Globalization has become a common occurrence in the corporate world. With an increase in the number and popularity of the tools of globalization, a large number of corporations are accessing global markets. However, globalization comes with its challenges, and thus it has had severe effects on leadership. This paper is an in-depth exploration of the effects that globalization has on leadership.
Globalization has a lot of effects on leadership. These effects are more pronounced in the corporate world where the entry of a corporation in global market has planning implications, capital implications, marketing implications and other issues associated with globalization (Mintchell, 2008). For instance, a corporation that enters global markets will have diverse environments to consider and a large customer base. These aspects of a global company make it difficult to make decisions, and it also makes it harder to direct the company.
Similarly, even after the right decisions or plans are made, implementation of the plans may prove to be a nightmare since the leadership of the corporation will have to work through a lot of key factors that may be both competing and diverse. For instance, different cultures receive various messages differently. In an advertising campaign, a certain message may work very well in a certain culture, while it may perform very poorly in other cultures (Ray, 2010).
This is because some non-verbal communication signs, or even words, may be offensive in some countries. Other similar situations may also apply in issues related to capital decisions in different countries. For instance, different countries have different taxes, political stability, etc. The latter may affect currency stability, which is a key consideration in making decisions for a global company.
From the above discussion about effects of globalization on leadership, it is apparent that a global company is far-off more complex than a regional company as far as making decisions and planning are concerned.
It is especially difficult if the organization is undergoing change (Ganly, 2010). For instance, if a company is going global, it will be difficult to make decisions because it has little knowledge and experience of the global markets.
If I were the leader of such a corporation, I would embark of fact-finding programmes that would make the leadership of the corporation to make informed decisions. For instance, I would ensure that before any advertising campaigns are done, the target people are properly studied to understand their code of conduct, and know the signals and words that they may regard as offensive.
It may even lead me to advocate for the decision that a single product will be advertised with different commercials in different countries in order to achieve maximum benefits from it. This will also be applicable since countries may speak different languages. For instance, there may be countries that do not understand English, and would need an advertisement done in French.
As evidenced in the discussion above, globalization has a lot of effects on the decisions made by leaders in the corporate world. As more companies go global, they face the challenge of managing their portfolios in a larger scale.
This proves a difficult task to many companies, which may even end up performing more poorly with a global status than with a regional or even local status. It is therefore of essence that before a company goes global, it evaluates it leadership to see if it can manage its operations on a global scale.
Reference List
Ganly, S. (2010). The effects of globalization on management and leadership. Web.
Mintchell, G. (2008). Globalization’s impact on leadership. Web.
Ray, C. (2010). The effects of globalization on management and leadership. Web.