Global Leadership Needs Organizational Behavior To Deal With Multicultural DifferencesOrganizational behavior has become vital in the international context, as almost all major organizations have expanded beyond national boundaries. In this world of globalization, global leadership has a very important role to play. Global leadership and organizational behavior requires managers of all multinational firms to manage a number of political, economical, and social environments, to create a unique individual difference from other global organizations. Various countries have various individual levels of differences that include masculinity/femininity, power, distance, individualism/collectivism, and uncertainty avoidance. Therefore, global leaders are required to be even more sensitive to cultural differences across various countries, if they want to achieve their economic objectives through multinational organizations spread all over the world.
Peoples' perceptions, their relationship with the immediate and global environment, the time dimension as well as the importance they attach to private and public space, are just some of the various aspects that differentiate one culture from another. These differences between cultural aspects of any two countries affect the way business principles are implemented across the world. It is only due to these issues of globalization that leaders today require new competencies in their organizations. Global leaders must have a set of global characteristics, regardless of which industry or country they belong to. To become a global leader, one must become a master in four key areas, namely perspective, savvy, inquisitiveness, and character. To become business savvy is not only a requirement, but more of a need today, because not only must one be able to think from a global perspective, but also adjust activities on the local working level as well, if he wants to satisfy customers at all levels. Therefore, a global leader must understand multiculturalism before anything else. It is more important for organizations to understand the multicultural world today, so as to be able to cross the invisible international borders of national cultures. Global leaders must also imbibe personal literacy, which refers to the evaluation and understanding of one's self. Social literacy also becomes an important aspect of the knowledge of a good leader. This study denotes challenging and engaging others who pertain to the same field. However, the most important aspect for a global leader is to focus and mobilize their organization through business literacy. Cultural literacy, which denotes leveraging and valuing cultural differences, is also very significant. This is so, as only if a manager knows how the culture of a particular country affects the perspectives of individuals living in it, would he be able to make his organization succeed. Even though most characteristics of global leadership and organizational behavior are similar to those of domestic organizational leadership and behavior, yet many scholars believe that a global approach by all organizations is necessary to stimulate and develop global competencies. |