Customer Reviews

Culture, Leadership, and Organizations: The GLOBE Study of 62 Societies

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This book will displace Hofstede's seminal work on culture because it provides the most up do date survey data on cultural values of countries. It is also a very useful leadership reference book. A bit on the expensive side, but then you are buying the Rolls Royce of culture books. To supplement this book regarding leadership in general a couple of leadership reference books would be useful (e.g., "Handbook of Leadership" by Bernard Bass--very complete, or more compact versions like "Leadership in Organizations" by Yukl or "The nature of Leadership" by Antonakis).

Though this book is rather expensive, it is worth the price. It gives a very good overview of both societal and organizational cultures in the 62 countries described. It helps understanding the challenges of multicultural teams. In combination with books written by Trompenaars and Hofstede a good insight can be developed in the backgrounds of behaviour and attitude of people in organizations with a multi cultural composition.

As American business becomes more global, we need to be more alert to differences in cultures. Most of us know at some level that other cultures do not think and operate the way that we do. But we struggle to identify the differences. Sometimes we rely on anecdotes and examples. Sometimes we rely on popular journalism, especially about India and China. Sometimes we rely on stereotypes (the way the French or the Japanese are). All of these are incomplete.
Robert House and his colleagues offer a comprehensive framework, based on very solid research, to understand the differences in cultures. They have identified 9 factors that differentiate cultures. Among the nine are how much the society is oriented toward meeting challenges and how much distance there is between the most and least powerful people. The US for example scores mid range on performance and low on power distance (gap between most and least is relatively small).
House's framework alerts us to differences in dealing with organizations and people in other societies. For example, the Germans have a stronger performance orientation and greater power distance. So in working with Germans we have to be sensitive to their greater attention to results and to power differences.
The book was written for academics, with Part 2 devoted to a detailed explanation of methodology. I believe that the book offers a lot of value to any practitioner who is seriously interested in understanding these culture differences. In particular, Part 3 offers a thoughtful explanation of the differences among cultures on each of the 9 dimensions. It is a tough read, but worth it, for anyone serious about learning to operate in the global economy.

House et al. (2004) provides an inside perspective of the world's cultural make up and how to use that knowledge to interact with confidence and intercultural effectiveness. The GLOBE research project is a live, ongoing, and scholarly invention. Why guess when you can learn to be a cross-cultural success? It's all about relationships!!!

This is a truly seminal work in a modern setting. Prof. House and his colleagues built on Geert Hofstede's work and advanced it to a newer plateau.