United Kingdom - Cultural Leadership Style

I have decided to compare the United States to Canada. The reason for this choice is due to Canada sharing our borders. I felt it would be interesting to see how another country so close to the United States may compare and differ to the culture of our country. Based on Professor Geert Hofstede’s comprehensive study of how values in the workplace are influenced by culture, the United States and Canada rank closely in almost all values surveyed.

With the rapid changes in a health care system around the world, healthcare organizations need to develop strategies that will help the organization to sustain with any difficulties that may arise. Healthcare systems expand their cultural leadership strategies in order to gain a thorough understanding of situations (Johnson, 2009) that will effectively improve their operations in community. Healthcare organizations use both the dynamic culture leadership (DCL) and the omnibus leadership as a model for implementation and a strategy for their success (Johnson, 2009).

Gender relations - Do stereotypical mind-sets around gender relations lead to gender inequality in this workplace? Do work structures disadvantage women? Is there an alignment of managerial attributes with gender stereotypes, such that male attributes of competitive spirit and technical competence are given

The increased need for more workers has led to less sexist decisions and more decisions being base off of qualifications. “As a result... women's share is supposed to increase from 46.4 to 46.8 percent,” Source A (Zupek). This source state that the amount of men and women in the workplace may soon be equal. A contrary justification would be that certain genders have specific qualities and their careers should pertain to that. Well, this argument can be easily disproved. Anyone can have any characteristic. Even men can have feminine

‘ What are the differences of managers’ leadership styles between the Western and Non-Western cultures ?’

Ever since the beginning of time there were difference made between the treatment of genders. In most societies if not all men always are at an advantage. Men are paid more, get more privileges. They are deemed more knowledgeable and credible.

Urban Meyer is the head coach for The Ohio State Buckeyes football team. He is 49 years old and was born in Toledo Ohio. He attended University of Cincinnati where he played football. Coach Meyer is married and has three children. Prior to coaching Ohio State he retired from coaching was working as a sports analyst for ESPN. Before retiring and working for ESPN, Coach Meyer was the head coach for the University of Florida. He led the Gators to two BCS championship wins and he held the highest percentages of wins for any active college football coach. (www.ohiostatebuckeyes.com).

Second, I would like to talk about the gender roles that play while both men and women are working for the same job or trying to get a job with the same field. When it comes to hiring people mostly go for men because they assume that men will get the job done better than a women would. “Most leadership positions are held by men, so women don’t expect to achieve them and that becomes one of the reasons they don’t” (Anna – Marie Slaughter). With that being said it makes the competition for a job more challenging for women. They have to not only reach all the qualifications that is needed for the job but to go above and try to beat what the men is going to

The IBM study of employees from the 70 countries was the basis for the dimensions and has been critized since there was only one company in the data set however, Hofstede’s belief was that using just one company would better reveal the national differences. According to the authors Phatak, Bhagat, and Kashalk (2009), he believed this because the IBM employees were the same in other respects like type of work, job descriptions, and education. This study has been stated to be the most comprehensive study of how values are influenced in the workplace (Itim International, 2012). Itim International, (2012) noted that Hofstede’s work established a paradigm in international economics, communication, and cooperation, from which Hofstede developed the first emphirical model of “dimensions” for national organizational culutre.

I have noticed double bind in my workplace considering one is too masculine or to feminine. I don't believe in all cases it is not men versus women . In the healthcare setting you see a lot of women in management and director positions . In addition to the women that are trying to work there way up to management and director positions .My manager and assistant manager have totally different work ethic ,however they both want to advance in there careers. My manager mannerism is not as aggressive and doesn't like confrontation yet she has been told she needs to assist more with resolution when issues arise . I personally think in any position a women purses she will need to incorporate others desires and wants in order to achieve her goal.

Air Force members such as myself, during some point in our careers will be a leader; whether you stay in for four years or make it a career. As a leader it is important to give thought to how you would lead once you are in a position of leadership. In five years I could potentially be the top enlisted leader in my squadron. I must focus on what type of culture my leadership could create. Using cultural intelligence what type of factors can influence my team? I need to understand if there is a cultural gap and if my organization is responsive or resistant to change; how would I combat against it? What symbols and ceremonies could I use to help strengthen the bond in the organization? Can my vision statement

Dr. Hofstede performed a comprehensive study of how values in the workplace are influenced by culture. In the 1970’s, as a Dutch researcher Dr. Geert Hofstede, collected and analyzed data from 116,000 surveys taken from IBM employees in forty different countries around the world. From those results, Hofstede developed a model that identifies four primary dimensions of differentiate cultures. These include: Uncertainty Avoidance (UA), Masculinity-Femininity (MAS), Individualism-Collectivism (IND), Power and Distance (PD). After a further study of the Asian culture by researcher Michael Bond in 1991, Hofstede added a fifth dimension in his theory, Long- and Short-term time orientation (LTO), also referred to as the Confucian Dynamism. His research has framed how cultural differences can be used in professional business transactions. Geert Hofstede 's dimensions analysis can assist the business person in better understanding the intercultural differences within regions and between countries.

Geert Hofstede is an influential Dutch researcher in the fields of organizational studies and more concretely organizational culture, also cultural economics and management. He is a well-known pioneer in his research of cross-cultural groups and organizations and played a major role in developing a systematic framework for assessing and differentiating national cultures and organizational cultures. His studies demonstrated that there are national and regional cultural groups that influence behavior of societies and organizations.

When a business decides to venture internationally into different countries with its products, services, and operations, it is very important that the company gains an understanding of how the culture of the different societies affects the values found in those societies. Geert Hofstede conducted one of the most famous and most used studies on how culture relates to values. Hofstede study enabled him to compare dimensions of culture across 40 countries. He originally isolated four dimensions of what he claimed summarized different cultures — power distance, uncertainty avoidance, individualism versus collectivism, and masculinity versus femininity (Hill, 2013, p.110). To cover aspects of values not discussed in the original paradigm Hofstede has since added two more dimensions — Confucianism or long-term orientation and indulgence versus self-restraint (Hofstede, n.d.). Because of the way Hofstede’s cultural dimensions are given an index score from 0-100, it is easy for a company to get a general comparison between the cultures they are expanding into and the culture they are already in.

Understanding the influence of culture in business practices and managerial decision-making requires explaining the differences between cultures. This is why, Hofstede (appendix 1) presents a well-known model based on four dimensions of culture: