The presentation covers contemporary issues in global leadership.

1. Trends in Global
Leadership and
Implications for IHRM
Module: International Human Resource Management
Profile of studies: Bachelor of International Business
Student: Slawomir Starzec
Dorset College Dublin
Date: 16th April 2015

2. Trends in Global Leadership
 IHRM has been defined as ‘the HRM issues
and problems arising from the
internationalisation of business, and the
HRM strategies, policies and practices which
firms pursue in response to the
internationalisation of business’ (Scullion,
1995).
 Global teams are formed across
geographical, temporal, and cultural
boundaries to tap into human resource pools
distributed around the globe, with the goal
of enhancing organisational innovation and
performance. (Carmel, 1999; Gluesing &
Gibson, 2004).

3. Situation of Women in International Management
 Despite the fact that women represent over 50 per cent of the
world population, the corporate management , political and
economic power is heavily dominated by men.
 The representation of women in international assignments
slowly increased from 2-3% noted in the 1980s to 12-15%
in 1999.
 The number of managers represented by women in Australia,
Canada, Europe and the United States ranges between 25-45%
but relatively few women are offered to expand towards
international careers.

4. Why are Women Underrepresented in IM?
Major reasons identified by Izraeli and Adler (1994) include:
 Stereotypical perception of women’s abilities and qualifications,
 Traditional attitudes towards women’s family roles,
 Family status might be problematic: single woman is more vulnerable to
harassment (physical safety),
 Women’s minimal access to the social networks (from which companies
recruit managers),
 General discrimination against women.

5. An Ideal Manager and Sex-role Stereotype
 According to commonly supported sex-role stereotype, males
are perceived as more task-oriented, objective, independent,
aggressive and generally more suited to hold managerial
duties (Marshall, 1984).
 Female managers are stereotyped as being more passive,
gentle, sensitive, compromise-oriented and less suited for
senior responsibilities (Marshall, 1984).
 Culturally settled image of an ideal manager associated with
masculinity widely supported by male managers hampers
women’s international careers (Adler, 1994).
 Although the specific image of an ideal manager differs across
cultures, the masculinity-related characteristics are
emphasised everywhere.

6. Myths about Women’s Suitability for International
Careers
Adler (1984,1987) identifies common myths according to which
women are perceived as unsuited to take global assignments
successfully. These include:
 Women are not motivated to seek international assignments,
 Reluctance of host-country nationals to transact business with women.
Adler revealed in his study (1987) that the female expatriates
were found to be as successful as male counterparts even in
male-dominated cultures as Japan and Korea.

7. Vicious Circle
 Decision-makers tend to rely on stereotypes and
best guesses when selecting staff for
international assignments rather than observing
women’s actual performance (Adler, 2002).
 Female employees are overlooked because men
make most decision about whom to send abroad
and many of men hold traditional views about
women (Chusmir and Frontczak, 1990).
Myths
Traditional
views
AssumptionsBest guesses

8. Increasing Women’s Participation in International Management
Changing organisation’s formal
policies (recruitment and selection) as
many jobs are still seen as ‘men’s’ and
‘women’s‘ jobs which influences the
initial intake of a particular gender to
organisations.
If the proportion of genders is
unbalanced at the selection stage, it is
difficult to improve anything at later
time (Rothwell, 1984).

9. Increasing Women’s Participation in International Management
 From an organisational perspective, it is
important to enable women to access
the organisational informal networks
which now tend to be hermetically
masculinised.
 According to O’Leary and Ickovics
(1992), networking is essential for
success in any professional career as
networks involve contacts and an
opportunity of mutual benefits.

10. Global Trends and Challenges in Leadership
 As global competition intensifies, the
demand for international managers
increases and the multinational companies
must develop new ways to identify , attract
and retain new pool of international
executive talents.

11. Global Trends and Challenges in Leadership
According to the survey by
PricewaterhouseCoopers on Global HR
Challenges (2006), one of the top global
challenges is the issue of leadership
development.
Increasing the participation of women in international management
through changing formal and informal organisational policies and
promoting women to expand towards international careers could help to
solve the problem of shortages of international management.
Scullion indicates (1994), that
shortages of international managers
are becoming an increasing problem for
many international firms and is
perceived harmful for the
implementation of global strategies.

12. Conclusions
 Although women represent over 50 per cent of the world population, they remain heavily
underrepresented in international management.
 Myths and sex-role stereotypes have adverse impact on selection and recruitment
processes.
In order to increase the number of women entering global management, the organisations
should change their formal and informal polices.
Increasing the number of women in international management could help to minimise the
problem of the lack of international managers.
Increasing the number of women in global leadership is the future path to change the male-
dominated leadership style and to bring the unity to societies.

13. Bibliography
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Managers in a Global Economy. Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 22-40.
Adler, N.J. (2002) ‘Global Managers: No Longer Men Alone’, International Journal of Human Resource Management, 13(5): 761-72.
Adler, N.J. and Izraeli, D.N. (eds) (1988) Women in Management Worldwide, New York: M.E. Sharpe.
Caligiuri, P.M., Joshi A. and Lazarova, M. (1999) ‘Factors Influencing the Adjustment of Women on Global Assignments’, International Journal of
Human Resource Management, 10(2): 163-79.
Marshall, J. (1984) Women Managers: Travellers in a Male World. Chichester: Wiley.
O’Leary, V. and Ickovics, J.R. (1992) ‘Cracking the Glass Ceiling: Overcoming Isolation and Alienation’, in U. Sekaron and F.T. Leong (eds),
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PricewaterhouseCoopers, 2006. IFTDO.Net. [Online] Available at: http://www.iftdo.net/Articles/2006-
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Scullion, H. and Linehan, M. (2005) International Human Resource Management: a crital text. New York: Polgrave Macmillan.
Scullion, H., (1994) ‘Staffing Policies and Strategic Control in British Multinationals’, International Studies of Management and Organisation,
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