Advances in Global Leadership: Volume 12

Carlos Ghosn, ex-chairman and CEO of Nissan and Renault, once admired as a role model of a global leader, was jailed in November 2018. This chapter examines why Nissan senior executives took the controversial step of reporting Ghosn’s alleged behavior to the Prosecutor’s office, knowing it would send him to jail, rather than manage the situation internally. Clearly, the trust that Ghosn had built during the Nissan revival was no longer alive. We describe three phases across two decades of Ghosn’s leadership in Nissan. In each phase we analyze the relationship between Ghosn’s behavior and the business outcomes, on the one hand, and Ghosn’s relationship with the senior leaders at Nissan, on the other hand. Ghosn built trust with Nissan leaders in Phase I through his skillful global leadership and positive social processes. The trust was reinforced on its own momentum through Phase II. Starting with Phase III, mistakes in managing social dynamics became evident: Ghosn did not adjust his social relationships at Nissan, following changes in the environment and the organization. He became disconnected from the Nissan senior executives and employees, who eventually blew the whistle on his behaviors. Ironically, it seems that many of the factors that led to Ghosn’s success at Nissan turned into factors which led to his downfall. Ghosn’s case tells us that the virtuous circle of leadership can sometimes spiral so far that it is taken for granted. Neglecting to tend this virtuous circle can unravel it.

This commentary focuses on Carlos Ghosn’s trajectory at Nissan through the lens of the Japanese sociocultural context. This approach highlights the issues of Japanese identity, orientation toward trust, and organizational practices, providing a fuller and slightly different explanation for what occurred. In addition to Ikegami and Maznevski’s argument that global leaders have their limits and make errors, the author contends that overly demanding global leadership roles sometimes place impossible burdens on global leaders, suggesting that there might be a limit to global leadership itself.

Collective global leadership requires team members to attempt to influence as well as accept influence from each other across multiple cultural, linguistic, and national boundaries, which is affected by the extent to which team members perceive the team as being safe for interpersonal risk-taking or the level of psychological safety in the team. The higher levels of collective leadership can, in turn, enhance the perceived psychological safety, and thereby create more positive outcomes for the team. This reciprocal relationship may be influenced by changes in team dynamics across the different stages of a team lifecycle. Using an inductive longitudinal study of 76 teams for nine months, we uncover the time-variant mutually reinforcing relationship between collective global leadership and team psychological safety. Our results show that the strength of this reciprocal relationship varies such that it is absent in the initial stage, becomes prominent in the middle stage, and then remains present, yet somewhat weakened, in the final stage of the team lifecycle. Our results also show that the initial collective leadership patterns in the team positively affect final leadership patterns, and this relationship is mediated by the team’s psychological safety in the middle stage of the team lifecycle. We discuss implications of this study on the theory and practice of global leadership and multinational teams.

The ability to effectively engage in cross-cultural interactions is imperative for leaders in our increasingly globalized world. Those who possess certain key psychological resources are more likely to engage in cross-cultural interactions successfully. Psychological resources include cross-cultural hope, efficacy, resilience, and optimism, which together comprise cross-cultural psychological capital (CC PsyCap). Previous research has indicated that CC PsyCap predicts cultural competence, yet the pathways underlying this relationship remain unexplored. We examined the relationships among CC PsyCap, engagement in cross-cultural interactions, stress during cross-cultural interactions, and cultural competence. The hypothesized relationships were tested using a sample of 135 undergraduate students (76% female) participating in study abroad programs. Participants completed measures of cultural competence, CC PsyCap, engagement, and stress approximately one month into their study abroad. Structural equation modeling analyses indicate that CC PsyCap and stress influence cultural competence directly and indirectly through engagement level during cross-cultural interactions. Furthermore, the results suggest that CC PsyCap indirectly influences engagement through stress during cross-cultural interactions. We discuss the implications of these results for people preparing to enter cross-cultural environments.

Answering to calls for further contextualizing global leadership, this study investigates power dynamics and cultural identities in global leadership in an African context. We took a grounded theory approach to investigate how a specific cultural context shapes assets and liabilities of global leaders. Drawing on our data comprising semi-structured interviews of managers of multinational enterprises operating in Ghana, we identified key assets and liabilities for being local or foreign in one’s global leadership role. Furthermore, we theorize four specific styles of leadership leveraging: identity leveraging, power leveraging, juxtapositional leveraging, and temporal leveraging. Finally, we integrated the above-mentioned elements and proposed a framework of contextualized assets and liabilities which illustrates how specific cultural context affects the assets and liabilities of localness and foreignness for global leaders, and how these assets and liabilities constitute the four styles of leveraging in such context. Implications of our findings for research and practice are discussed.

