Leadership Traits in Europe, Russia, and Japan Essay -- Cross-cultural

Leadership has meaning only in an organisational context, and only in the sense of managing within a system of inequalities. Superior-subordinate relationships divine service to define leadershiphip behavior, and the culture in any particular party influences the nature of these relationships. Two leadership cases are common to all societies, however. The root is the Charismatic role, or the capability to provide vision and inspiration. This is underlined by transformational leadership concepts. The second is the instrumental role, or the capability to design legal organizational processes, control activities, and meet organizational objectives. This describes the functional expectations of someone is a leadership role. However, each society determines the relative importance of each role and therefore what makes a good leader. Cross-cultural research has identified a pattern of characteristics common to effective leaders in these two roles, plainly these commonalities do no t constitute shared traits. They include Conscientiousness Dependability, operation orientation, and pains within the scope of ones responsibilities Extroversion Open, neighborly attitude, as opposed to remaining insulated from group activities Dominance Appropriate custom of authority in a system of inequalities Self-confidence Comfort in ones own skills and abilities for managing Recent research has also suggested that no matter of cultural contingencies, effective leaders tend to display intelligence, energy, emotional stability, and openness to experience. In the international context, this last characteristic encourages cultural sensitivity without ethnocentric imposition. Each society assigns unique meanings for most of these characteristics, and consequently their importance varies in all societies. For example, Mainland Chinese people agree with those in the United States that perseverance is an essential attri notwithstandinge of a conscientious manager, but the t wo societies do not interpret achievement in the same way contradictory Americans the Chinese ascribe little value to individual success. Other terms, such(prenominal) a dominance, carry value-loaded and controversial meanings, but the root meaning of judge the mantle of leadership is worldwide. In confronting such shared attitudes, researchers have centre on how leadership roles vary across cultures a... ...ions and a growing second of foreign enterprises do business in lacquer. As a consequence, observers, accept that Japan is on the brink of major changes in its management systems. They emphasize that traditions of insular relationships and company solidarity worked extremely well in a rapidly expanding economy, but todays slower growth requires the countrys businesses to adjust to international management practices to retain their competitive strength. Consequently, industry leaders are beginning to realize the need to abandon practices that depend on homogenous companie s and culture-bound commitments to the organization. A growing group of observers expects that Japanese companies will forswear centralized control of overseas posts, and that firms will scale down tumid headquarters staff. Some companies have begun to adapt U.S. management techniques that reward individuals on merit some also accept the idea of employee mobility and hire external talent. In effect, some evidence indicates reconciliation of Western management practices, but change is likely to be slow, and it is unlikely to affect enterprises in Japan as much as Japanese firms activities in foreign countries.