As globalization dictates companies’ success, they search for intensive competitive strategies and thus move to foreign markets. In a context of globalization, the leaders need to be competent at business peculiarities, implement ethical and respectful approaches with the foreign subordinates, and be open to innovative ideas. While at the national market the manager should be innovative, competent and willing to improve in the first place, the comprehension of foreign mentality must be cornerstone of globalization-driven leadership. The main issues the leader may face in the new company quarters is a refusal of accepting the organization’s rules and views and resistance to changes due to cultural divergence. When managing the new market workforce, firstly, leaders need to become familiar with the existing hierarchy in the firm, as it dictates the management strategy. The main structural issue during globalization is overloaded hierarchy that becomes a barrier to innovation, hence, the leaders should simplify the system, remove micro-management and create the appropriate conditions of equality within the company. Secondly, the managers of the new firms’ quarters should study the non-formal relationships of the employees precisely and encourage conversation between the subordinates and the priors. This may allow detecting the existing controversies within the firm and smoothening the globalizing process. The leadership, in this case, must include business ethics, respect of an unfamiliar culture, and careful managerial action, which contribute to the main difference between domestic and globalization-driven leadership.
Organizational leadership is an area in business management which aims to solve managerial tasks provoked either by subordinate individuals or by the organization itself. An effective organizational manager should be aware of the strong and the weak of the company and the employees and guide them to common corporate vision. The leadership theory as a scientific approach appeared in the 19th century. The study of leadership transformed significantly from the times of the first attempts to discover crucial leaders’ features. The Great Man Theory, having emerged in middle 19th century, was the first attempt to explain the origins of ruling, and it is fully based on an assumption that the leaders were men born to be chiefs. The Trait Theory also stated that leaders’ qualities are predestinated, but it advanced to search for the needed traits of the effective leader. The Lewin’s Leadership Styles, which are autocratic, democratic, and Laissez-Faire, added diversity to the ruling approaches. The Behavioral studies concluded that leadership is not affected by gender and psychological predispositions. The Contingency theory stated that leaders may act differently in several managerial situations and that there is no commonly-agreed leadership style. The modern theories, such as Transactional, Transformational Leadership, bring much diversity to the styles of management. They explore an impact of external factors on managers’ decisions and affection of leaders’ behavior and interaction with employees on the productivity of the latter.
The adaptive issues represent the most unpredictable challenges for a company. While the technological ones can be eliminated by acting within the employees’ area of expertise, the adaptive cannot be dismissed by such actions. Dealing with such issues often requires shifting the attitude and values of the staff. The Senge’s Learning Organization framework was developed to counter a company’s attitudinal difficulties. The 5 Disciplines with the Systems Thinking at the helm, confront the 7 Learning Disabilities (including adaptive issues) in the process of a learning organization’s creation. The theory states that the changes should be well-structured and the managers should search for solutions not causing more issues. The Kotter’s 8-Step Process describes how to promote crucial changes in a company’s structure. The steps are creating a demand for changes, recruiting a team of supporting specialists, forming strategic visions, enlisting volunteers, removing barriers, creating achievements, supporting the wins, and changing the institution. The essential elements for confronting the issues are competent teams, initiatives, removing barriers, and fixation of results. Goleman’s Emotional Intelligence implies the leadership talents are not innate, thus need continuous development. The leader should own a variety of skills implemented in 5 areas of influence to create changes. Self-Awareness explores the inner qualities of a manager, Self-Regulation facilitates adaptation, Social Skill and Empathy help to guide the subordinates and considering their needs, and the Motivation drives everyone forward.
In The Fifth Discipline, Senge discusses organizational problem solving and creating a Learning Organization. The latter is a company that facilitates the educational process of the staff and also develops itself to remain competitive. A successful leader implements five disciplines in interaction with the subordinates to develop the core learning capabilities of the organization. As parts of the Four Disciplines, Personal Mastery develops self-discipline, Mental Models – inner values and perception, Shared Vision – genuine participation, and Team Thinking – the pursuit of pure collaboration. Being the Fifth Discipline, Systems Thinking aims to integrate the previous pillars of organizational learning and requires that a leader uses the previous four disciplines precisely. According to the theory, a leader’s main task is to use the five disciplines in overcoming the 7 barriers to organizational learning. The Learning Disabilities are equating employees’ responsibilities with their personality, thinking of the problems to emerge only externally, reacting instead of preventing, concentrating on small achievements, being blind against the destructive changes, not learning from previous experience, and believing that the management team can solve issues of any difficulty. Systems thinking bounds the other four disciplines and creates a possibility for constant organizational learning and countering the learning barriers.
Every company develops its culture, which is a combination of values, beliefs, and approaches to interaction between the employees making the organization remarkable. The culture is based on common views, inner written and spoken rules, norms, systems, and habits. While exercising effective leadership, the managers search for various options of improvement and integrate the innovations into the company’s community. To enrol novelties flawlessly, leaders should always act in accordance with inner rules, values, and vision of the firm’s members, which are the contributors to corporate culture. The latter often has several flaws, and a successful manager should detect and proactively shift the malicious aspects of organizational attitude to guide the subordinates through the effective growth. In the case when the culture is destructive or stops the urgent innovation, the leader should address the various methods of creating major changes according to the existing theories of organization management. The aim of a learning organization theory is to transform the perception of a firm’s members to a learning one, and the changes should occur in basic cultural paradigms. These include focusing on specific goals and general strategy, working in a team, and sharing the innovative ideas. Transforming an organization into a learning one implies integrating the five disciplines into the culture so that the employees’ motivation becomes genuine.