Mohammad Mosaddek Hussain :
Nowadays, the attitude and behavior of employee’s in the business enterprises are attracting deep attention of the employers for keeping their profits for long years through the existing human resources working in the organization. This psychological element can build the positive effect among the mindset of the employees in the global aspect. So, global psychology and its culture should be given due importance for international business expansion and corporate and local culture as well. Trained human resources are the key elements in strengthening the company’s business growth and ensuring profit of the business enterprise. In this respect, psychological aspects and mental status of the employees should be carefully studied to match with the global mindset for expanding growth of business.
According to Gupta and Govindarajan (2002), the cognitive psychology has shown that mindset exists through knowledge structure primarily composed of differentiation and integration attributes. The latter first of two refers to the narrowness of knowledge the individual brings to a context, whereas the latter one refers to the level of integration of disparate knowledge elements in the knowledge structures. When differentiation is low, integration is not an issue; however, when it is high, integration becomes a critical attribute. Many of us are changeable and each time frequently swing towards the person we last met. Further, Gupta and Govindarajan define global mindset more precisely as “one that combines openness to and awareness of diversity across cultures and markets with a propensity and ability to synthesize across this diversity process as a whole.
Moreover it is grasped that the value of global mindset is best revealed by the company’s ability to combine speed with accurate response. The company’s ability to grasp the needs in the local market and its ability to build cognitive bridges across the needs and between its own global experience and capabilities are manifested in such comparative advantages which identify the emerging opportunities, analyze the trade-off between the local adaptation and global standardization, smoothen the complimentary activity coordination across the borders, spread out the concept of new innovations and technologies, share best practices effectively and efficiently across subsidiaries. The value of global mindset becomes quite apparent when analyzing how its presence or absence might affect a company’s strategy in a rapidly growing foreign market of extremely complex economy where public policy is unpredictable and preference is given to local companies as opposed to foreign. Changing and reformulating strategies in order to achieve goals in the foreign market may still not be enough for success if there is a lack of understanding of changes in the foreign market and demand and lack of integrative global perspective towards the ongoing events in the foreign market. Awareness of changes in foreign market environments can therefore become a major source for valuing and upholding the global mindset and identifying and addressing its new and existing challenges in the continuing situation.
Needless to say that achieving global mindset occurs through cultivation, as prescribed by cognitive psychology and organization theory, and it is driven by curiosity and commitment to gaining knowledge about the world and its way of operation, by exposure to diversity, by unequivocal formulation of current mindsets, as well as by development of integrated perspective on diversity of standards in cultures and markets. Cultivating curiosity about the world is a reflection of attitudes, an element of individual personality traits. Although the companies are capable of manipulating with adroitness to further produce curiosity among employees, their greatest freedom still lies on employee selection and in managing the demographic makeup of the companies. Companies cultivate knowledge regarding diverse cultures and markets through facilitating such knowledge at individual levels and through diversifying the company workforce itself, which build cognitive diversity inside the mindset of individuals as well as bring together a diverse knowledge base across the organization members. Formulating current mindset is heavily influenced by the process of interaction between people and the environment, which shapes the interpretation of the surrounding world, hence affecting how the mindset changes or remains unchanged. Self-consciousness becomes a necessary and inseparable component when cultivating the current mindset which work best through asking managers to articulate own beliefs about the subject domain, as well as through drawing comparative analysis of how different managers would interpret the same things. Getting formal education that builds on the awareness of diverse cultures and markets and participating in events and projects in foreign markets, and emerging oneself into more extensive cultural learning programs and trainings are all powerful ways of constructing a global mindset among the employees to a group of competent human resources.
Diversity and humans do not easily negotiate differences due to different background and situation. “The human brain’s response to differences is typically arousal, alarm, and sometimes attacks, until such time as the differences are processed by exposure, reason, or mastery” (Marsella, 2009, p. 121). The interactions between social diversity markers (i.e. ethnicity, race, age, sex, gender, social class, religion, sexual orientation, physical or mental challenges, physique, etc) as well as between interpersonal and individual differences result in different conditions of acceptability in various situations. Differences become the source of problems in cultures and organization; however, diversity encounters occur under problematic perceptions among people. Equally, leaders in countries face increasing cultural challenges during their day-to-day interaction with peoples within and outside the organization. In this global era, cultural diversity intelligence, competence, understanding, appreciation and embracement are required to be an effective leaders in the global situation.
