2004 dare to embrace differences complete version vanbeek english

Cultural Lessons in Leadership Development Maarten van Beek, MA; University of Twente, June 2004

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Dare to embrace Differences Cultural Lessons in Leadership Development

A comparative study of Dutch, British, Russian and Japanese organisational

leaders.

Author: Maarten van Beek, MA

Academic mentor: Prof. Dr. Joseph Kessels,

University of Twente

External assessor: Mr. Ad Kill, MSc MA MBA

Advisor: Prof. Dr. Mikhail Gratchev,

Western Illinois University

Unilever mentor: Mr. Arjan Overwater,

Chairman Unilever Russia

and Ukraine

Rotterdam, June 11, 2004


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The Dutch place emphasis on egalitarianism and are sceptical about the value of leadership.

Terms like leader and manager carry a stigma. Dutch children will not tell schoolmates if their

father is a manager.

GLOBE, 1998


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Contents

Research Summary 5

Chapter 1 Research Introduction 6

1.1 A global economy, new leadership dilemmas 6

1.2 Conceptual Framework, research questions 8

and conjectures

1.3 Company of research, Unilever 11

Chapter 2 Leadership 15

2.1 Leadership, an overview 15

2.2 Culture, an overview 20

2.3 Intercultural Leadership 25

Chapter 3 Methodology 29

3.1 This Explorative Quantitative Research 30

3.2 Data collection 30

3.2.1 Leadership 33

3.2.2 Behaviour Event Interviews (BEI) 33

3.2.3 Validity and reliability 37

` 3.2.4 Leadership for Growth Profile (LGP) 39

3.3 Additional and critical notes on methodology 40

Chapter 4 Research results and outcomes 43

4.1 Research outcomes 43

4.2 General descriptive results and general conclusions 46

4.2.1 Descriptive results per country 48

4.3 Examining relationships and the conjectures 50

Chapter 5 Discussion and recommendations 51

5.1 The research questions and outcomes discussed 51

5.2 Recommendations: a framework of intercultural leadership 55

development

5.3 Further research 57

Some final words 62

Acknowledgements 63

References 64

Appendices 68


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Research Summary

Too often the debate about a global versus a local approach takes place on beliefs and is not

based on facts and research. Equally all too often arguments are given which plead for or

against taking cultural differences into account. This research aims to contribute to this

cultural, and local versus global discussion on the one hand and provides the company of

research – Unilever – with a practical framework on how to work more effectively with its

competency profile in each culture and country (the Leadership for Growth Profile) on the

other hand.

Does the definition of effective leadership differ depending on situational factors as business

environment and culture? If so, the same should also apply to competency frameworks,

which try to develop effective leadership. Research conducted in a variety of settings has

provided compelling evidence that, indeed, as House (House, R.J., Hanges, P.J., Ruiz

Quintanilla, S.A., Dorfman, P.W., Javidan, M., Dickson, M., Gupa, V., 1999, p 176) suggests

“What is expected of leaders, what leaders may or may not do, and the status and influence

bestowed upon leaders vary considerably as a result of cultural forces in the countries or

regions in which leaders function.”

This study aims to outline cultural differences in leadership competencies in Unilever, a large

international fast moving consumer goods company. This research is a explorative study

using a qualitative data collection by Behaviour Event Interviews. Most past research into

leadership and leadership differences within national cultures was conducted on a

quantitative basis (Bass, 1981; House, et al., 1999; Hofstede, 1980).

This research explores which competencies lead to business successes in four countries,

whether they differ per country (culture) and how they relate to a global competency

framework (in this research: Unilever’s Leadership for Growth Profile). For this 77 interviews

(Russia N=19, Netherlands N=21, UK N=19 and Japan N=18) were conducted and analysed

and these led to 208 cases. For each case the critical behaviours which lead to business

success were noted and analysed into competencies. In total 208 cases (Russia N=51

cases, Netherlands N=54 cases, UK N=52 and Japan N= 51 cases) were analysed into

competencies. These competencies were defined using a competency dictionary covering 35

competencies in total (Hay, 1999; Unilever, 1999).

This research contributes to the local versus global debate by giving a framework of how a

global competency model can be used more effectively in different cultures, based on the

critical business success indicators of the 208 cases which were analysed for this research.


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Chapter 1 Research Introduction

1.1 A Global Economy, New Leadership Dilemmas

In a new global economy products, services, money, businesses and people are no longer

bound by national borders. They move relatively freely between countries and cultures. In

this global economy, companies face new challenges (Drucker, 1999) that are not just

economic or technical. Human resources are increasingly important for the competitiveness

and profitability of organisations. Maslow (1998) already predicted that people would become

the key competitive factor. Pfeffer (1994, 1999) demonstrates that companies investing in

their employees become more efficient, effective, and profitable. Organisations can grow

more successfully when they properly understand and manage their employees’ differences

in competencies, skills and knowledge. Combining these differences will lead to new ways of

defining problems and finding more creative, efficient and effective solutions. One of the

main organisational challenges in a global economy is combining people’s competencies,

skills, and knowledge and creating a worldwide learning organisation that harnesses its

human resources more effectively. Companies should build on people’s strengths and talents

and help them overcome their weaknesses. In order to exploit people’s different

competencies, skills and knowledge, these competencies, skills and knowledge have to be

defined. Therefore, an insight into (intercultural) attitudes, customs, knowledge, skills and

competencies that lead to business success is essential. In this study those competencies

which lead to business success are the subject of research.

The Global Economy has lead to a broad generalisation and standardisation. Multinationals

like Unilever, Shell and General Electric have rolled out Human Resources policies on a

global scale. Policies which do not take cultural differences or different market situations and

economies into account. General standardised HR-policies on reward, performance ranking,

recruitment and leadership development are developed at the centre and rolled out globally

(Noe , Holdback, Gerber and Wright, 2001; Barham and Oates, 1991; Brewster, 1991).

Popular, merely western, HR scholars and magazines plead for inspirational leadership,

emotional intelligence or primal leadership without making a distinction between local

markets and cultures.

This research focuses on the HR dilemma which multinationals face in the global economy.

A dilemma between placing emphasis on the local market and cultural conditions or on

globalisation and generalisation of HR practices and policies.


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Within the broad field of international human resources the focus will be on (organisation)

leadership, an important research topic for scholars and companies because of the impact

that leaders have on their organisations. Leaders set organisation goals, motivate

employees, make decisions, function as role models, and contribute to an organisation’s

image and culture.

There have been many studies on leadership over the years (Stogdil, 1957; Hollander, 1964;

McGregor, 1966; Goble, 1972; Bass, 1981; Blake and Mouton, 1978; Bryman, 1986; Brion,

1998; Yukl, 1997; Smith, 1994; Hughes, Ginnett and Curphy, 1999; Chemers, 2000, etc.).

The majority of these focus on characteristics, traits, effectiveness, and task-orientation of

leaders. In the last two decades more and more scholars (Pfeffer, 1994; Kotter 1995; Argyris,

1998; Coleman, 1998, 2000; etc.) have been focusing on the human aspects of leadership:

people-oriented leadership. There are several cultural studies on leadership (Bjerke, 1999;

Gratchev, 2000; House, Hanges, Ruiz Quintanilla, Dorfman, Javidan, Dickson, Gupa,1999;

Brodbeck, 2000; Gestner and Day, 1994), but comparative studies of leadership in different

countries are scarce. From the 1970s onwards scholars such as Hofstede (1980, 1991,

1994) and Trompenaars (1985, 1994, 1997) have studied intercultural aspects of

organisations. For example: power distance, uncertainty avoidance, and femininity. In the

last decades there has been an increase in articles and literature focusing on international

Human Resources Management (HRM) and labour relations. The interest in international

leadership and differences between leaders in various countries has grown in the wake of

the globalisation process. Bass (1981) reviews over 100 studies on leadership behaviour in

different cultures. Recent cross-cultural research carried out within the scope of the GLOBE

project (House, et al.,1999) focuses on leadership in fifty-six countries (see: Chapter 2).

This thesis explores what competencies are linked with business successes, whether they

differ per country (different cultures and economies) and how they relate to a global

competency framework. This thesis argues that effective leadership differs between the four

countries under research. And the data collection focuses on this. Differences between

industries (Foods and Home and Personal Care (HPC)) and assignment (sales, marketing,

finance, supply chain) are less likely (Bass, 1981) but could occur. Bass (1981), Dunnette,

(1976) and Yukl (1998) do not mention differences between production, staff and general

managers or between managers in foods or home and personal care (HPC) businesses. A

comprehensive literature study (Brodbeck, 2000) did not lead to research which proves

differences in these different industries or functions within multinational companies. Most

leadership theories and research do not focus on differences between leaders but focus on

general attributes and behaviours which are often linked with effective leadership (House, et

al., 1999). This will be explored in paragraph 1.2.


