Share your perspective on leadership in the workplace and describe how it has been shaped by the increasing influence of globalization

first Share your perspective on leadership in the workplace and describe how it has been shaped by the increasing influence of globalization.
Leadership is the core driving force of an organization, whether upwards or downwards. Leaders’ qualities like integrity, vision or focus, consistency and connectedness with people can be spelt as the guiding principles amidst contradicting or opposing challenges such as organizational profitability, uncertainty, rapidly changing demographics and customer needs, rapidly advancing technologies etc. Surrounded and pressured with such challenges, leaders are rapidly changing in terms of their own vision and outlook and their leadership skills, all mostly focused more toward sustaining than leading. This paper focuses on identifying few underlying factors that affect leadership methods in the contemporary organizational setup.
McShane states, “ Globalization refers to economic, social and cultural connectivity with people in other parts of the world” (p. 8). From this perspective, globalization has serious implications for business leaders, especially in multinational organizations. These organizations require diverse workforce as well as diverse leaders that possess awareness of influence of cultural, political and social aspects on business. Globalization has resulted in easier accessibility of technology, information, data and products/services. It has also resulted in stiffer competition among organizations and greater passion of people to achieve more in less time, contrary to the conventional steady growth rate powered by profits and bureaucracy. Leaders in contemporary workplace embody these implications in the form of aggression in their business conduct, growth and aspirations. As a result, evidences of businesses booming and going bust have surfaced in recent past.
Secondly, globalization has caused organizational struggle for existence, and sustenance is extremely difficult besides opening up opportunities to expand and develop. These opportunities have in fact caused paradigm shifts of leaders in different parts of the world. For instance, the Chinese managers are becoming increasingly individualistic contrary to their collectivistic culture. The research also reveals lowered commitment of new managers to their traditional values, here Confucianism (Ralston et al, 425). Mindset of future managers is changing rapidly towards embracing global strategies and challenges, which means leaders/managers are adapting to international management styles irrespective of their cultural background (Peng & Shin, 179).
Despite leaders’ adjustments to the process of globalization, many businesses continue their struggle to sustain and lead, and some have even collapsed. Their collapse is attributed to leaders’ demoralizing values such as greed, deceit and selfishness (Nonaka & Takeuchi, 59). At the same time, successful and well-respected contemporary global leaders display integrity, compassion, judgment, connectedness, power and knowledge. These leaders also live and lead amidst pressures of globalization, and possess the wisdom to lead. (67).
To conclude, globalization has certainly invited many changes and challenges to businesses and the way they are led. These changes have reshaped leaders’ value systems, priorities, and management perspectives. However, leadership principles that drive and sustain businesses, like integrity, vision or focus, consistency, connectedness, still remain the same. The only additional learning that contemporary leaders make use of is the knowledge of global perspectives, which makes them, as Nonaka and Takeuchi point, wise leaders of the 21st century.
Works Cited
McShane, Lattimore, Steven and Glinow , Mary Ann Von. Organizational Behavior: Emerging
Realities for The Workplace Revolution. 3rd ed. New York: McGrawHill/Irwin. 2005. Print
Nonaka, Ikujiro and Takeuchi, Hirotaka. “ The Wise Leader: How CEOs Can Learn Practical
Wisdom to Help Them do What’s Right for Their Companies-And Society.” Harvard Business Review. (May, 2011): 59-67. Print
Ping, Mike W and Shin, Hyung-Deok. “ How Do Future Business Leaders View Globalization.”
Thunderbird. International Business Review. (Aug 2008): 175-182. Print
Ralston, David, A, Carolyn P. Egri, Sally Stewart, Terpstra, Robert H, and Yu Kaicheng. “ Doing
Business in the 21st Century with the New Generation of Chinese Managers: A Study of Generational Shifts in Work Values in China.” Journal of International Business Studies. (Second Quarter, 1999): 415-428. Print