Week 2 – Assignment 1: Explore Managing in a Global Context

The terms multinational and global business is often used interchangeability. The reality is that there is a difference. Multinational Corporations (MNC) have facilities and assets in at least one country other than its home country. They adjust their products and service to each of the local markets. Global companies are located in a number of countries where they market the exact image/brand in all markets. Still, managing in either international business requires an understanding of the political, cultural, economic and regulatory environment of the countries where they operate.

Using the social media venues (Twitter, Linkedin or Facebook), you must pick one of the following international businesses to explore- S.C. Johnson A Family Company. Begin by selecting one of the international businesses to research to use as your specific organization throughout this course. Know that when a manager has been assigned to work globally, they must be effective and efficient in gaining knowledge about the organization and the place where they will be located.

For this assignment, using at least 3 resources, prepare a report including the following sections:

A brief introduction to the organization and location(s) including
Key features of the organization’s global competitive strategy.
What topics, if any, are trending about the organization?
From your point of view, describe management challenges s related to multicultural geographically distributed teams, communication strategies, handling cross-cultural issues and technology enhancements.

Length: 3-4 pages

Your paper should demonstrate thoughtful consideration of the ideas and concepts presented in the course by providing new thoughts and insights relating directly to this topic. Your paper should reflect scholarly writing and current APA standards.

SC Johnson, A Family Company

Introduction

SC Johnson’s headquarters are located in Racine, Wisconsin and is a five-generation family managed company since its founding in 1886. The company believes that family leadership is what The company mission statement has been to promote goodwill to humankind as Herbert F. Johnson Sr. stated one night in 1927 (Facebook, 2017), “The goodwill of people is the only enduring thing in any business. It is the sole substance. The rest is shadow.” The household brands that are well known in the United States are Ziploc, Glade, Windex, Drano, Raid, Scrubbing Bubbles, Shout, and Glade products. They are a global company versus a multi-national corporation due to their products packaging and branding/image being marketed exactly the same, no matter the market in well over 100 countries. With over 12,000 employees located in offices in over 70 countries, they prize themselves on their core values of a cleaner and healthier home for the consumer. (SC Johnson, 2017)

· Key features of the organization’s global competitive strategy.

· What topics, if any, are trending about the organization?

· From your point of view, describe management challenges related to:

1. multicultural geographically distributed teams

· willingness to adapt to global culture

· inspire others to embrace change

2. communication strategies

· range of communication styles

3. handling cross-cultural issues

· local customs and traditions

· needs

4. technology enhancements

· technical knowledge and skills to upgrade?

· Headquarters communicating with subsidiaries

Length: 3-4 pages

References

Twitter. (2017, October 15). Retrieved from Twitter: https://twitter.com/SCJohnson/media

LinkedIn. (2017, October 15). Retrieved from Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/

company/4039/

Facebook. (2017, 10 15). Retrieved from Facebook:https://www.facebook.com/pg/

SCJohnson/about/?ref=page_internal

Describe the Business Impact:

Describe the Social Impact:

Describe the Business Impact:

Describe the Social Impact:

CSR Initiative(s)

Target Group(s)

Impact Scale

1-5

Customers

Employees

Suppliers

Local

Community

Global

Environment

Business

Impact

Social

Impact

CSR Initiative(s)

Target Group(s)

Impact Scale

1-5

Customers

Employees

Suppliers

Local

Community

Global

Environment

Business

Impact

Social

Impact

CORPORATE SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY (CSR) ACTIVITY MATRIX

Directions: Review your global organization’s CSR activities. Select two CSR activities that you believe are significant. Based on the two CSR activities you selected, complete the matrix below.

The Journal of Socio-Economics 37 (2008) 907–918

The role of corporate social responsibility
in strong sustainability

György Málovics a,∗, Noémi Nagypál Csigéné b, Sascha Kraus c
a Department of Culture, University of Szeged, 6722 Szeged, Szilléri sgt. 12, Hungary

b Budapest University of Technology and Economics, Hungary
c Department of Entrepreneurship, University of Oldenburg, Germany

Accepted 1 December 2006

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to analyze to what extent corporate social responsibility (CSR) contributes to
strong sustainability, i.e. to what extent the use of natural resources and the environment is possible, given
the current level of economic activity. We therefore examine responsibilities that corporations should take in
order to fulfil the requirements of strong sustainability. Based on current CSR practices and theory as well
as on businesses motivations regarding environmental and social investments, we will introduce the role of
corporations in influencing consumption patterns. Furthermore, we will attempt to answer to what extent
responsible corporate behaviour is determined by the current economic system.
© 2007 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

JEL classification: Q56; M14

Keywords: CSR; Motivations; Strong sustainability; Rebound effect; Consumption

1. Weak and strong sustainability

The current burden on the planet’s natural resources can result in global climate change, the
growth of desert regions, and the homogenization of flora and fauna. There is an old argument
among economists about the limits these problems set in light of the future of humanity (Homer-
Dixon, 2004). The economic optimists (who think that there are no limits to population, economy,
and consumption) and pessimists (according to whom the size of population and global economy
is already too high for earth to provide resources for) represent the two opposite aspects.

∗ Corresponding author. Tel.: +36 62 474 255; fax: +36 62 474 255.
E-mail address: gymalovics@jgypk.u-szeged.hu (G. Málovics).

1053-5357/$ – see front matter © 2007 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/j.socec.2006.12.061

mailto:gymalovics@jgypk.u-szeged.hu

dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.socec.2006.12.061

908 G. Málovics et al. / The Journal of Socio-Economics 37 (2008) 907–918

Sustainable development has become one of the most popular topics for both politicians and
economists in recent years. By the year 2004, almost 90% of the US-American Fortune 500
companies already had explicit corporate social responsibility (CSR) initiatives (Kotler and Lee,
2004; Lichtenstein et al., 2004). There is currently a strong debate on sustainable development,
although there is not yet a generally accepted definition of the concept. The most “popular”
definition is the one from the Brundtland Commission, according to which the core of sustainable
development is to satisfy the needs of the present generations in such a way that it does not
lower the chance of future generations to satisfy theirs (Jöst, 1996). Accordingly, the economic
activity of the present is likely to narrow the chances of future generations by ruining the global
ecosystem on which human society and the economy are based. According to Jöst (1996), the
main question to solve is: “To what extent is the use of natural resources and the environment
possible, if our economy is to exist in the very long run?” (p. 78). Based on the Brundtland
concept, the question could also be reformulated as: To what extent is the use of natural resources
and the environment possible, if our economy is to exist on at least the present level in the very
long run?

The International Institute for Sustainable Development, Deloitte & Touche and the World
Business Council for Sustainable Development (WBCSD) define sustainable development for
business enterprises as “[. . .] adopting business strategies and activities that meet the needs of
the enterprise and its stakeholders today, while protecting, sustaining and enhancing the human
and natural resources that will be needed in the future” (Labuschagne and Brent, 2005, p. 160).
Existing literature generally agrees on three dimensions of sustainability: (1) economic, (2) social,
and (3) environmental. A sustainable business has to take into account “the interests of future
generations, biodiversity, animal protection, human rights, life cycle impacts, and principles like
equity, accountability, transparency, openness, education and learning, and local action and scale”
(van Kleef and Roome, 2007, p. 41).

Summarizing, it can be stated that the ecological aspect of sustainability includes being respon-
sible for future generations by sustaining a certain level of natural resources, thereby providing
essential functions to human society. According to Ekins and Simon (2003), these functions are
as follows:

• Source function: delivery of natural resources to the economy (energy carriers, agricultural
land, or biological resources).

• Sink function: refers to the possibility of disposing waste.
• Life support function: a set of functions performed by land, water and air essential to sustaining

life.
• Human health and welfare function: includes services that maintain health and contribute to

human well-being.

When discussing sustainable development, most economists use the capital theory approach
(Harte, 1995). This approach assumes that we can keep the level of welfare at a minimum on a
constant level, i.e. providing similar opportunities for future generations by providing them with at
least the same amount of capital the present generation owns. The total capital consists of natural
and man-made (economic and social) capital. Sustainable development can be divided into weak
and strong sustainability. Weak sustainability means that even if the quantity of natural capital is
decreasing by creating man-made capital, total capital can be maintained, which would be enough
to fulfil the criteria of sustainability. Strong sustainability on the other hand is less permissive,
saying that natural capital cannot (or only to a limited extent) be substituted by man-made capital

G. Málovics et al. / The Journal of Socio-Economics 37 (2008) 907–918 909

and may suffer irreversible harm, so that is necessary to maintain not only the aggregate but also
the amount of available natural capital (Neumayer, 1999; Pearce, 1988).

Although there are many opportunities for mitigating resource depletion and environmental
degradation through the substitution of manufactured capital, economic production is still a work
process that uses energy to transform materials into goods and services. Producing a manufactured
capital substitute requires the input(s) of natural capital, and the multi-functional nature of ecosys-
tems in sustaining socioeconomic development makes it difficult to substitute their life support
with manufactured capital. It seems that opportunities for substitutions are being more limited
than many authors assume (Ecological Economics, 2003). Based on current knowledge, broader
ecosystem services (e.g. protection against harmful cosmic influences, regulation of the local
and global climate including the hydrological cycle, water catchment and groundwater recharge,
prevention of soil erosion and sediment control, and maintenance of biological/genetic diversity)
simply cannot be substituted by any other form of capital (Gustafsson, 1998; Cleveland and Ruth,
1997).

Due to these contemporary limits to substitution of natural resources by man-made capital and
the scientific uncertainty concerning the necessary minimum level of natural resources needed to
secure the aforementioned vital services to human society (Ekins, 2003), CSR will be analyzed
from the aspect of strong sustainability in this article.

2. Requirements of strong ecological sustainability

The aforementioned interpretations of sustainability are also important from the corporate
point of view, since business corporations are the main actors in an economy which trans-
forms natural capital into man-made capital. Based on the two interpretations, there are also two
approaches used to measure corporate contributions to sustainability (Figge and Hahn, 2004; Cal-
lens and Tyteca, 1999): relative and absolute measures. The first approach investigates efficiency,
while the second focuses on effectiveness (i.e. absolute resource use). The relative measure
compares the value created by the company with the resources used or the harm caused to the
environment. Eco-efficiency in this respect means producing the same amount of products while
consuming less environmental input. The absolute measure focuses on the value added by the
company, defined as benefits minus internal and external costs.

There are several concepts concerning the requirements for enterprises for strong sustainability,
such as the Concept of Integrated Chain Management (DeGroene and Hermans, 1998). Its criteria
include:

(1) use of non-renewable resources,
(2) stimulation of the use of sustainable energy,
(3) keeping of the balance in the process of use and production of renewable resources, and
(4) keeping renewable and non-renewable resources as long as possible in the material cycles,

unless this is not environmentally desirable.

Other criteria can be found in the Natural Step Concept, which is based on four natural systems
principles (Ehrenfeld, 1997):

(1) crucial substances must not systematically increase in nature,
(2) industrial products must not systematically increase in nature,

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(3) the productivity and diversity of the natural system must not be allowed to deteriorate, and
(4) fair and efficient use of energy and other resources.

Other authors (Wallner, 1999; van Weenen, 1995) emphasize that a real sustainable ecocycle
economy needs energy that is not connected to the process/product. According to this view, only
solar energy would be appropriate for sustainability.

Authors exploring the links between business and ecological sustainability emphasize resource
and energy conservation, the role of non-renewables, and the reduction of waste (Heeres et al.,
2004; Ehrenfeld, 1997; Wallner, 1999; van Weenen, 1995; Reijnders, 2000). These principles
serve as guidelines for strong sustainability and are reminiscent of Daly and Cobb (1990), who
established three often-cited implications for the sustainable use of natural resources (Gerbens-
Leenes et al., 2003; Petschow et al., 1998):

(1) Renewable resources should not be exploited at a greater rate than their regeneration level.
(2) Non-renewable resources should not be depleted at a greater rate than the development rate

of renewable substitutes.
(3) The absorption and regeneration capacity of the natural environment should not be exceeded.

Despite these aforementioned business guidelines for sustainable resource use, even in the
light of capital theory, it is difficult to operationalize and measure strong sustainability in practice
on the micro (e.g. company) level. It is still very difficult for individual companies to decide the
direction that should be taken in looking for a solution, since no solid guidelines have been for-
mulated regarding the ecological limits within which companies ought to operate (DeGroene and
Hermans, 1998). It is doubtful that strong sustainability can be measured on the level of business
organizations, since practical concepts so far “fail to address what conditions must be met, what
factors need to be overcome, and what characteristics actually determine an ecologically sustain-
able organization” (Handfield et al., 2002, p. 71). Gerbens-Leenes et al. (2003) also emphasize
that it is not yet possible to measure (strong) sustainability from a system perspective, since an
integrated measuring method concerning the three aspects (economic, social, and environmental)
has not yet been developed. Furthermore, environmental reporting of companies is poorly devel-
oped, widely accepted standards for sustainability are not yet available, and companies usually
address their environmental effects only on a local level, thereby using a large number of indi-
cators. As a result, the generated information is incompatible, does not address the sustainability
issue as a whole, or provides hardly any additional knowledge on the environmental sustainability
of a production system. To complicate matters, companies differ even in the same business sector,
outsourcing is becoming more and more common, and the type and number of processes differ
per company. Thus, indicators vary among companies and generate incompatible information,
which makes it virtually impossible to assess strong sustainability on a company level.

