Free Essay: Case Evaluation of Cross-Cultural Management

Societal culture is the beliefs and values commonly upheld and in existence in a particular population. These are the expectations and standards of a population living together in a given place that governs them. For effective running and management of any organization, business, or country, the leadership style and the societal culture should always be in harmony. Effective leaders take into consideration the various cultural differences to positively influence the functionality of a particular group since, by doing so, they are able to different working ways and interactions with both the team and the outside world.

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Leading and managing groups of people are ways of ruling and organizing people. Leadership entails coming up and setting a group’s vision with the aim of being followed by the group to the implementation of the goal (Hersey, & Blanchard, 1982). Every leader has a unique leadership style that fits into some leadership theories. Some of the theories of leadership include;

The great man theory urges that leaders are born and not made. It further claims that leadership skills and traits are inherent. Leaders of this nature have natural characteristics of courage, intelligence, and confidence, among other traits. The other theory is the trait theory. This theory claims that given natural traits tend to make perfect leaders. However, not everyone with qualities makes a strong leader. The behavioral theory aims at how an individual's surroundings and not the natural skills help in developing a leader. The theory claims that the occurrence majorly influences people's leadership styles in the environment around them. This act of responding to environmental behaviors is known as conditioning.

Management Theory or transactional theory identifies leadership as a system of fines and achievements. The theory views successful leadership as result-oriented and hierarchical. Transactional or management leader’s main priorities are structures and orders rather than creativity. The relationship theory or the transformational theory urges that effective leaders are noted from their relationship between the leader and their teams. These leaders rule, inspire, and motivate through their passion and enthusiasm. The leaders are the role models of their staff. Situational theory urges that the best leader is who is able to adapt to a particular situation and is flexible to change his or her leadership style to fit into the given situation. The theory does not advocate for any leadership style, nor does it relate to any particular leader. Situational leaders respond to situations by coaching, commanding, participating, delegation, or persuading. The flexibility of these leaders is their main definition.

In trying to comprehend how the variable of societal culture fits into the theories of individual managerial traits, leader behavior, interaction patterns, role relationships, follower perceptions, influence over followers, influence on task and team goals, and influence managerial behavior, this work takes into consideration Russia’s president, turkey’s president, Venezuela’s president and Gazprom Space System leadership styles as they cope with both internal and international societal issues of importance to their companies or countries.

Vladimir Putin

Vladimir Putin is the Russian president and a word known leader born in St. Petersburg, in 1952. Putin's political career grew slowly through the St. Petersburg's mayor administration to top government ranks in the Russian government. Before ascending to the presidency, Putin first became the Russian prime minister and held the position for two terms. Putin leads the largest country in the world and the largest in nuclear production.

Political leadership globally is among the most challenging leadership styles since it requires governing the entire country with different cultures and communities. To manage any given country, the leader has to possess wise and strong leadership traits. President Putin rose to Russia's top seat when Russia needed a strong leader who could lead the country to develop and win against corruption. Putin has established and shown his strong and wise leadership style through the economic stability of Russia.

Being the Russian president, Putin tries his best to understand Russian citizens' culture, norms, and values. Having being brought up in a communist and a low-income family, Vladimir Putin has become a role model for many Russians and other people globally. This is because he is a definition of a self-made, successful, and hardworking leader. In his leadership style, Putin is seen to be a participative leader given by the fact that Russia is a democracy, although Russia needed an authoritative leader. Putin is also a charismatic leader; this is evident through his strong and excellent communication skills. Over the years, he has always been able to convince the Russian citizens to trust him and believe in his country's visions. In his leadership style, Vladimir Putin changes his personality and behaviors to fit in his surroundings. This makes him a charismatic and a strategic leader since he is able to develop himself and entire Russia.

Vladimir Putin has to be in the managerial position before, and he suits the Russian presidency seat since the country needed a strong leader who could lead the country to prosperity (Simonsen, 2000). He is known for using his leadership and managerial skills to influence the citizens in keeping Russia stable. Putin has excellent psychological abilities, which he uses in decision making and taking risks, which he thinks are best for his country. Having come from the same background as many Russian citizens and being people-oriented, Putin knows what his citizens require from his administration at a given time. Through his management skills and background, Putin can control his citizens by harmonizing and coordinating them to accomplish a common objective based on their wants. In coming up with his country's policies, Putin puts into consideration the Russian values, view, and culture. In order for Russia to remain socially stable and gain control over the people, Putin pushes his policies and strategies by using authoritative and dictatorial leadership style. He can achieve his desire through his constant use of his influence, charisma, position, and authority.