A consequence of globalization is the deterritorialization of space, place, and territory, as well as culture and identity. Focusing on identity-in-context within externally imposed, integral, and multilevel changes, a review of contemporary and post-modern literature contributes an expanding and fluid, albeit insufficient, trajectory for global identity development. Building on this earlier work, this paper offers a model of global identity, provoked by and responding to four key tensions salient to global leaders in the deterritorialized environment. Using a developmental paradigm, the expanded conceptualization comprises a re-constructive, developmental process of global identity, multidimensional identities as a constellation enabling spanning and navigating porous boundaries, an interdependency construct of relational belonging that transcends geography, and a sense of advocacy for extended global responsibility. Transformational opportunities for global identity development and future research are suggested.

In the field of global leadership, much of the research has focused on uncovering competencies and methods for assessing competencies. The process of developing global leaders has been researched less frequently; however, it is widely accepted that this process involves learning on the part of the leader. Mezirow’s (1978, 1991) transformative learning is a special type of learning in the domain of adult education and a useful lens to better understand the disorienting triggers that are thought to induce global leadership development (GLD). In simple terms, a disorienting experience occurs when we discover that something we thought was certain is now uncertain. Conducting business in another country or merely navigating to a grocery store or restaurant there can be a disorienting experience. In these situations, people are exposed to new information that does not fit their current meaning structures or thought paradigms, and at this juncture, people have a choice: to transform their perspective or remain unchanged. When individuals transform their perspective, they are experiencing transformative learning. The first section of this chapter reviews the concept of disorienting experiences across disciplines and within the domain of learning and education. The second section explains three GLD process models with a special focus on the role played by disorienting trigger events in each one. The final section explains the Disorientation Index (Ensign, 2019), which articulates dimensions of trigger events. The chapter concludes with future research directions and practical implications.

In the global world we live in, organizations have become progressively complex. “C” organizations have been replaced by “I” organizations, implying that we have moved from organizations permeated by a command, control, and compartmentalization orientation, to organizations distinguished by cultural signifiers such as interaction, information, and innovation. Effective teamwork will be essential to make these complex, highly diverse, increasingly virtual structures work.

Given the complexity of teamwork, this chapter discusses some of its benefits and drawbacks. Particular attention is given to possible team killers. Given the darker side of teams, a group coaching intervention technique is presented to resolve this daunting challenge. Taking this approach will help the members of a team to take control of their key team functions: setting direction, creating alignment throughout the organization, and building the commitment of everyone needed to accomplish organizational objectives.

To explore this intervention technique, the notion of the clinical paradigm is introduced, meaning using a psychodynamic-systemic lens that focuses not only on what is directly observable, but also on out-of-awareness behavior. The five premises that characterize the paradigm are described. It is suggested that applying the clinical paradigm within group coaching setting helps to tease out the central interpersonal role in which executives consciously and unconsciously cast themselves. It also helps explore the complementary roles they take on in an executive role constellation, creating tipping points for change. In addition, a number of other intervention techniques are introduced that help foster change.

Manfred Kets de Vries, one of the pioneers in the field of global leadership, was interviewed on the topic of global leadership development. He described various intervention techniques he utilizes in his Challenge of Leadership program at INSEAD – a year-long seminar aimed at CEOs – that include exercises, life case studies, 720-degree feedback instrumentation, and the use of the group coaching intervention technique to create a “transitional space” or safe environment where senior executives can be both vulnerable and honest; a place where they can experiment with new ways of dealing with their world. Kets De Vries’s reliance on psychodynamic-systemic concepts, given his background as a psychoanalyst and management professor, was also explored. In addition, he discussed the future of global leadership development and the role business schools can play in producing global leaders.

This chapter describes the effort of the author to enhance the global leadership effectiveness of US diplomats through resilience education and workforce training. The rationale for expanding the competency set for global leaders is explained in the diplomatic context, and the extension to other areas of international endeavor is suggested.

Franz Heukamp, Dean of IESE Business School, was interviewed on the role of business schools for developing and educating global leaders. He outlines what corporations expect from business schools, discusses how companies’ demands have changed over time, and shares his views of effective global leadership training in the business school context, drawing on the case of IESE Business School.

We review academic journal articles, chapters in scholarly books, and dissertations that were published in the global leadership domain in 2018 and compare our findings with those of Mendenhall, Li, and Osland’s (2016) earlier review of the 2010–2014 period. Specifically, we trace and discuss relevant changes over time in the number of authors, nature of employed methodologies, linkages of global leadership to related phenomena, and the prevalence of drawing on other conceptual approaches compared to those previously used to study global leadership. We conclude by discussing implications for advancing (1) an integrated body of global leadership theory, (2) novel forms of empirical research, and (3) collaborative global leadership research.