A further reason for the deficiencies in measurement is the scientific uncertainty concerning
natural resources. According to Ekins (2003), it is not possible to identify particular elements
of critical natural capital due to the complexity of natural systems. Scientific knowledge on this
topic is still regarded as uncertain and incomplete.

3. The limits of technologically based concepts

Researchers dealing with corporate sustainability emphasize the role of more effective and
less natural resource-intensive (both concerning energy and materials) production methods and

G. Málovics et al. / The Journal of Socio-Economics 37 (2008) 907–918 911

systems. Although it is more than only eco-efficiency, which is basically at the centre of busi-
ness attention (see, e.g. the official documents of the World Business Council on Sustainable
Development),1 whether technological optimization indeed contributes to resource and energy
conservation can be doubted. The recognized problem with this approach is the so-called rebound
effect that can be observed on both the micro and macro levels (Dyllick and Hockerts, 2002).
On the micro (company) level, e.g. several companies manage to reduce the quantity of mate-
rial use per product unit, but the total use of raw material increases because output grows more
rapidly than efficiency. Human beings basically use improved technological efficiency to increase
comfort and improve their quality of life, not to reduce resource consumption. Examples from
Norway show that energy consumption per household has increased when energy conservation
has been introduced in private houses. Greater efficiency improved comfort through larger living
areas (50% increase on average in private houses in Norway between 1973 and 1987), higher room
temperature, and increased use of electrical equipment. In vehicle development, the improvements
in fuel efficiency achieved over the last 10 years have over-effected the increased use of cars, and
the general increase in the number of cars in society (Hanssen, 1999).

The Ecological Footprint (EF) measure shows that the rebound effect also appears at the macro
level (Wackernagel and Rees, 2001). EF is a resource management tool that measures how much
land and water area a human population requires, under prevailing technology, to produce the
resources it consumes and to absorb its waste. Capturing the effects of the economic system on
the ecological system both at the input and output sides and thus the resource requirements of
present consumption patterns under prevailing technology, we consider EF to be the best current
tool to capture the dynamics of the effects of the economic system on the natural environment.
Basically, growing EF shows us that a society consumes an increasing amount of natural resources
and depletes these resources to an ever-greater extent.

Analyzing the measure on a national level, we find that the EF of developed countries—which
are the strongholds of CSR—is still increasing. The global EF was 2.5 times higher in 2001 than in
1961, despite the improvements in technology and eco-efficiency. It has grown continuously since
the 1960s, and has exceeded the sustainable level since the 1980s. Furthermore, the global EF of
humanity grew more than 700% in the last 40 years (WWF, 2004). Also, higher GDPs, which
usually mean higher social and environmental consumer expectations, higher levels of CSR and
EMS (environmental managements systems) activities, and higher eco-efficiency through better
technology, result in higher EF. Although developed countries have introduced EMS and CSR
for decades, and there are more and more environmentally and socially conscious consumers and
companies in these countries, EF growth has not stopped (Bagliani et al., 2006).

Nearly the same is seen with social issues. Poverty and income inequities within and among
societies have also grown significantly over the last decades, both within and among societies
and also in the developed world. The trickle-down effect does not seem to be justified by present
practice (Stiglitz, 2003). The present continuous worldwide economic growth does not help to
solve environmental and social problems, and instead seems to deepen them (Daly and Cobb,
1990; Meadows et al., 2004).

All in all, it seems that the environmental optimization of processes and products will not be
enough to achieve the overall objective of sustainable development (Vollenbroek, 2002).

1 Although the eco-efficiency definition of the WBCSD admits that there is an absolute carrying capacity for Earth
(Barrett and Scott, 2001), the organization considers eco-efficiency to be the only environmental responsibility of business
(WBCSD, 1996a,b, 1997, 1998, 2006).

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4. A consumption-based view

Concerning the existence of the rebound effect, many authors suggest that sustainability
demands more than increased eco-efficiency by technological development. It also requires a
change in consumption patterns. Northern societies in particular have been characterized by an
enormous throughput of resources and energy for many years: 20% of the world population uses
80% of the material and energy resources annually extracted and exploited. Considering these
huge differences in the level of consumption, it is clear that first of all the Northern societies can
significantly contribute to the reduction of global natural resource use, e.g. by reducing their own
consumption level. Several authors (Pataki, 2000; Csutora and Kerekes, 2004) emphasize that the
reduction of consumption will be necessary to achieve sustainability, since the main reasons for
environmental damages are the wasteful consumption patterns of Northern consumers and the
increasing push towards new Southern markets (Buday-Sántha, 2002). Doubt can be raised about
whether an increased income level of Southern societies can positively contribute to sustainabil-
ity in these countries (an argument is made by some that the direct burden on renewable natural
resources such as land or rainforests would decrease), as it may also have an (indirect) negative
impact on sustainability due to increasing consumption. Nonetheless, reduced consumption in
Northern societies seems to be essential to reach ecological sustainability.

5. The role of business in consumption patterns

Natural resource depletion is the result of the activity of three different, closely connected,
mutually influencing main spheres: government, the business sector, and citizens and their organi-
zations (NGOs). Although governmental power is at the centre of media attention, it is moreover
the business sector which could potentially play the most important role in making a move
toward greater sustainability (Hutchinson, 1996; Buday-Sántha, 2002; van Kleef and Roome,
2007; Michaelis, 2003). According to Bertrand Collomb, the president of WBCSD, only the busi-
ness sector can find solutions for sustainable development because governments do not produce
goods (Interviews, 2005).

According to one view, decisions regarding reducing consumption appear on the level of pri-
vate individuals (Hanssen, 1999). However, if we consider the society as a subsystem of the
natural environment and the economy as a subsystem of society, we encounter a more complex
situation. Analyzing the relations among the different subsystems, we find that while the relation-
ship between the economy and the society subsystems is mutually direct, a certain asymmetry
can be observed between the natural environment and the economy. Primarily, economic activity
influences the natural environment directly by taking inputs from and generating outputs into
the environment (other interventions into natural processes occur here as well). The other effect
is indirect: Actors in the economy may also influence the natural environment in a less evident
way through society, i.e. by influencing consumption patterns. From a capital theory point of
view, social capital can influence future natural capital amounts in two ways: (1) by influencing
the ability to improve eco-efficiency and (2) by determining attitudes toward consumption and
natural capital so that natural capital preservation becomes a priority in the future.

As Michaelis (2003) emphasizes, there are three different types of business-related change
which might contribute to sustainable consumption:

(1) Development of new technologies and practices.
(2) Changes in the economic and legal incentives that shape both production and consumption.

G. Málovics et al. / The Journal of Socio-Economics 37 (2008) 907–918 913

(3) Changes in the values and discourses that shape the culture of business, government, the
media, and civil society.

Accordingly—besides government and citizens—the business sector is indeed also responsible
for current consumption patterns, and plays an important role in influencing consumption in a
more or less sustainable direction.

6. The concept of CSR

As mentioned, doubt can be raised on whether the weak concept of sustainability (including
eco-efficiency) is in and of itself enough for resource conservation. Strong sustainability seems
to also demand sustainable consumption patterns, and business (as probably the most powerful
sphere in society) also has its role in contributing to it. We therefore will subsequently examine
how the business sector can contribute to sustainable consumption. Our statements are formed
on the basis of current CSR theory and practices as well as on business motivations regarding
sustainability investments.

In Europe, the main factors fostering CSR are “expectations from citizens, consumers, public
authorities and investors in the context of globalization and large scale industrial change, invest-
ment decisions considering social interest, the increased concern about the damage caused by
economic activity to the environment, and transparency of business activities brought about by
the media and modern information and communication technologies” (Commission, 2001, p. 5).
In summary, both the demand for and opportunities of monitoring companies’ behaviour have
increased.

The core idea of the CSR concept is that the business sector should play a deeper (non-
economic) role in society than only producing goods and making profits. This includes society-
and environmentally driven actions, meaning that the business sector is supposed to go beyond
its profit-oriented commercial activities and increase the well-being of the community, thereby
making the world a better place (Robins, 2005).

An overall picture on current CSR practices is offered by Rondinelli and Berry’s (2000) study
on the environmental reports of different multinationals (MNCs). They divide CSR activities
into external and internal practices. External practices are for example incentives for employees
and managers collaborating on environmental improvement projects; philanthropic activities that
support community, national, and international efforts to improve environmental conditions; and
strategic alliances between MNCs and environmental and public interest groups to solve crucial
environmental problems. Internal practices include enhanced regulatory compliance to reduce
the corporations’ negative environmental impacts of hazardous emissions in the communities in
which they are located; adoption of pollution prevention and clean manufacturing practices that
prevent pollution before it occurs; redesign of products and processes to achieve more beneficial
environmental impacts for customers and communitiesm materials reduction; recycling and re-
use; and resource conservation. Although external practices are more “visual”, they usually only
reflect a small part of MNCs’ environmental management activities, and do not have the strongest
potential impacts on contributing to sustainable development. Moreover, internal practices rep-
resent a far larger portion of the total amount most companies annually spend on environmental
management activities.

Both external and internal practices contribute to sustainable ecological development both
directly (e.g. external resource conservation activities) and indirectly (saving natural resources
by resource and energy input reduction through improved eco-efficiency). Nevertheless, both

914 G. Málovics et al. / The Journal of Socio-Economics 37 (2008) 907–918

also have deficiencies regarding strong sustainability. While external practices are often local and
represent only a very small part of MNCs’ profits (Rondinelli and Berry, 2000), the problem with
internal practices is the aforementioned rebound effect.

CSR practices can also be categorized on the basis of corporate interests. Spitzek (2005) divides
them into three main groups:

(1) Must-responsibilities (consumer needs and law requirements, neglecting these would endan-
ger immediate survival).

(2) Should-responsibilities (these are vital for long term survival, based on the expectations of
societies, not manifested in low, neglecting them can cause boycott, disinvestment).

(3) Can-responsibilities (not expected by the society, not pressed by the law or the market, no
sanction applies when neglected, can help better reputation).

Another categorization from Rondinelli and Berry (2000) divides CSR into four levels:

(1) Commercial self-interest: Adhering to all laws and regulations and selecting those activities
that benefit stakeholders and communities directly contributes to profitability and competi-
tiveness.

(2) Expanded self-interest with immediate benefits: Undertaking activities that go beyond nor-
mal business concerns to benefit stakeholders and communities in ways that also provide
measurable short- and medium-term benefits to the company.

(3) Expanded self-interest with long-term benefits: Supporting community activities, such as
education and training, that will have important impacts on continuing business success.

(4) Promoting the common good: Supporting or participating in activities that improve conditions
in the community, or for stakeholders with no expectation of direct tangible benefits to the
company.

Nevertheless, these categorizations fail to address the question of consumption and the role of
the businesses sector in influencing it into a sustainable direction.2 Based on businesses’ moti-
vations in connection with environmental and social investments, the reason for companies not
addressing such a question becomes clear. Taking a look at the empirical research dealing with
the motivation of firms for implementing environmental and social investments, we find that
they are indeed motivated by business reasons. Researchers seem to agree that both business
and non-business (ethical) aspects appear due to the implementation of CSR measures, but that
environmental and social investments are mainly business driven (Granek and Hassanali, 2005;
Zhu and Sarkis, 2006; Drechsler, 2005; Fryxell et al., 2004; Fryxell and Szeto, 2002; Kwon et
al., 2002; Hall, 2000; Rondinelli and Berry, 2000; DeGroene and Hermans, 1998). According to
Máté Kriza, the director of the Hungarian Business Council for Sustainable Development, the
main motivating factor of the business sector is profit, and the management of a sustainable com-
pany regards environmental and social investments as a business opportunity (Interviews, 2005).
Bertrand Collomb, the president of WBSCD, also sees these tools as necessary for successful
business (Interviews, 2005).

2 As far as we know, there is only one company telling its consumers to reduce their consumption and to only buy
the necessary products in order to get closer to sustainable consumption patterns: Patagonia’s Buy Less, But Buy Better
(McSpirit, 1998).

G. Málovics et al. / The Journal of Socio-Economics 37 (2008) 907–918 915

Since CSR and EMS are mostly only applied as long as they contribute to economic suc-
cess (profit, long-term competitiveness, image, etc.), most companies only meet their must- and
should-responsibilities due to government regulations or consumer expectations. Also, compa-
nies manage risk and reputation through CSR rather than tackling the more difficult issues. Most
companies’ CSR actions aim to provide community benefits through increased sales, and do not
deal with larger questions such as their impacts on communities through the ways they do business
(Doane, 2005). Indeed, the business community in general interprets “sustainable consumption”
as a higher consumption of sustainable products. It subsumes sustainable consumption within sus-
tainable production or resource efficiency (Michaelis, 2003), which has serious limits in achieving
sustainability goals.

Besides admitting that companies also have to be economically sustainable, we think that
companies have made Friedman’s view of CSR their own, which says that ‘the business of business
is business’ (Interviews, 2005). Companies regard social and environmental development beyond
business interests as the responsibility of government. Companies are in business in order to earn
profits and create wealth (for their owners), so their perceptions of how to achieve sustainable
development will always be influenced by their overall business strategies (Rondinelli and Berry,
2000). These business strategies have been influenced by e.g. the rapid spread of the public
share ownership model in recent years (Michaelis, 2003). This seems to make more companies
increasingly focused on financial performance and less on social and environmental standards in
order to satisfy shareholder expectations, often at the expense of employees and even customers.

