Handbook of Leadership Theory and Practice

13

LEADERSHIP AND CULTURAL CONTEXT

A Theoretical and Empirical Examination Based on Project GLOBE

Mansour Javidan, Peter W. Dorfman, Jon Paul Howell, and Paul J. Hanges

Introduction

There is ample evidence that the world of business is increasingly global (Giddens, 1999; Govindarajan and Gupta, 2001; Friedman, 2005; Inkpen and Ramaswamy, 2006). The globalized business world of today provides firms with unprecedented opportunities but also formidable challenges because it represents a higher level of complexity resulting from conditions of multiplicity, interdependence, and ambiguity (Lane, Maznevski, and Mendenhall, 2004).

In a recent article, Samuel J. Palmisano, chairman of the board, president, and CEO of IBM, examined the forces shaping ...