International Management - Cross-Cultural Model and Analysis of China and Australia - Essay Example

International leadership and management

Table of Contents

1. Introduction3

2. Literature review3

2.1 Leadership and management3

2.2 Issues in leadership and management4

2.3 Management style of two countries5

3. Cross cultural model and analysis of China and Australia6

3.1 Leaderships and Cultural models6

3.2 Comparison between Chinese and Australian Leadership7

4. Leadership and management style to work as a team9

5. Conclusion10

Reference List11

Appendix12

• 1. Introduction

Leadership and management are necessary to manage the employees and run the business activities in the international market successfully. In these circumstances, the leaders and managers need to be efficient in leading the team to achieve the organisational objectives in an effective manner (Lord, De Vader and Alliger, 2006). The main purpose of the essay is to discuss about leadership and management style of the two countries, one is western such as Australia and other is Eastern named China. In this regard, the literature review about the management and leadership style, issues in leading the organisational team and cross-cultural management are essential to develop understanding about the differences in management styles in China and Australia. The essay also provides an opportunity to reflect own experience of working in a culturally diverse team and review the literatures for evaluating the management and leadership style of the team.

• 2. Literature review
  • 2.1 Leadership and management

In the recent era of internationalisation, leadership and management needs to be strong to manage the business activities successfully. The leaders play a vital role in encouraging changes in the organisations (Gibb, 2007). The leaders try to create organisational vision and mission and sets different strategies for motivating the employees to achieve the goals. On the other hand, management team produces business planning and budgeting to allocate organisational resources and sets proper timing so that the goals and objectives of the companies can be achieved effectively. The management of the companies are also responsible for managing jobs rules and procedures, creating solutions and implement corrective strategies to fulfil the business requirements. Therefore, both the leadership and management style is essential to run the business in a proper way.

The leadership style in this regard is of four types such as autocratic, democratic, laissez-faire and bureaucratic (Jerabek and Day Jr, 2009). Under autocratic leadership, the leaders mainly focus on the organisational task and the responsibility of the employees. In this style, the leaders plan effective decisions alone without discussing with other people within the organisation. Under democratic leadership style, the leaders are open minded and build open communication so that it is possible to lead the team successfully. Team involvement and maximisation of the people’s requirements are helpful to achieve the organisational goals (Kornør and Nordvik, 2010). On the other hand, bureaucratic leaders are anxious and concentrate on rules and regulations in the company. Accordingly, laissez-faire leaders empower the employees to share strategies and business information for implementing the best planning (Smith and Foti, 2008).

• • 2.2 Issues in leadership and management

Competitive pressure and changing market demand increases the issues in managing and leading a company which further deteriorate organisational productivity, creativity and efficiency of the employees. In the recent years, communication is a big issue that create more misunderstanding and hamper team work practice at workplace. Without communication, the leaders cannot lead the team properly and lack of communication further adversely affects the employee’s willingness to work and to share their actual requirements within the organisation (Zaccaro, et al. 2012). Moreover, lack of empowerment is also another issue for which the management team and leaders face the issue of resistance to change. In the recent times, the leaders and managers also implement least strategies to motivate employee’s creativity and therefore, there is lack of initiatives in building employee’s relationship and trust. Training and development is also another challenge for the managers as the training provided by the organisation sometime do not match with the career opportunities of the employees. Henceforth, lack of implementation of proper planning and strategic management increases the challenges in leading the organisational staff and improve efficiency of the employees in conducting the business activities more creatively (Kirkpatick and Locke, 2011).

• • 2.3 Management style of two countries

The cultural tradition depends on values, norms and interpersonal behaviour. The behaviour of the Chinese are towards communism rather than individualism as the people in the country believes in more communication to improve own efficiency to conduct the organisational job (Casimir and Waldman, 2007). Therefore, people in the society prefer more communication with each other so that they can share own views and ideas with each other. This will further help to build an efficient team within an organisation. Moreover, the Chinese leaders are more autocratic as compared to other developed countries mainly like western nations. The leaders do not believe in sharing business information with their subordinates and organisational staff. Therefore, the leaders try to develop proper planning individually without empowering any organisational staff (Maurer and Lord, 2010). The Chinese leaders prefer more personal development for improving efficiency of the employees and in this regard, they provide effective training program to their organisational staff. The leaders maintain business ethics which is the first priority as compared to profit maximisation. The workers can participate in decisions mainly related to working conditions and employee’s issues and they do not have the right to participate in the decision making behaviour of the strategic policies.