On the other hand, although there is an imbalance of power between companies and the public, it
is not clear “how far individual businesses can shape patterns of consumption, or to what extent they
are prisoners of the system” (Michaelis, 2003, p. 915). The answer to this question could be a bit
of both: Large consumer product corporations in particular can certainly influence consumption,
but individuals within these corporations may well experience themselves as “prisoners of the
system”. Companies mostly play by the rules of the business culture they operate in, i.e. success
for the ‘fittest’ companies, and failure for the unfit.

7. Conclusion

CSR is gaining more importance in today’s business life, and its different definitions empha-
size its contribution to sustainability. However, internal CSR practices, where most of the CSR
resources are spent, mainly focus on relative sustainability and eco-efficiency, while external prac-
tices, although concentrating on absolute sustainability, still represent a very low rate of business
resources, and mostly only focus on the local level.

Because of scientific uncertainty, the limits of substitutability of natural resources with man-
made capital, and the rebound effect, it is doubtful that such CSR activities effectively contribute
to the conservation of natural resources and their vital services. According to several authors
(Pataki, 2000; Csutora and Kerekes, 2004), a change in Northern consumption patterns would
also be necessary to achieve sustainability goals.

Since CSR practices are mainly motivated by business reasons, companies fail to address larger
questions such as e.g. their impacts on communities through the ways they do business, including
how they influence consumption patterns. However, it is not clear how far individual businesses
are actually able to influence consumption, and corporate behaviour is to a high extent determined
by the rules of the current economic system.

The present economic system makes it difficult for companies to address the aforementioned
broader questions. The topic of green consumption is a good example of how the controversial

916 G. Málovics et al. / The Journal of Socio-Economics 37 (2008) 907–918

environment of business nevertheless attempts to create responsible actors. According to various
previous research, Western consumers are becoming increasingly “green” and socially conscious
in their mind (Mastny, 2004; Vágási, 2000; Németh, 1999; Pakainé Kováts and Herczeg, 1999;
Borsi, 1997; Soler, 1996). Despite this, firms that are actually ethical usually capture less than
1% of the overall market (Doane, 2005), and the growth of GDP and income are at the centre of
public attention. These latter facts show that consumers are still not necessarily environmentally
conscious in their activities and consumption (Doane, 2005; Buday-Sántha, 2002).

Concerning these circumstances, companies have to meet two often contradictory require-
ments: (1) selling at low prices and (2) being environmentally and socially conscious. Since—as
the example of green consumption shows—the first one seems to be stronger, companies are
tempted to externalize. This is obviously contradictory to the well-being of societies. However,
if a socially responsible company does not lower its prices, it will most likely be outrun by its
competitors (Atkins, 2006).

Externalizing less and thereby taking more responsibility on the other hand means lower
competitiveness due to higher costs and prices. A similar logic can be applied to sustainable
consumption. If a responsible company tries to persuade its customers to consume less (or only
the necessary amount) of its products, and its competitors act contrarily, the company may suffer
a disadvantage in global competition, e.g. by reduced relative economies of scale and higher
prices. Again, a possibly unsustainable activity is reinforced by the present form of the market
and consumer decisions.

Summarizing our thoughts, we can say that among today’s market circumstances, businesses
do not seem to be able to find solutions for sustainable development themselves. Reaching the goal
of sustainability requires more than CSR and eco-efficiency. It needs the active participation and
cooperation of governments, businesses, and citizens in order to set sustainable consumption as a
common goal of societies, and to reach an agreement on its conditions. But such an agreement does
also have to involve quantity beside quality, and each sphere of society has its duty in contributing
to it.

Acknowledgement

The authors want to thank the anonymous reviewers for their very helpful comments and
encouragements that contributed significantly to the development of this paper.

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The role of corporate social responsibility in strong sustainability

Weak and strong sustainability
Requirements of strong ecological sustainability
The limits of technologically based concepts
A consumption-based view
The role of business in consumption patterns
The concept of CSR
Conclusion
Acknowledgement
References

Week 2: Mini Lecture

Managing in a Global Context

Global organizations are defined as businesses that operate simultaneously throughout the world. Global leaders are critical to their organization by contributing to the development of strategy, creating the appropriate culture, and managing diverse people. Having the essential leadership skills and global intellect is vital to the global manager’s success.

Skills for global leaders include understanding their environment with opportunities and challenges; having the technical knowledge, skills, and insights, along with a global “mindset”; possessing the ability to deal with multiple perspectives and ambiguity using global strategic thinking; demonstrating a willingness and ability to adapt to rapid change and inspire others to embrace that change; and exhibiting an ability to manage the complexities of leading teams with people from different nationalities working in multiple locations.

An important growing function for global organizations is their involvement in helping to solve social problems and make a positive impact in communities around the world. Corporate social responsibility (CSR), as it is known, continues to be a growing philosophy where consumers and employees want companies to evolve their business practices to make a positive societal impact.

Still, the reality is that globalization poses many challenges for managers. For example managers struggle with the extent to which organizational policies and practices can be standardized with respect to local customs, traditions and needs. Further, global teams with its members from different countries and functional backgrounds working in various locations with a multitude of communication styles present its own challenges.

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Article
December 2009

Making the most of corporate social
responsibility
By Tracey Keys, Thomas W. Malnight, and Kees van der Graaf

For companies that see CSR as an opportunity to strengthen the
business, the big challenge is execution. Smart partnering can
provide a practical way forward.

oo often, executives have viewed corporate social responsibility (CSR) as just
another source of pressure or passing fad. But as customers, employees,

and

suppliers—and, indeed, society more broadly—place increasing importance on CSR,
some leaders have started to look at it as a creative opportunity to fundamentally
strengthen their businesses while contributing to society at the same time. They view
CSR as central to their overall strategies, helping them to creatively address key business
issues.

The big challenge for executives is how to develop an approach that can truly deliver on
these lofty ambitions—and, as of yet, few have found the way. However, some innovative
companies have managed to overcome this hurdle, with smart partnering emerging as
one way to create value for both the business and society simultaneously. Smart

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partnering focuses on key areas of impact between business and society and develops
creative solutions that draw on the complementary capabilities of both to address major
challenges that affect each partner. In this article, we build on lessons from smart
partnering to provide a practical way forward for leaders to assess the true opportunities
of CSR.

Mapping the CSR space

There is no single accepted definition of CSR, which leads to plenty of confusion about
what constitutes a CSR activity. We can begin to develop a working definition of CSR by
thinking about its dual objectives—benefiting business and society—and the range of
potential benefits in each case (Exhibit 1).

Exhibit 1

Corporate social responsibility: The landscape

Corporate social responsibility encompasses dual objectives—pursuing
benefits for the business and for society.

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Many businesses pursue CSR activities that can best be termed pet projects, as they
reflect the personal interests of individual senior executives. While these activities may
be presented with much noise and fanfare, they usually offer minimal benefits to either
business or society. In the middle are efforts that can make both sides feel good but that
generate limited and often one-sided benefits. With philanthropy, for example,
corporate donations confer the majority of benefits on society (with potential but often
questionable reputational benefits to the business). Similarly, in what’s best referred to
as propaganda, CSR activities are focused primarily on building a company’s reputation
with little real benefit to society. Some cynics suggest that this form of CSR is at best a
form of advertising—and potentially dangerous if it exposes a gap between the
company’s words and actions.

None of these approaches realize the opportunities for significant shared value creation
that have been achieved through smart partnering. In such ventures, the focus of the
business moves beyond avoiding risks or enhancing reputation and toward improving its
core value creation ability by addressing major strategic issues or challenges. For society,
the focus shifts from maintaining minimum standards or seeking funding to improving
employment, the overall quality of life, and living standards. The key is for each party to
tap into the resources and expertise of the other, finding creative solutions to critical
social and businesses challenges.

So how does this work? The examples in the two accompanying sidebars (see
“Addressing rural distribution challenges in India” and “Ensuring sustainable supplies
of critical raw materials”) illustrate smart partnering initiatives at Unilever. Both
address long-term strategic challenges facing the company and help to build creative
partnerships that accrue significant benefits to both sides.

Initial questions for any leader should be, “Where have you focused CSR activities in the
past?” and, more important, “Where should you focus them for the future?” All
organizations have to balance limited resources and effort, so the challenge is how best
to deploy yours to maximize the benefits to your business (and your shareholders and
stakeholders), as well as to society. Start by mapping your current portfolio of CSR
initiatives on the framework shown in Exhibit 1 and ask: What are the objectives of our
current initiatives? What benefits are being created, and who realizes these? Which of
these initiatives helps us to address our key strategic challenges and opportunities?

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Focusing CSR choices: Guiding principles

Companies are likely to have activities scattered across the map, but that’s not where
they have to stay—nor is it how the benefits of CSR are maximized. Many companies start
with pet projects, philanthropy, or propaganda because these activities are quick and
easy to decide on and implement. The question is how to move toward CSR strategies
that focus on truly cocreating value for the business and society. The accompanying
examples suggest three principles for moving toward this goal.

1. Concentrate your CSR efforts. Management time and resources are limited, so
the greatest opportunities will come from areas where the business significantly

interacts with—and thus can have the greatest impact on—society. These are

areas where the business not only can gain a deeper understanding of the mutual

dependencies but also in which the highest potential for mutual benefit exists.

2. Build a deep understanding of the benefits. Even after selecting your chosen
areas of opportunity, finding the potential for mutual value creation is not always

straightforward. The key is finding symmetry between the two sides and being

open enough to understand issues both from a business and a societal

perspective.

3. Find the right partners. These will be those that benefit from your core
business activities and capabilities—and that you can benefit from in turn.

Partnering is difficult, but when both sides see win–win potential there is greater

motivation to realize the substantial benefits. Relationships—particularly long-

term ones that are built on a realistic understanding of the true strengths on

both sides—have a greater opportunity of being successful and sustainable.

Applying these principles to choosing the appropriate CSR opportunities prompts
additional questions—namely: What are the one or two critical areas in our business
where we interface with and have an impact on society and where significant
opportunities exist for both sides if we can creatively adjust the relationship? What are

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the core long-term needs for us and for society that can be addressed as a result? What
resources or capabilities do we need, and what do we have to offer in realizing the
opportunities?

Building the business case

In smart partnering, mutual benefit is not only a reasonable objective, it is also required
to ensure long-term success. But this commitment must be grounded in value-creation
potential, just like any other strategic initiative. Each is an investment that should be
evaluated with the same rigor in prioritization, planning, resourcing, and monitoring.

Now you need to define the array of potential benefits for both the business and for
society. This will not always be easy, but a clear business case and story is important if you
are to get the company, its shareholders, and its stakeholders on board.

You can assess the benefits across the following three dimensions:

1. Time frame. Be clear on both the short-term immediate objectives and the long-
term benefits. In smart partnering, the time frame is important, as initiatives can

be complex and take time to realize their full potential.

2. Nature of benefits. Some benefits will be tangible, such as revenue from gaining
access to a new market. Others will be equally significant, but intangible, such as

developing a new capability or enhancing employee morale.

3. Benefit split. Be clear about how benefits are to be shared between the business
and society. If they are one-sided, be careful you are not moving into the

philanthropy or propaganda arena. Remember that if the aim is to create more

value from partnering than you could do apart, then benefits must be shared

appropriately.

Exhibit 2 outlines two contrasting benefit arrays for the Unilever examples discussed in
the accompanying sidebars. With Project Shakti, the short-term tangible benefits are
extremely clear and powerful, while in the case of Kericho the long-term intangible

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benefits are strategically critical for both the business and the communities in which it
operates. Remember that it is not essential to have benefits in every section of the
matrix. However, if you are struggling with any of the dimensions—for example, there
are no long-term or tangible benefits or if most of the benefits are one-sided—go back
and ask if this is a real partnering opportunity where significant mutual value creation is
possible.

Exhibit 2

Plotting the

benefits

Smart partnering initiatives deliver short-term and long-term benefits to
businesses and communities.

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As you develop a clear array of benefits, a business case, and a story to communicate to all
stakeholders, ask: Do we have a clear understanding of the entire array of benefits and
the associated business case, on which we can focus, assess, and manage the potential
CSR activity? Does the activity focus on fundamental value creation opportunities where
we can really partner with society to realize simultaneous benefits? Are the
opportunities significant, scalable, and supportive of our overall strategic priorities?

Implementing CSR with consistency and
determination

Partnering, as we all know, can be challenging. It requires planning and hard work to
assess potential mutual benefits, establish trust, and build and manage the activities,
internally as well as externally. But is it worth it? Companies at the forefront of such
partnering suggest the answer is a resounding yes, but an additional two principles need
to be followed to ensure success:

Go in with a long-term commitment. Having a positive impact on societal issues such
as living standards is not a “quick fix” project. Leaders who want to partner therefore
need to have a long-term mind-set backed up by solid promises and measurable
commitments and actions. Your initiative must demonstrate added value to both
shareholders and stakeholders over time.

Engage the entire workforce and lead by example. Your workforce can be one of your
greatest assets and beneficiaries when it comes to CSR activities. Increasingly, employees
are choosing to work for organizations whose values resonate with their own. Attracting
and retaining talent will be a growing challenge in the future, so activities that build on
core values and inspire employees are key. Unilever, along with other leaders in smart
partnering, actively engages its employees in such initiatives, seeing improved
motivation, loyalty, and ability to attract and retain talent as a result. Engaging the
workforce starts at the top. Leaders must be prepared to make a personal commitment if
the activities are to realize their full potential.

