International Leadership

This book strives to support leaders when effecting success for their organizations, by leading their teams, projects, and organizations across borders in an increasingly boundaryless world. To this end, the book offers both an academic’s and practitioner’s perspective, amalgamating a curated selection of established experts, seasoned leaders, and new voices. Authors were invited to showcase novel research, best practices, and business cases, for the purpose of increasing international leadership capacities of effecting success across borders in a boundaryless world. As a result, a compendium of new knowledge around the international leadership phenomenon has been created, hopefully useful for academics interested in positive practice, for leaders and experts of international and internationalizing organizations, for leaders working across borders with their teams and projects, for leaders aspiring to work internationally, and for students preparing themselves for an international career.

The ability to successfully lead organizations and teams to international success is of ever higher significance today. However, despite the current and past prevalence of the international leadership discourse, the concrete meanings and desired outcomes of international leadership often remain difficult to determine. This is due to the epistemology of the concept being multifaceted and challenging to theoretically describe, and because rapidly evolving mega-trends such as globalization, digitization, and sustainability transform the shape the practice of international leadership. This introductory chapter strives to propose both a current and a future-oriented positioning of the international leadership theme, by synthetically anchoring this important topic in current knowledge and thought. As a result, the context within which international leadership is relevant today will be illuminated, international leadership domains will be clarified, and concrete implications on international leadership practice will be derived. In so doing, this chapter also serves as a lead-in into this edited volume, by delineating the scope and objectives the authors collectively pursue.

This chapter explores how SME entrepreneurs engage in the pursuit of international opportunities, based on a qualitative interview study. Taking an international entrepreneurship perspective, the study identifies fundamental actions and interactions of SME entrepreneurs in the pursuit of international opportunities, and derives three essential and underlying roles they take on in the process. The study thereby contributes to an enhanced understanding of internationalization as an opportunity-driven process and conceptualizes the SME entrepreneur as a powerful agent within the process.

Determining when a company is ready to enter a foreign market is a difficult undertaking. The timing needs to be well considered. On the one hand, developing learning routines necessary for foreign markets and creating sufficient commitment among the staff needs time. On the other hand, older companies tend to be reluctant in their learning ability and act less agile. This article examines the effect of age on the speed and success of internationalizing firms. We also examine different types of perceived impediments in the subsequent internationalization process. A set of hypotheses is developed, drawing on the international new ventures (INV) approach. We test firms’ age at internationalization as a predictor for the speed at which new markets are entered, as well as for subsequent growth in foreign sales while controlling for size, branch, and strategic posture. Relying on longitudinal data from a sample of internationalizing firms from Switzerland, there is evidence of path dependency: The older the firms when they start to internationalize, the slower their subsequent internationalization process. By the same token, we have also observed that firms starting early with their process of internationalization are able to internationalize much faster. This negative impact of age on internationalizing business affects firms not only in the short or medium term, but also in the long term, i.e. over more than 30 years of post-internationalization. Finally, we found evidence that age at internationalization raises the likelihood that the firm will perceive a lack of international experience among its employees and managers as a major impediment for its international success.

In Arabic-speaking countries, Swiss exporters often work with independent distributors to sell their products. The market potential of these countries is too small to justify wholly owned subsidiaries. The leadership of independent distribution partners also selling other manufacturers’ products is, therefore, a key success factor for Swiss exporters. However, the peculiarities of the Arab business world remain alien to many Swiss managers. This chapter aims to determine the challenges involved in cooperating with distributors in Arabic-speaking countries, and how these challenges can be dealt with. Based on a survey of Swiss exporters, the three phases of cooperation with distributors are investigated: selection, motivation, and long-term cooperation. Although all three phases are important, the results show that long-term cooperation is the main challenge. Obstacles are that distributors fail to keep promises, receive negative feedback from customers, or do not carry out activities in the expected quality. Personal relationships are considered a key success factor for succesful long-term cooperation. However, according to the survey, cultural differences remain a source of misunderstandings and mistakes. These are less about religious regulations than about a different understanding of time, a lack of commitment, and the different values associated with personal relationships. The authors conclude that the motives for action in the Arab world differ from those in Switzerland and are thus often misinterpreted by Swiss managers.

Leadership plays a significant role in determining an institution’s success in an international context. The extent to which a cross-cultural organization is effective in an international environment is largely determined by its structure, processes, and leadership. These success factors remain somewhat consistent across industries and lessons learned in one industry may have cross-industry implications. While higher education leadership is recognized as complex, demanding, and unique, it also offers valuable insight into the field of international leadership and may yield transferable lessons learned to any transnational organization. Specifically, that there is much to learn from higher education leadership in international contexts. Both academics who author this study have lived, taught, and led in international higher education for many years. This self-study of leadership in this field contributes to the knowledge base in relation to the complexities of leadership in International Branch Campuses (IBC) wherein the leadership is charged with balancing diverse cultural aspects of employees, but also of the cultures of the host country and the guest institution. Findings reveal three areas of complexity: possibilities and tensions of budget change; leadership in a transitory international environment; transitory/contract faculty in IBCs in times of economic change. The authors assert the need for extensive commitment to embrace, integrate, and embody intercultural competencies particularly in addressing difficult and changing times as a feature of their self-study of international and transnational leadership.

