Developing a Global Leadership Model Summary

With ever increasing globalization and change in business environment, leaders will be challenged to manage relationships more than in the past. This will include the ability to interact effectively with diversity of partners and other businesses and within the larger context of differing cultures. This will truly require global leaders. As Allen J Morrison has discussed in his paper, the changing global environment is likely to continue to stimulate the transformation and revitalization of not only business institutions but also that of leadership styles and approaches. Small as well as large corporations recognize they will have to change in order to compete in the global marketplace. Such transformations require a new set of leadership skills and a good working definition of leadership.

Globalization is not a new phenomenon or a new trend. Globalization has become a common trend among organizations in a fight for survival and to expand markets across the globe. With this comes a new challenge that is needed to handle globalization. One of the most prominent challenges is to find a leadership style or model that suits your globalization strategy. Global leadership was given more importance post the 1950's. Until before that it was looked up oddly when people spoke of international business. The human resource would look at developing only competencies that suit domestic business. While those who were looking for opportunities abroad were left to fend for themselves and develop competencies that were needed to survive overseas.

The article reviews articles from three separate literature streams namely, domestic leadership literature, contingency theory and global strategy literature, and cross-cultural management literature. Literature for domestic leadership has plenty of contributions from the olden days as well as contributions from notable personalities such as Aristotle, Descartes, Confucius, and Machiavelli. One area which has limited contributions is the systematic study of the competencies associated with effective business leaders. Though there is considerable progress on linking managerial competencies and effective strategy implementation. Studies in this trend show that certain types of leaders are best suited for particular strategies. Though, this various in accordance to what is required to suit the domestic business. In studies carried out in the United States it gives more emphasis on the hierarchical command and control structures. A dominant element of U.S. leadership models is the belief in the long-term efficiency of markets. Leaders operate under the assumption that short-term inefficiencies must be found and exploited quickly. One problem within domestic leadership models is that they cannot be applied on the international business scene as business environments vary in each domestic market.

The second set of literature reviews deals with contingency theory and global strategy. This trend has