This is the tough bit of the process: taking action, rather than speaking about it, and
keeping up the momentum even when targets are far in the future. As you plan the
implementation of your chosen initiatives and follow through, ask: Can we build the

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commitment we need across the organization to make this happen—and are we as
leaders willing to lead by example? Have we planned effectively to ensure that
implementation is successful, with resources, milestones, measurement, and
accountability? How can we manage the initiative, focusing on the total array of benefits
sought, not just the short-term financials?

What’s a leader to do?

When it comes to CSR, there are no easy answers on what to do or how to do it. A
company’s interactions and interdependencies with society are many and complex.
However, it is clear that approaching CSR as a feel-good or quick-fix exercise runs the
risk of missing huge opportunities for both the business and society. Taking a step-by-
step approach and following the principles outlined here offers leaders a way to identify
and drive mutual value creation. But it will demand a shift in mind-set: the smart
partnering view is that CSR is about doing good business and creatively addressing
significant issues that face business and society, not simply feeling good. And smart
partnering is not for the faint of heart. It requires greater focus, work, and long-term
commitment than do many standard CSR pet projects, philanthropic activities, and
propaganda campaigns, but the rewards are potentially much greater for both sides.

Continuing the conversation—Authors’ response to reader
comments

In January 2010, the authors reviewed our readers’ comments on their original article and
weighed in on the conversation with new insights and suggestions.

Many thanks to those who read and considered the ideas in our article “Making the most
of corporate social responsibility”—and particularly to those who shared their thoughts

and experience

s on smart partnering. As many rightly pointed out, there has been a
groundswell of interest in CSR, as well as a growing number of powerful examples of
smart partnering. This momentum reflects an improved understanding of the potential
benefits to companies and the increasing maturity of social organizations. Both see the
potential for mutually creating value.

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Our aim was to advance the debate on how to make CSR an integral part of core strategic
thinking rather than a feel-good add-on to it. Where should we take this conversation?
Many of the responses came from academics or from executives responsible for CSR
activities in their firms. While this is natural, it raises the question of how best to engage
(or help these executives to engage) senior business leaders who make strategic choices
and set the direction of companies—particularly the next generation of leaders, who face
more pressing global and societal issues than ever before.

Three challenges
Our work, that of others in this field, and the input of McKinsey Quarterly readers
suggest that there are three basic challenges to making smart partnering a strategic
imperative and opportunity for companies. They also suggest ways to overcome those
challenges.

1. Get CSR on the strategy table

For CSR to achieve its potential, it must focus on key areas of interaction between a firm
and its environment and address value creation activities at the center of the strategic
agenda. The challenge is to get innovative CSR thinking on the table when business
strategies are being explored and decided. How can we make CSR approaches an integral
part of the strategic toolbox for business unit leaders?

First, the potential benefits of CSR, notably smart partnering, need to be demonstrated
in practice if mainstream senior business leaders are to recognize the significant
opportunities it offers. That is why sharing your and our examples is so important. Next,
key CSR executives must be part of core strategy processes. Ultimately, CSR must cease
to be a separate function and become part of the skill set of all business leaders as an
innovative way to solve critical problems.

2. Stretch your strategic ambition for CSR

Several readers spoke of favorably received CSR activities within their organizations in
the realms of philanthropy and partnering. As we suggested, the starting point in any
CSR strategy should be to outline the CSR activities a company already undertakes and
to be clear on their intent and fit within the overall portfolio. Where CSR activities are
primarily philanthropic in nature, they can create a strong base for building a company’s

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reputation and engaging employees. Philanthropy also has other obvious advantages: it
is relatively easy to undertake, can often be set off against tax, and requires less effort and
commitment across the organization.

The questions with this approach are: What benefits are being left on the table, both for
society and the business? What opportunities are being missed? The challenge is to
stretch strategic ambitions for CSR and to move actively toward smart partnering, where
the biggest opportunities are to be found. Stretching means going beyond common
practice. While it is extremely encouraging to see a growing recognition of the benefits of
CSR for building employee engagement, this is only the tip of the iceberg. In the
examples we described, the benefits matrices set out much broader ambitions and arrays
of benefits (short and long term, tangible and intangible) for both society and core
business strategies. How can you stretch your company’s ambitions in a similar way?
Whom do you need to involve, particularly among mainstream business leaders, to gain
new perspectives and challenge conventional wisdom?

3. Reinforce your core values, internally and externally

When corporate visions and strategies are described, there is often a reference to core
values, which shape individual behavior and expectations about how we work and
interact together. But we often limit discussions about values to internal behavior and
actions. As several readers noted, shouldn’t senior executives also be held accountable
for how companies live core values in their interactions with all stakeholders?

Businesses have an impact on societies, and vice versa, so there is a need to recognize the
mutual responsibilities that this entails. Within societies, trust in businesses is low,
public scrutiny of firms is constant, customer choice criteria include the reputations and
values of suppliers, and the next generation of leaders will choose employers whose
values match their own. For businesses, one potential challenge is whether the way they
operate externally—not just internally—will ultimately have an impact on their “license
to operate.” Many companies that approach CSR strategically recognize this symbiosis
and build on strong values, living them internally and externally.

Clearly, we do not advocate smart-partnering initiatives solely because they reinforce a
company’s core values; this is heading into the realm of propaganda. But as you consider
the benefits of a potential initiative, do explicitly consider its impact on your corporate

10/13/2017 Making the most of corporate social responsibility | McKinsey & Company

https://www.mckinsey.com/global-themes/leadership/making-the-most-of-corporate-social-responsibility 11/13

values. If you cannot see a direct link to them, think about how you could create one—for
example, reinforcing values through employee involvement or building additional
external relationships based on the initiative.

Moving forward

What’s your next step? First, engage with key senior business leaders to identify two or
three critical interactions with society. Then for each, map out what you have to offer in
capabilities, knowledge, resources, relationships, and so on that would make a difference
in addressing the challenges you have identified, both for your business and society.
Consider what ideal partners could offer to complement the things you bring to these
challenges. For the Unilever–Kericho example in our original article, a critical interaction
with society involved raw materials (in particular, tea). Mapping the possible
complementary strengths of a partnership could produce a kind of balance sheet.

Unilever tea
business

Ideal partners

Strategic
challenges: Ensur e

sustainable

supplies of cr itical
r aw mater ials;
enhance cor por ate
r eputation

Strategic challenges: Incr ease
income and skills of r ur al far mer s;
ensur e long-ter m sour ce of
income thr ough sustainable
agr icultur e

What we can
offer:

Ongoing, high-

volume

purchases of

What an ideal partner can offer:

Critical mass of farmers and

farming communities prepared

to work together to improve

sustainability and quality of tea

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https://www.mckinsey.com/global-themes/leadership/making-the-most-of-corporate-social-responsibility 12/13

tea—ie,

sustainable

incomes

Agricultural

knowledge and

experience to

help improve

quality of

farming and

crops

Long-term

perspective to

allow time to

realize mutual

benefits

Environmental

commitment

Reputation

and

relationships

to help build

trust among

and attract

reputable

partners—eg,

NGOs,

governments

supplies—ie, communities that

recognize the potential for

mutual benefits and are

committed to realizing them

Local- and regional-government

relationships (and potentially

investments) to support

improvements in sustainable

agriculture and environmental

management

Partners with local energy and

habitat-conservation knowledge

and experience

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https://www.mckinsey.com/global-themes/leadership/making-the-most-of-corporate-social-responsibility 13/13

Use the balance sheets you have developed as a starting point in identifying issues and
discussing them with key internal stakeholders and potential external partners. In a
world of burgeoning technology, we may even one day see some type of CSR “dating
agency” where potential partners could share their balance sheets. As discussions
progress, a balance sheet can also help you and your partners construct the benefits
array and business case for your smart-partnering initiative.

In this sort of process, experienced CSR executives can really start to move CSR onto the
strategic agenda by engaging executives on real business challenges. That means helping
these executives to identify the opportunities, share concrete examples, think more
broadly about solutions, and move forward.

Smart partnering is good business. Our readers’ experiences and ideas confirm that
momentum is building toward a time when CSR will be absorbed into core strategy and
business activities rather than treated as an orphan in need of a special label. With your
help, this momentum will build. Share your experiences, shape your activity portfolios,
develop your balance sheets and benefits matrices, and challenge the business
community to keep changing mind-sets for the better.

1. V. Kasturi Rangan and Rohithari Rajan, “Unilever in India: Hindustan Lever’s Project Shakti,”

Harvard Business School case 9-505-056, June 27, 2007.

About the author(s)

Thomas Malnight is a professor of strategy and general management at the

International Institute for Management Development (IMD), in Lausanne, Switzerland,

where Tracey Keys is a program manager. Kees van der Graaf is Executive-in-Residence

at IMD, following his retirement from the board of Unilever, where he was also president

of the European business.

MBA-5110: Week 2 Grading Rubrics

Week 2 – Assignment 1: Explore Managing in a Global Context

Criteria

Content (5 Points) Points

1 Assignment includes a brief introduction to the organization and

including key features of the organization’s global competitive strategy

and any trending topics.

2 There is sufficient discussion from your point of view, describing

management challenges as related to multicultural geographically

distributed teams, communication strategies, handling cross-cultural

issues and technology enhancements.

Organization (2 Points)

1 Organized and presented in a clear manner. Included a minimum of

3 scholarly references, with appropriate APA formatting applied to

citations and paraphrasing; 3-4 pages in length.

Total 7

Week 2 – Assignment 2: Assessing Global Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR)

Criteria

Content (3 Points) Points

1 Assignment includes the selection of two CSR activities that you

believe are significant and the matrix is completed.

Organization (N/A)

Total 3

Journal of World Business 51 (2016) 115–126

From cross-cultural management to global leadership:
Evolution and adaptation

Allan Bird a,*, Mark E. Mendenhall b

a D’Amore-McKim School of Business, Northeastern University, 313a Hayden Hall, 360 Huntington Avenue, Boston, MA 02115, United States
b College of Business, University of Tennessee, Chattanooga, 406 FA Fletcher Building, 615 McCallie Avenue, Chattanooga, TN 37403, United States

A R T I C L E I N F O

Article history:

Available online 29 October 2015

Keywords:

Global leadership

Cross-cultural management

Comparative management

A B S T R A C T

We provide a quasi-historical review of how the field of global leadership evolved. In doing so, we

conceptually map an overall trajectory of the field of global leadership, discussing the nature of its origins in

the field of cross-cultural management. We trace evolutionary trends in the field of cross-cultural

management from 1960 to the present, and explore how these trends influenced the formation of the global

leadership literature. After reviewing the primary domains of the global leadership field, we conclude with

a discussion of the implications of our analysis for future research and managerial practice.

Contents lists available at ScienceDirect

Journal of World Business

j o u r n a l h o m e p a g e : w w w . e l s e v i e r . c o m / l o c a t e / j w b

1. Introduction

The past fifty years of international business research has seen an
extraordinary evolution in our awareness and understanding of
cross-cultural management. As consciousness of the challenges and
rewards of managing across national and cultural boundaries has
grown, the nature of the global business context has also evolved. In
this article we provide a quasi-historical review of the field of global
leadership, tracing its initial roots in the fields of international,
comparative, and cross-cultural management. In doing so, we
conceptually map an overall trajectory of the field of global
leadership as well as delineate its current terrain. Our intent is not
to provide a comprehensive treatment of the global leadership field
nor of the international, comparative, and cross-cultural manage-
ment literatures, which would be beyond the scope of this paper and
would require book-length treatments. Rather the emphasis will be
on how a changing context and evolving phenomena brought us to
where we are in the study of global leadership.

Before going further, we offer an additional clarification. From
inception there has been ambiguity and dissent over the terminolo-
gy that management scholars use when discussing management
outside a purely domestic context. In general, ‘‘international
management’’ is used as the broadest classification, incorporating
international strategy, international human resources, and all other
aspects of managing internationally and at all levels of analysis.

* Corresponding author.

E-mail addresses: a.bird@neu.edu (A. Bird), Mark-Mendenhall@utc.edu

(M.E. Mendenhall).

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jwb.2015.10.005

‘‘Cross-cultural management’’ has generally referred to accommo-
dating differences in cultural practices when managing outside of
one’s home country and it often takes a comparative perspective. In
this article, we use both of these terms, although when using
‘‘international management’’ we are most often referring to the
broader field while when using ‘‘Cross-cultural management’’ we
are mostly referencing a more specific subset of that field.

We next offer an overview of precursors to the advent of global
leadership divided into four eras or ‘‘stages’’ and review how the
cross-cultural management literature generally approached the
study of leadership in each stage, and discuss how various research
streams from these stages combined to give birth to the field of
global leadership. We then provide an overview of the global
leadership literature, and finally conclude our analysis with a
discussion of its implications for future research and practice.

2. A brief history of global leadership

We begin with a brief history of cross-cultural management
research viewed from the vantage point of a focus on global
leadership. Given the brevity of this historical overview, it
necessarily paints a picture that can be misleading in its
presentation of an orderly path of development. The reality is
significantly messier in terms of digressive exploratory tangents,
detours into theoretical dead-ends and intractable disagreements
over conceptual terms and organizing frameworks. Nevertheless,
we contend that there is a discernible, though meandering, path of
development that results in a coherent field of scholarly

inquiry

into a phenomenon called global leadership that has generated the

http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.1016/j.jwb.2015.10.005&domain=pdf

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jwb.2015.10.005

mailto:a.bird@neu.edu

mailto:Mark-Mendenhall@utc.edu

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/journal/10909516

www.elsevier.com/locate/jwb

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jwb.2015.10.005

A. Bird, M.E. Mendenhall / Journal of World Business 51 (2016) 115–126116

attention of numerous scholars. This is evidenced by recent special
journal issues devoted to the construct by Journal of World Business
(Steers, Sanchez-Runde, & Nardon, 2012), Organizational Dynamics
(Executive Summaries, 2013), and European Journal of International
Management (Maznevski, Stahl, & Mendenhall, 2013) as well as the
fifteen year existence of an annual edited book series that has now
shifted to journal status: Advances in Global Leadership.