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As mentioned before, this thesis combines and focuses on theories and ideas on leadership

and cultural management studies and human resource development. In a global economy,

leadership can no longer be regarded in isolation. Consequently, the subject of investigation

is cultural differences in leadership. As mentioned above, much research has been

conducted into areas such as leadership characteristics and traits. How does the culture

influence leadership styles and competencies? Are there differences in leadership practice in

various countries? Do leadership styles vary between countries? Are corporate leadership

profiles globally applicable? How should leadership competencies be used in a global

economy? Are there leadership competencies which are effective in each country? Which

leadership competencies are effective per country? Hofstede (1980) argues that most

management theories, for the greater part American, are not generally applicable. The

majority of theories known and taught are based on Anglo-American thinking and are less

relevant to Asia, South America, or even most European countries. Most books and articles

on leadership are written by Anglo-American authors using Anglo-American examples and

case studies. This thesis discusses cultural differences in leadership and tries to answer the

questions raised above. Most people have prejudiced views about leaders in other countries.

Although lacking a scientific basis, these ideas are implicit in many widespread leadership

theories (House et al., 1999). This thesis wants to make a contribution to international

leadership research and do away with implicit leadership theories.

1.2 Conceptual Framework, Research Questions and Conjectures

This research aims to provide a set of recommendations for leadership development in a

global company or “How to use cultural differences within Unilever’s Leadership for Growth

Profile to develop more effective leaders in Japan, Russia, the Netherlands and the UK. This

aim should help Unilever to improve its leadership development programmes, processes and

tools. In addition, this research hopes to make a contribution to the field of intercultural

leadership, as it is one of the first studies which focused on which competencies lead to

business success and whether they need to differ per country in order to improve a

multinational’s leadership development and competency profile.

This research focuses on leadership competencies which lead to business success. The

situational approach within the leadership literature (Dunnette, 1976; Bass, 1981) argues that

effective leadership differs in the environment it is practised in (see: also Chapter 2). If

effective leadership depends on the environment, the same also holds for competencies

which lead to effective leadership behaviour. The two most important factors of the

environment are: the social-economic situation and the culture (Dunnette, 1976). Figure 1

gives a simple overview of the factors which influence effective leadership behaviour.


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For organisational leadership the key indicator is business success. In other words, are the

business targets achieved that the company has set? Business success is defined in

Chapter 3. Culture is one of the situational factors which influences effective leadership.

Socio-economic circumstances (including market and business circumstances) are another

situational factor which influence leadership (House et al., 1999). Figures 1 and 2 show the

relation between these factors and leadership.

Figure 1. Leadership and its situational factors socio-economic circumstances and culture

As effective leadership depends on situational factors, an insight is needed into which

leadership competencies lead to business success and whether they differ from a cultural

point of view. Data-gathering about the leadership competencies that lead to business

success can be used to explore whether they differ culturally and how these effective

leadership competencies relate to a global competency framework like the Leadership for

Growth Profile (LGP, see appendices). To examine this I formulated the following research

questions:

The main research question is:

What leadership competencies for Unilever middle managers lead to business

success?

Building further on this I will answer the following sub-questions:

Are the competencies which lead to business success part of Unilever’s Leadership

for Growth Profile (LGP)?

Do the competencies which lead to business success differ per country?

In the introduction it is stated that effective leadership differs per culture. House et al. (1999),

Trompenaars and Hampden-Turner (1997), Hofstede (1980) and others have provided

evidence for this. The following paragraphs will deepen this research. When leadership

Socio-economic circumstances

Leadership

culture

culture


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differs per culture, leadership development should be adapted to national or regional

differences; e.g. leadership competencies and skills should differ per country or region.

This research started by arguing that most companies are strongly globalised and so are

their HR policies and systems. Most popular scholars on leadership and corporate leadership

styles and profiles show that in practice the view of one best leadership type still holds.

Unilever – the company of research – rolled out most of its HR policies, such as Reward for

Growth, Personal Development Plans and Leadership for Growth Profile, globally without

taking cultural differences into account.

It is necessary to link leadership competencies to the environmental characteristics such as

culture and business success factors in order to achieve real business success. I argue that

Unilever does not do this at the moment, which is in contradiction with Unilever’s vision to be

a multi-local multinational. Aligned with this the following hypotheses have been formulated.

This research aims to explore “which leadership competencies lead to business success and

whether these effective leadership competencies differ between cultures”. Based on the

findings of this research I will propose a framework of how to use leadership competencies

within a global company.

Figure 1 puts leadership into its environment. Figure 2 builds further on that and gives the

relations between the building blocks of this research. Figure 2 points out that leadership has

several environmental factors, such as culture and business success. The concepts printed

in bold are within the scope of this research.

Figure 2. Research framework

environment

Leadership

Business

success

•characteristics

•competencies

•global competency frameworks (e.g. LGP)

•competency dictionaries

•skills

•knowledge

•experience

•Culture

•Rituals

•History

•Symbols

•Language

•religion

•Socio-economic circumstances

business success:

•achievement of targets

•profit and volume growth

•achieving annual plan

•achieving work plan

•unemployment rate

•market development •income per inhabitant

Culture


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In Chapter 2 the relations and factors of leadership and environment as shown in figure 2 will

be explored further and placed within the context of leadership. This research focuses on

competencies. Within the environmental factors ‘culture’ and ‘business success’

competencies which lead to success can be defined. Two examples of competency profiles

which claim to be accelerators of business success are Unilever’s Leadership for Growth

Profile or Shell’s 6 Planets competency model.

Leadership competencies (e.g. styles) which are culturally endorsed are defined by the

GLOBE (Global Leadership Organisational Behaviour Effectiveness) research team (House

et al., 1999) and others like Trompenaars (1985; Trompenaars and Hampden-Turner, 1997).

Competencies which lead to business success were collected by means of a series of

interviews conducted for this research (see chapter 3 on Methodology). As this research

explores cultural differences in effective leadership competencies this research was

conducted in 4 countries: Japan, Russia, the United Kingdom and the Netherlands. All

countries represent a different cultural cluster (House et al., 1999; Ronen and Shenkar,

1985; see Chapter 2).

To answer the research questions (p. 11) and explore the use of competencies in different

countries and find out whether they lead to business success, I defined the following

conjectures.

There will be no relationship between business success and Unilever’s Leadership for

Growth Profile (LGP) for middle managers.

Competencies which lead to business success for middle managers differ per

country.

Chapter 2 will give an extensive literature overview focusing on intercultural leadership.

Chapter 3 will explain the methodology used in this thesis. For this research 77 interviews

were conducted in which cases of business success were described. Based on these cases

competencies which lead to business success were defined. The relationships between

these competencies and the LGP will be explored in Chapter 4. In Chapter 4 the results of

this research will be described. These will be discussed in Chapter 5: the Discussion. In

Chapter 5 recommendations will also be given on how Unilever can use its Leadership for

Growth Profile more effectively based on the findings in this research.


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1.3 Company of research: Unilever

The data as to which competencies lead to business success were gathered from 77

interviews conducted within Unilever. Unilever was created more than 70 years ago when

Margarine Unie, a Dutch margarine company, and Lever Brothers, a British soap (as well as

foods) company, merged. The merger benefited both businesses, which were competing for

the same resources and using similar distribution channels and marketing approaches. The

merger resulted in a consumer goods company with operations in over 40 countries. Today

most Unilever products are sold in 150 countries and are leading brands.

Business Overview

The Unilever name may not be familiar to most consumers, but its products are very well

known; 150 million people use Unilever products every day. Magnum Ice Cream, Dove, and

Lipton Tea are all well-known products that are in the Unilever portfolio. Other famous brands

include Bertolli, Knorr, Hellmann’s, Omo, and Vaseline. Unilever has chosen to promote

brands as a business strategy.

Unilever operates with two global divisions, Unilever Bestfoods and Home & Personal Care

(HPC). These two divisions comprise 14 product categories. Food: dressings and spreads,

tea, health and wellness, ice cream, and global food service. Home & Personal Care:

deodorants, hair care, household care, laundry, skin care, oral care, personal wash, and

fragrances.

Unilever employed more than 265,000 people in 2003. Locally recruited and trained

managers account for around 7% of the overall workforce. Unilever’s worldwide turnover in

2003 was more than €43 billion. Of that, operating profit was €2.9 billion. During the year

growth in leading brands rose by 3.4%.

Corporate Structure

Unilever has two parent companies: Unilever PLC (UK) and Unilever N.V. (the Netherlands),

yet it operates as one business with one management team, the Executive Committee.

