Co-leadership Success through Mutual Acculturation
Year: 2012
Type: article
Abstract: Due to globalization corporate leaders are facing tough demands. Leaders are under pressure to ride out global recessions, global financial crisis, and setbacks of their company in the global network. This article discusses how leaders could rethink traditional approaches of competition via a successful trans-cultural co-leadership strategy investigating one important component of synergy creation, namely mutual cultural adjustment. The results suggest that successful acculturation enables both leaders to function as locally embedded and globally embedded managers. Through colocation and cooperation over a long span of time, the co-leaders studied were able to develop similarities of culture characterized by universalist approaches that dominate in the global financial business. The actors also adjusted their personal culture to prefer strong achievement orientation while building an honest partnership including emotional responses and instant feedback to confirm their communications. In conclusion, global leaders need to seek constantly to integrate with the global business community, while at the same time being committed to promotion of their local business and strong performance in the local market. The co-leadership approach introduced here can help leaders abroad to re-think how they build relations with global and local actors concomitantly by collaborative developments in long-lasting partnership.
Authors: Rolf D. Schlunze, Weiwei Ji
Language: English
Subfield: Communication
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W2169569185