From cross-cultural management to global leadership: Evolution and adaptation See discussions, stats, and author profiles for this publication at: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/ XXXXXXXXXX...

From cross-cultural management to global leadership: Evolution and adaptation
See    discussions,    stats,    and    author    profiles    for    this    publication    at:    https:
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From    cross-cultural    management    to    global
leadership:    Evolution    and    adaptation
Article        in        Journal    of    World    Business    ·    October    2015
DOI:    10.1016/j.jwb XXXXXXXXXX
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3rd    edition    of    the    book,    "Global    Leadership:    Research,    Practice,    and    Development."    View    project
Allan    Bird
Northeastern    University
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Mark    E.    Mendenhall
University    of    Tennessee    at    Chattanooga
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Journal of World Business xxx XXXXXXXXXXxxx–xxx
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WORBUS-770; No. of Pages 12
From cross-cultural management to global leadership:
Evolution and adaptation
Allan Bird a,*, Mark E. Mendenhall
a D’Amore-McKim School of Business, Northeastern University, 313a Hayden Hall, 360 Huntington Avenue, Boston, MA 02115, United States
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
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.
� 2015 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Contents lists available at ScienceDirect
Journal of World Business
jo u r nal h o mep age: w ww.els evier . co m/lo c ate / jw
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
ewards 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 cu
ent te
ain. 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
ought 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
oadest classification, incorporating
international strategy, international human resources, and all othe
aspects of managing internationally and at all levels of analysis.
* Co
esponding author.
E-mail addresses: XXXXXXXXXX (A. Bird), XXXXXXXXXX
(M.E. Mendenhall).
Please cite this article in press as: Bird, A., & Mendenhall, M. E. From
adaptation. Journal of World Business (2015), http:
dx.doi.org/10.10
http:
dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jwb XXXXXXXXXX
XXXXXXXXXX/� 2015 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
‘‘Cross-cultural management’’ has generally refe
ed 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 refe
ing to the
oader 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
ief history of global leadership
We begin with a
ief history of cross-cultural management
esearch viewed from the vantage point of a focus on global
leadership. Given the
evity 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
cross-cultural management to global leadership: Evolution and
16/j.jwb XXXXXXXXXX
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dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jwb XXXXXXXXXX
mailto: XXXXXXXXXX
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A. Bird, M.E. Mendenhall / Journal of World Business xxx XXXXXXXXXXxxx–xxx2
G Model
WORBUS-770; No. of Pages 12
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 behavio
lossomed 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
Thunde
ird 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
een 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
Thunde
ird 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.
Please cite this article in press as: Bird, A., & Mendenhall, M. E. From
adaptation. Journal of World Business (2015), http:
dx.doi.org/10.10
also illustrates the rise of cross-cultural management research
through the proliferation of journals focused on this field ove
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 XXXXXXXXXXand jo
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 exace
ated 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 refe
ed
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).
XXXXXXXXXX–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
eflected 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
ecognition of difference, but also an implicit focus on identifying
and emphasizing those values and practices that home and host
country have in common.