2.1. Positioning cross-cultural management research as a field of

inquiry

After World War II, management and organizational behavior
blossomed as fields of research in academe. Many younger scholars
assume that cross-cultural management followed only after these
fields were well established, but that is not the case. The field of
cross-cultural management arose simultaneously to the general
fields of management and organizational behavior. As Table 1
indicates, journals with a distinct focus on the study of
management and organizational behavior in international con-
texts were established simultaneously to mainstream manage-
ment journals and have continued that trend to the present.
Scholarly journals in psychology trace back to the early 1900s, but
journals focused specifically on organizational psychology and the
management of organizations did not appear until the 1950s. It is
noteworthy that the Journal of International Business Studies and
Thunderbird International Business Review published their first
volumes just three years after the appearance of Administrative
Science Quarterly and the Academy of Management Journal. Also
noteworthy is that the Journal of World Business began publication
ten years ahead of the Academy of Management Review and
fourteen years ahead of the Journal of Organizational Behavior. As
long as there has been scholarly interest in management, there has
been concomitant interest in cross-cultural management. Table 1

Table 1
Founding dates of selected management and international management journals.

Management journal Founding date

Psychological Bulletin 1904

Journal of Applied Psychology 1917

Human Relations 1947

Personnel Psychology 1948

Administrative Science Quarterly 1956

Academy of Management Journal 1958

Journal of International Business Studiesa 1959

Thunderbird International Business Review 1959

Management International Review 1960

Journal of Management Studies 1963

(Columbia) Journal of World Business 1965
Asia Pacific Journal of Human Resources 1966

Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology 1970

International Studies of Management & Organization 1971

Organizational Dynamics 1972

International Journal of Intercultural Relations 1972

Journal of Management 1975

Academy of Management Review 1976

Journal of Organizational Behavior 1979

Strategic Management Journal 1980

Asia Pacific Journal of Management 1983

International Journal of Human Resource Management 1990

Leadership Quarterly 1990

Human Resource Management Journal 1990

Organization Science 1990

British Journal of Management 1990

International Business Review 1992

Cross Cultural Management: An International Journal 1994

Journal of International Management 1995

Advances in Global Leadership 1999

International Journal of Cross Cultural Management 2001

European Journal of International Management 2006

Journal of Global Mobility 2013

a Italics denote international management journals.

also illustrates the rise of cross-cultural management research
through the proliferation of journals focused on this field over
time.

Early work in cross-cultural management often consisted of
identifying a phenomenon or theory of interest and asking, ‘‘Is this
phenomenon the same in another country?’’ or ‘‘Does this theory
apply in another culture?’’ Typical of these types of studies were
Herzberg’s studies of motivation in Finnish workers (1965) and job
attitudes among Soviet workers (1965).

Reflecting the developmental state of management and
organizational behavior theorizing at the time, many of these
studies lacked sophistication in their approach to exploring
differences. This situation was exacerbated by a lack of under-
standing of the complex ways in which cultures might vary as well
as in the influences of culture across myriad norms, processes and
ways of thinking. Nevertheless, there was a concerted effort to
identify and address the challenges of cross-cultural research. By
the early 1960s, volumes on cross-cultural methodology had
already begun to appear (Moore, 1961).

This was also a period in which the hegemony of the U.S.
economy led many scholars to consider American management
approaches as the pinnacle to which managers and organizations
in other countries should aspire. Also common at this time was a
widely held view of industrialization imposing a set of technologi-
cal imperatives that would lead all nations to a common form of
manufacturing and management. This perspective, later referred
to as the ‘‘technological imperative’’ (Tassey, 2007) was presumed
to compel a convergence toward those behaviors that were most
efficient. Consequently, it was not uncommon to find scholars who
were focused on identifying universal management principles
(Likert, 1963) or testing the applicability of American theories in
other cultures (Nagandhi & Estafan, 1965; Newman, 1970).

2.2. 1960–1980: the rise of international

From 1960 to 1980 the field of cross-cultural management
focused primarily on the study of organizational behavior and
management systems with a view of countries other than the U.S.
as having cultural and organizational systems that were viewed as
‘‘foreign’’ or ‘‘other’’ in nature. Following World War II, large,
primarily American, firms began to look to overseas markets to
enhance revenue, and much attention was focused in the literature
on uncovering how local cultural, legal, business, and political
systems operated. Dominant organizational structuring was
reflected in ‘‘international division’’ and ‘‘foreign subsidiary’’
configurations with a heavy focus on the control function of
expatriate managers sent from headquarters and the home
country to supervise and train local managers. There was
recognition of difference, but also an implicit focus on identifying
and emphasizing those values and practices that home and host
country have in common. Knowledge transfer was conceived as
being largely uni-directional in sequence: from headquarters to
subsidiary and from home country to host country.

Unicultural and comparative research during this period was
largely respectful of difference, but the undertone was one of
dominance in theoretical perspective and of identifying how best
to extend North American management techniques. A swell of
research began that focused on how to help expatriates adjust
culturally to the host culture, with little emphasis on assisting local
employees in adjusting to expatriates and the headquarter/home
country culture.

Toward the end of this period, with Europe fully recovered from
WWII and Japan firmly established as not only a major exporter,
but also a growing presence around the world, two shifts took
place. First, American manufacturing found itself increasingly
uncompetitive in foreign markets, leading to a loss in confidence in

A. Bird, M.E. Mendenhall / Journal of World Business 51 (2016) 115–126 117

American manufacturing and management techniques. Simulta-
neously, Japanese manufacturing and management techniques
became a source of increasing interest. Management scholars
developed similar interests in Japanese concepts and models
(Mendenhall & Oddou, 1986; Ouchi, 1981). Quality control circles,
kaizen, kamban, and just-in-time became common-place terms.
Second, multinational companies found themselves doing busi-
ness in more than a handful of countries and the rise of computers
and telecommunications made it possible to link headquarters and
subsidiaries in ways that facilitated greater interdependence.
These developments moved culture to the front and center.

2.3. 1980–2000: the rise of culture

In the 1980–2000 time period scholars’ foci shifted in tandem with
the evolution of the onset of ‘‘multi-domestic,’’ ‘‘regional,’’ and
‘‘matrix’’ organizational structures emerging in MNCs. These organi-
zational restructurings increased the need for expatriate managers to
expand their skill sets in order to operate effectively in their
responsibilities by developing effective working and social relation-
ships with host-national subordinates. The age of the ‘‘detached
expatriate’’ manager ended, and the age of the ‘‘engaged-expatriate
manager’’ ensued. A plethora of research studies on expatriate
effectiveness occurred in response to this shift in MNCs’ priorities.

As globalization transformed the nature of the milieu in which
managers operated in the 1990s, organizational structuring in
MNCs retained much of their same designs on paper, but in reality
became global and virtual in nature, and reflected what Bartlett
and Ghoshal (1992) had conceived in the late 1990s – the advent of
the transnational organization. Even if MNCs’ organizational
designs did not reflect the transnational organization on paper,
for many global managers the nature of their work became
essentially transnational in fact. The context of globalization, with
its inherent elements of interdependency, multiplicity, flux and
complexity (Lane, Maznevski, & Mendenhall, 2004) required
global managers to confront the necessity of adopting new global
leadership skills beyond those that were required to be an effective
expatriate manager.

With these shifts in organizational structure and process came
increasing need for managers to loosen managerial control and
rely more extensively on shared values. This, in turn, led to an
emphasis on greater cultural awareness. Theories that focused on
values or other core orientations that were universal in nature, but
were manifested differently across cultures, existed before
1980 as well (Hall, 1966; Kluckhohn & Strodtbeck, 1961).
However, as noted, the emergence of Hofstede’s (1984) seminal
work, Culture’s Consequences, triggered a massive focus on
conducting comparative studies in management and organiza-
tional behavior, with a host of these ensuing studies conducted in
the area of comparative leadership. Though not commonly
employed by anthropologists in the study of cultural systems,
values orientations and their attendant surveys provided manage-
ment scholars with a practical means of studying cultural variation.
Moreover, findings could be easily translated into actionable
recommendations for managers. The increased use of Hofstede’s
findings and his survey gave rise to several other frameworks in this
genre (e.g., Schwartz, 1992; Trompenaars & Hampden-Turner,
1998). Simultaneously, more research emerged in the 1980s, with a
heavy focus on expatriation and cross-cultural adjustment.

Much of the types of research of this second time period (1980–
2000) continue to the present as well; however, we believe a clear
transition has taken place, not just in the leadership realm, but in
cross-cultural management and all the other sub-fields of
international management toward research that often implicitly
and more often explicitly studies phenomena from a global
contextual orientation.

2.4. 2000-present: the rise of global

The current period, into which we transitioned sometime
around the start of the 21st century is one that is global in focus.
Leaders now find themselves leading global teams (Zander,
Mockaitis, & Butler, 2012), global projects, and global operations
often from the countries of their birth. They may not be expatriates,
but nevertheless they are global leaders. Or, if they are expatriates,
they may be leading multiple global teams and organizational
divisions outside of the region in which they are based. In essence,
they can be called on to lead ‘‘anyone, anywhere, at any time.’’ The
global category does not necessitate global leaders putting aside
the skills they have gained that were identified in findings from
cross-cultural management research. Rather, it requires adding to
that repertoire of knowledge and skills. For example, in terms of
cultural acumen, it requires enhanced understanding of contex-
tualization in cultural systems and how negotiated cultures
emerge and should be managed and led within global organiza-
tional systems, multicultural contexts, and global M&As (Salk &
Brannen, 2000). This is reflected particularly in the heavy emphasis
on boundary spanning (Beechler, Sondergaard, Miller, & Bird,
2004) in which global leaders engage. It is noteworthy that
boundary spanning is the most frequently identified activity of
global leaders in research findings, and yet does not receive
mention in Yukl’s (2012) comprehensive leadership volume until
the publication of the 8th edition.

3. Cross-cultural management: unicultural, comparative, and
intercultural

We now explore how cross-cultural management research
generally approached the study of leadership-related issues across
the time periods discussed above. In her review of the extant cross-
cultural management research published in leading management
journals from 1971 to 1980, Adler (1983) distinguished between
three types or categories of cross-cultural management research:
unicultural, comparative, and intercultural. Unicultural research
focused on organizational management within a single country;
for example, organizational commitment in German organizations.
Comparative research examined organizational management in
two or more countries and delineated comparisons between them;
for example, conflict resolution norms in Mexico, India and Turkey.
Finally, intercultural research focused on the interaction between
or among organizational members from two or more countries; for
example, communication effectiveness between Danish expatriate
managers and Filipino employees in the Philippines.

Adler (1983) found that unicultural articles were the most
common, comprising 48 percent of all cross-cultural organization-
al behavior articles she reviewed. Comparative articles comprised
30 percent of the extant research, and intercultural articles, at
22 percent, were less than half that of the unicultural category. All
together, they comprised just 3.6 percent of 11,219 articles
published in 24 leading (primarily North American-based)
management journals.

3.1. Unicultural

Unicultural studies are founded on anthropological and
sociological paradigmatic lenses, with seminal examples being
Abegglen’s (1958) work, The Japanese Factory, Richman’s (1965)
volume on Russian management or McMillan’s (1965) writing on
industrial leaders in Latin America. More recent examples of
scholarship in the unicultural category are Puffer and various co-
authors’ investigation of work and organizational processes in
Russia (1994; McCarthy, Puffer, & Shekshnia, 1993; Puffer &
McCarthy, 2001, 2003) and Mbigi and Maree’s writings on African

A. Bird, M.E. Mendenhall / Journal of World Business 51 (2016) 115–126118

management (1995). In terms of leadership, scholars working from
a Unicultural focus have provided the field with in-depth,
sophisticated, and nuanced knowledge of the dynamics of
country-specific and culture-specific leadership processes –
and other systems, processes and behaviors that relate directly
to leadership effectiveness (e.g., conflict resolution, motivation,
etc.). This research has been a significant benefit also to
practicing managers who have found themselves working
abroad, and confronted with leadership processes that differ
markedly from their own. For example, expatriates who have
been able to find these scholarly works and study them have
greatly benefited at personal and professional levels from this
research in assisting them to more effectively live and work in
new cultures.

3.2. Comparative

Comparative studies are based on psychological and sociologi-
cal perspectives that often use theories and frameworks of culture
to explore these perspectives. Appearing on the horizon shortly
around the same time as the publication of Adler’s (1983) article,
Geert Hofstede’s (1984) seminal Culture’s Consequences, had a
dramatic and permanent impact on the field of international
management, shifting the focus of many international manage-
ment researchers to the Comparative category from 1981 to the
present. Scholars working in this dimension of international
management often utilize the cultural models of Kluckhohn and
Strodtbeck (1961), Triandis (1995), Hall (1966, 1973), Trompe-
naars and Hampden-Turner (1998), Schwartz (1992), and the
GLOBE project (House, Mansour, Hanges, & Dorfman, 2002) as the
conceptual foundations for their research.