Since the late 1990s, a legal paradigm shift has occurred regarding the acceptability of corruption in international business transactions. Today, foreign corruption is legally and ethically reprehensible, but the figures prove that for a long time it was part of what was considered common practice in international business, and corruption is still widespread around the globe. Against this background, the question arises as to what contribution international leaders can offer in the fight against corruption. In this context, this article describes combatting corruption as a leadership task and discusses the concept, importance and limitation of ethical leadership in anti-corruption efforts. Furthermore, it presents a selection of direct and indirect management tools international leaders can apply to mitigate and manage corruption risks. Finally, it discusses the context in which international leaders act to prevent corruption, specifically the organisational culture and the influence that leaders have upon it as individual agents.

Intercultural competences are crucial for effective collaboration in today’s volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous (VUCA) work environments. The goal of this chapter is to inform and, possibly, to inspire managers, leaders, and teams to become enablers of transboundary cooperation and success. It consists of three sections: (1) Theoretical Foundations; (2) Insights from Practice; (3) Methods for Learning and Development. First of all, we share our views of the theoretical concepts, which are important to better understand the multifaceted topic of this contribution. In particular, we focus on the key competences for successful collaboration in intercultural work settings. Based on our own qualitative field research in intercultural contexts, we then open the perspective on a selection of strategies experienced managers use in their practice. Intercultural competences concern all of us. Thus, in a third step, we provide insights into possible paths for action. We present a range of methods which may support managers, leaders, and teams in the development process of intercultural competences. As a synthesis, we introduce a model which summarizes the process of intercultural competence development and may serve as a reminder of the culture facilitator role we all need to play on the social stages on which we act.

Management of projects with teams from different countries, cultural backgrounds as well as diverse political and economic environments is needed in every organisation that operates across borders. In our globalised world, this is the daily routine managers of international teams have to deal with. A summary of the required basic leadership skills will be provided after reviewing the theoretical approaches to how teams can be led in a Western- as well as in a Chinese-dominated environment, with a focus on Singapore. The emphasis of this paper will be on best practices and daily routines to successfully lead international teams on projects in a professional service firm. This includes the way challenges are addressed during a project and how leadership is being adapted to these changes. The experiences and the reflections made in the course of such relationships are analysed. This paper also gives insights into certain parameters that were changed during a project in order to ensure its successful completion. A comparison of theoretical guidance and practical examples is made on how to build trust within teams. As a conclusion, the challenges that occurred are summarised, as well as the pitfalls that should be avoided in order to be successful. On this basis, the learning and influence on the author’s leadership practices will be addressed, and how these translate into virtual intercultural project work.

There is an increase in literature on leadership in Africa, and this growing body of work documents the need for a leadership transformation, as well as the need to contextualise leadership development to the African context. However, only very few studies have analysed leadership development in Africa.

This chapter analyses a contextualized leadership development programme in Kenya that set out to address young people’s leadership transformation ambitions. It aims to answer two questions:The training was successfully tailored to the Kenyan context, by adapting training material, by using case studies and visual materials from the Kenyan context, and by adopting an experiential learning approach. The documented impact shows that participants indeed succeeded in transforming their leadership as they desired. Impact was evident across three global categories of competencies, notably managing oneself, relationships and the community. Central for the successful transformation was the dynamic of starting with increasing individual agency, which then not only allowed for leadership roles to be taken up, but also enabled a focus on leading other people and the community.

This chapter explores how members in virtual, global, and multicultural teams become prominent global leaders. It uses a qualitative and narrative research design to analyze data of participants in a virtual exchange mobility program. It analyzes individual reflexive reports of selected “highly commended peer-leaders” who have emerged from among hundreds of peers who took part in a virtual mobility program organized by Global Enterprise Experience (GEE). Reflexive reports contain information about personal achievements, challenging circumstances, and strategies followed by the participants over the course of the project. After coding and a thematic analysis, our findings show four phases of the emergent leadership process: first, various sources provide a stimulus for leadership; second, certain essential elements come up in the emergent leadership process; third, emergent leaders’ behavior differentiates them from ordinary leaders; and fourth, there are individual outcomes of the leadership process for emergent leaders.

Organizational leaders, as the most essential drivers of mission, policy, and practice, need a particular mindset and skillset in order to be effective in their roles. In a strategically connected world of global business, leading others effectively and efficiently requires additional knowledge, skills, and attitudes beyond traditional leadership competencies that work well in localized contexts. Without intercultural competence (IC), leaders will not have the ability to influence followers throughout the depth and breadth of their organizations. In this chapter, we explore the leadership process through intercultural excellence within the context of an interconnected world. This chapter provides an overview of contemporary leadership theories and practices, an introduction to models of the components of IC as well as its development and maintenance, an examination of case studies in which effective leaders process and bridge across cultural differences, and concrete recommendations for best practices.

