6. FOCUS ON RESEARCH - Responsible Leadership
International Leadership and Organizational Behavior
Leaders in business and non-profit organizations increasingly work across national borders and in multi-cultural environments. You may work regularly with customers or suppliers abroad, or be part of a globally dispersed cross-functional team, or an expatriate manager on an international assignment. You may be a member of a global online community, or a development aid worker collaborating with an international network of partner organizations. In all of these contexts, your effectiveness as a leader depends on how well you understand and are able to manage individual and collective behaviors in an intercultural context. In this course – together with a team of Bocconi expert faculty and Bocconi alumni – we’ll explore the theory and practice of international and intercultural leadership and organizational behavior. Social science research has revealed systematic ways in which our behavior differs across cultural contexts – enabling us to more effectively work across borders. Insights from psychology, neuroscience, sociology and anthropology, from communication studies and from management scholarship allow us to understand what shapes individual and group decision making, what enhances or weakens team performance, and how we can build and use our social networks. And the shared practical experience of international leaders allows us to identify concrete steps to enhancing intercultural leadership competence, and to be cognizant of common leadership challenges. Learning about organizational behavior provides a great opportunity to develop your leadership skills and to reflect on your own behavioral tendencies. How do you usually make important decisions? What motivates you and how do you try motivating others? How successfully do you leverage and integrate diverse skills and views in a team? Do you prefer professional relationships with a close-knit group of trusted colleagues, or with a far-flung network of acquaintances from all walks of life? If you really want to learn how organizations behave and take decisions and at the same time develop leadership skills, then this is the course for you. We are looking forward to welcoming you and supporting you on this journey of learning and discovery. COURSE SYLLABUS Week 1 - Leadership Acumen. International perspective on leadership, common traps & challenges, and opportunities of intercultural leadership. Week 2 - Navigating Culture. Impact of cultural differences on organizations, decoding culture, culture classifications and stereotyping, developing intercultural intelligence. Week 3 - Communication. Communication and its impact on leadership identity and relationships, managing communication to improve decision making, steps for developing your intercultural communication skills. Week 4 - Motivation. Views on individual motivation, cultural differences in motivation, developing motivation and commitment in teams. Week 5 - Networking. Patterns of interpersonal relationships in/across organizations, strategically developing social networks and social capital, norms for networking across cultures. Week 6 - Conflict. Effective / defective conflict management approaches, dealing with ethical dilemmas. Thanks to the participation of our alumni and of the Bocconi Alumni Association, participants will have practical insights on international leadership. RECOMMENDED BACKGROUND All are welcome! Some prior exposure to basic issues of organizational behavior (communication, decision making, motivation, etc.) is useful, but not required.
MANAGING CONFLICTS
Conflicts are a normal occurrence in any organization, and can be productive and beneficial when managed effectively. In this last module we talk about conflicts styles, and focus on distributive and procedural justice concerns across a variety of cultural settings. Bocconi alumni share their approaches to identifying and working through important conflicts in a multicultural context. We also discuss how to handle ethical dilemmas – often the most challenging conflicts international leaders have to handle.
1. Introduction to Conflict Management12:10
2. Distributive Justice15:31
3. Procedural Justice17:20
4. FOCUS ON PRACTICE - Healthy Conflict Culture13:33
5. Ethical Dilemmas14:40
6. FOCUS ON RESEARCH - Responsible Leadership12:27
7. Wrap Up5:15
Department of Management and Technology
Hi Massimo, thank you so much for coming.
Thanks, Franz for inviting me here.
Yeah, it's a real pleasure, we've been talking about issues of conflict
and ethical conundrums and how leaders have to deal with that and how difficult it
can be to know, are you doing the right thing? Are your followers doing
the right thing? I know that you've been working a lot
with companies on those issues so I was wondering
whether if you can share some of your experiences about those interactions.
I was wondering whether if you can share some of your experiences about those interactions.
I think this is a topic that's really important for companies.
Yes. It's really important for
companies and the emerging trend right now is related to the responsible leadership.
Responsible leadership comes from the convergence
of two main streams of research.
The first one is social responsibility that sees firms as social
entities within broader socio-economic context.
The other one is the leadership part,
So the traditional leadership models.
The conversions of these becomes responsible leadership.
Responsible leadership means that you should take into account all
the stakeholders that are considered within the firm and external to the firm.
So it means you are looking at employees on one hand,
because as a leader, you influence the behavior of employees.
But on the other hand, the social entity of the firm is something
that has an impact also outside, so for the local community or
the socio-economical context as well.
So responsible leadership is the convergence of these two and
has two main pillars.
The first one is having a long-term orientation.
So having goals that go beyond
what is the quarter or the fiscal year.
And go in the direction of the long-term survival of the firm and
for the long-term benefits of the economical context.
On the other side.
So this is the legacy part?
Yeah, the legacy part for the firm and the legacy part also for
the leader. There is a legacy of the leader
In terms of being a person who is able to develop his or
her employee to be the successor of this leadership role.
So the leader looks also on how
we can develop people for being the next leader of the future.
So the important shift is that this responsible leadership model is related
not to the leader itself, but is related to the external part of the leader.
So employees and the external social community.
