Global Literacies: Lessons on Business Leadership and National Cultures [Hardcover]

Carl Phillips (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 11, 2000

Throughout the world, languages differ, but the business questions are the same. In French and Japanese, Hebrew and English, executives are asking, "How can I survive and thrive in the borderless, global marketplace?"

For answers, the authors of Global Literacies went straight to the leaders themselves -- the CEOs of thousands of corporations around the globe.

Two lessons emerged. First, there are leadership universals that every executive and manager needs to practice in order to be world-class at home and abroad. The second defied conventional wisdom: in the borderless economy, culture doesn't matter less, it matters more.

Around the world, business leaders apply their own experiences -- personal, professional, and cultural -- to an ever-expanding world of Dutch colleagues, Brazilian suppliers, Taiwanese manufacturers, and Chinese competitors. These leaders are trying to become globally literate...and Global Literacies is for, and about, them.

No one knows this better than CEOs of successful global companies such as Japan's Canon, Sweden's Ericsson, Taiwan's Acer Computers, the U.K.'s British Telecommunications, and U.S.-based Coca-Cola.

In Global Literacies, a team of researchers led by Robert Rosen, Ph.D., of Healthy Companies International, and Watson Wyatt Worldwide have produced the first model of international business success based on a wide-ranging landmark study of global leaders and their world-class companies. Global Literacies documents the exclusive results of a worldwide survey of over one thousand senior executives and in-depth interviews with CEOs of seventy-eight companies -- companies representing 3.5 million employees in more than 200 countries, and with more than $725 billion in annual sales.

Global Literacies offers compelling new insights and business tools:

The Global Leadership Universals

Learn the new literacies of business:

* Personal Literacy -- understanding and valuing yourself

* Social Literacy -- engaging and challenging people

* Business Literacy -- focusing and mobilizing your business

* Cultural Literacy -- valuing and leveraging cultural difference

The Global Success Quotient

Learn which are the most globally active, financially successful companies -- and countries -- in the world, understand how they got there, and apply those learnings to your own organization.

The Cultures of Twenty-first-Century Business

Develop ways to see global challenges and opportunities, think with an international mindset, act with fresh global-centric leadership behaviors, and mobilize world-class companies -- whether you're a multinational giant, a domestic manufacturer, or a local community organization.

National Profiles

With sophisticated profiles of thirty countries, and survey data from eighteen national cultures -- from the Tolerant Traders of the Netherlands to China's Ancient Modernizers and the Optimistic Entrepreneurs of the United States, Global Literacies is a groundbreaking and fascinating work on the most important issues in the world of business today.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Cutting-edge corporations are talking more and more about the emergence of a true worldwide marketplace, and about how it is dramatically reshaping the way they do business. Global Literacies, by psychologist and businessman Robert Rosen, takes this conversation one thought-provoking yet practical step further by comparing the process to a child's gradual mastery of words and ideas. Accordingly, he suggests, businesses venturing onto the global stage first "must learn to read the world's new language" if they really hope to succeed. He combines a worldwide survey of more than 1,000 corporate leaders, in-depth studies of 28 national cultures, and one-on-one interviews with 75 multinational CEOs (such as Leo van Wijk of Royal Dutch Airlines, Canon's Ryuzaburo Kaku, Sir Peter Bonfield of British Telecommunications, and Coca-Cola's M. Douglas Ivester) to show how pacesetters "see global challenges, think with an international mindset, create fresh leadership behaviors and mobilize people in culturally mindful ways." The road to success via literacy that he subsequently develops and explains in this book includes "unlearning our past assumptions," cultivating a "flexible mind" that is comfortable with chaos and change, and discovering how differences among people, companies, and countries affect the institutions we build and the strategies we employ. --Howard Rothman

From Publishers Weekly

Businesspeople operating outside their native country need some understanding of foreign cultures. This study offers a survey approach--both in the sense of broad coverage and use of survey data--to the idea that national culture matters even in a globalized world. The authors received questionnaire responses from more than 1,000 senior executives and conducted interviews with 78 CEOs. As an almanac for international business, the book is moderately valuable. Boxed sets of handy information about the major developed economies supplement the CEO interviews, in which the authors usually work in a few basic facts about history and culture. Unfortunately, the book goes no deeper than this. German leaders, described as "quality perfectionists," value "knowing your strengths and shortcomings," while U.K. leaders, dubbed "modernizing traditionalists," advocate leading by example. The CEO interviews read like annual report letters. Although the book claims information from financially successful companies, many of the 78 choices, such as Boeing and Novatris, have underperformed the stock market and many of the CEOs are under intense criticism. No hard questions are asked about these matters. The CEO of a company best known recently for a bitter strike speaks only of the need for trust and communication with employees. These CEOs doubtless have useful things to teach about success and business, but the authors do not press them to go beyond superficial platitudes such as encouraging one's employees to think positive. (Feb.)
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 416 pages
• Publisher: Simon & Schuster; 1 edition (January 11, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0684859025
• ISBN-13: 978-0684859026
• Product Dimensions: 9.5 x 5.9 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 13.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #793,262 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Welcomed Global Leadership Primer, July 22, 2001