On the other hand, the leaders in western country such as Australia mainly give importance in profit maximisation, human relationship, strategic planning and long term future planning and more creativity and technological advancement (Girvin, 2006). The leadership style in Australia is more towards innovation and the management team tries to encourage the employee’s creativity to achieve more. Moreover, the businesses focus on profit maximisation and try to create values for the business stakeholders. Moreover, the leaders foster more communication within the organisation to share more ideas among the team members (Smith and Foti, 2008)). Therefore, collaboration and interaction at workplace provides an opportunity to conduct the job creatively. Moreover, the leaders believe in equality and therefore, it is helpful to manage the employees without any cultural differences. The leaders are more participative than the leaders in China. This working practice of Australian leaders and mangers are helpful to meet the organisational goals and objective more efficiently.

• 3. Cross cultural model and analysis of China and Australia
  • 3.1 Leaderships and Cultural models

A wide range of studies have been conducted on assessing the role of cultures on the behaviour of leaders. In addition, the models have also focused on assessing the relationship between the leaders and subordinates on the basis of their different cultural perspectives. Limon and La France (2009) mentioned that cognitive prototypes can be considered as a vital component that relates to the leadership theories. Cognitive prototype has highly influenced the perceptions of leadership and also the reactions attached with the leadership. In this regards, Nordvik and Brovold (2008) cited that recognition model can be used for determining the cultural impacts on leaderships.

Although, some of the leadership traits have been recognised on the global basis, it has also been found that implementation of these leadership traits have widely been varied across the cultures. In this case, the examples of the leaders of Australia and New Zealand can be considered. It can be expected that both the leaders of both the countries Australia and New Zealand would be egalitarian. However, in reality, the leaders of Australia have found to be more socially oriented and fewer tasks oriented compared to the leaders of New Zealand (Hofstede and Bond, 2008). According to Hofstede (2010), Hofstedes’ cultural model has highly influenced the traits of leadership. The trait such as ‘goal oriented’ has been considered as a crucial factor for stimulating the traits of leadership.

• • 3.2 Comparison between Chinese and Australian Leadership

The interpersonal behaviour of the Chinese people has been highly motivated by Confucian values (Gibb, 2007). Hence, more emphasis has been provided on social hierarchy. In addition, it has been indicted that the social stability depends on the unequal relationships. With the increased value of money, the pattern of Chinese culture has also changed. However, some of the basic components have remained unchanged. Most of the scholars have a wide range of dissimilarities between the leadership traits in China with that of the other countries (Smith and Foti, 2008).

Kornør and Nordvik (2010) mentioned that China may score low on the individualism due to the presence of reference groups and influence of communism. Based on the researches, it has been found that in China, collectivistic values have been quite prominent. Moreover, due to the effect of Confucian values of hierarchy, China may obtain high score on the power distance. In terms of sharing the information to the sub-ordinates and decision making, the Chinese leaders have found to be autocratic in nature. In contrast, the leaders of Australia prefer egalitarian and consultive management styles. According to Smith and Foti (2008), Australian leadership style can be differentiated due to the presence of high individualism. In addition, the leaders of Australia tend to be a firm believer in the perception of equality. Therefore, the Australian leaders prefer to make mate ship rather than dictatorship with the subordinates.

One of the most essential factors that enable the leaders of Australia to be successful is their ordinary nature. Low power distant between the sub-ordinates and supervisors is one of the most important factors that have been observed in the Australian culture. In addition, a leadership trait in Australia has also been influenced by more direct communication style. Participative leadership style has differentiated the Australian leaders with that of the Chinese leaders. Maurer and Lord (2010) further added that Australian leaders are less concerned about the uncertainty avoidance compared to that of the Chinese leaders. Hence, Australian leaders are comparatively more innovative than their Chinese counterparts. On the other hand, the leaders of Australia like to take the individual initiatives or responsibility. Thus, the Australian leaders prefer to develop work design according to the particular job. Individualism or low power distance can be considered as one of the main factor behind such nature of the Australian leaders. On the other hand, in China, the leaders have been influenced by collectivistic and high power distance (Hofstede, 2010). Hence, the Chinese leaders prefer group work and they impose a strong control over the group members. In Chinese organisations, the leaders used effective tools to appraise the performance of the teams. Most surprisingly, the Chinese leaders do not perceive communication as an important aspect of leadership. Therefore, it can be inferred that a wide range of dissimilarities have been found between the Australian and Chinese leaders due to the deviation in their cultural backgrounds.

