Global Mindset - the more, the better?

It is tempting to believe that one can never have enough global mindset, that everyone must have this (Gupta, Govindarajan & Wang, 2008), and that “Once top executives become aware of the connections between mindset, practices and outcomes, they can begin to leverage culture for better business performance.” (Thomas, Harburg & Dutra, 2007, p. 6). It is undeniably difficult to be an opponent of global mindset: it sounds modern, appealing and correct. After all, who wants to be classified as having a local, domestic or ethnocentric mindset? There is a social pressure to be trendy. But this may not

necessarily reflect a company's strategic reality. If one asks Ghemawat, a professor of strategy and author of the book World 3.0: Global Prosperity and How to Achieve It (2011), there are many of us who suffer from “globaloney”: globalization madness, rooted in highly exaggerated notions of globalization and its consequences. According to Ghemawat, there is no evidence for viewing globalization as an

all-consuming, unstoppable force. Based on his analysis of world trade and international relations, it would be an exaggeration to characterize the current situation as more than semi-global. Part of Ghemawat's

explanation for the non-recognition of globalization's (according to him) more moderate extent, or globalization madness, is that decision-makers in international/global organizations usually live much more globalized (working) lives than the rest of the population, including their own staff. They overestimate the scale of globalization and its impact on staff and the company in general.

Many of the recommendations, which companies can draw from research into global leadership and global mindset, are based on a more flattened “corporate world order”, consistent with Friedman's conclusion that

“The World is Flat” (Friedman, 2007). This is an understanding that Ghemawat and others consider

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misleading and perhaps not in line with the Danish or European commercial landscape. The ideal, and thus the objective of leadership development activities aimed at the formation of global leaders in the “flat world”, is usually the omni-cultural and organizationally liberated person, a merchant seaman sailing round the world with a girlfriend in every port. Such professionals certainly do exist: international

“corporate nomads”, who join forces with other “travelers” in the global world order, and live lives, which in many ways are way beyond the kind of context described in a Danish study of global professionals (Storgaard & Skovgaard, 2012). Meanwhile, the question is whether this group is typical or a distinctive minority (Ministry of Education, 2005)? Moreover, one wonders whether this style of working life is realistic for the majority, and whether or not it is actually necessary.

As regards the majority of leaders, Ghemawat's answer is no. He adopts a differentiation perspective in terms of global leadership skills. Only a small core need the global mindset leadership skills and they should be under no illusion that they can cultivate them locally. This group in particular should be supplied with

“globaloney antidote”, so they can catch up with the fact that the vast majority can do with regional leadership competences. In this respect, HQ managers are particularly in a danger zone of influencing the dominant logic (Kaplan, 2008) to be one of a global reality that is out of tune with the rest of the

organization. Above the clouds, as we all know, the sun always shines and, with a bird's eye view, the world maybe appears flat(ter) to senior executives, who move in these higher altitudes. However, for the vast majority of employees and leaders in the global world, working life is quite earthbound, visibility is poorer, and the earth is still spherical. Similarly, Gupta & Govindarajan argue that global mindset is not equally important for every single group in an organization, that it does not manifest itself in the same way at the various leadership levels, and that it depends on the task. “Although we contend that returns to investment in cultivating a global mindset would always be positive, we do not expect them to be uniform. The value added by global mindset, and the value subtracted by its absence, is likely to be strongest in the case of those individuals who are directly responsible for managing cross-border activities, followed by those who must interact frequently with colleagues from other countries” (Gupta & Govindarajan, 2001, p. 124).

Finally, the group of cosmopolitan nomads may be difficult to keep motivated and interested because they may develop disinterest in and disrespect for local job tasks and, not least, more locally oriented colleagues (Pucik, 2006; Javidan, 2011). In fact, home culture grounding and identification with your home country may be a positive factor for positive outlook on globality in keeping with global mindset, while over-identification with globality may render it difficult to collaborate with more domestically and locally oriented persons thus not mirroring the ability to handle local and global simultaneously central to global mindset. This can be illustrated in the below matrix producing four archetypical outlooks in international collaboration based on negative/neutral or positive attitude towards home and abroad /away respectively:

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Positive perception

of ’abroad’ and ’away’ (Grounded) cosmopolitans ‘Globaloneys’

Global ‘nomads’ and ’gypsies’

Negative/neutral perception of ’abroad’ and ’away’

Nationalists Wanna-be immigrants

&

Nostalgics

Positive perception of ‘home’, ‘local’, ‘domestic’

Negative/neutral perception home’, ‘local’, ‘domestic’

Figure 3.5: Perceptions of home and away – 4 archetypes. Source: Author.

The wanna-be immigrants and nostalgics are driven away from something rather than drawn towards something else thus seeking – if given opportunity – to assimilate and go native in effect not being able to bridge home and away. The nationalist are too caught up in maintaining and cherishing their own

background to really embrace ‘the other’, and ‘globaloneys’ – although very internationally oriented, have lost a positive outlook of their own background in effect losing their ability to engage with locals. A middle ground is occupied by the grounded cosmopolitans being positive about their own background and home culture while at the same time celebrating ‘the other.’ And so, the global nomad workers with an high degree of cosmopolitanism may not be in pole position in terms of developing a global mindset and role as boundary spanners and paradox navigators as they have taken sides in the local-global duality.

While Ghemawat claims that we exaggerate how many people should be global in the cross-border sense of the word, and thus narrows down the group of leaders, who need to practice global leadership, other global leadership perspectives indicate that globality is also present at the national and local levels. If one adopts a perspective on global leadership in the sense of border-crossing, paradox leadership, this expands the group of leaders, who need to practice global leadership and includes a group of persons, whom up to now we have not noticed in the global leadership landscape. It is a matter of local, national-level staff with extensive international collaborative interfaces, but it is also a matter of companies, who want to achieve results across organizations (locally) or within the context of the diversity of local, multicultural society. In short, the group of persons, for whom global leadership is relevant, has been expanded to include far more than the traditional group of leaders, who have been posted overseas.

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When we talk about global leadership, we often take for granted that the company already has a global strategy, and has achieved a considerable level of internationalization. Global mindset is necessary for leaders, who work in a company with a global strategy (Gupta & Govindarajan, 2001), and that global mindset should be conducted and implemented in relation to the implementation of strategy and specific management behavior in this context (Rosenfeldt, 2013; DEA, 2013). But research also points to the fact that global mindset is important in relation to the actual formulation of the strategy. This includes the question of whether national companies can arrive at a strategy that makes the most of the opportunities in global markets. Local companies with global vision have more success in internationalization and are more likely to tackle globality. This includes another group of leaders, for whom leadership with global mindset can be a competitive parameter: those who are ready to go global or born globals (Gabrielsson &

Kirpalani, 2012; Poole, 2012).