By 

Debbe Kennedy (San Francisco) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Global Literacies: Lessons on Business Leadership and National Cultures (Hardcover)

I happened upon this book and I'm so glad I did! It is a well-written, easy-reference global tool--- much more than just another business book for the shelf. The first-hand stories, study data and format makes it a keeper. Although the study was relatively small, it was globally broad and big enough, with its weighty contributors, to give any leader a good dose of global nourishment to help you forge your own new path. What I like about it most is the straightforward presentation that is free of gobbledegook, so common to many business books. Many leaders across geographies, industries and sectors are trying to find their bearings in the marketplaces, workplaces and communities of the world at this turbulant time of opportunity. This book not only provides stimulating information, but it helps one remember that the solutions we seek are not so complicated. No big surprises. Instead, these times just ask little more of us. Working across cultures and geographies ultimately means working with a new consciousness about others---learning from and thinking more about each other --- and realizing that it is by putting our differences to work that we will open the way for new levels of innovation and a world that benefits all. The book serves as a reminder of how much you already know as a leader that can now be applied to a new set of global problems---as well as, how much you need to learn. I plan to share it with my customers and fellow leaders of change. Thank you for this work!

6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Informative and Elegant, February 11, 2000

By 

Ptak Science Books (Washington, DC, USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Global Literacies: Lessons on Business Leadership and National Cultures (Hardcover)

A close reading of this book reveals an impressive insight in the subject matter and an elegant and crisp style of presentation. I found the book informative, deftly written and useful. It is a must read book for any person wishing to come to some understanding on the gloal economy, for any person engaged in commerce, and for any person who is curious about global cultures.

15 of 20 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars A Frenchman, an Indian, and a Brazilian Walk into a Bar , April 28, 2000

By 

Jonathan Lehrich - See all my reviews

This review is from: Global Literacies: Lessons on Business Leadership and National Cultures (Hardcover)

Alvy: "You're, like, New York Jewish Left-Wing Liberal Intellectual Central Park West Brandeis University ... the Socialist Summer Camps and the father with the Ben Shahn drawings, right? And you really, you know, strike-oriented kind of - uh, stop me before I make a complete imbecile of myself."

Allison: "No, that was wonderful. I love being reduced to a cultural stereotype."

[Annie Hall, 1977]

------------------------------

Everyone talks about globalization, but few do anything about it. As the world contracts, many once-arrogant executives find themselves humbled by their ignorance of the manners, modes, and mores of other nations and cultures. At the same time, accelerated communication has built self-confidence among those leaders who might once have aped the methods of Western business superpowers. Americans, British, French, and a host of the traditionally smug are discovering that they can't just talk at their counterparts to the east and south. They need to understand them, speak their language (figuratively and literally), and learn how to make the borderless economy work.

So argues Robert Rosen and his colleagues in Global Literacies. Using a 1,000-person survey, combined with interviews with 75 CEOs in 28 countries, the authors have developed a model of twenty behaviors and roles for the twenty-first century leader. These competencies - "Chaos Navigator", "authentic flexibility", "Respectful Modernizer", etc. - are here elucidated by example, using extended interview excerpts and admiring descriptions of leaders chosen as competency archetypes. It's a reasonable approach, particularly when complemented by capsule summaries of their leaders' countries and their cultures. If your knowledge of world history, geopolitics, and comparative religions is limited, and if you don't have a World Fact Book near at hand, then you'll find convenient answers in these reports.

But every reporter wants to write editorials, and it's in the oration and polemics that Global Literacies stumbles. As a business topic, literacy is not lite and racy, so the authors try to spice up their book with fortune-cookie truisms....

"Leaders are people, too."

Global Literacies is clearly the work of a motivational speaker, full of sound bites and fury. It also tends towards proof by sweeping assertion. Discussing China's $30 billion Ping An Insurance, for example, the authors state that "the secret of [its] success is its ability to keep one foot in traditional Chinese culture and one foot in the world, constantly learning and modernizing Chinese culture." This may be true, but how could it be proved? How does one measure "learning and modernizing" as a competitive advantage? Must great leaders always have strong cultural roots?

How you respond to Global Literacies will depend in part on where you stand in the classic argument of nature vs. nurture. By overemphasizing "national traits" that predetermine behavior, Rosen and his colleagues have fallen into the classic trap of cultural stereotyping. They argue for example that "we need to combine the egalitarian nature of the Dutch, the change orientation of Americans, the achievement orientation of the Overseas Chinese, and the humility of the Scandinavians." All Scandinavians? Aren't there any supercilious Swedes out there?...

Ultimately Global Literacies informs more than it persuades. Some segments are merely unfortunate; Douglas Ivester, held up as the epitome of communication and "urgent listening", has since been fired as CEO of Coca-Cola for a series of gaffes and mishandled controversies. And it is true that the interweaving of interviews and facts can be instructive, even enlightening. But eventually you begin to wonder whether these cultural depictions are portraits or cartoons. If you're going to travel around the world in 400 pages, be warned that travel may narrow the mind.