Joyce S. Osland

Organizational Implications of Latin American Culture Lessons for the Expatriate Manager

What does an expatriate manager (or consultant or visiting professor) need to understand about the local culture to work effectively in Latin American organizations? This article contains the major lessons we have accumulated over many years spent working in and around Latin American organization. We overcame a reluctance to make generalizations about large and varied region, albeit with a coherent value system (INGLEHART; CARBALLO, 1997), to submit our best effort at identifying cultural explorations that underlie common organizational problems were overcome. Without question, there are

The journey inward: Expatriate hero tales and paradoxes

What is the overseas experience really like, and why is it so significant? Based on interviews with returned expatriates, Osland uses Joseph Campbells metaphor of the heros journey to analyze expatriate stories and answer these questions. The resulting framework outlines the predictable stages in the expatriate journey and articulates for the first time the complex, transformational nature of the expatriate experience and its inherent paradoxes. In addition to helping expatriates make sense of their experience, this framework furnishes prospective expatriates with more realistic expectations and provides practical lessons for companies and human resource professionals who want to handle expatriates more effectively.

Expatriate Paradoxes and Cultural Involvement

This exploratory study articulates and describes nine paradoxes inherent in the expatriate experience based on data from a sample of 35 repatriated businesspeople. Factor analysis produced four factors: bridging cultures, self identity, cautious optimism, and cultural intelligence. They correlated with several measures of cultural involvement, an original concept that refers to the extent to which expatriates enter the foreign culture and work interdependently with host country nationals. This indicates that expatriates who are more involved in the local culture seem more likely to experience paradox. Content analysis described how expatriates handle and resolve paradox.

Making Sense of Intercultural Collaboration

The rise of globalization is accompanied by an increase in alliances and collaboration. While firms are gaining in expertise and cultural sensitivity, some initiatives founder as people fail to fully consider culture’s impact. We adopt a cultural sense-making approach to intercultural collaboration, presenting a framework for analyzing cultural differences—value dimensions and communication styles rarely compiled in one location. Using these concepts, we explain cultural barriers to trust, a key component in collaboration, and demonstrate how cultural sense making is useful in analyzing intercultural situations. Fourteen strategies to help managers collaborate more effectively across cultures follow.

Broadening the Debate The Pros and Cons of Globalization

Globalization has become an increasingly controversial topic, and the growing number of protests around the world has focused more attention on the basic assumptions of globalization and its effects. The purpose of this literature review is to broaden the boundaries of the debate on globalization and increase our understanding of its influence beyond the economic sphere. The winners and losers resulting from globalization are identified along with empirical evidence of its impact on key areas: equality, labor, government, culture and community, and the environment. The literature indicates that globalization is an uneven process that has had both positive and negative effects. The article presents some of the arguments of various stakeholders in the globalization controversy.

A Comparative Study of Managerial Styles Among Female Executives in Nicaragua and Costa Rica

As more women attain high-level positions in both business and government, researchers and practitioners alike have pondered whether women managers have a distinctive style (Adler, 1996; Adler and Izraeli, 1994). Most of the research describing the managerial style of female executives has been carried out in the most industrialized countries. Gender-related management style has received scant attention in Central America where one finds little or no research on managers of either sex. We report here the findings of the first empirical study, conducted in 1992-93, of female managers in this region. There is limited agreement among U.S. scholars on gender-related differences in style. Some researchers find no male/female differences (Donnell and Hall, 1980; Fagenson, 1990; Powell, 1993), while others maintain that female managers are in fact different (Grant, 1988; Rosener, 1990, 1995). In one of the few cross-cultural studies, Gibson (1995) found that women leaders in four countries were more likely to focus on interaction facilitation (the extent to which a leader facilitates group interaction and communication in order to develop an effective team) than men, who placed more emphasis upon goal setting. Several studies from the United States and other countries reported that women apparently prefer a more participative style than men (Bayes, 1991; Eagly and Johnson, 1990; Soutar and Savery, 1991). Sadler and Hofstede (1976), however, found contra-

The women's global leadership forum: Enhancing one company's global leadership capability

Will women become leaders in the increasingly global world of the twenty-first century? According to many Chief Executive Officers (CEOs), promoting the best people—whether male or female—into senior leadership positions is a strategic necessity if their companies are to succeed, let alone prosper. This article describes the commitment that one major multinationals CEO made to moving women from around the world into the most senior leadership positions. It describes an organizational development process, led by the CEO that included a targeted survey of both male and female executives, convening a 4 1/2-day Global Leadership Forum, and actively changing the organization based on recommendations generated at the Forum.

Global Leaders as Experts

In this chapter, we show how our understanding of global leadership can be enriched by applying research on expert decision making. We review Kleins model of expert decision making and other research on expert cognition. Then we apply these findings to show how the decision-making processes of expert global leaders might differ from those of novice leaders. Finally, we suggest directions for future research.

The Context of Expert Global Leadership

We focus on the extreme complexity of the global context in relation to global leadership expertise. We relate how the subjects in a qualitative study of expert cognition in global leaders describe their work context. Our goal is to build a foundation for a theoretical argument as to what distinguishes domestic/traditional leadership from global leadership and further clarify the role context plays in challenging and developing global leaders.

Exceptional global leadership as cognitive expertise in the domain of global change

Prior empirical investigations in global leadership are typified by a content approach using surveys or interviews. Research on how global leaders perceive and respond to their work context is scant. This investigation focused on global leadership as a form of expert cognition in the domain of global change. We employed applied cognitive task analysis and content analysis to identify how exceptional global leaders conceptualise their work contexts, approach their work, and develop their expertise. Our findings suggest that characteristics of the work context exert a strong influence on the type of expertise that global leaders exhibit. We conclude with a consideration of the implications of these findings and the expert cognition approach for future research on global leadership behaviour.