As we know that successful leadership of today’s increasingly diverse workplace is among the most important global challenges throughout the world. The problem of managing today’s culturally diverse workforce is the unfortunate inability of the leaders’ and managers’ to fully comprehend the organizational, cultural and global dynamics which creates barriers in the development process. The global economy has moved diversity to the top of any leader’s agenda. It is revealed that that cultural issues in leadership should be studied to identify both differences between cultures and specific within country practices that would help expatriate leaders to succeed. Besides, organizational communication in different areas will differ across cultures. s Global leaders need to recognize such differences and its causes and effects. Research shows that leadership theories in many cases limiting our knowledge about how culture might influence their validity, particularly in Eastern cultures. During the last decade, interest in cross-cultural leadership has increased dramatically for apparent reasons. Increasing globalization of organizations has made it more critical to learn about effective leadership in different cultures. Influencing and motivating culturally diverse workforce has become an increasing challenge for global leaders or leaders of cultural diversity on local levels. Successful influence requires a broad understanding of cultural differences and motivational factors in each culture and at the same time different practices of other countries.
In this respect, it may be highlighted that the Global Leadership and Organizational Behavior Effectiveness (GLOBE) research program has carried on a cross-cultural investigation of leadership and national culture, using data from 825 organizations in 62 countries to identify nine dimensions on which national cultures differ: power distance; individualism versus collectivism; masculinity versus femininity; uncertainty avoidance; long-term versus short-term orientation; and humane versus performance orientation (Robbins and Judge, 2008, p. 125). The GLOBE framework is primarily based on Geert Hofstede’s Framework for Assessing Cultures – one of the most referenced approaches for analyzing cultural variances since 1970s (p. 124).
The information that GLOBE research indicate here that certain traits, skills, and behaviors are rated highly relevant for effective leaderships in all culture, for example, integrity (honest, trustworthy, just), visionary (has foresight, plans ahead), inspirational (positive, dynamic, encourages, motivates, builds confidence), decisive, diplomatic, achievement-oriented, and team-integrator, whereas some attributes varied widely in relevance across cultures, such as ambitious, cautious, compassionate, indirect, risk taker, self-sacrificing, sensitive, status conscious etc. Examining the relationship among societal cultures, situational variables (such as strategy, culture, uncertainty, etc), leadership process, and organizational effectiveness, the GLOBE project has provided significant research results for leadership of cultural diversity in the rapid pace of globalization and economic development.
It is necessary to grasp that appropriate understanding of how leadership of cultural diversity and organizational communication with global mindset are exerted in real world practices, To achieve success in the diversified cultural atmosphere this requires a careful study of cultural values, traditions, and norms, as well as diversity training for the global employees. Failure in business in diversified situation primarily happened due to the inability to understand and accept the cultural differences and lead according to those differences in different situations and cultural differences..
Special attention should be given to honored guests, elders, parents, teachers, bosses and leaders and must be treated differently as per status. They strongly value and adhere to a hierarchical relationship in society. They see the society as composed of people who are inherently unequal in rank and standing, and differences in rank are signaled and reinforced by the style of the interaction between the parties involved. Deference, respect and formality towards superiors are the norm. In addition, juniors are supposed to keep their opinions to themselves unless specifically and directly asked.
Culture values the importance of status differences and hierarchies in societies. The complex authority and status relationships characterize culture, which parallels with the idea of power distance in Hofstede’s study. Further Luthans (2008) notes that “power distance is the degree to which members of a collective expect power to be distributed equally” . Singapore has a high rating on power distance, which means that large inequalities of power and wealth exist and are tolerated in the culture.
So we should observe the diversified cultural norms, attitude, behavioural differences, mindset categories, local desires and emerging demands, historical and current trends of the people of different culture and countries, psychological propensity and mindset, local leadership patterns and global trends of business policies, operational methods and training the employees on local and behavioural practice, HR policies in global development trend in the light of situational difference before planning the business strategies considering the cultural diversities, locations, global tendency and mindset of human resource personnel, identify appropriate management and operational methods, strategies, research and development process design and process improvement as per need of the expansion of business as a whole
(Mohammad Mosaddek Hussain, MCHRD, MIPM Chairman, BIHRM Foundation, Bangladesh)
Nowadays, the attitude and behavior of employee’s in the business enterprises are attracting deep attention of the employers for keeping their profits for long years through the existing human resources working in the organization. This psychological element can build the positive effect among the mindset of the employees in the global aspect. So, global psychology and its culture should be given due importance for international business expansion and corporate and local culture as well. Trained human resources are the key elements in strengthening the company’s business growth and ensuring profit of the business enterprise. In this respect, psychological aspects and mental status of the employees should be carefully studied to match with the global mindset for expanding growth of business.