Global Strategy including global HR(D) policies such as competencies management

(Leadership for Growth Profile) and remuneration (Reward for Growth) and overall business

performance is the responsibility of the Executive Committee. The Executive Committee is

headed by the two chairmen of Unilever; other members include the Global Division

Directors for the Foods and Home & Personal Care divisions, the Corporate Development

Director, the Finance Director, and the Personnel Director. Unilever is unique in that it has

two chairmen, due to the division of Unilever PLC and Unilever N.V. Business is divided into


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two global divisions: Unilever Bestfoods and Home & Personal Care. These two divisions are

divided into regional business groups.

Unilever has divided all its staff into 6 worklevels (WLs). Worklevel 1 covers around 240,000

people worldwide who have non-managerial positions and work in factories or offices.

Worklevel 2-6 covers Unilever’s management population, around 25,000. This research

focuses on WL2 and WL3 managers. These are middle managers, such as senior brand

managers, HR managers, factory directors or business unit controllers.

Vision

The vision of Unilever is best defined in its Corporate Purpose. This statement “describes

what Unilever aspires to be, as well as expressing its values and beliefs” (from the Unilever

Social Review 2000: Unilever’s approach to corporate social responsibility). The Unilever

Corporate Purpose (in summary) is as follows:

Our purpose in Unilever is to meet the everyday needs of people everywhere.

Our deep roots in local and cultural markets around the world are our

unparalleled inheritance and the foundation of our future growth.

Our long-term success requires a local commitment.

We believe that to succeed requires the highest standards.

The second point (in italics) points out Unilever’s focus on local culture. I will refer to this later

in my discussion and recommendations.

The Corporate Purpose reflects the multi-local multinational philosophy of Unilever, or the

transnational organisation as Walton (1999) argues. As a multi-local multinational, local

operating companies are able to draw on the resources of a global corporation. This

approach brings together global scale and local relevance. The Company also believes that

its deep roots in local cultures and markets around the world are the foundation of its future

growth.

The second statement reflects the focus on cultural markets and will be the backbone of a lot

of dilemmas between central and corporate initiatives and policies and local ones. This is

one of the main challenges described in this research.

Corporate Strategy

The Unilever’s “Path to Growth”, announced in February 2001, is a strategy to drive growth

and shareholder value. The Path to Growth consists of six strategic thrusts: (1) Reconnect

with consumers, (2) Enterprise Culture, (3) Simplify, (4) World-Class Supply Chain, (5)


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Pioneer New Channels, and (6) Brand Focus. Unilever is reducing the number of products in

its portfolio from 1,200 to 400. Products will become more global. This reduction in the

number of products is cost-effective with regard to marketing and the supply chain and will

make Unilever brands more recognisable globally. In February 2004 Unilever announced that

“vitality” will be added to Unilever’s purpose, but the focus on the strategic thrusts will remain

unchanged.

The strategic thrust: ‘Building an Enterprise Culture’ is the most important responsibility of

Human Resources. This particular thrust of the Path to Growth aims to encourage winning in

the marketplace through employee mindset, passion and motivation. This is achieved

through organisational restructuring, assessment, workshops, and rewards. Leadership

development is key in building this enterprise culture.


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Chapter 2 Leadership and Culture

2.1 Leadership, an overview

Everyone has opinions and ideas about leadership. These theories are often not founded on

research but based on people’s own experience or popular literature. But even research into

leadership shows contradictory findings and assertions without coherence and interpretability

(Chemers, 2000). Leadership is one of the subjects in the field of organisational and

industrial psychology that has interested many scholars. Hundreds of books and articles

have been published about leadership. Leadership involves a wide range of aspects such as

decision making, traits, effectiveness, motivation, and types of leadership. This chapter

presents an historical overview. Leadership is a broad subject; there are numerous scientific,

popular and practical studies on leadership. Leadership is not easy to define and several

different definitions are in use. This section gives an overview of research conducted into

leadership, based on the categorisation by Vroom (in: Dunnette, 1976). This chapter

provides a theoretical basis and gives an historical overview of leadership. Subsequently,

several classifications of leadership are presented.

A common definition of general leadership is the one employed by Stogdill, (1948, p. 3) a

pioneer in leadership research: “Leadership may be considered as the process (act) of

influencing the activities of an organised group in its effort towards goal setting and goal

achievement”. Simonton (in: Stogdill, 1950, p. 411) defines a general leader as “that group

member whose influence on a group’s attitudes, performance or decision making greatly

exceeds that of the average member of the group.” The definition used in this research is

derived from the GLOBE project. As organisation leadership is the subject of investigation,

this thesis uses a definition of organisation leadership. The GLOBE project (House et al.,

1999, p.7) defines organisation leadership as “the ability of an individual to influence,

motivate, and enable others to contribute toward the effectiveness and success of the

organisation of which they are members.”.

Theories, research, and scholars

“The study of leadership is an ancient art” (Bass, 1981, p. 5). Throughout our history

philosophers, scholars and business people have performed research into leadership.

Nowadays leadership is studied as part of organisational and industrial psychology, an

academic discipline whose roots can be traced back to the 1920s, when Walter Dill Scott

held a presentation for a group of businessmen (Dunnette, 1976).

Vroom (in: Dunnette, 1976) describes three approaches to leadership research, in

chronological order: the trait approach, the situational approach, and new approaches to


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leadership, which are dealt with in this section. The new approaches to leadership described

here include a new generation of scholars and researchers from the 1980s and 1990s,

whereas Vroom only covers those up to the mid-1970s. Figure 3 shows the relationship

between leadership behaviour and various variables.

Situational Variables Organisational Outcomes

Leader

Personal Attributes Situational Variables

Figure 3. Schematic presentation of variables used in leadership research (Vroom, in:

Dunnette, ed. 1976, p. 546)

Trait Approach

The trait approach to leadership, which regards leadership as a personal characteristic, is

widespread. The number and the manifestation of unidimensional personality traits relevant

to leadership vary from person to person. Trait approach scholars are convinced that some

traits are more effective than others. Their research programmes focus on finding these

effective leadership traits. In line with these ideas, scholars argue that it is possible to

measure whether people are effective leaders. Dozens of tests have been developed, all

claiming to be able to distinguish between highly effective leaders. These effective leadership

traits are supposedly the most effective ones for any situation, in any culture or

circumstance. A person featuring several traits of effective leadership is allegedly able to

manage any situation.

The trait approach to leadership embraces two equally important studies: the Ohio State

Studies (Dunnette, 1976; Bass, 1981; Yukl, 1997) and the Michigan Studies (Dunnette, 1976;

Bass, 1981). The Ohio State University researchers identify four dimensions to characterise

differences in behaviour of leaders, of which consideration and initiating structure (Dunnette,

1976, p.1530) are considered to be the most important. Consideration can be defined as

“leadership behaviour indicative of friendship, mutual trust, respect, and warmth. (Dunnette,

1976, p.1530)” Initiating structure can be defined as “leadership behaviour focused on the

relation with subordinates, organising, and defining group activities” (Dunnette, 1976, p.

1531). These dimensions come close to some of the leadership types discussed in this

research: viz. people-oriented leadership, task-oriented leadership and the type that Bales


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(in: Dunette, 1976) labelled socio-emotional leadership and task-facilitative leadership in his

research in 1949.

The Ohio State Studies (Dunnette, 1976; Bass, 1981; Yukl, 1997) use two different methods

of research. The most important research instrument is called Leader Behaviour Description

Questionnaire (LBDQ), the other Leadership Opinion Questionnaire (LOQ). The LBDQ asks

subordinates to score their leader's behaviour. The LOQ, like this research, uses a self-rating

questionnaire for leaders. Both questionnaires focus on the above-mentioned two

dimensions of leadership, which are also the subject of this research.

The Michigan Studies (Bass, 1981; Dunnette, 1976), conducted by the University of

Michigan, are similar to the Ohio State Studies, the principal differences being that the

Michigan researches do not pay much attention to leadership dimensions and operate more

on an ad hoc basis. They have been more successful in obtaining objective criteria of

leadership effectiveness.

Some final remarks on the trait approach to leadership: Stogdil (1948) reported that few traits

(most notably intelligence) were sometimes associated with reliable differences between

leaders and followers, but there was no single variable that was related to leadership across

a variety of situations. Stogdill’s (1948; Bass, 1981) findings have set the stage for theories

of leadership predicting an interaction between leader trait and situational contingencies

(Chemers, 2000), as described in the next section. Although nowadays there is a strong

focus on a situational approach to leadership, there are still a lot of scholars and business

people who argue that traits are the most important aspect of leadership. Modern theories on

leadership still use parts of the trait approach to leadership, supplemented with other views,

ideas or research results.

Situational Approach

The situational approach looks at the situation and circumstances around leadership.

Scholars in this field stress that effective leadership behaviour is not simply based on specific

traits that assure success in any situation.

