Cultural differences in societies and organizations are believed to influence individual expectations for and perceptions of one's environment, modes of social interaction, and expressions of emotions and global behavior patterns such as leadership and conflict management styles. The Global Leadership and Organizational Behavior Effectiveness (GLOBE) research program is an ongoing effort designed to investigate three issues connected to this topic. First, GLOBE is designed to determine the process by which culture influences the type of leadership behavior desired by people in organizations and societies. Second, GLOBE focuses on differences across cultures in terms of the value placed on certain leadership behaviors, the scope of leader influence, the social status of leaders, and the amount of power granted to leaders. Third, GLOBE identifies country specific and universal cultural syndromes in each of the cultures studied. The GLOBE sample of countries represents a wide variety of cultures, and every major region of the world is represented by at least three countries. These data permit an assessment of the degree to which a number of leader behaviors that are central to prevailing leadership theory are accepted and viewed as effective in each of the countries studied. The current project is to finish coding, analysis, and synthesis of the data already collected for this phase of the GLOBE research program.
