Created 19 April 2003

Comments Invited: Business is a Social Science: Theory Development: Managing the International Enterprise: Variables Influencing Managerial Leaders, A model of the critical variables influencing the managerial leader of an international business organisation:

My current plan is to define and assess, as well as possible, the human aspects of the business culture in New Zealand. I am seeking ideas as to what people think a model of a business culture centred around managerial leadership might look like.

I invite your comments:

Has this wheel already been invented?

Business is a social science. These few pages are the first small step in defining a research project attempting to build a theoretical model, including measuring instruments, to identify the variables exerting critical influence on managerial leadership performance.

GLOSSARY:

Clock Builder: Creating an organization that has the capacity to succeed through many product cycles, and under successive leaders, is clock-building; Collins & Porras (1994) make a reasonable case that these kinds of people are different from leaders, particularly charismatic leaders. Collins, James C. & Porras, Jerry I. (1994) Built to Last, New York: HarperCollins Publishers. Cf. http://www.mastersforum.com/archives/collins/collins.htm

Emic: Of or relating to features or items analyzed with respect to their role as structural units in a system, as in behavioural science or linguistics. 

Etic: Of or relating to features or items analyzed without considering their role as a structural unit in a system, as in behavioural science or linguistics.

Anthropology: Emic -- from the perspective of the insider, the "native’s" point of view; the subjective interpretation of beliefs, values, practices, behaviours as they make sense to participants in a cultural system. Etic -- from the perspective of the detached, external, observer; "objective" measurement or description that does not depend upon an insider’s understanding of the phenomenon

Emic measuring instruments, those that are culture bound

Etic measuring instruments, those that measure “culture free” phenomena. 

Feedback System: Input to an activity changes the processes within the activity, and hence the outputs, and information concerning the output of the activity causes (or should cause) the entity generating the input to change the input.

Implicit measures: tools to measure the opinions, attitudes, and beliefs about an entity, e.g., “leader” or “manager”

Explicit measures: tools to measure the behaviour of an entity

Subjective & Objective Culture: See http://www.ac.wwu.edu/~culture/triandis1.htm and Osgood, Charles E. Probing subjective culture. Journal of Communication, 1974, 24 (1): 21-35 and 82-100. Reprinted in Charles E. Osgood and Oliver C.S. Tzeng. 1990. "Language, Meaning, and Culture, The Selected Papers of C.E. Osgood." Charles E. Osgood and Oliver C.S. Tzeng (Eds.). New York: Centennial Psychology Series.

•	Material/Objective Culture: Buildings, tools, clothing, methods of transportation, etc.
•	Subjective Culture
•	Characteristic ways of viewing the environment (e.g., ideas, theories, and political, religious, scientific, aesthetic, economic, moral and social standards for judging events in the environment.
•	Subjective culture can be institutionalized in government, education, religion, etc. systems.

Values are principles that guide our lives. They are designed to lead us to our ideal world
•	Transcend specific situations
•	Guide selection or evaluation of behaviour and events
•	Ordered by relative importance
See: Schwartz, S.H. (1992). Universals in the content and structure of values: Theoretical advances and empirical tests in 20 countries. In M.P. Zanna (Ed.), Advances in Experimental Social Psychology, Vol. 25, pp. 1-65. San Diego/London: Academic Press.

Issues:

1.	Organisational Culture is a feedback system, with the managerial leader influencing and being influenced by.

2.	What critical, crucial variables need to be added or taken from the model?

3.	Is “clock-building” a style of leadership or management?

4.	Implicit measures of traits of managers, leaders, clock-builders, how do we identify competence prior to actual performance?

5.	Explicit measures, how should competent managers, leaders, clock-builders behave? 

6.	Can implicit and explicit measures be separated, can we recognise a leader before he or she begins to perform leadership functions?

7.	Suggest measuring tools for critical variables.

8.	Tools to Measure Leadership: Emic & Etic, Implicit & Explicit: GLOBE implicit leadership survey? MLQ? Explicit: LBDQ XII?

9.	Tools to measure organisational effectiveness

10.	Tools to measure managerial effectiveness

11.	Tools to measure anything

12.	Do values interact with competence? How?

13.	Does virtue lead to financial reward? If the criminal and corrupt were competent and intelligent, shouldn’t they be able to make more money through honest endeavour?

Remember Ockham's razor, also spelled "Occam's razor", but also called "law of economy" or "law of parsimony", is a principle stated by William of Ockham, that entities are not to be multiplied beyond necessity (non sunt multiplicanda entia praeter necessitatem). Only use the minimum number of independent variables required to predict the dependent variable to your acceptable level of accuracy.

Send comments to romielittrell@yahoo.com

Thanks to contributors:
•	Dr. George F. Simons, George Simons International, France
•	Dr. Paul T. P. Wong, Trinity Western University, Canada
•	Prof. James Taylor, The Centre for Research on Higher Education Policy, Portugal
•	Dr. Oliver C. S. Tzeng, Professor and Director, Osgood Laboratory for Cross-Cultural Research, Indiana University-Purdue University at Indianapolis, USA

The Ecology of the Managerial Leader

Input		
Individual
Characteristics		
Family
Influences		
Occupation
Requirements		
Community
Ecology		
Society
Ecology		
Intercultural 
Experience

                                                                                                                                    

Process		
Subjective
Culture
		
Objective
Culture		
Personality
Dimensions		
Occupational
Variables	

Output					
The 
Managerial 
Leader 
Entity

MANAGERIAL LEADERSHIP DETAILED DIAGNOSIS MODEL:

Physical
Appearance
		
Intelligence			
Gender		
Experience		
Personality		
Ethnic
Culture(s)		
Societal
Culture(s)		

											    					
		
The Managerial Leader Entity			

	
Personal 
Competence	

	

Multi-culturality
		Tool: 
Hofstede 
& Bond Dimensions?	

	

	

	

Personal Values		Tool: 
Schwartz
Value
Survey?					

Org.
Culture																

Personal
Business
Aspirations			
The Hiring-Firing Entity
		
Immediate
Situation		
Economic
Environment
		
Plans
		
Physical
Environment		
Business
Environment

Feedback system, measurement of the outcome of the activities in the organisation will (or should) lead to changes in the inputs.

MANAGERIAL LEADERSHIP PRESCRIPTION MODEL

MANAGERIAL LEADERSHIP PRESCRIPTION MODEL. In a business organisation, all systems are feedback systems

The 
Managerial 
Leader 
Entity			
Plans
		
Physical
Environment		
Business
Environment

								

	
Organisational 
Culture		
Ethnic 
Culture(s)
		
Societal
Culture(s)	

			

Primary
Activities
•	Innovation
•	Logistics
•	Operations
•	Marketing & Sales
•	Service	

	

	
Support
Activities
•	Procurement
•	Technology Development
•	Human Resource Management
•	Firm Infrastructure