The situational approach builds further on the trait approach to leadership. The best known

contribution to situational research, the Least Preferred Co-worker (LPC); (Fiedler, 1967),

places the trait approach in a situational perspective. LPC focuses on the co-worker with

whom the leader feels he can co-operate least on a regular task. Leaders are asked to

indicate, on an eight-point scale, how they think about bipolar items, for instance whether the

co-worker is friendly-unfriendly, cold-warm, or open-reserved?


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LPC researcher Fiedler (1967) greatly contributed to this approach with his Contingency

Model. The model claims that “In essence, it is a system for predicting which leaders will be

effective in different situations” (Vroom, in: Dunnette, 1976, p. 1535). Fiedler (1976) outlines

the practical implications of this model as follows. “If our theory is correct, then the

recruitment and selection of leaders can be effective only when we can also specify the

relevant components of the situation for which the leader is being recruited. There is no

reason to believe that this cannot be done or that this should not be done in specific cases.

Difficulties arise because leadership situations change over time. The organisation must then

be aware of the type of leadership situations into which the individual should be successively

guided so that an electrical engineer does not get assigned to bookkeeping duties”.

(Dunnette, 1967, p. 250).”

The situational approach to leadership is nowadays quite common. It covers lots of models

and research into leadership. This research can be seen in line with the situational approach

as it focuses on environmental influences (business success and culture) on leadership.

Various industries, assignments and countries are expected to influence leadership,

according the situational approach. However, evidence only shows differences between

countries (Hofstede, 1980; House et al., 1999). The situational approach is often combined

with trait approach aspects. The “new approaches to leadership” described in the next

section are often influenced by the situational approach as well.

New Approaches to Leadership

As mentioned before, leadership is a popular subject of research. Many theories about

leadership and leadership effectiveness have been developed in line with the situational

approach. Vroom (in: Dunnette, 1976) talks about two aspects that influence leadership

situational variables and personal attributes. These have been described in the previous two

subsections of this chapter.

In the mid-70s to mid-80s there was a movement of leadership theories focused on cognitive

models, gender, and transformational and cultural leadership theories (Chemers, 2000).

Some of these theories will be mentioned below; for cultural aspects reference is made to

Paragraph 2.2.

In the mid-70s scholars focused on cognitive models of leadership, such as leadership

perception. Eden and Levitan (in: Chemers, 2000) conducted research into the perception of

leadership by asking participants to rate leadership behaviour by imagining leaders. These


20

ratings were compared with the leadership behaviour of actual leaders. The attribution theory

(Gleitman, 1991) provided a theoretical framework for the research into leadership biases.

Popular books were published which argued that female traits like warmth, flexibility and

nurturance made women more effective leaders than men. But some more serious research

into leadership and gender was done as well. In his Handbook of Leadership Bass (1981)

mentions some of these researchers. Eagly (1991), for instance, conducted a series of meta-

analyses on male-female differences in leadership. Eagly (1991) concludes that men use

more task-oriented leadership styles and women more people-oriented styles. Although the

outcomes will not cause any surprise, the major effort was to present data instead of implicit

theories.

Rapid developments in business and political systems call for leadership theories that focus

on transition and change. From the eighties we see more and more articles and books on

transformational theories and transformational leadership. Scholars such as Kotter (1995),

Collins (2001) and Quinn (1996) write on organisational change and the role that leaders

play in it.

This third subsection finishes by describing more recent research approaches to leadership.

New approaches to leadership have various themes, which are illustrated by the titles of the

following books and articles: ‘Charismatic Leadership in Organisations’ (Conger & Kanungo,

1998), ‘Results Based Leadership’ (Ulrich, Zenger and Smallwood, 1999), ‘Deep Change,

Discovering the Leader Within’ (Quinn, 1996), ‘Inspirational Leadership’ (Den Hartog, 1997),

‘The New Leadership Paradigm’ (Sims & Lorenzi, 1992), ‘The Seven Habits of Highly

Effective People’ (Covey, 1989), and ‘A Higher Standard of Leadership’ (Nair, 1994). Though

these titles have a popular ring, most books are founded on reliable research. It is interesting

to note that many recent works on leadership focus on such leadership characteristics as

inspirational, charismatic, or value-based.

A large number of leadership articles and books describe how to become a change

champion or a highly effective leader. Successful leaders of multinationals, such as Jack

Welch (GE, USA), Bill Gates (Microsoft, USA), Ingvar Kamprad (IKEA, Sweden), Jan Carlzon

(SAS, Sweden) and Richard Branson (Virgin, UK) are often taken as examples of leaders

with effective or excellent leadership behaviour. A majority of recent scholars on leadership

underline the importance of the characteristics mentioned above. It will remain a moot point

whether these leadership characteristics are traits, whether they can be learned and

developed or whether they are inherited. Most researchers agree that effective leadership

behaviour depends on circumstances (Bass, 1981). Therefore, all recommendations made


21

by these scholars and business leaders about “How to become an effective leader!” are

questionable.

There is no one best way of management because of situational differences, such as culture

(Hofstede, 1980) or business environment. Jack Welch, Richard Branson and Jan Carlzon,

for instance, are all three completely different in their leadership but are recognised as highly

effective leaders within their organisations and as role models within their countries.

Much of the research done in the 1980s and 1990s shows a new research approach. The

trait and situational approaches are mainly empirical and/or use common psychological or

sociological theories. Nowadays, research largely focuses on case studies. Such research

not only relates to the businessmen mentioned but also involves biographies of successful

leaders of the past such as Kennedy, Ghandi, Ford and Johnson (Adiar, 1989).

2.2 Culture, an overview

This section presents a theoretical perspective of cultures. Culture is one of the background

variables in this research. This section offers some background knowledge on cultural

studies and the countries of research: Japan, Russia, the Netherlands and the United

Kingdom. Note that the research presented below focuses on cultures in general. Chapter

2.3 will focus on cultural research into leadership.

What is culture? Culture defined

Everyone acts, thinks and feels differently. These differences are determined by human

nature, culture and personality traits. These three aspects influence people to varying

degrees (Hofstede, 1980; Triandis, 1994). In line with Hofstede (1980) this thesis argues that

human nature is inherited and is generally the same for all people. Thus, English

businessmen and Indonesian rice farmers both share the ability to feel love, anger and fear,

and both need people around them. Human nature can be described as an individual’s basic

abilities. What people do with these abilities largely depends on their (social) culture. Cultural

differences occur at different levels. For instance, a country, a town and a Boy Scout group

each have their own culture. An individual learns the cultural differences from the group.

Culture is difficult to define. Where human nature stops and culture begins or where culture

stops and personality starts is still a moot point for social scientists. The third background

aspect that determines people’s behaviour, thinking and feeling is personality. Personality

traits such as extroversion and openness are partly inherited and partly acquired. The

triangle below measures personality and culture at the two uppermost levels (Figure 4).1

1 A comprehensive discussion of the nature-nurture debate is beyond the scope of this thesis.


22

The definition used here is the one employed by GLOBE (House et al., 1999), which is

consistent with traditional theories about cultures as described in Hofstede (1980), Shaw

(1990) Dunette (1976) or Ronen and Shenkar (1985) “Cultures are distinctive normative

systems consisting of model patterns of shared psychological properties among members of

collectivities that result in compelling common affective, attitudinal and behavioural

orientations that are transmitted across generations and that differentiate collectivities from

each other.” (House et al., 1999, p. 27).

This study explores what leadership competencies are effective in the countries of research

and whether these competencies culturally differ. This research makes the assumption that

countries are cultural carriers. Countries are political units which have constantly been

changing over the years. In the history of mankind, countries are relatively new. It should be

noted that countries can be multilingual and multi-ethnic. It could be argued that these

countries possess several nation-wide cultures. Although the countries investigated in this

thesis generally show consistent cultural patterns (Hofstede, 1980), there are arguments

against using countries in cultural studies. Practical circumstances and the relative degree of

consistency in the countries investigated are the main reasons for using countries in this

research (see Methodology chapter).

1. Personality

2. Culture

3. Human Nature

Figure 4 :Three levels of uniqueness in human mental programming (Hofstede, 1991, p. 6).

Human behaviour is guided by culture. It shapes perception, beliefs and behaviour and acts

as a standard against which other cultures are measured. Terpstra and David (1991, p. 78)

define culture as follows: ”Culture is a learned, shared, compelling, interrelated set of

symbols whose meanings provide a set of orientations for members of a society. These

orientations taken together provide solutions to problems that all societies must solve if they

are to remain viable.”. Hofstede uses another definition of culture in which he draws an

analogy with a computer (1991, p. 7): “the collective programming of the mind, which


23

distinguishes one group or category of people from another.” A third definition of culture is

one specified by anthropologists. Kuckhohn and Kroeber (in: Adler, 1991, p. 57) give the

following definition: “Culture consists of patterns, explicit and implicit of and for behaviour

acquired and transmitted by symbols, constituting the distinctive achievement of human

groups, including their embodiment in artefacts: the essential core of culture consists of

traditional (i.e. historical derived and selected) ideas and especially their attached values:

culture systems may, on the one hand, be considered as producers of action, on the other

hand as conditioning elements of future action.” Although the three definitions focus on

different aspects, they all argue that culture categorises people into different groups.

