Different Leadership in Volks in China and Germany

1. Introduction

Since leadership exists in such wide ranges like leadership in education, leadership in political, as well as leadership in business world, writers and researchers find it is not easy to actually define the word “leadership”. However, no matter in which area, the core idea about leadership is “influencing” people (White, 2005). Hence, a good leader should not only influence subordinates performance to achieve companies’ objectives but also inspire them to reach individual’s potential (Lee & Chuang, 2009; Holt & Wigginton, 2002).

With increasing companies start global leadership development programs (Luthans & Doh, 2012), how to manage interaction between leaders and followers with different culturally background become highlighted (Thomas, 2008). A good leader should use three leadership styles as flexible as possible to meet the needs of intercultural interactions.

The purpose of this report is not to focus on how leadership affects the organizational performance of a firm, but to list some theories of how cultural specifics can influence leadership behaviour in a multinational context. This paper is structured as follows. Literature review about culture dimensions and its influence on leadership is described in section two. Case study of cross-cultural international management issues in Volkswagen between China and German is presented in section three to analyze the differences of the leadership. Conclusion based on the previous analysis is presented in the final section.

2. Literature review

2.1 Leadership styles

Considering different cultural backgrounds, leadership behaviour varies in different countries and regions (Nazari & Emami, 2012). In Russia, tsarist tradition remains one-person leadership with unquestioned authority (Holt & Wigginton, 2002). Based on Confucian values and Sun-Tzu quotes, in a long history, Chinese used “heads” who born to be supervisors under natural circumstances and substitute for managers or leaders (Holt &...