How are the Leadership and Cultural Challenges met by the Born Globals?

Abstract

Small global firms organizing and working through information and communication technology are relatively new field of study within organisational theory and with limited knowledge in it the practitioner are required to learn by doing. Born Globals are becoming more and more a generalized practice for achieving projects especially for high technology products and therefore a relevant topic and a key subject for an upcoming academic research in organizational reality. Most importantly their vision is global, they have global products which are of unique and specialized nature, and they have accelerated internationalization capability from inception. Their specificity in terms of conception and global presence all the time via information and communication technology explains the often used denomination Born Globals. The global cooperation involves actors in very diverse cultural contexts of shared practicies. Because they are both new and complex a relevant research is needed in order to get a better understanding of what are the challenges they are facing. This research is based on a case study of a small danish based software development firm. Inspired by Grounded Theory as a method for extracting data from evidence, this study identifies the leadership and cultural challenges met by the born globals. This problem oriented nature of the research dives its findings in an empirical example of a small high technology danish leaded firm with a rapid growth and smart innovative product. The novelty of the phenomenon, the global multicultural and technology field in wich it occurs (or defines it), justifies the choice of the empirical qualitative research for a problem solving strategy building. Cross Cultural and Project Management perspectives for the analysis, acknowledgements of the limits of the chosen methodology and theorysing emthods are concluded. The main findings are that the homogenous top down centralized decision making applied for leading the global teams is challenged by the cross-cultural context met of the locallity of global scale and the specific need requirements of two ways communication and task assignments incremental steps for leading a project. Difficulties are detected for the small start ups to adapt locally on many places and therefor a balance between homogenization and particular way of managing is to be found. Advantages and weaknesses and of global versus local leadership are discussed. This research paper is a problem oriented study attempting to extract through exploration of an empirical example data an useful analytic frame in order to understand a contemporary observable practice and foster further research. Inducing theory seems unrealistic since the generalizability of the case study is under investigation and will be a subjective an deliberate consideration bounded by the reader’s perception. Again, rather than theory building, a problem solving strategy is applied to a wide range of problems is the work here. Highlighting valid insights is the challenge. Effectively acknowledging the global presence and dynamism of the small high technology firms as a contemporary way of achieving projects reveals also a personal interest. As a business student exploring the intercultural leadership dynamics on one side and through a personal multicultural experience and mobile professional lifestyle on the other, remote cooperation on projects using information technology turned out to be a preferred practice. It is the native and only way of doing in the high technology start up companies (Jolly et al., 1992), called also organisational entities conceptualised directly on the net, born global (McKinsey&Co., 1993); (Knight&Cavusgil, 1996); (Madsen & Servais, 1997). In these terms, born globals are a symptom of innovative change and organizational adaptiveness as well as a fascinating organizational capacity for overcoming the space time boundaries. Last but not least, it represents a symbol of social progress proving that leadesrship and intercultural communication interaction are the essence and the drive of a new organizational culture based on collaborative projects worldwide. Empirical data is answering the question How are the leadership and cultural challenges met by the born globals? It is collected thought qualitative interviews with managers and developers working remotely for a Copenhagen based IT start up Copenhagen Shipping Exchange. By extracting theory from data, leadeship style and cultural challenges are identified in the dynamics characterizing a Bangkok developers team and european team with Copenhagen’s headquarter. These dynamics are grouped in two analytical focus points defined by the particular attention found to have be accorded to the local cultural context impacting the global team interaction on one side and the project sense making and follow up and task assignment challenges globally. The first part of analysis dicusses Global versus local leadership and cross cultural analysis, inspired by ethnographical research and selected Hofstede's dimentions. The Second analytical focus, concerns how project managers meet the challenges of communicating task assigment and follow up, projected through the usefullness found in Project management practical tooling. In infolding further literature from Yin for methodology of case study, Harvard Business School guide about managing projects in high technological environment, partially Hofstede and ethnology litterature as well as empirical research publications in business online journals, problem solving strategizing is designed about cross cultural global project leadership.