Consequently, culture can be used to point out and explain differences in people’s behaviour,

attitudes, values and beliefs.

In order to compare different cultures, differences in behaviour, values, attitudes and feelings

must be categorised. A common way to do so is in terms of symbols, rituals, heroes and

values, called practices (Hofstede, 1991). Figure 5, Hofstede’s onion diagram clarifies this.

Figure 5 : The onion diagram, manifestation of culture at different levels of depth (Hofstede,

1991, p. 9).

Symbols in the onion diagram means words and pictures that are recognised by, and have

the same meaning for, people in the same culture. They have been assigned to the outer

layer because they are most easily displayed and developed. Heroes are role models for a

culture. They have prestigious characteristics, or their deeds are highly valued. Rituals are

patterns of behaviour that have a specific, culture-bound meaning. Values are components of


24

cultures that indicate the difference between good and bad, done and not done, etc. and are

firmly embedded in the culture and difficult to change.

After this brief discussion of the concept of culture and its manifestations, consideration will

now be given to national differences. In order to establish cultural differences, it is necessary

to find different patterns in how people think in different countries. Cultural comparisons often

look at the way people solve problems (Trompenaars and Hampden-Turner, 1994). For this

purpose common problems have to be translated into general terms. Kluckhohn and

Strothbeck (in: Adler, 1991) identify six cultural orientations: Who am I? How do I see the

world?, How do I relate to other people?, What do I do?, How do I use space?, and How do I

use time? Given these orientations, they argue that mankind faces five basic problems: What

is the relationship of the individual to others? (Relation Orientation); What is the temporal

focus of human life? (Time Orientation); What is the modality of human activity? (Activity

Orientation); What is a human being’s relation to nature? (Man-Nature Orientation); and

What is the character of innate human nature? (Human Nature Orientation). These

orientations reflect values with behavioural and attitudinal implications. Hofstede (1980)

developed a similar set of tools to analyse culture.

Hofstede’s research

Hofstede is one of the authorities on research into different cultures. In the late 1960s and

early 1970s Geert Hofstede (1980, 1991) collected data within IBM on organisations and

cultures. He covered 38 professions from 72 countries, in 20 different languages on two

occasions in time (1968 and 1972), using 116,000 questionnaires. Trompenaars (1994) also

carried out research into national cultures relevant to this thesis. Geert Hofstede’s results

mark a breakthrough in cultural research. The dimensions he uses – and others, such as

Bond and Smith (1996) and Hoppe, after him (see: Hofstede, 1980) – are Small Power

Distance vs. Large Power Distance, Collectivism vs. Individualism, Femininity vs. Masculinity,

Weak Uncertainty Avoidance vs. Strong Uncertainty Avoidance. He adds a fifth dimension

suggested by Bond (1988) in the context of cross-cultural research with reference to Asian

Confucian thinking. Hofstede calls this dimension Long-term Orientation vs. short-term

Orientation. Some of Hofstede’s results for the countries covered in the present study are

cited in the following paragraphs.


25

Power

Distance

Individualism/

Collectivism

Masculinity/

Femininity

Uncertainty

Avoidance

Japan 78 46 95 (ranked as number 1) 7

UK 35 89 66 35

NL 38 80 14 53

Russia (est.) High very low high very high

Table 1, Relative ranking according to Hofstede, 1980 (note: Russia was not included in

Hofstede’s research; Russian estimated rankings based on Hofstede (1991); 100 is highest, 0 is

lowest score. Hofstede never published his statistical data as Standard Deviation (SD) or

country means (M).)

Trompenaars’ research

Other important scholars in cultural studies are Fons Trompenaars & Hampden-Turner

(1994). Their 7-D model derives from an extensive file of cross-cultural data obtained though

Trompenaars’ work as a consultant and trainer in cross-cultural business. Trompenaars &

Hampden-Turner use dilemmas to point out cultural differences. Some examples of

dilemmas are given in the last sections of this research. Trompenaars & Hampden-Turner

recognise seven cultural dilemmas: Universalism vs. Particularism, Individualism vs.

Communitarianism, Specificity vs. Diffuseness, Neutrality vs. Affective Response,

Achievement vs. Ascription, and Internality vs. Externality, as well as time (past, present,

future. Besides Hofstede’s findings, this study also uses some of Trompenaars’ & Hampden-

Turner’s data in describing national differences in culture.

Both Hofstede’s and Trompenaars & Hampden-Turner’s research shows differences in

cultural values, attitudes and behaviour between the countries investigated. As mentioned

earlier, both researchers use general cultural aspects which are translated into business and

leadership related issues. Focusing on the leadership types and leadership aspects of this

research differences between the countries could be expected.

Hofstede is probably right in stating that there is no single generally valid management

theory. Most leadership theories and ideas are greatly influenced by western (primarily

American) thinking. Japanese leadership theories, for instance, tend to give greater

prominence to issues such as “trust,” “facilitation” and “respect” (Trompenaars & Hampden-

Turner, 1994) than do occidental ones. This research is also western biased. The aspects of

leadership discussed in this research are based on western management theories. Team

building, giving feedback, coaching, entrepreneurship, production-oriented and goal

achieving are mentioned in lots of management books and articles as aspects that lead to

excellent leadership. Most of these books and articles are written by western scholars and

writers and are based on western management philosophies and experience.


26

Universalism Particularism

UK, Netherlands Japan

Analysing Integrating

UK, Netherlands Russia, Japan

Individualism Collectivism


Obtain status Ascribe status


Equality Hierarchical

UK, Netherlands Japan, (Russia)

Chronological thinking Synchronic thinking

UK, Netherlands Japan

Table 2: An overview of country values (Trompenaars, Hampden-Turner, 1994. No statistical

data available)

2.3 Intercultural leadership

The previous two chapters presented a theoretical background to the discussion of

leadership and culture and provided some information about the countries concerned and

national aspects of leadership. This chapter gives an overview of relevant research into

leadership from an intercultural perspective. It ends with the GLOBE research which is

discussed in more detail because of its importance for this research.

While Hofstede and Trompenaars & Hampden-Turner mainly concentrate on national cultural

differences in general, this thesis focuses on leadership. Bass (1991) and House, Wright and

Aditya (in: Early and Erez (eds.), 1999) give an overview of studies into international

leadership. This research singles out research which is relevant for the countries discussed

here or research which has a big influence on cultural research on leadership.

Hofstede (1994) reanalysed data from an earlier survey (Hofstede, Neuijen, Ohay and

Sanders (1990) in: Hofstede, 1991) on organisational culture covering the responses from

1,300 people in 20 different countries, two-thirds of them managers. The findings of this

reanalysis were that, by looking at the data at the individual level, the dimensions of

organisational culture completely disappeared and were replaced by a new set of dimensions

that are inherent in what can be called psychological culture.


27

Smith and Peterson (1994) conducted a survey in 14 countries using a questionnaire

distributed to middle management. Managers were requested to rate each of eight sources

of meanings for each of eight organisational events on a 5-point scale. The survey resulted in

an analysis at national level, with adjustments to individual scores being made for

demographic differences. One of the findings was that managers in Hofstede’s study from

countries judged high on individualism and low on power distance placed greater reliance on

their experience and on their subordinates, while managers in countries rated low on

individualism and high on power distance tended to rely to a much greater extent on formal

rules.

Smith, Dungan and Trompenaars (1996) examined the values of managers, using various

methods and earlier data gathered by Trompenaars in the course of training programmes in

Europe, Asia, and the United States. (The non-random samples varied from 29 to 1,121

respondents per country, and the number of countries included was 43.) Two dimensions

emerged: egalitarianism vs. conservatism and loyalty. These correlated with each other (.83).

Smith and Peterson (1994) conducted surveys in 25 countries asking respondents to rate, on

a five-point scale, their reactions to eight critical organisational events. They targeted middle

management in the public and private sectors. Their research found three factors describing

managers’ various combinations of reliance on rules and procedures, belief, unwritten rules,

advice from subordinates, colleagues, and superiors, and personal experience. Leader event

management processes were consistently related to the differences in national cultures that

Hofstede identified.

