research foundations
The World Is Flat …And So Are Leadership Competencies By Kenneth P. De Meuse, King Yii Tang, Kevin J. Mlodzik, Guangrong Dai
Key takeaways: • To succeed in today’s economy, organizations must possess global leaders with the right knowledge, experience, and competencies. • Many MNCs resist identifying and developing talent globally largely because of the assumption that global leaders in different regions of the world possess and need significantly different skills. • Our study found that the “world is flat” pertaining to leadership competencies.
In his best selling book, The World is Flat, Thomas Friedman (2005) noted that shifts in technology, transportation, communication, and market conditions are leveling the playing field for organizations around the globe. Once powerful regional advantages (or disadvantages) are becoming increasingly irrelevant as companies exercise their freedom to design, manufacture, and market their products and services from anywhere on the planet. Due to globalization, a new type of corporate leader is emerging – the so-called “global leader.” Jokinen defines such a leader as “anyone having global responsibility over any business activity” (2005, p. 201). Others describe global leaders as individuals who have an extraordinary capacity to unify an international workforce around a vision through demonstration of personal mastery, thinking globally, anticipating opportunities, and using shared leadership networks (see Adler, 2001; Goldsmith, Greenberg, Robertson, & Chan, 2003). This type of leadership is engendered by an ability to develop and implement criteria for business performance, independent from the assumptions of a single country, culture, or context (Barlett & Ghoshal, 1992; Maznevski & Lane, 2004). If multinational companies (MNCs) are to battle the increased shortage of global talent, a comprehensive understanding of what characteristics define a successful global leader is needed.