopes of their work.

Norms.

This includes behaviors that a group develops; they may be acceptable or unacceptable. An example of this is coming to work late, including the leader or improperly dressed employees. These behaviors counter productivity, amounting to terrible leadership and eventually failure of the business.

Practices

These are the things put in place to be done regularly or occasionally. A good example is where a company holds a meeting every week just to keep the personnel up to date with the companys products so that all the employees irrespective of their department are well informed of what goes on in each section.

Regional culture clusters

The Globe research project classified leadership into six scales: charismatic/value-based, participative leadership, human-oriented, team-oriented, autonomous and self-protective leadership. This scale was used to categorize the globe into clusters according to their leadership styles.

Anglo cluster. This includes Britain, United States, South Africa, Canada, and Australia. Leaders are highly motivated and visionary. There is a cultural emphasis on individualism. Rewards are based on merit, and individual achievements come first over collective bonds. The desired leadership behavior in this region is team oriented and participative.

The Western Europe region cluster has Netherlands, Italy, France, Spain, Portugal, Greece, Norway, Finland, Denmark, and Sweden. Here there is a culture of self- fewer leaders. They motivate and involve others in the decision-making process. In this region value, based leadership is encouraged.

Latin America. This comprises the countries: Mexico, Brazil Argentina, Guatemala, and Bolivia just to mention a few. This cluster is quite unique. These societies express devotion to family and organizational authorities. Members do not anticipate supremacy to be evenly distributed.Their leaders are team oriented charismatic and participative. The Middle East. Under this cluster are Egypt, Kuwait, Morocco, Qatar, and Turkey. Here leadership emphasizes on face-saving and less attention on group-oriented charismatic leadership.

In conclusion, I disagree with global research on regional cultural dimension because leadership culture comes down to an individual level. In most Middle East countries, leadership emphasizes on face-saving and less attention on group-oriented charismatic leadership. There is a cultural emphasis on individualism. Rewards are based on merit, and individual achievements come first over collective bonds. The desired leadership behavior in this region is team oriented and participative. While a majority in a region may exhibit a certain cultural trait, there is a minority that may not have been considered.

References

Edgar Schein. (2016). Organization Culture and Leadership. John Wiley & Sons.

Robert House. (2014). Strategic leadership across cultures: the GLOBE study of CEO leadership behavior and effectiveness in 24 countries. California: Thousand Oaks: SAGE Publications.