According to Gupta and Govindarajan (2002), the cognitive psychology has shown that mindset exists through knowledge structure primarily composed of differentiation and integration attributes. The latter first of two refers to the narrowness of knowledge the individual brings to a context, whereas the latter one refers to the level of integration of disparate knowledge elements in the knowledge structures. When differentiation is low, integration is not an issue; however, when it is high, integration becomes a critical attribute. Many of us are changeable and each time frequently swing towards the person we last met. Further, Gupta and Govindarajan define global mindset more precisely as “one that combines openness to and awareness of diversity across cultures and markets with a propensity and ability to synthesize across this diversity process as a whole.
Moreover it is grasped that the value of global mindset is best revealed by the company’s ability to combine speed with accurate response. The company’s ability to grasp the needs in the local market and its ability to build cognitive bridges across the needs and between its own global experience and capabilities are manifested in such comparative advantages which identify the emerging opportunities, analyze the trade-off between the local adaptation and global standardization, smoothen the complimentary activity coordination across the borders, spread out the concept of new innovations and technologies, share best practices effectively and efficiently across subsidiaries. The value of global mindset becomes quite apparent when analyzing how its presence or absence might affect a company’s strategy in a rapidly growing foreign market of extremely complex economy where public policy is unpredictable and preference is given to local companies as opposed to foreign. Changing and reformulating strategies in order to achieve goals in the foreign market may still not be enough for success if there is a lack of understanding of changes in the foreign market and demand and lack of integrative global perspective towards the ongoing events in the foreign market. Awareness of changes in foreign market environments can therefore become a major source for valuing and upholding the global mindset and identifying and addressing its new and existing challenges in the continuing situation.
Needless to say that achieving global mindset occurs through cultivation, as prescribed by cognitive psychology and organization theory, and it is driven by curiosity and commitment to gaining knowledge about the world and its way of operation, by exposure to diversity, by unequivocal formulation of current mindsets, as well as by development of integrated perspective on diversity of standards in cultures and markets. Cultivating curiosity about the world is a reflection of attitudes, an element of individual personality traits. Although the companies are capable of manipulating with adroitness to further produce curiosity among employees, their greatest freedom still lies on employee selection and in managing the demographic makeup of the companies. Companies cultivate knowledge regarding diverse cultures and markets through facilitating such knowledge at individual levels and through diversifying the company workforce itself, which build cognitive diversity inside the mindset of individuals as well as bring together a diverse knowledge base across the organization members. Formulating current mindset is heavily influenced by the process of interaction between people and the environment, which shapes the interpretation of the surrounding world, hence affecting how the mindset changes or remains unchanged. Self-consciousness becomes a necessary and inseparable component when cultivating the current mindset which work best through asking managers to articulate own beliefs about the subject domain, as well as through drawing comparative analysis of how different managers would interpret the same things. Getting formal education that builds on the awareness of diverse cultures and markets and participating in events and projects in foreign markets, and emerging oneself into more extensive cultural learning programs and trainings are all powerful ways of constructing a global mindset among the employees to a group of competent human resources.
Diversity and humans do not easily negotiate differences due to different background and situation. “The human brain’s response to differences is typically arousal, alarm, and sometimes attacks, until such time as the differences are processed by exposure, reason, or mastery” (Marsella, 2009, p. 121). The interactions between social diversity markers (i.e. ethnicity, race, age, sex, gender, social class, religion, sexual orientation, physical or mental challenges, physique, etc) as well as between interpersonal and individual differences result in different conditions of acceptability in various situations. Differences become the source of problems in cultures and organization; however, diversity encounters occur under problematic perceptions among people. Equally, leaders in countries face increasing cultural challenges during their day-to-day interaction with peoples within and outside the organization. In this global era, cultural diversity intelligence, competence, understanding, appreciation and embracement are required to be an effective leaders in the global situation.
