Leadership of cultural diversity: the impact of leadership

Leadership of Cultural Diversity: The impact of leadership

The aim of this dissertation of dr. Katja Raithel is to understand how to manage cultural diverse teams in the best way and increase team performance in multinational organizations. Therefore, defining what kind of leader characteristics drives team performance and what leadership characteristics foster the positive outcomes of diversity in cultural diverse teams is the focus of the current dissertation. Despite the fact that some important research in leadership and cultural diversity in teams has been done, little is known about the influence of team leaders.

Through globalization and internationalization organizations are becoming more and more diverse especially in terms of cultural background. Cultural diversity, therefore, is a critical factor for multinational organizations. Thus, we highlight the current key diversity initiatives in such a company, including several action fields of diversity management.

The two empirical chapters in the dissertation adds to the understanding of leadership of cultural diversity. We investigate in instances of negative effects of cultural diversity and discuss how these can be managed.

• • Firstly, we take a team level perspective and focus on how variation in nationality in teams (i.e. cultural diversity of teams) negatively affects team performance. Specifically we look at the impact of team leader cultural background and leader tenure on team performance.
• • Furthermore we take an individual level perspective and investigate how cultural differences between individuals and their fellow team members (i.e. cultural dissimilarity) may negatively impact feelings of psychological safety of these individuals. It specifically deals with the perceived psychological safety of team members in cultural diverse teams.

In some the dissertation outlines the importance of effective leadership of cultural diversity and point to beneficial implications for diversity management within multinational organizations.