Interesting. In a way,
the leader opens the followers’ eyes to this wider responsibility and
if he or she wants to make sure that
is then continued, even if, they step down,
or they get promoted that there's this continuation.
Exactly. This is the point.
And recent research points out that doing this helps employees to be more motivated,
so the external stakeholders are more motivated, are more engaged in the firm,
are more engaged in taking this heritage part, this legacy part.
On the other side we have an impact on the external community,
on the external environment, that is related to reputation.
Mm-hm, sure.
But we don't forget that firms are also economic entities.
And recent research points out that if we have this leadership style or
leadership model, we will also have an economic benefit.
So firms that apply a responsible leadership approach,
they are more likely to generate a economic value for the economy.
So we have three main goals.
One that is internal, motivation and engagement for employees.
On the other side, benefits for the firm in terms of reputation and for
the social community.
And then, the third is the economic value that is generated by the firm.
So firms that are able to put the,
stakeholder goals and objectives just in front of the economic goals,
are more likely to gain those three kinds of advantages.
And it's particularly important.
Okay, very interesting.
So how do you get there?
How do you implement a responsible leadership model in your organization?
Responsible leadership is a matter of culture.
And the leaders should be the people who foster this culture.
So it's not just a matter of a board of directors or a CEO.
It's a matter of all the leaders that embrace this model.
But we can have five different factors,
like a pentagon that should have be oriented toward responsible leadership.
The first one, like we said, is the stakeholder orientation.
So we should take into account the different demands of the
stake holders, internally and externally.
Then there is the part related to integrity.
So the leader should be able to walk the walk and talk the talk,
so being able to be a person that
says, does, and acts consistently.
Then we have the role model.
The leader should be a model.
So there should be a person who makes the others learn through their example.
To be the right person at the right place
that develop this long-term orientation and this legacy.
How do you role model such a thing?
Managing external stakeholders can be fairly complex,
how do you role model that behavior?
Mm-hm.
You can have the people pass through
training related to this “how to manage different stakeholders.”
We have many examples on how we do it in terms of training,
and we are helping firms to develop this kind of attitude.
In terms of role modeling, we have, after the training,
a cascading aspect within the organization.
We have these leaders that become the ambassador within the firm about this model.
They help people to develop in this in this direction.
For example, having projects that are managed by the leader and
are acted by the followers related to stakeholder consideration.
The knowledge is passed-
-to the followers.
Then we have the sustainability of this.
So a work-life balance pattern.
And at the same time, being resilient,
being able to bounce back when something happens.
So having the energy to sustain a long-term effort.
So a marathon and not just a quick race.
And then we have again the disconnected to this, this long-term orientation.
Long-term orientation means developing people for reaching long-term goals.
And at the same time, acting for long-term goals in terms of
heritage or in terms of legacy of the firm and
not just play for the quarter or just play for the fiscal year.
I would like to bring an example related to this.
This is a construction company that was going to build a
backbone highway, pretty long, passing through different local communities.
And instead of choosing the best deal in terms of economics for
choosing the subcontractors what they do is to choose subcontractors
in the local community for each step of the construction.
So they somehow empowered the local companies that were more responsible.
Feeling more responsible for their own community.
And on the other hand, they look at the stakeholder consideration.
Considering what is the benefit not just for the firm, but
for the external community as well.
And this motivated also people in the subcontractor that felt
part of this big project and felt part of this project in terms of being
able to bring something very important for their context and for their people.
Cool, so that's the stakeholder orientation for sure.
There is the long-term orientation in there, in
not thinking cost reductions right now but
thinking long-term, I guess harmonious relationships with the community members.
Was that the idea?
So where do you see the other parts of the model?
For example, you see role modeling.
So for choosing a bid, you show to your employees that you are not choosing for
economic value, but you are choosing for the benefit.
The others see that.
The others are aware of this.
It’s a very visible decision that then becomes the norm,
or that you want to be the norm.
You also see sustainability,
because you manage something that is sustainable over time.
You don't just focus on your business,
but you focus on developing the community that is more sustainable also
in terms of economic growth.
I guess it even as a work-life balance to some degree
because those local companies
are building in their backyard so to speak,
so their lives are affected by that.
So they better do a good job, or otherwise, they suffer everyday of
the year that they have to use the highway they didn't build properly.
They are actually also very close
so there's not a long commute.
Oh, that's true, you shortened your commute.
That’s very humane.
It's very local so
the results of this interest in terms of this work-life balance.
What are the big barriers in your view that companies have to overcome?
This seems like a compelling idea,
but often, compelling ideas on paper are still very difficult to implement.
I see one very big barrier.
That is still most of the firms have this short-term orientation and
focus on the economic value.
Well, it's the pressure that they have, right?
It’s not by choice.
But like we said before, we can have, if we embrace this model,
the same advantages
that are not just economic in the long-term,
But if we focus on the short-term, this model cannot work.
We should think about what happens next.
There are a lot of things to do.
Take for example, that we run a survey to make leaders aware
about their sustainable responsible leadership style and
their degree of responsibility in embracing their role.
And out of 100% of the index, we have around 65/66%.
So there is-. From the that you've-.
There are a lot of things to do for the companies.
And I think the first step should be the self-awareness about who you are,
and what are the impacts you can have in the long-term,
on the stakeholders that are involved in your leadership role.
Certainly food for thought.