Smith, Misumi, Tayeb, Patterson, and Bond (1989) conducted research aimed at supervisors

in various countries, including the United Kingdom and the United States. The questionnaire

used Misumi’s Performance (P) and Maintenance (M) scales and asked employees to score

their immediate superiors’ behaviour. It emerged from this work that there are similarities and

differences between general leadership styles across nations. Only in the United States was

there a clear distinction between M and P behaviours.

Global Leadership Organisation Behaviour Effectiveness Research Program (GLOBE)

Major research into leadership from a cultural perspective is being conducted by the GLOBE

research group. So far, GLOBE has conducted research in 62 countries. Some of the results

have already been presented in various journals, but most of the findings from the GLOBE

project will be published in June 2004. House et al. (1999) and Hartog, House, Hanges, Ruiz

Quintanilla and Dorfman (1999) presented some of the first findings and discussed the


28

research methods used in the GLOBE project. GLOBE research focused on cultural

dimensions and cultural endorsed leadership profiles. The scores of the countries of

research on the GLOBE leadership and cultural scales are summarised below. The cultural

attributes of GLOBE are: Uncertainty Avoidance, Assertiveness, Future Planning, Power

Distance, Collectivism I (institutional), Collectivism II (Family and Group), Human Orientation,

Performance Orientation, Gender Egalitarism (read: gender equality).

GLOBE uses ‘as is’ and ‘should be’ scales. With this distinction House et al. (1999) tried to

measure the actual behaviour of leaders (as is) and which leadership attributes are seen as

more effective or efficient (should be).

As Is Uncer-

tainty

avoid-

ance

Gender

egalitar-

ianism

Assertive

-ness

future

orienta-

tion

Power

dis-

tance

Institu-

tional

collec-

tivism

Family

collec-

tivism

Hu-

mane

orienta-

tion

Perfor-

mance

orienta-

tion

Japan 4.07 3.19 3.59 4.29 5.11 5.19 4.63 4.30 4.22

Russia 2.88 4.07 3.68 2.88 5.52 4.5 5.79 3.94 3.39

NL 4.70 3.50 4.32 4.61 4.11 4.46 3.70 3.86 4.42

UK 4.65 3.67 4.15 4.28 5.15 4.27 4.08 3.72 4.08

Table 3a: Scores on Cultural attributes of GLOBE; 6 is highest score, 1 is lowest score. (House

et al., 1999)

Should

Be

Uncer-

tainty

avoid-

ance

Gender

egalita-

rianism

Assertive

-ness

Future

orienta-

tion

Power

dis-

tance

Institu-

tional

collec-

tivism

Family

collec-

tivism

Hu-

mane

orienta-

tion

Perfor-

mance

orienta-

tion

Japan 4.33 4.33 5.56 5.25 2.86 3.94 5.26 5.41 5.17

Russia 5.07 4.18 2.83 5.48 2.62 3.89 5.63 5.59 5.54

NL 3.24 4.99 3.02 5.07 2.45 4.55 5.17 5.20 5.49

UK 4.11 5.17 4.15 5.06 2.8 4.31 5.55 5.43 5.90

Table 3b: Scores on Cultural attributes of GLOBE; 6 is highest score, 1 is lowest score (House

et al., 1999)


29

scale versions M SD

GLOBE cultural scales

Uncertainty avoidance Should be

As is

2,72 3.64

.61

.77

Assertiveness

Should be

As is

2.76 3.00

.82 1.01

Power distance

Should be

As is

3.03 3.48

1.03 .95

Collectivism, social emphasis

Should be

As is

2.62 3.12

.67 1.08

Collectivism, family cohesiveness Should be

As is

2.94 2.21

.68

.76

Future planning

Should be

As is

2.36 2.05

.71

.71

Humane orientation

Should be

As is

2.56 2.25

.53

.63

Performance orientation Should be

As is

2.79 2.00

1.09 .67

Table 3c: Mean (M) and Standard Deviation (SD) on GLOBE’s Cultural attributes (House et al.,

1999).

In contrast to Hofstede’s and Trompenaars & Hampden-Turner’s outcomes GLOBE aims to

measure cultural differences between countries instead of general cultural differences

translated into leadership.

Brodbeck (2000) focused on the European countries in the GLOBE project, which led to

some interesting conclusions with regard to this thesis. Based on Triandis (1982), the

GLOBE researchers make the assumption that there are pre-existing leadership prototypes

and expectations which are a potential source of variance across cultures. This paragraph

sums up the outcomes of the GLOBE research project for the countries of this research, as I

did for Trompenaars and Hampden-Turner and Hofstede in previous paragraphs. Together

the GLOBE team, Trompenaars and Hampden-Turner and Hofstede are the most influencing

scholars on leadership and culture.

Autono-

mous

Charisma-

tic

Humane Self

protective

Participa-

tive

Team-

oriented

Japan 3.67 5.49 4.68 3.60 5.07 5.56

Russia 4.63 5.66 4.08 3.69 4.67 6.63

NL 3.53 5.98 4.82 2.87 5.75 5.75

UK 3.92 6.01 4.90 3.04 5.57 5.71

Table 4a: Scores on Leadership attributes of GLOBE; 6 is highest score, 1 is lowest score

(House et al., 1999)


30

scale M SD

GLOBE cultural scales

Autonomous 3.83 .85

Charismatic 5.56 .84

Humane 4.13 .97

Self protective 3.04 1.01

Participative 4.97 .82

Team oriented 5.74 .86 Table 4b: Mean (M) and Standard Deviation (SD) on GLOBE’s Leadership attributes (House et

al., 1999).

GLOBE defined 5 leadership attributes for effective leadership, which are culturally

endorsed: Charismatic, Team Oriented, Participate, Human Orientation, Autonomous, Self-

protective.

In accordance with the GLOBE hypotheses the following conclusions can be drawn. The

GLOBE research presents evidence that leadership concepts are culturally endorsed (House

et al., 1999). Secondly, GLOBE has produced a validated set of dimensions representing

core differences in leadership between the countries of research (House et al., 1999). The

tables above give the relevant data on the countries of research in this thesis.

This chapter aimed to give an overview of relevant research in leadership and culture as a

basis for this research. Chapters 3-5 focus on this actual research, the data collection,

methodology, findings, discussion and recommendation. Research by Trompenaars,

Hofstede and GLOBE will be used to underline some of the findings of this research.


31

Chapter 3 Methodology

This chapter explains how this research was conducted. The main input in this research is

formed by the 77 interviews and the 208 cases analysed into behavioural indicators which

can be categorised into competencies. This chapter focuses on: the data collection,

interviewees, Unilever’s Leadership for Growth Profile, the Behaviour Event Interviews (BEI)

and gives definitions of the variables used, such as ‘business success’. The interview

protocol is added in the appendices.

3. 1 This Explorative and Qualitative Research

In chapter 1 the research question and two sub-questions were formulated as follows:

Which leadership competencies for Unilever middle managers lead to business

success?

And as sub-questions:

Are the competencies which lead to business success part of Unilever’s

Leadership for Growth Profile (LGP)?

Do the competencies which lead to business success differ per country?

Based on the research questions above, I defined the following two conjectures to explore

the effectiveness of Unilever’s Leadership for Growth Profile in the countries of research.


Growth Profile (LGP) for middle managers.

Competencies which lead to business success for middle managers differ per country.

This chapter explains the methodology which is used to explore these questions and prove

the conjectures right or wrong. For this a series of interviews (81, of which 77 are used for

analysis) were conducted. These interviews gave data of which behavioural

patterns/indicators lead to business success. These behavioural data were categorised into

competencies from the Hay-McBer competency dictionary or the LGP.

This research focuses on competencies which lead to business success. The business

success competencies were specially gathered for this research by conducting a series of

interviews as described in this chapter. This research aims to explore whether leadership

competencies which lead to business success differ per country and match Unilever’s

Leadership for Growth Profile (LGP); this is based on the belief that environment influences

effective leadership behaviour (Dunnette, 1976; Bass, 1981; Brion 1998; Yukl, 1997; Clegg,

Hardy and Nord, 1996).


32

3.2 Data collection

The countries of research were selected on the basis of business relevance and their cultural

differences. All four countries are important countries for Unilever, The Netherlands and the

United Kingdom are the home countries and Russia and Japan are important growth

countries in markets where Unilever is not yet a key player. Furthermore, all four countries

represent a different cultural group of countries as stated in chapter 2 (House et al., 1999;

Hofstede, 1980; Ronen and Shenkar, 1985).

Interviewees, middle managers

The research focuses on organisational leaders of what Unilever defines as Worklevel 2 and

Worklevel 3. This group covers managers in leading positions with a work experience of at

least 3-10 years. Worklevel (WL) 2 and 3 managers can be defined as: middle managers

with organisational or functional end responsibilities. For example: a Works Manager who

has final responsible for a factory, a National Account Manager (NAM) who is Unilever’s key

contact for one or more retailers, a Brand Manager who is responsible for the Dutch

positioning of Dove, Bertolli or Ola, a Controller who is responsible for the finances of a

Sourcing Unit/factory or Business Unit/marketing and sales organisation. In line with this,

Worklevel 4 and 5 managers can be seen as senior managers at board level and (senior)

vice presidents of business groups.