From the traits and qualities of Vladimir Putin, it is clear that he is a made leader and not a born leader. His upbringing has developed most of Putin's leadership qualities and traits, and life experiences; for instance, he was brought up in poverty where his siblings succumbed to hunger (Simonsen, 2000). These hurdles motivated him and gave him a strong desire to succeed. He developed a lot of his qualities through his civil law major education and KGB training. He was able to learn different ways of relating to interacting and motivating people at different levels. For smooth interactions with the diverse communities and cultures, Putin mastered an excellent command in communication skills by learning various languages.

The KGB training developed Putin both mentally and physically. This training made him develop conscientiousness. This gave him control over his body and mind, which was reflected in the autocratic style of leadership. Vladimir Putin's traits and qualities, which he developed through his training and experiences helped him in becoming successful in ruling Russia. Being an ambitious expansionist, Putin's personality influenced his leadership style. He is generally a controlling and dominant person since his early life. However, Putin is a self-disciplined individual; this trait has helped him achieve his goals despite every obstacle.

Behavioral leadership theory focuses on a given leader's behavior. The leader's behavior is used as a tool to see the leader's influence on his people and the results of the behavior. Vladimir Putin is viewed as a strict and hardworking person, and his ideas and visions mainly influence this. His behavioral traits impact leadership and management styles, decision making, and strategies. In his interactions, he makes decisions best for Russia's interest-based on rationality and not emotions. Putin's behavioral traits indicate his perfectionist nature in making decisions. As much as possible, he avoids making mistakes, thus taking time before arriving at a specific conclusion. Putin's leadership style shows both transactional and transformational styles of leading.

In his leadership, Putin is an autocratic leader. He makes decisions on his own and does not involve his team in any part of the process. He established a one-party state in Russia. The party had a top-bottom leadership hierarchy and command. He reviews his decisions on practicality and logic basis. He is task-focused when making decisions; he considers the objectives, the current issues, and the time. Before coming up with the final decision, Putin allows his management team to go over his plan; then, he makes the final decision with no consultation. In most events, the management team has no influential role to play since Vladimir Putin is an autocratic leader who thinks he is always perfect in everything he does. He only listens to his staff ideas and takes in their views and opinions but does not involve them in the final decision-making process. He believes he knows what is right for Russia.

Putin's skills and characters, such as his ability to comprehend Russia and the relationship between the community and his government and how the world impacts his country, enables him to come up with situation factors that are about to occur and how he makes the right decisions when the situations happen. Since he believes he is a perfectionist, he works hard on coming up with generalizations with a view of a situation that he perceives may occur and how he will apply his leadership skills to the situation.

Recep Tayyip ErdoganRecep Tayyip Erdogan, the Turkey president, is among the most influential and powerful leaders of modern times. This is mainly because of his leadership styles both to his citizens and the world. Tayyip leads his citizens with a great feeling of wariness, doubt, and misgiving about other people's actions. Throughout his leading, Erdogan has never relied on people since he believes that they may sabotage his acts and plans. Edorgan is always suspicious of anyone competing for his post or opposing his ideas (Hermann, 2002). He chooses people to work within policy-making based on their loyalty to him. Tayyip is known for firing and appointing new associates making sure no one opposes him. His distrust of people's personality makes him highly sensitive to any form of condemnation and takes strick actions against anyone he thinks is challenging his command and power (Hermann, 2002).

On the ability to complete a given work, problem-solving, relationship maintenance, and creation of a group spirit, Erdogan is seen to have low skills. His primary focus when leading is mostly on maintaining high morale of the citizens and loyalty. To him, leadership is all about empowering and mobilizing citizens. However, Erdogan has a lower emotional attachment to his citizens despite being a national leader. By merging Edorgan's traits, his motivation towards the word. It is seen that his motivation towards the world is influenced by the relationships he is creating and the various opportunities he is aiming to reap their advantages (Hermann, 2002).