One of the unanticipated side-effects of the worthwhile focus
on the utilization of the above cultural models for conducting
research in multi-nation contexts has been a tendency to
emphasize a singular focus on culture as an explanatory
framework to the exclusion of other contextual variables on
cross-cultural management phenomena. Concurrent with Hofste-
de’s seminal work, Child (1981) argued for employing multiple
lenses, noting that in addition to culture there were other
contingencies that also gave rise to variations in managerial
behavior. However, for many scholars comparative management
essentially became synonymous with the term, ‘‘cross-cultural
management.’’

Arguing against the ‘‘comparative management equals cross-
cultural management’’ paradigm were a small cadre of scholars
who focused on a more complex view of culture. Osland and Bird
(2000), for example, cautioned that the use of cultural values
frameworks tended toward the formation of sophisticated stereo-
typing processes that discouraged more complex conceptualiza-
tions of culture characterized by a greater attention to multiple
factors. In a similar vein, Brannen (2004) and Brannen and Salk
(2000) emphasized the necessity of multiple cultures and
contextualization in order to better understand the emergence
of ‘‘negotiated cultures’’ created by managers and subordinates in
the multicultural contexts of multinational subsidiary operations
and in multinational mergers and acquisitions.

Comparative research has generated a massive amount of
journal publications since the 1980s, which in turn has been a
significant catalyst for the field’s ongoing progression and health.
In terms of leadership, scholars working from a comparative focus
have generated tremendous amounts of knowledge regarding the
multiplicity of differences that exist between national and cultural
leadership systems and why those differences exist. For example,
Wanasika, Howell, Littrell, and Dorfman (2011), explore leadership
across Sub-Saharan Africa, while Takahashi, Ishikawa, and Kanai
(2012) explore leadership in Japan, China, Indonesia and Thailand.

3.3. Intercultural

Intercultural research focuses extensively on how people who
differ culturally from one another successfully or unsuccessfully
bridge the cultural differences associated with management and
leadership practices delineated by comparative research studies.
This category of international management research has been
heavily influenced by theories from the fields of social psychology,
inter-cultural communication, and cross-cultural psychology.
Additionally, scholars working in this area often combine cultural
frameworks routinely used in comparative research with theories
from the aforementioned fields to attempt to better understand
the dynamics of interpersonal exchange between people who are
culturally different from one another. Some scholars came to view
the term, ‘‘cross-cultural management’’ as embodying research
that was both of the comparative-category and also the
intercultural category, thus expanding the conceptual tent of
cross-cultural management.

The burgeoning expatriate literature is mostly housed within
the intercultural category, and the global leadership field has
distinct roots in this category, which we will subsequently discuss;
however, before we explore this causal connection, it is important
to first introduce another foundational cause – perhaps the
primary causal factor – to the coming forth of global leadership as a
distinct field of study.

3.4. Global: a fourth category of cross-cultural management research

In the 1990s, leaders of organizations found themselves
crossing borders across all dimensions of business and government
more rapidly, more constantly, and more frequently than they had
in previous decades. Global supply chains became the norm. Global
markets became the norm. Immediate, real-time global communi-
cation with all stakeholders became the norm. Global knowledge
sharing became the norm. Global finance systems became the norm.
Global competitors became more ubiquitous and dangerous. Global
careers became increasingly important. Social media, branding,
marketing, selling, and communication became the norm. Some-
thing was changing – the world of business seemed less
‘‘international’’ in nature and more, somehow, ‘‘global’’ in nature.
For many businesspeople and scholars the term, ‘‘global’’ replaced
‘‘international’’ as the adjective commonly used to describe
organizational and leadership strategies, thinking, and behavior.

What had changed in the environment from the 1980s to the
1990s was difficult to characterize. Often it was simply called
‘‘globalization’’ (Lane et al., 2004). Previously, ‘‘international’’ had
to do with working with people from other countries, sometimes
simultaneously and sometimes unilaterally, but at the turn of the
21st century those working relationships evolved. Managers and
leaders were now working with ever-present, ongoing interactions
between all these people from multiple countries between each
other in the present – in other words, the world seemed less linear
and now more non-linear in nature.

As a result, organizational leaders and consultants such as
Rhinesmith (1992), Brake (1997), Rosen, Digh, Singer, and Philips
(2000) and Goldsmith, Govindarajan, Kaye, and Vicere (2003)
recognized that firms needed more than country or area specialists
as leaders to work across borders; they realized that they needed
‘‘global leaders’’ – leaders who could thrive in a world that
reflected this new reality of real-time, multiple spanning of
technological, financial, cultural, organizational, stakeholder, and
political boundaries. Thus, we add a new category to the three that
Adler (1983) constructed for categorizing cross-cultural manage-
ment research, that of Global.

As scholars began to explore leadership in a global context they
tended to do so with implicit assumptions that everyone in the

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field shared their understanding of what they meant when they
used the term, ‘‘global’’ as a construct. Just as there is widespread
disagreement in the general leadership field about the exact nature
and definition of the construct, ‘‘leadership,’’ a similar situation
exists in terms of scholars who conduct research in the Global
category: as yet, there is no widespread, common agreement
among scholars as to what the nature of ‘‘global’’ entails. Scholars
have begun to work on delineating the variables inherent in the
‘‘global’’ construct and preliminary construct definitions and
typologies have been established (Mendenhall, Reiche, Bird, &
Osland, 2012), but these frameworks will no doubt be refined
across time, and likely be further refined in the future as more
scholars work to better understand the dynamics of the context in
which leaders work in the 21st century.

4. The origins of global leadership research

An understanding of global leadership as a research stream
requires recognition that several tributaries flowed into its
creation, and continue to feed its vitality. In addition to the
demands of the global construct discussed in the above section, we
trace the course of each of those streams, discussing distinctive
features and contributions. The foundation for global leadership
research is multifaceted and reflects a composite of contributions
from the expatriate, intercultural communication, comparative
leadership and global management research streams. Although not
directly focused on the challenge of leading in a global context,
each stream provided perspectives useful in thinking about
attributes, skills and roles involved in leading globally and were
incorporated by scholars in their theorizing about, and empirical
approaches toward global leadership.

4.1. Stream one: expatriation

Employees sent from their home country to work for an
extended period of time (typically anywhere from six months to
five years) are commonly referred to as expatriates (Aycan &
Kanungo, 2002). From the mid-1960s forward, with the expansion
of primarily North American and European businesses outside
their home markets, expatriate managers represented emergent
global managers. Over time employees on such assignments
expanded to include employee flows not just from home country
parent to host country subsidiary, but also from subsidiary to
headquarters and from one business unit to another across
national boundaries (Collings, Scullion, & Morley, 2007) as well
as to self-initiated expatriates who cross borders in pursuit of
international positions (Inkson, Arthur, Pringle, & Barry, 1997).
Expatriate work inherently involves working across national and
cultural boundaries. Consequently the experiences of expatriates –
their work, cultural adjustment, and growth – were an obvious
foundation on which to build an understanding of global leaders.

4.1.1. Selection

Essential to any consideration of expatriates is the decision of
who to select. Historically companies have centered their selection
criteria on technical competence, past domestic performance and
willingness to accept the assignment (Anderson, 2005; Graf, 2004;
Mendenhall, Kuhlmann, Stahl, & Osland, 2002). Originally Miller
(1975) and subsequently Black, Morrison, and Gregersen (1999)
found prior domestic performance was a poor predictor of
expatriate performance. Indeed, Ruben (1989) found that char-
acteristics associated with high performance in North American
settings – passion for success, risk-taking, assertiveness – were
often liabilities in global situations. Tung and Varma (2008) found
that willingness to live and work in a new culture was essential,
but concluded it was a threshold criterion for taking on an

assignment, not a predictor of success. Several studies have
concluded that technical skill is a necessary, but not sufficient
criteria for superior expatriate performance (Tung, 1981; Varma,
Stroh, & Schmitt, 2002).

Researchers focusing on personality characteristics have been
somewhat more successful in identifying characteristics predictive
of superior performance. Research on the Five Factor Model of
personality (Costa & McCrae, 1992) identified emotional stability,
extraversion, openness and agreeableness as factors influencing
successful adjustment and performance (Shaffer, Harrison, Gre-
gersen, Black, & Ferzandi, 2006). Caligiuri and Di Santo (2001) also
found support for a lack of ethnocentrism as being positively
associated with adjustment. In their meta-analysis of 30 studies of
expatriate performance, Mol, Born, Willemsen, and Van Der Molen
(2005) found that four of the Big Five (the factor, Openness, was not
a predictor) along with cultural sensitivity and local language
ability were good predictors of performance. One criticism of the
use of Five Factor traits for selection is that they are too broad in
their conceptualization. Bird, Mendenhall, Stevens, and Oddou
(2010) have argued that personality characteristics more narrowly
defined are appropriate. In a study of nearly 400 Japanese
expatriates, Furuya, Stevens, Bird, Oddou, and Mendenhall
(2009) found that measures of personality characteristics associ-
ated with intercultural competence were predictive of expatriate
performance as well as post-repatriation performance.

4.1.2. Adjustment

Research on expatriates has focused primarily in the area of
expatriate adjustment. Early studies of adjustment were done on
military personnel and Peace Corps volunteers and other
governmental employees in the 1960s and 1970s, with more
focus on business expatriates beginning in the 1980s with a
significant increase from the 1990s to the present. The most
prominent theory of expatriate adjustment produced in the
international management literature was created by Black,
Mendenhall, and Oddou (1991) wherein they laid out a compre-
hensive framework of international adjustment that focused on
three types of adjustment – work adjustment (adjusting to new
work roles, responsibilities, contexts, etc.), interaction adjustment
(adjusting to cultural differences in norms and modes of interaction)
and general adjustment (adjusting to the broader aspects of living
and working in another country). Their theory argued that before
expatriation there is a phase of ‘‘anticipatory adjustment’’ that is
moderated by various individual and organization variables, which
in turn influences ‘‘in-country adjustment,’’ which in turn is
moderated by the following categories of variables: individual,
job, organization culture, organization socialization, and non-work.
Each of these categories in turn were hypothesized to directly
influence the three types of adjustment in specified ways. In a review
of 66 studies on international adjustment conducted over 25 years,
Bhaskar-Srinivas, Harrison, Shaffer, and Luk (2005) found strong
empirical support for the Black-Mendenhall-Oddou model. The
field is rife with other theories of expatriate adjustment as well
(for a review see: Takeuchi, 2010) and additionally many
atheoretical, empirical studies that investigate the relationship
of a range of variables to a variety of aspects of expatriate
adjustment.

Closely tied to adjustment is the question of expatriate
effectiveness. Defining effectiveness in an expatriate context has
proven to be particularly challenging given a complex context that
usually includes multiple stakeholders with competing demands,
coordination over space and time and the ambiguity of working in
uncertain or unfamiliar settings (Harrison, Shaffer, & Bhaskar-
Shrinivas, 2004). Even when metrics for determining effectiveness
have been established, Shaffer et al. (2006) note that systems to
actually track performance are ineffective or non-existent. All in

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all, Stroh, Black, Mendenhall, and Gregersen (2004) found that two
broad facets of expatriate performance – managing tasks and
managing relationships – were particularly important to expatri-
ate effectiveness, however this area of the expatriation literature is
under-researched and in need of more attention from scholars
working in the field.

4.1.3. Transformation

The expatriate experience has also been viewed as having
powerful transformative potential. Adler’s (1975) model of
expatriate adjustment is best viewed as one of the first to
recognize transformation as the underlying phenomenon. His
model entails five phases: contact with the other culture,
disintegration, reintegration, autonomy, and independence. Twen-
ty years later Osland (1995) invoked Campbell’s metaphor of the
‘‘hero’s journey’’ to describe the transformative experience of
expatriation. She identified four types of changes that her sample
of American expatriates underwent. Positive changes in self were
reflected in increases in open-mindedness, adaptability, sensitivi-
ty, tolerance, patience, respectfulness, maturity, confidence,
independence and competitiveness. She also found decreases in
impulsiveness. Changes in attitude included acquiring a greater
appreciation of cultural differences, increased appreciation of one’s
own good fortunes, broader perspective about the world, a deeper
appreciation of life in general and a different attitude toward work
and the place that work occupied in one’s life. Improved work skills
focused on greater interpersonal sensitivity and dexterity as well
as communication skills, particularly listening skills. There was
also a greater appreciation of power dynamics and how to exercise
power and more flexible managerial style. Increased knowledge
related not only to business but encompassed a wide range of
topics spanning social, political and economic matters.

Recent work (Herman & Zaccaro, 2014) has sought to unpack
the impact of transformation by examining changes in self-concept
and how global work experiences and role demands lead to a
complexification of self-identity that enables an adaptive response
to the complexities inherent in global leader work roles. Though
not rising to the level of transformation, expatriates experience
increases in global knowledge (Furuya et al., 2009), increases
professional contacts globally, and deeper understanding of a
company’s operations and business structure as well as enhanced
awareness of expatriates’ knowledge limitations (Caligiuri & Di
Santo, 2001.

4.2. Stream two: intercultural communication

Because so much of what global leaders do involves communi-
cating across differences, a second stream of inquiry influencing
global leadership research comes from the study of intercultural
communication. Within the intercultural communication disci-
pline, the study of intercultural communication competence has
focused on behaviors associated with effectiveness. Defined as ‘‘the
ability to effectively and appropriately execute communication
behaviors that negotiate each other’s cultural identity or identities
in a culturally diverse environment’’ (Chen & Starosta, 1998: 28),
this stream of research directly applies to the study of global
leadership. Gudykunst (1994) concludes that the following skills
are most important in intercultural competence: mindfulness,
cognitive flexibility, behavioral flexibility, tolerance of ambiguity
and cross-cultural empathy.

