Selfishness of Employees
There are a number of problems that need to be addressed by the company, and to do this will require decisive leadership. That leadership must combine a common strategic vision with the ability to transfer ideas between cultures. This paper will explain this concept of leadership as it pertains to running a global organization that faces some difficulties.
There are a number of different communications issues that have lead to the current situation. The employees around the world are not working to a common objective. Additionally, they each have a differing view on moral and ethical issues, and how to manage the company. There are also issues with employee fit, where some employees do not properly fit with their roles within the company. This leads to reductions in workplace satisfaction and other problems.
There are a number of different leadership theories that are applicable in this circumstance. Servant leadership is based on the idea that the leader acts to meet the needs of the team members (Greenleaf.org, 2008). This is not applicable in this situation because the different team members differ significantly with respect to organizational culture. Thus, the leader cannot easily serve the disparate units under his or her control.
Another leadership style is for command-and-control, or autocratic leadership (Cherry, 2010), a highly centralized structure in which the leader dictates to the different units and employees what their roles are and what is expected of them. While this style is out of fashion in many parts of the West, it is still common in other cultures where the power distance is relatively high. This leadership style works in a multicultural setting, however, because there are a number of different outcomes...
Ultimately, the staff must be equipped with the tools and/or mindset to solve the problem, and this simply is not the case at the company. The problem that this company faces in part is that the workers do not have any clear guidance as to their ultimate objectives. As such, the employees have no concept of how to work with each other and the result is conflict and strife within the organization. To remedy this, leadership is needed in the cities where the leaders grasp the concept of people from different cultures working together for a common objective. London, Toronto, Chicago and Seattle should therefore take the lead in developing communications and motivation strategies for the entire team. This is not to downplay the importance of the other groups on a technical level, but it does downplay the value of those groups in solving intercultural problems, in relation to the above-mentioned world cities.
From a leadership perspective the command-and-control model is ideal because it helps to dictate the terms on which the communication between groups will take place. For the manager, it is important to understand that one is capable of having significant influence on the entire group. This global group may be disparate in terms of culture, but each member of the group understands the value of multicultural interaction. It is important, however for the company to emphasize the value of this type of interaction. Many managers may not truly understand the value to the company's objectives of global multicultural interaction, so it is important to utilize…