As we know that successful leadership of today’s increasingly diverse workplace is among the most important global challenges throughout the world. The problem of managing today’s culturally diverse workforce is the unfortunate inability of the leaders’ and managers’ to fully comprehend the organizational, cultural and global dynamics which creates barriers in the development process. The global economy has moved diversity to the top of any leader’s agenda. It is revealed that that cultural issues in leadership should be studied to identify both differences between cultures and specific within country practices that would help expatriate leaders to succeed. Besides, organizational communication in different areas will differ across cultures. s Global leaders need to recognize such differences and its causes and effects. Research shows that leadership theories in many cases limiting our knowledge about how culture might influence their validity, particularly in Eastern cultures. During the last decade, interest in cross-cultural leadership has increased dramatically for apparent reasons. Increasing globalization of organizations has made it more critical to learn about effective leadership in different cultures. Influencing and motivating culturally diverse workforce has become an increasing challenge for global leaders or leaders of cultural diversity on local levels. Successful influence requires a broad understanding of cultural differences and motivational factors in each culture and at the same time different practices of other countries.
In this respect, it may be highlighted that the Global Leadership and Organizational Behavior Effectiveness (GLOBE) research program has carried on a cross-cultural investigation of leadership and national culture, using data from 825 organizations in 62 countries to identify nine dimensions on which national cultures differ: power distance; individualism versus collectivism; masculinity versus femininity; uncertainty avoidance; long-term versus short-term orientation; and humane versus performance orientation (Robbins and Judge, 2008, p. 125). The GLOBE framework is primarily based on Geert Hofstede’s Framework for Assessing Cultures – one of the most referenced approaches for analyzing cultural variances since 1970s (p. 124).
The information that GLOBE research indicate here that certain traits, skills, and behaviors are rated highly relevant for effective leaderships in all culture, for example, integrity (honest, trustworthy, just), visionary (has foresight, plans ahead), inspirational (positive, dynamic, encourages, motivates, builds confidence), decisive, diplomatic, achievement-oriented, and team-integrator, whereas some attributes varied widely in relevance across cultures, such as ambitious, cautious, compassionate, indirect, risk taker, self-sacrificing, sensitive, status conscious etc. Examining the relationship among societal cultures, situational variables (such as strategy, culture, uncertainty, etc), leadership process, and organizational effectiveness, the GLOBE project has provided significant research results for leadership of cultural diversity in the rapid pace of globalization and economic development.
It is necessary to grasp that appropriate understanding of how leadership of cultural diversity and organizational communication with global mindset are exerted in real world practices, To achieve success in the diversified cultural atmosphere this requires a careful study of cultural values, traditions, and norms, as well as diversity training for the global employees. Failure in business in diversified situation primarily happened due to the inability to understand and accept the cultural differences and lead according to those differences in different situations and cultural differences..
Special attention should be given to honored guests, elders, parents, teachers, bosses and leaders and must be treated differently as per status. They strongly value and adhere to a hierarchical relationship in society. They see the society as composed of people who are inherently unequal in rank and standing, and differences in rank are signaled and reinforced by the style of the interaction between the parties involved. Deference, respect and formality towards superiors are the norm. In addition, juniors are supposed to keep their opinions to themselves unless specifically and directly asked.
Culture values the importance of status differences and hierarchies in societies. The complex authority and status relationships characterize culture, which parallels with the idea of power distance in Hofstede’s study. Further Luthans (2008) notes that “power distance is the degree to which members of a collective expect power to be distributed equally” . Singapore has a high rating on power distance, which means that large inequalities of power and wealth exist and are tolerated in the culture.
So we should observe the diversified cultural norms, attitude, behavioural differences, mindset categories, local desires and emerging demands, historical and current trends of the people of different culture and countries, psychological propensity and mindset, local leadership patterns and global trends of business policies, operational methods and training the employees on local and behavioural practice, HR policies in global development trend in the light of situational difference before planning the business strategies considering the cultural diversities, locations, global tendency and mindset of human resource personnel, identify appropriate management and operational methods, strategies, research and development process design and process improvement as per need of the expansion of business as a whole
(Mohammad Mosaddek Hussain, MCHRD, MIPM Chairman, BIHRM Foundation, Bangladesh)