Mindfulness refers to a process of thinking that is open to new
information, new categories, and multiple perspectives (Langer,
1992). To be mindful is to pay attention to internal assumptions,
cognitions and emotions of oneself and of the person with whom
one is communicating. Cognitive flexibility has been more widely
framed as cognitive complexity in the international business

literature (Levy, Beechler, Taylor, & Boyacigiller, 2007) and is
usually paired with cosmopolitanism as a dimension of global
mindset (Rhinesmith, 1992). It involves the ability to weigh
multiple perspectives and to consider a variety of frameworks and
schemas in making sense of situations. Behavioral flexibility, also
often referred to as adaptability or flexibility, entails the skill of
executing situationally appropriate behavior (Bird, 2013). Budner
(1962: 29) defined tolerance of ambiguity as ‘‘the tendency to
perceive ambiguous situations as desirable.’’ Focusing specifically on
intercultural tolerance of ambiguity, Herman, Stevens, Bird, Men-
denhall, and Oddou (2010) found a four-dimensional factor structure:
valuing diverse others, coping with change, dealing with unfamiliar
situations, and managing conflicting perspectives. Finally, cross-
cultural empathy is defined by Bennett (1993) as being able to
experience some aspect of reality different from one’s own culture.

In addition to being a set of skills, intercultural communication
competence can also be seen as a process. Considered in this way,
research has focused on communication styles – e.g., high- versus low-
context, direct vs. indirect, expressive vs. restrained (Hall, 1973),
cognitive styles (Nisbett, 2003; Riding & Rayner, 2000), conflict
resolution styles (Ting-Toomey & Oetzel, 2001), interaction rituals
(Ting-Toomey, 1994), nonverbal communication (Hall & Knapp,
2013), and value orientations (Hofstede, 1984; Kluckhohn &
Strodtbeck, 1961; Schwartz, 1992; Trompenaars & Hampden-Turner,
1998). Each of these aspects from the field of intercultural
communication has had an influence on how global leadership
scholars view effective communication in global leadership processes.

4.3. Stream three: comparative leadership

Comparative studies of leadership involving two or more
cultures extend back at least as far as Fiedler’s (1967) field studies
and his conclusion that culture has an effect on group interaction
thereby affecting leader behavior. Following the rise of culture-
focused research with Hofstede, comparative studies of leadership
invoking cultural value dimensions (Fiske, 1992; Hall & Hall, 1990;
Hofstede, 1984; Kluckhohn & Strodtbeck, 1961; Schwartz, 1992;
Trompenaars & Hampden-Turner, 1998) increased significantly.
The second edition of Hofstede’s (2003) groundbreaking volume
alone identifies more than 2000 comparative studies employing
his set of values orientations.

Comparative leadership studies have identified a wide range of
differences in leader and follower behavior between one or more
cultures. For example, followers in collectivist cultures are more
likely than followers in individualistic cultures to identify with
their leaders and their organizations (Earley, 1989; Triandis, 1995).
Leaders in high power distance cultures are more likely to be
autocratic than their counterparts in low power distance cultures
(Adsit, London, Crom, & Jones, 1997).

Comparative leadership studies have also taken a leadership-
theory based approach, seeking to understand the viability or
applicability of specific theories in differing cultural context. For
example, aspects of participative leadership were found to be less
effective in high power distance cultures (Newman & Nollen, 1996;
Welsh, Luthans, & Sommer, 1993). Kirkman, Chen, Farh, Chen, and
Lowe (2009) found a positive relationship between followers’
power distance and shared perceptions of transformational
leadership as it related to procedural justice. Den Hartog et al.
(1999) found that some elements of transformational and
charismatic leadership – motivational, encouraging, communica-
tive, trustworthy, dynamic, positive and confidence-building –
were common across a wide range of cultures, leading to
speculation that these may be universally applicable. Dickson,
Castaño, Magomaeva, & Den Hartog (2012) as well as Aycan (2008)
provide two reviews of the cross-cultural and comparative
leadership literature.

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A major contribution of the GLOBE study was the delineation of
preferred leader attributes that were found to vary or be consistent
across cultures (Den Hartog et al., 1999). Increasingly similar
business practices, technology, education-levels as well as
expanding interdependent business activities suggest the
likelihood of increasing convergence in preferred leader
attributes. GLOBE researchers have, in recent years, shifted
their attention away from comparative leadership, focusing
more directly on global leadership. For example, House, Javidan,
Dorfman, and De Luque (2006) propose that global mindset,
tolerance of ambiguity, flexibility and cultural adaptability are
essential qualities for effective global leadership. More recent
work (Dorfman, Javidan, Hanges, Dastmalchian, & House, 2012)
has focused on extending GLOBE data to a broader understand-
ing of global leader attributes.

The contribution of comparative leadership research has been
to map the terrain of leadership styles in individual countries as
well as to demonstrate how national leadership attributes
converge or diverge from leadership attributes found in other
countries. Additionally, and particularly with regard to Project
GLOBE, these studies have identified universally acceptable and
unacceptable traits. Such findings are valuable to corporations in
selecting individuals for international leadership assignments in
terms of fit with host country expectations and preferences.
Moreover, leaders working across multiple cultures can better
understand what types of adjustments may be required.

4.4. Stream four: global management

Because it involves cross-border responsibility and often
requires a balancing of competing, sometime contradictory,
demands across multiple units in different regions and countries,
research on global managers is often couched in terms of a contrast
to domestic managers. At the same time, scholars have also argued
that managing in a global context entails more than is found in the
typical expatriate assignment of working in a single foreign
country (Adler & Bartholomew, 1992).

A common starting point for examining managerial roles is
Mintzberg’s (1973) pioneering effort. He identified seven roles:
monitor, spokesperson, leader, liaison, decision maker, innovator
and negotiator – while also noting that variations in the frequency
and manner in which managers performed these roles was
moderated by environment, job, situation and person. Several
studies have found differences between domestic and global
managers in personality characteristics, work roles and skill
requirements. For example, Leslie, Dalton, Ernst, and Deal (2002)
found that global managers were perceived as needing more
emotional stability, conscientiousness, cultural adaptability, per-
spective-taking capability than domestic managers. Similarly
global manager roles entailed larger components of stress-coping,
decision-making, negotiating, and innovating. In a similar vain,
Spreitzer, McCall, and Mahoney (1997) hold that learning
behaviors – seeking and using feedback, adventurousness and
openness to learning, being flexible – constitute a significant
determinant of effectiveness for global managers and advocated
focusing on specific characteristics and behaviors of being cross-
culturally adventurous and insightful, seeking opportunities to
learn, and being open to criticism.

These types of studies of global managers led to attempts to
understand how to best develop global management skills in
current managers who found themselves working in international/
global contexts. Since many of these global managers were also
expatriates, the expatriation literature focused on engaging in
studies to ascertain how to best develop social, work, and
emotional skills necessary to work effectively across cultures.
Much work has been done in this field and has had a significant

impact on scholars’ views of global leadership development
processes.

5. The literature on global leadership

The early 1990s witnessed a budding interest in leaders
working in global contexts. Seeking to understand and explain
the differing role and competency demands of leading at the global
level, some sought to extend domestic leadership ideas while
others drew upon observations and experiences in global settings
to identify sui generis characteristics of global leadership. Kets de
Vries and Mead (1992) extended competency lists developed
previously in domestic settings and incorporated additional
qualities required for global work. Tichy, Brimm, Charan, and
Takeuchi (1992) wrote about ‘‘true globalists’’ drawing upon the
differences they had identified in their executive development
activities. Rhinesmith (1992) drew upon his consulting experience,
as did Brake (1997) several years later, to identify sets of
competencies specific to global leaders.

Empirical investigations of global leadership can be roughly
categorized by methodology. A variety of studies have adopted
qualitative approaches relying primarily on a small number of
interviews, anecdotal reports or case study approaches (Bingham,
Black, & Felin, 2000; Emerson, 2001; Green, Hassan, Immelt, Marks,
& Meiland, 2003; Kets de Vries & Florent-Treacy, 1999; Marquardt
& Berger, 2003; Maruca, 1994; McFarland, Senn, & Childress, 1993;
McKibben, 1997; Millikin & Fu, 2005; Nohria, 2009; William, 1991;
Wolfensohn, O’Reilly, Campbell, Shui-Bian, & Arbour, 2003).

Less common have been empirical studies that extended
beyond focus groups, impressionistic observations and personal
experience. The empirical work carried out to date in global
leadership has been almost completely focused on unearthing and
understanding competencies, traits, attributes, and skills associat-
ed with effective global leadership. Yeung and Ready’s (1995) work
stands out as the first quantitative study in the field. They analyzed
a sample of 1200 managers working in 10 corporations and drawn
from eight countries. Their list of identified competencies
included: articulate a tangible vision and related values and
strategy, be a catalyst for strategic change, be a catalyst for cultural
change, possess a results orientation, possess a customer orienta-
tion and empower others. Black et al. (1999) interviewed roughly
130 senior line executives and HR managers in their study of
‘‘global explorers,’’ their term for effective global executives. Rosen
et al. (2000) surveyed over a 1000 senior executives from
28 countries, supported 75 interviews. McCall and Hollenbeck
(2002) conducted interviews with 101 executives drawn from
thirty-six countries. Goldsmith et al. (2003) reported on their
findings from interviews with 207 current and potential global
leaders. Their study also included over 200 high potentials and
questionnaire surveys of 75 executives and focus groups that
included 28 CEOS. Also in 2003, Bikson, Treverton, Moini, and
Lindstrom (2003) reported on interviews with 135 senior man-
agers in U.S. public, for-profit and non-profit organizations.
Focusing on global leader task analysis and required knowledge,
skills and abilities, Caligiuri and Tarique (2009, 2012) surveyed
over 240 global leaders. The studies above are representative of the
range of approaches employed over the first two decades of
identifiable global leadership research.

5.1. Global leadership competencies

From the early 1990s forward, the growing cadre of scholars
studying global leaders attempted to delineate competencies
critical to their success. Reviews of this literature (Bird & Osland,
2004; Jokinen, 2005; Mendenhall & Osland, 2002; Osland, 2008;
Osland, Bird, & Mendenhall, 2012; Osland, Bird, & Oddou, 2012;

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Osland, Bird, Osland, & Mendenhall, 2012) identified over
160 competencies purported to influence global leadership
effectiveness. A vast number of these competencies overlapped
conceptually (Jokinen, 2005), many differed only in semantic terms
(Osland, 2008), and some overlapped with variables that had been
found to directly influence expatriate selection, adjustment,
effectiveness, and transformation and also variables that were
important to intercultural communication. Thus, global leader-
ship scholars drew from the expatriation and intercultural
communication literatures in order to provide increased rigor
and a better understanding of the dynamics of competencies that
are influential to global leadership effectiveness. Mendenhall and
Osland (2002) sought to bring order to the chaotic nature of the
field by grouping competency dimensions into six broad catego-
ries: visioning, global business expertise, global organizing savvy,
traits and values, cognitive orientation, and cross-cultural
relationship skills.

Global leadership competencies span a range of qualitatively
different types. There are predispositional characteristics of
personality (e.g., inquisitiveness or optimism); attitudinal orienta-
tions (e.g., cosmopolitanism or results orientation); cognitive
capabilities (e.g., cognitive complexity or intellectual intelligence);
motivational inclinations (e.g., motivation to learn or tenacity);
knowledge bases (value-added technical skills or global business
knowledge); and behavioral skills (e.g., cross-cultural communi-
cation or boundary spanning). Thus, global leadership comprises a
multi-faceted set of competencies.

Bird (2013) reviewed the proliferation of global leader
competencies from 1993 to 2012, documenting 160 competencies.
He also found that competencies are typically introduced within
the context of organizing frameworks (cf., Bird & Osland, 2004;
Brake, 1997; Kets de Vries & Florent-Treacy, 1999; Morrison, 2000),
and that competencies are distributed roughly equally across three
categories – 55 fall into a Business and Organizational Acumen
grouping, 47 group into Managing People and Relationships and
58 into Managing Self. An integration and synthesis in order to
remove conceptual overlap, minimize semantic variation and
achieve theoretical frugality resulted in a more parsimonious set of
fifteen competencies.

In a departure from the competency focus, Caligiuri (2006)
adopted a job analytic approach, seeking first to identify the
requirements of the tasks of global leaders and then analyzed
what knowledge, skills, and abilities were critical to effective job
performance. She developed a list of ten global leadership work
activities: work with colleagues from other countries, interaction
with external clients from other countries, interaction with
internal clients from other countries, necessity of speaking a
foreign language at work, supervision of employees from different
nationalities, development of strategic plans with worldwide
scope, management of budgets on a worldwide basis, engagement
of negotiations in other countries and with people from multiple
countries, management of foreign suppliers or vendors, and
management of risk on a worldwide basis. In a subsequent study,
Caligiuri and Tarique (2009) found that effectiveness was
predicated on high-contact leadership development activities
such as short- and long-term expatriate assignments, participa-
tion on global teams, global meetings in other countries,
leadership development programs and mentoring by executives
from outside the manager’s home country. These development
activities were moderated by the Big Five personality trait
extraversion. Caligiuri and Tarique (2012) subsequently found
that global leader effectiveness was positively influenced by
cross-cultural competence, which in turn was supported by
personality traits of extraversion, openness to experience and low
neuroticism as well as by several types of cross-cultural
experiences.

