Examining Culture #4 - GLOBE - Linking Leadership to Culture

In this mini-series, we are looking at the challenges of managing across a diverse range of geographic and cultural boundaries.

We have already presented the findings of Hofstede and Fons Trompenaars.  Today we are looking at Global Leadership and Organizational Behavior Effectiveness or GLOBE as it is known.  Tomorrow we will review Hall, both very influential and insightful studies into Culture.

The research for GLOBE was initiated by Robert J House of the University of Pennsylvania in 1991.  His initial purpose was to find a way of measuring and defining the leadership qualities across different cultures.  Building on and expanding the seminal work of Hofstede, and that of other organisational theorists, House set about developing a multi-country, multi-organisational research program.  This has now encompassed over 16,000 middle managers in over 60 countries.   

 

Whilst there is clear overlap with the work of Hofstede  (see Hofstede 2010), it also brings some new insights, particularly in the area of leadership and leadership performance.  More particularly, GLOBE spans more than 951 organisations, rather than one entity, as in Hofstede’s case.  Shi & Wang in their thorough comparison of the two models, outline the differences in methodology below.

 

 

We cannot say by looking at this table, that one approach is better than the other.  We can say however, that they bring different aspects of data into the body of knowledge on multi-cultural management.  Hofstede was concerned with finding differences in national cultures, so only having one organisation, but one that could provide over 117,000 respondents still brought a larger data sample in which to achieve this task then had ever been done before. GLOBE, on the other hand, was a broader research piece, which looked at defining leadership qualities across different cultures.  Both are useful, but need to be considered within their respective frame of reference. 

The GLOBE model identified nine cultural dimensions, which as we can see from Table below, have parity with Hofstede’s model on many counts:

 

 

GLOBE enhances rather than detracts from the original work of Hofstede.  It goes one step further in looking at the impact of culture on organisational performance, through the introduction of the Performance Orientation dimension and the definition of institutional collectivism. 

Shi & Wang (2011) remind us that whilst “GLOBE study is less criticized than Hofstede’s work, possibly not because there are fewer controversial issues, but perhaps more because it is much more recent, and therefore researchers have not yet fully analysed and tested it” (P. 93)

GLOBE provides a framework that goes beyond the measuring management or only considering one organisation and systemically looks to gather data from across sectors and countries.  GLOBE goes one step further in linking culture to performance, and important advance in thinking of why culture? and why now?

As we see more and more mergers and acquisitions failing to deliver on promises and a global recession that is continuing to bite, GLOBE provides us with some through-provoking ideas about how we might continue to motivate and manage people across organisational and geographic boundaries.

 

Please share your thoughts or experiences on cross cultural management here, or email us if you would like to find out more about our work in this area at feedback@agents2change.com

 

References

Hofstede G (2010) The GLOBE debate; Back to relevance, Journal of International business Tudeis, 41: 1339-1346

House RJ, Hanges PJ, Javidan M, Dorfman PW & Gputa V (2004) Culture, Leadership and Organizations: The  GLOBE study of 62 societies, Thousand Oaks, CA, Sage

Shi X & Wang J(2011) Interpreting Hofstede Model and GLOBE Model:  Which way to go for Cross-Cultural Research?, International Journal of Business and Management, 6(5), 93-98.

Comments

[Mary Morgan]

Useful stuff even though its looks informative so far for someone. everything you exposed really very good. Thank you!

[Mary@agents2change.com]

Thank you for your comments, I am pleased yu like it. As you say, its nothing new, but it's still relevant today.