• 4. Leadership and management style to work as a team

The leadership style that is being followed in our organisation has hugely been influenced by the cultures. The characteristics of the western culture have stimulated the leadership traits of mine and other managers of my company. We prioritise on smaller power distant. Therefore, open communication has been preferred by all the leaders in my company. We like to set an example by initiating the tasks. Moreover, the leaders of our company prefer innovative thinking rather than the orthodox idea. Most importantly, in our organisation, the opinions or ideas of all the team members have been encouraged. We provide enough attention to analyse the ideas shared by the team members. Any decisions taken by us have been discussed with the team members. Open communication and active participation has contributed high class performance of our company. In our organisation, the leaders do not believe in the hierarchy. Rather, a democratic leadership style has been followed by the leaders of our organisation. However, we also appraise the performance of our team mates with the help of effective tools and techniques.

• 5. Conclusion

The report has been initiated with the purpose of conducting a comparative study on the leadership styles in China and Australia. The study has mainly focused on analysing the role of culture on the leadership traits. The components of Hofstedes’ cultural model have been used to differentiate the leadership style in Australia and China. Based on the discussion, it has been found that the communicative, friendly, humorous and participative are some of the most common leadership traits found among the leaders of Australia. On the other hand, autocratic leadership style has been followed by the leaders of China. Moreover, a strict hierarchy has been followed in the Chinese firms. As a result of that, Chinese leaders maintain a significant distance with their subordinates. The scope of innovation is more in the case of the Australian leaders. In contrast, the Chinese leaders do not prefer to share the information with their team members. Thus, it can be concluded that based on the cross-cultural factors, the leadership traits have been highly stimulated. Therefore, in order to evaluate the quality of the leaders, the cultural context is also required to be assessed.

• Reference List

Casimir, G. and Waldman, D.A., 2007. A Cross Cultural Comparison of the Importance of Leadership Traits for Effective Low-level and High-level Leaders Australia and China. International Journal of Cross Cultural Management, 7(1), pp.47-60.

Gibb, C.A., 2007. The principles and traits of leadership. The Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, 42(3), p.267.

Girvin, J., 2006. Leadership and Nursing: Part two: styles of leadership: The shift in focus from leadership as demonstrated by a set of personality traits to leadership as a complex aggregation of style, context and perfomance is examined. Nursing Management, 3(2), pp.20-21.

Hofstede, G. and Bond, M. 2008. The Confucius Connection: From Cultural Rootsto Economic Growth. Organizational Dynamics, 16, pp. 5–21.

Hofstede, G., 2010. Culture’s Consequences:International Differences in Work Related Values. Newbury Park, CA: Sage Publications.

Jerabek, S. and Day Jr, D., 2009. Traits of Leadership. FBI Law Enforcement Bulletin, 78(11), pp.20-22.

Kirkpatick, S.A. and Locke, E.A., 2011. Leadership: do traits matter? The Executive, 5(2), pp.48-60.

Kornør, H. and Nordvik, H., 2010. Personality traits in leadership behavior. Scandinavian Journal of Psychology, 45(1), pp.49-54.

Limon, M.S. and La France, B.H., 2009. Communication traits and leadership emergence: Examining the impact of argumentativeness, communication apprehension, and verbal aggressiveness in work groups. Southern Journal of Communication, 70(2), pp.123-133.

Lord, R.G., De Vader, C.L. and Alliger, G.M., 2006. A meta-analysis of the relation between personality traits and leadership perceptions: An application of validity generalization procedures. Journal of applied psychology, 71(3), p.402.

Maurer, T.J. and Lord, R.G., 2010. An Exploration of Cognitive Demands in Group Interaction as a Moderator of Information Processing Variables in Perceptions of Leadership, Journal of Applied Social Psychology, 21, pp.821–39.

Nordvik, H. and Brovold, H., 2008. Personality traits in leadership tasks. Scandinavian Journal of Psychology, 39(2), pp.61-64.

Smith, J.A. and Foti, R.J., 2008. A pattern approach to the study of leader emergence. The Leadership Quarterly, 9(2), pp.147-160.

Zaccaro, S.J., Gilbert, J.A., Thor, K.K. and Mumford, M.D., 2012. Leadership and social intelligence: Linking social perspectiveness and behavioral flexibility to leader effectiveness. The Leadership Quarterly, 2(4), pp.317-342.

• Appendix

Hofstedes’ Cross Cultural Dimensions

(Source: Hofstede, 2010)