5.2. Global leadership as expert cognition

There are several difficulties with adopting solely a competency
approach to studying global leadership; for example, competency
lists are often lengthy, linkages between competencies and
effective behavior are often ill-defined, specific competency
requirements are likely to vary across a range of complex contexts,
the principle of equifinality suggests that no one specific
competency profile will be determinative, and empirical studies
of competencies often fail to distinguish high performers from
average or low performers. This last point is significant because
McClelland (1973) defined a competency as an underlying
characteristic that predicts superior performance. Moreover, Klein
(1999) found that high performers, i.e., ‘‘experts,’’ are different
from average performers. Experts are better than novices or
average performers at such processes as perceiving more – and
differentiating between – relevant information, noticing more
contextual, behavioral, and cultural cues, combining relevant
information into meaningful patterns, perceiving complex inter-
action among cues, employing intuitive reasoning, and developing
more complex perceptions of their work.

Osland and Bird (2005) reasoned that framing global leadership
performance as an activity in cognitive expertise resulting in
effective behaviors would facilitate a better understanding of how
highly effective global leaders perceived their work context and
the tasks they were asked to perform, how they approached their
work, their cognitive and strategic thinking, how they managed
relationships, motivated others and accomplished their objectives.

Employing Cognitive Task Analysis, a methodology used by
expert systems and artificial intelligence researchers, they under-
took several studies of ‘‘expert’’ global leaders, i.e., the subset of
highly effective leaders (Osland, Bird, Osland, & Oddou, 2007).
Their findings (Osland, Bird, & Oddou, 2013; Osland, Oddou, Bird, &
Osland, 2013) confirmed Klein’s thesis. Expert global leaders
perceived more relevant information, noticed more contextual,
behavioral and cultural cues and were able to combine that
information into meaningful patterns. They also developed more
complex perceptions of their work contexts.

Expert global leaders characterized their work context and
work processes in terms of activities that clearly differentiated
them from average or novice global leaders, particularly with
regard to leading major change initiatives on a global scale (Osland,
Bird, et al., 2013; Osland, Oddou, et al., 2013).

5.3. Global leadership development

The question of how to best develop global leaders has been a
focus of scholars from the early stages of the field’s emergence. One
of the early catalysts for work in this area was the Thurnau
Conference of 1998. Held in Thurnau, Germany, the conference
brought scholars together who were working independently of
each other in this new field in order to integrate perspectives,
develop research partnerships, and publish scholarly findings. The
conference was hosted by the combined resources of the Deutsche
Forschungsgemeinschaft, the Foundation of International Man-
agement–Bayreuth, the German Marshall Fund of the United
States, The University of Bayreuth, and the J. Burton Frierson Chair
of Excellence in Business Leadership at the University of Tennessee,
Chattanooga.

The conference resulted in publications that addressed global
leadership development from perspectives of integrative theoriz-
ing from the extant expatriate adjustment literature, institutional
HRM processes, German firms’ strategic use of international
assignments as global leadership developmental programs,
strategic HR practices of European, North American and Japanese
MNCs and their impact on global leadership development, the

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efficacy of using assessment centers for global leadership
development; repatriation policies, and conceptualizing future
research and practice needs in the field (Mendenhall & Kühlmann,
2001).

Although the call to develop global leadership capabilities came
10 years earlier (Marsick & Cederholm, 1988), since 1998, the focus
on developing global leadership has burgeoned, in no small part
due to organizations’ needs for global talent. Part of firms wrestling
with how to best win the ‘‘war for global talent’’ and creating talent
management pipelines has been the important aspect of deter-
mining how best to ensure that high potentials are developing
global leadership skills as they proceed through a firm’s talent
pipeline (Logan, 2008). To better understand how global leadership
competencies can be developed in people, a sub-set of scholars
working the global leadership field began investigating this
question. For example, personality traits and existing global
competencies and their predictive relationship to developing
subsequent global leadership skills have been clarified by Caligiuri
and Tarique (2009, 2012), and various global leadership develop-
ment models have been developed as well (for a review see Osland,
Bird, et al., 2013; Osland, Oddou, et al., 2013). Additionally, ‘‘best
practice’’ programs in industry have been subjected to scholarly
analysis that in turn has yielded significant heuristic value in the
field (for an example, see Pless, Maak, & Stahl, 2011). Integration of
effective competency development principles from the field of
clinical psychology have also begun to be integrated in research
(for an example, see Mendenhall, Arnardottir, Oddou, & Burke,
2013). Additionally, findings from research on global leadership
development are beginning to be applied directly to curricula and
programs in business schools (Bird, Lane, & Athanassiou, 2014),
influencing the developing of global leadership competencies in
students before they begin their careers, with global leadership
development centers having been established for undergraduate
business school students at institutions such as San Jose State
University, Northeastern University, and Brigham Young University.

Our discussion of the global leadership literature amounts to an
abbreviated introduction to the field, and as such does not broach
its complexity or diversity, nor does it apprehend the influence of
global leadership research on other areas of global management
(e.g., global teams, global strategy, top management teams), or its
influence on other research streams (expatriation, intercultural
competence, intercultural communication). A review by the
authors of the number of articles in scholarly outlets – not
including the articles and books that are more aptly categorized in
the trade/practitioner realm – yielded a figure of more than
600 scholarly works having been published since 1990, with the
lion’s share of them published since 2006, reflecting a strong,
progressive, upward trend in publication rate in the field.

5.4. Types of global leadership

It is clear that from the advent of research on global leadership
to the present that there remains still a lack of clarity by what
scholars mean when they say global. While fledgling attempts have
been made to define and operationalize the construct of global
(Mendenhall et al., 2012), it is necessary for scholars to maintain
the momentum of these theoretical efforts in order to avoid the
condition that long plagued the expatriate literature; namely, the
lack of specification of the construct of ‘‘expatriate.’’ For decades,
scholars simply stated in their research that they studied
‘‘expatriates’’ and their subsequent findings were widely general-
ized if there was methodological rigor associated with their
research. Over time, it became clear that there were likely different
‘‘types’’ of expatriates that vary based on length of stay, purpose of
assignment, degree of cultural challenge of assignment, and
intention for accepting the assignment. Further, it seemed clear

that cross-cultural adjustment skills likely varied in valence for
different types of expatriates. In essence, scholars studying
expatriates had to ‘‘start over’’ and begin to more carefully
circumscribe the nature or type of expatriates contained within in
their samples, and to use methodologies that allow them to
differentiate which general cross-cultural adjustment skills move
conceptually from figure to ground and vice versa for each type of
expatriate (Konopaske, Mendenhall, & Thomason, 2009).

Just as a widely agreed upon typology of expatriates would have
enabled the expatriate literature to generate more nuanced, and
conceptually sophisticated findings regarding the relationship
between cross-cultural adjustment skills and specific types of
expatriates, so too would the global leadership literature benefit
from: (1) continued rigorous efforts to define and operationalize
the construct of global and (2) development of typologies of global
leadership that will allow scholars engaging in empirical studies to
more carefully circumscribe the nature of the sample, i.e., to
delineate what type of global leaders they are studying, and thus
draw more refined and in-depth relationships between the
dependent variables of their studies and the actual type of global
leaders to whom those relationships are linked. The avoidance of
simplistic, over-reaching generalizations is an important concern
for the field of global leadership to avoid. Initial efforts toward
development of a typology of global leadership have recently
emerged (Reiche, Bird, Mendenhall, & Osland, 2014), but have only
been exploratory in nature. This seems a fruitful area to which
global leadership scholars should turn their attention.

6. Conclusion

At its inception, the field of cross-cultural management was
focused primarily on ‘‘management,’’ with little regard for
‘‘leadership’’ (Haider, 1966). This was consistent both with how
scholars approached managerial behaviors in an international
setting as well as the thinking around what cross-cultural
management entailed and the work that international managers
performed. Given organizational structures and internal commu-
nication and information systems, international work was
primarily managerial in scope. Few activities involved leadership
activities of creating and communicating a vision or leading
change. Boundary spanning activities, were largely related to local
activities as opposed to part of a larger integrated, strategic effort.

Over time, with the advent of globalization and the accompa-
nying technological improvement in communication and infor-
mation flows, the activities of managers in international settings
took on a more strategic role. The exhortation to ‘‘Think global, act
local’’ also encouraged system-wide, strategic thinking. Interna-
tional managers currently find themselves tasked with developing
and implementing a corporate vision, building organizational
culture, fostering diverse stakeholder relations and leading
significant change efforts. In short, global managers are called
upon to exercise greater leadership.

Researchers studying managers in global contexts have under-
gone a parallel transformation as a consequence of recognizing that
the managers they were studying were increasingly behaving as
leaders. In the 21st century it may still be possible to make the
traditional distinction between managers and leaders. To the extent
that such a delineation is productive, then it is also safe to conclude
that the number of global managers who should now be designated
as global leaders has also grown substantially.

6.1. Multiple theoretical perspectives

While it has proven profitable for global leadership scholars to
approach the phenomenon largely from the perspectives of
competencies, job analysis, expert cognition, and developmental

A. Bird, M.E. Mendenhall / Journal of World Business 51 (2016) 115–126124

approaches and pedagogies, we hold that studying the phenome-
non from additional theoretical perspectives will likely produce
rich findings that will advance the field. The general leadership
field has benefited from studying leadership from new perspec-
tives such as complexity leadership theory, shared leadership
theory, followership theory, relational leadership theory, collabo-
rative leadership frameworks, responsible leadership models, to
name but a few. Signs of such a trend in the field of global
leadership are emerging as well. For instance, Mittal and Dorfman
(2012) argue for the utility of applying servant leadership theory.

Additionally, continued debate regarding the breadth and scope
of the conceptual domain of global leadership will be necessary to
continually push scholars to steadily refine the construct and
better understand its dynamics. For example, Steers et al. (2012)
hold that the global leadership literature reflects three conceptual
approaches to the study of the construct: the universal approach,
which focuses on the ‘‘leader as leader’’ (e.g., transformational
leadership), the contingency approach, which focuses on the
‘‘leader as local manager,’’ and the normative approach, which
focuses on the leader as global manager – and the role that
leadership style and values plays in multinational corporate
culture and system outcomes (Shim & Steers, 2012). Conversely,
other scholars have focused on a narrower conceptual boundary of
the construct (see for example, Mendenhall et al., 2012). The field
requires such debate, research, and refinement of the nature of the
phenomenon in order to progress, and our examination of the
literature suggests that such robust exchange and development
will continue amongst scholars in the field.

6.2. Managerial relevance

It is our view that a wider understanding of the current main
approaches that are used to study global leadership would be
advantageous for firms to know about and draw from to bolster
global leadership selection and development practices in their
global talent management systems, but this is not occurring. That
firms are largely ignorant of the global leadership literature is not
surprising given the well-accepted condition that scholars and
executives generally have poorly developed or ineffective
knowledge-sharing relationships. Some inroads are being made,
as some scholars in the global leadership field also are active
consultants to industry and government; however, in the future,
the field needs to consider, like all other sub-fields with the realm
of management, how to improve the sharing of their value-added
findings for practicing mangers in such a way that they can be
accepted and comprehended by them. The wave of research in
global leadership does not seem to be waning, but rather is
growing at a rapid rate.

Similarly, we feel that, just as scholars need to develop a
rigorous typology of global leadership that is contextually
nuanced, so HR executives should turn their attention to
delineating contextual nuance in their selection, development,
and deployment of global leaders in their organizations. In our
experience, it is common practice to develop global leadership
programs that tend to be ‘‘one-size-fits-all’’ both in curricula and in
scope. All high potential managers are trained in the same way for
different types of global leadership roles. It seems clear from the
extant research that there are many different types of global
leadership contexts within which some global leadership compe-
tencies are likely to be more salient than others. Firms not only
need to refer to the best research findings available in the field in
order to construct rigorous global leadership training programs,
but they need to critically analyze each type of global leadership
assignment and provide specialized training based upon the
obvious demands and competencies that are clearly associated
with that assignment as well (Stroh & Caligiuri, 1998).

We wait with curious expectation to view what advances the
field of global leadership will experience when it comes time to
revisit the field fifty years hence.

Acknowledgement

Funding for this research was generously provided by the Darla
and Frederick Brodsky Trustee Professorship in Global Business.

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From cross-cultural management to global leadership: Evolution and adaptation

1 Introduction
2 A brief history of global leadership
2.1 Positioning cross-cultural management research as a field of inquiry
2.2 1960–1980: the rise of international
2.3 1980–2000: the rise of culture
2.4 2000-present: the rise of global
3 Cross-cultural management: unicultural, comparative, and intercultural
3.1 Unicultural
3.2 Comparative
3.3 Intercultural
3.4 Global: a fourth category of cross-cultural management research
4 The origins of global leadership research
4.1 Stream one: expatriation
4.1.1 Selection
4.1.2 Adjustment
4.1.3 Transformation
4.2 Stream two: intercultural communication
4.3 Stream three: comparative leadership
4.4 Stream four: global management
5 The literature on global leadership
5.1 Global leadership competencies
5.2 Global leadership as expert cognition
5.3 Global leadership development
5.4 Types of global leadership
6 Conclusion
6.1 Multiple theoretical perspectives
6.2 Managerial relevance
Acknowledgement
References

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