The interviewees were selected per country based on a nomination list and all have the

following characteristics:

- Native Russian, Japanese, Dutch or British

- Good understanding of the English language

- Responsible for a team, assignment or another organisational unit

- Middle management: WL 2 and WL 3 (for definition see above)

- Abroad for no longer than 3 years, to ensure that they are not influenced too much by

other cultures (Hofstede, 1980)

Per country the Human Resource Director nominated 30-40 interviewees who all matched

the criteria above. From these 30-40 nominations per country I selected 25 interviewees (at

random) per country. This selection was based on their administrative personnel numbers

and was anonymous. All 100 interviewees (4 (countries) x 25) were invited to participate in

this research. Around 20 per country responded positively (20 for Russia, 21 for the

Netherlands, 20 for the United Kingdom and 19 for Japan). In total 81 interviews were

conducted, of which 77 were used for analysis (see: Table 5, p. 44)


33

Background information on the interviewees was gathered from Unilever Personal Data

systems online (age, years in job, function, industry).

3.2.1 Leadership

This research explores which leadership competencies lead to business success in Japan,

Russia, the Netherlands and the UK and whether they culturally differ and match Unilever’s

Leadership for Growth Profile (LGP). The research framework is repeated below. This

paragraph will describe how the data were gathered and analysed. The analysis of the data

collection of the competencies that lead to business success is the main effort of this

research (see: table 6, p. 49)

Figure 6. Overview of the variables of this research.

To answer the research questions and explain the conjectures, data relating to which

competencies lead to business success per country are necessary. Using this data it will be

examined whether competencies which lead to business success differ per country; and

whether Unilever’s competency framework covers those competencies that lead to business

success or whether there are more competencies which are related to business success.

The relationship of the environmental factors (of culture and the business success factors)

and Unilever’s Leadership competency profile are examined in this research. Leadership is

defined in Chapter 2. Leadership can be broken down into several factors such as:

environment

Leadership

Business

success

•characteristics

•competencies

•global competency frameworks (e.g. LGP)

•competency dictionaries

•skills

•knowledge

•experience

•Culture

•Rituals

•History

•Symbols

•Language

•religion

•socio economic circumstances

•business success:

•Achievement of targets

•bottom and top line

•achieving annual plan

•achieving workplan

•competition/competitors

•market development

Culture


34

characteristics, competencies, skills, knowledge, traits, etc. as explained in chapter 2

(Dunnette, 1976; Yukl, 1998). This research focuses on leadership competencies. A

theoretical overview of the relation between leadership characteristics, skills, competencies,

skills or knowledge goes beyond the scope of this research. The focus in this research is on

competencies. I see competencies as a collection of those behavioural aspects which lead to

effective leadership and business success (Yukl, 1998).

The competencies used in this research are part of the Hay-McBer competency dictionary

(2000) and/or Unilever competency profile, the Leadership for Growth Profile (LGP). The

Hay-McBer competency dictionary that I used gathered together 24 competencies which

Hay-McBer associated with business success. This dictionary was used internally by

consultants to assess managers. Unilever’s Leadership for Growth Profile consists of 11

competencies and will be explained in more detail in this chapter. In categorising the

observed behaviour I could choose from 35 (24 Hay-McBer and 11 Unilever) competencies

in total. All competencies which were observed are summed up in the appendices.

For this research 77 interviews were conducted. These interviews aim to provide an insight

into which behavioural patterns are related to business success. These behavioural patterns

are translated and categorised into 35 competencies. A summary is given for each country of

the competencies that can be derived from the interviews, in other words which

competencies lead to business success. Table 6 shows which competencies were noted

down most often.

In other words, during the analysis of observed behaviour from the interviews a

comprehensive competency dictionary covering 35 competencies (24 Hay-McBer and 11

Unilever competencies) (and their definitions) was used to categorise the behavioural

indicators into competencies. All definitions in this dictionary are defined on the basis of

positive and negative behavioural indicators. Only those competencies which were critical for

business success were scored. After categorising the observed behaviours into

competencies I analysed whether these competencies were part of the LGP and whether

they differed per country.

Figure 7. Leadership (competencies) as one of the variables of this research

environment

Leadership

Business success

•characteristics

•competencies

•skills

•knowledge

•experience

Culture


35

One of the environmental factors that is critical is business success. Business success is

directly linked with the leadership competencies that increase or decrease business success.

To achieve business success some competencies will be more necessary than others. The

data collection of those competencies which lead to business success is the main empirical

effort of this research and gathered by conducting Behavioural Event Interviews (BEI).

Figure 8. Business success is related to leadership competencies

For preparation and as background information for the interviews information about the

companies and socio-economic circumstances of the countries of research were gathered.

These business data give an overview of the most important issues that the company faces

and were necessary to prepare myself for the interviews and understand the context of the

cases of business success which the interviewees talked about.

3.2.2 Behaviour Event Interviews (BEI)

The interview format (see appendix) is based on the Behaviour Event Interview technique

(BEI) (Hay, 1999, 2000). The BEI is based on Flanagan’s Critical Incidents Method (in:

Stogdill, 1957) and is also described in Dunnette (1976) and Clegg et al. (1996). The BEI

was first used in the US army in the ‘70s. In the early 1970s the US focused on academic

ability and IQ in selection. McClelland (in: Dunette, 1976) criticised this approach for not

predicting success and for being biased. McClelland developed and tested principles and

methodologies for conducting competency research. He developed the BEI methodology for

use in competency assessment. BEI methodology is now used across the world and is seen

as a valid way to assess and predict future effectiveness of leaders. Figure 9 points out the

predictability validity of the BEI (Hay, 2000). Although the predictability validity is high, I have

not found statistical evidence for the BEI itself as measurement tool.

Method Predictability validity

Graphology/Astrology 0

Unstructured Interviews .19

Personality Tests .39

Ability Tests .53

Behavioural Interviews .48 - .61

Assessment Centres .65

Figure 9. Predictability validity of future behaviour and performance, Hay Consulting, 2000

Business success

Leadership Competencies (e.g. LGP)


36

The BEI technique has several characteristics (Hay, 2000) which make it particularly useful

for this research which conducted interviews to assess which competencies lead to business

success in the countries of research.

Objective measures of behaviours

Minimises bias of interviewer

Common language and template used across different assessors

Gets data beyond the normal knowledge and self image level

Designed to elicit and record evidence of the presence/absence of a candidate's

competencies from examples of what they have done in the past

The interview structure is critical to minimising the inevitable subjective evaluations

and bias that creep into many interviews

Concentrates on a small number of key factors

Focuses on clarifying intent, action, outcome

Is a means of collecting FACTS, not views or beliefs

For this research the interviews conducted were semi-structured and focused on

examples/cases (at least 2 per interview) which visualise the behavioural aspects of

successful business achievements (see Appendix 5). All interviews were conducted in

English and tape-recorded.

During the interview, proof was sought for behavioural evidence (positive and negative) of

the competencies which lead to business success (see Appendix 4). Hay (1999, 2000) calls

this searching for “FACTS”:

F FEELING

“How did you feel when that happened?”

A ACTION

“What did you say?”

“What did you do?”

C CONTEXT

“Tell me about the situation”

“What was your role?”

“Who was involved?”

“What was the outcome?”

T THINKING

“What was going through your mind at that point?”

“What were you thinking?”


37

The ‘FACTs’ helped to structure the interviews and helped to give a more in-depth insight

into each case/example. More important is the focus on the behavioural indicators that are

critical in each case/example. What behavioural support was directly linked to the described

business success? These behavioural indicators are categorised into one of the 35

competencies used for this research. One critical competency per case/example. Summing

up the competencies per country leads to the overview in table 6, which is the main outcome

of this research.

Critical Business Success Competencies

The interviews focused on leadership behaviour and competencies which lead to business

success. Business success is defined as: ‘achievements of the interviewee or his/her team

which had an indisputable impact on the business.’ These achievements do not have to be

part of their regular work or efforts and should be stretching. Often these will/can be

mentioned in the behavioural evidence in the Personal Development Plan (PDP, Appendix 8)

and Variable Pay Targets. These are part of a manager’s personnel file and as such are

documented. Both PDP and Variable Pay Targets are linked with the business annual plan or

balanced scorecard. By defining ‘business success’ in this way, I want to make it tangible

and describe it in hard figures.

Where possible, interviewees brought copies of their PDPs to the interview to ensure that we

had ‘real life examples’ of cases/examples of business success that they played an important

role in.