With China’s expanding engagement in global economic affairs, there is an increasing demand for Chinese executives to take on international leadership roles and responsibilities. This emerging phenomenon has caught the attention of researchers worldwide. In this study, we apply the transvergence concept to an exploration of a new framework that characterizes effective leadership in a dynamic glocal context. Our field research includes three case studies of Chinese executives whose leadership experiences will shed light on how Chinese executives incorporate cultural values from both East and West to deal with managerial issues. At the same time, the case studies reveal the key elements for effective leadership in today’s globalizing world, where different cultures meet and blend to form new and unique ones. The research findings suggest that transvergent leadership can be understood and identified in terms of personal traits and skills incorporated into the contextual dynamics that embody the dialectic of glocalization, which is characterized by simultaneous local responsiveness along with global integration.

We are currently experiencing a shift in the debate about the purpose of business and the role of companies in a well-governed, fair, sustainable, and equitable society. Companies are hence increasingly confronted with often diverse ethical expectations from a variety of different stakeholders, which requires companies to develop a leadership cadre that possesses specific ethical leadership skills and a virtuous character in order to participate in a sometimes challenging global discourse on issues of ethical concern, as well as to contribute to solutions to these issues. However, this individual actor perspective is not sufficient, and hence questions around the ethical character of the collective actor also need to be considered and addressed. This article explores answers as to how ethical leadership can be developed, how it is connected to terms like character and virtues, whether a collective actor can also have a virtuous character, how perception mechanisms in regard to ethical problems work, and how purpose-oriented decision-making processes in a company need to be structured by purpose-driven leaders in order to systematically allow all of its members to behave in sync with its purpose. The discussion in this article around character and ethical leadership needs to be seen in the context of a globalized and multicultural world in which ethical leadership is often surrounded by nothing less than high levels of ethical ambiguity or even conflict in which agreement on what “good” or “ethical” leadership means is not an easy objective to accomplish.

This paper aims to generate thoughts on the traits that denote the trustworthiness of a leader. Drawing upon in-depth interviews with five international Chief Executive Officers and Managing Directors of successful international firms, we will share the experiences and insights gained about their trusted leaders in order to find common ground in the traits of trustworthiness in a leader.

A number of competencies were found to be important foundations and are necessary prerequisites for a leader to successfully build up trust. The traits that make the difference between just being a competent leader and being a trusted leader can be defined under an ethical dimension (integrity and honesty) and a relational dimension (benevolence and caring). Highly trusted leaders are equipped with an intelligence quotient, a moral quotient, and an emotional quotient. Assessments and judgments as to whether or not leaders are trustworthy are constantly made both explicitly and implicitly by the people surrounding them. The presence of all three above quotients has to be proven to be genuine and consistent; trustworthiness does not come from a first impression, nor does it come from a gut feeling; it has to be earned and built upon over time.

Based and secured on resources and rational strategic decisions, large companies’ internationalization paths may not work for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). Multinational enterprises (MNEs) operate with far more different structural resources and conditions, which shapes their decision-making processes and balances the ambiguities that come along with it. SMEs going international, on the other hand, face very different circumstances than MNEs. As a result of their limited market knowledge, scarce resources, and little international experience, SME entrepreneurs rely heavily on partnerships, alliances, and networks. The internationalization process of an SME is only rarely driven by rational motives and clearly planned phases but occurs by chance and opportunistic situations. Moreover, since SMEs face scarce resources, they often have no other choice than to trust and follow the intuition of a decision-maker who is characterized by trust and self-confidence. SME internationalization thus reflects a personal hunch on the part of the entrepreneur as well as muddling-through processes rather than the rational pursuit of clear goals. The case of “NatureYou” going international points on the important role of the SME decision-maker and the alternative SME internationalization paths.

This case study documents the internationalization effort of a Swiss SME which strongly benefited and revolved around the leadership of its co-founder and CEO with an early drive for internationalization. Not only did the company experiment with international production locations, it also quickly established global reach in marketing and distribution. By 2018, its leadership was challenged internationally as the maintenance of operations and distribution stretched resources and questioned efficiency in using of them. In a subsequent phase of analysis, consolidation, and dedicated investment, the leadership strengthened its international strategic effort and successfully developed global sales.

This chapter provides a specific example of the challenges and life-altering impacts of international and intercultural leadership development: scientific and professional development opportunities for early career scientists in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) are limited. In many of these countries, there is a disproportionately low number of biomedical and clinical researchers relative to the high burden of disease, a disparity that is aggravated by emigration of up to 70% of scientists from their countries of birth in pursuit of education and employment elsewhere. To help address this gap, Novartis and the University of Basel developed a novel immersive fellowship program that has been going on for more than a decade. In this personal account, several of the program leaders have worked with a leadership expert to present a case study from their experience in establishing and coordinating the program. The goal is to provide an opportunity for classroom discussions on intercultural leadership. The lessons learned may be applied to the design and conduct of other programs that aim to strengthen science ecosystems in LMICs specifically and in leadership development generally.