In Appendix 5 I have summarised some examples of business successes which were

scored. Within this research we reach a critical point in defining business success, as

Unilever’s Leadership for Growth Profile is based on business Growth (see Appendix 4).

Business success and business growth may seem two different measures but I will explain in

the discussion chapter that this is not the case for the middle managers interviewed.

From Interview to Competencies, through behavioural observations

The next chapter sums up the main outcomes of this research: an overview of which

leadership competencies lead to business success per country. This information was

gathered by conducting interviews. This paragraph explains how the competencies are

derived from those interviews.

For each interview used (Russia N=19, Netherlands N=21, UK N=19 and Japan N=18, in

total N=77) 2-3 examples/cases were analysed (Russia N=51, Netherlands N=54, UK N=52


38

and Japan N= 51, in total N=208). Based on the business examples/cases given in the

interviews, behavioural indicators have been written down which lead to the business

successes achieved. These behavioural indicators have been translated into competencies

based on the Hay-McBer competency dictionary (24 competencies) and the LGP (11

competencies). This translation was based on the definitions of the competencies and the

positive and negative indicators. All 35 competencies were described in detail by Unilever

and by Hay-McBer (Hay, 1999, 2000; Unilever, 1999). This made the translation from

observed behaviour into competencies structured and not difficult to do. Figure 10 gives an

schematic overview of the four steps from interview to competency. In each interview I

focused on 2 cases/examples for business success. For both I wrote down those behavioural

indicators that lead to business success. These indicators were translated into 1 critical

competency per case/example.

Figure 10, From Interview to Competencies

Table 6 shows how often a particular competency has been analysed as critical in one of the

cases described. These competencies are based on the behavioural examples taken from

cases/examples of business success (see chronology in Figure 10.)

All competencies used were chosen from a Hay-McBer competency dictionary or the 11

Unilever LGP competencies. The definitions of the competencies scored within this research

are summarised in Appendix 6. From each example/case the key competency for business

success was extracted. Only the critical competency for business success per case was

scored (N=208 based on 208 cases/examples).

In this research only one competency per case was noted down and used for further

analysis. As I mentioned earlier in this paragraph, the BEI is based on Flannagan’s Critical

Incidents Method (in: Stogdill, 1957). This methodology is based on the fact that only one set

of critical behaviour is responsible for a desired outcome, like business success. In line with

this I focused on one set of behaviour per interview that was critical for the success

achieved. This critical set of behaviour is further translated into one competency.

1. BEI Interview

2. Successful Business Cases (N=2)

3a. Critical behavioural indicators for business

success per case

4a. Critical competency (N=1) which leads to business

success in that particular case

3a. Critical behavioural indicators for business

success per case

4b. Critical competency (N=1) which leads to business

success in that particular case


39

There are limitations to this approach, as one can argue that there are more competencies

which lead to business success or that there is one main competency and several underlying

competencies. I have chosen to follow the BEI structure and focus on only one competency.

Next to the methodological argument to follow the BEI structure I also believe that the

chosen approach simplifies the research. Looking at more competencies would lead to a

more complicated framework and would not help to answer the research questions. In

paragraph 5.3 on further research I will argue that focusing on more competencies and the

relation between them is of great value, but goes beyond the scope of this research.

3.2.3 Validity and Reliability

Before starting the research 10 test interviews were conducted to gain familiarity with the BEI

method and the competency dictionary and hone the questions and the interview technique

of the interviewer. The interviewees were Dutch (3), English (2), Indian (1), Polish (1), French

(1), German (1) and Chinese (1). All test interviews were conducted in English. The second

reason was to practise interviewing in English and to ensure that enough questions were

available before conducting the interviews for this research.

During the interviews I asked the interviewees to talk about business success cases. To

make sure these cases were real and the interviewee had an actual role in the business

success case they described, I used their Personal Development Plans (PDPs) to verify this

(see: Attachment 8). All cases discussed during the interviews were mentioned in the PDPs

of the interviewees.

To increase reliability two interviews per country (N= 16 cases in total) were analysed by a

second person. In this way the inter-observer reliability was checked. This second opinion

was based on analysis of the tape-recordings of the interviews. This means that a second

person analysed the tapes, wrote down the critical behaviour indicators and matched these

behavioural indicators with one of the 35 competencies (24 from the Hay-McBer dictionary

(Hay, 1999) and 11 from Unilever’s LGP (Unilever, 1999) that are used in this research.

The competency set that I used (24 from the Hay-McBer dictionary and 11 from Unilever’s

LGP) is defined extremely accurately. Appendix 4 gives a summary of the definitions.

Unilever (2000) has developed an Handbook which covers positive and negative behaviours

per competency (N=11). Hay (1999) are specialists in competency management and the

competency dictionary that I used is also used by their professional HRD consultants and

gives detailed behaviours and positive and negative behaviours of all 24 competencies.


40

The analyses were done separately and were based on the audio (tape) recordings which

were made during the interviews. The second person was a Unilever HR manager who was

accustomed to using the LGP, the BEI technique and the Hay-McBer competency dictionary

(Hay, 1999, 2000). Both this second person and myself had been trained in the use of the

BEI methodology. In all 8 interviews (16 cases) the second interviewer scored the same

competencies based on the Hay-McBer competency framework.

This proves that the method used (BEI) is reliable and that the research can be repeated.

Although the second interviewer saw the same competencies lead to business success in

the cases I will not argue that the inter-observer reliability is 100%. The reason for this is that

only 16 cases were analysed twice. The fact that – as I already mentioned – the second

person was a Unilever HR manager who had been extensively trained in the BEI and Hay-

McBer and LGP competencies might have influenced the high score on inter-observer

reliability.

The interview protocol (appendix 7) and the detailed explanation of how I got from the

interviews to the competencies, via observed behaviour, assures that this research can be

repeated. The BEI methodology is explained and references have been given for background

information. The use of standardised definitions of the competencies (Unilever, 1999:

Hay,1999, 2000) ensures that the translation from the observed behaviours to competencies

can be repeated. This translation, and the fact that it can be repeated by a third person, is

critical for this research.

After conducting and analysing the interviews I sent a report to the HR director of each

country of research for comments and approval. This report covered the data for their

country, as summed up in figure 6. This was not only a service for their kind co-operation, but

also a way of verifying the data I gathered per country. The HR directors of Russia, the

Netherlands and the United Kingdom had no comments and felt very comfortable with the

outcomes. The HR director of Japan wanted to discuss why I had not found evidence for the

relation between one particular competency (Seizing the Future) and business success in

Japan. Otherwise he had no questions. Overall the HR directors gave me the feedback that

their experience backed up my findings and were happy to have proof of their own ideas.

The comments of the HR directors assure the validity of this research. This research reflects

and shows the relation between the variables as they are in practice. The HR directors

expected that the chosen methodology would lead to the outcomes of this research and

mentioned this again after seeing the findings.


41

The outcomes of this interview can be generalised (external validity). This research is based

on a 208 real business cases analysed by a proven method (BEI interview). For a qualitative

research based on interviews this is high. A different sample or different interviewer would

have let to the same outcomes. By stating that the outcomes of this research can be

generalised I underline the external validity of this research. Paragraph 3.3 discusses risks of

this research. One of the main points I already want to make is that by working with concepts

as leadership, culture and business success, the internal validity might be lower. Internal

Validity is concerned with whether the action of the independent variable is actually the

cause of the changes observed in the dependent variable. By defining all variables as

accurately as possible, I have tried to increase the internal validity as much as possible.

In the interviews I asked the interviewees if they wanted to receive the outcomes of my

research for their own country. These were sent to (63%) of all interviewees. I had no further

correspondence with them other than explaining my findings when they had questions. All

operational constructs have been defined.

3.2.4 Leadership for Growth Profile (LGP)

The LGP was originally developed as a set of differentiating competencies for WL 5/6s,

externally benchmarked against the world's best Growth leaders. The aim of this new

competency model was to ensure Unilever that develops behaviours that enable Path to

Growth. In 2001 the LGP was cascaded for WL 4, WL 3 and even WL 2 managers.

This research explores the relationship between the LGP and the cultural and business

success factors by focusing on worklevel 2 and worklevel 3 managers. Each country or

business group assesses its managers on the eleven LGP competencies each year.

The mean, median and mode of these assessment scores of 2002 per worklevel were

computed for this research (appendices: 2 and 3). These data give a good overview of how

the managers of each country score on the LGP and provide additional data for the

discussion chapter.

Below I have summarised the eleven competencies divided into the three clusters that

Unilever uses. The competencies are defined and further explained in appendix 5.


42

Leadership for Growth Profile:

Builds Commitment for Growth - Team commitment

- Strategic influencing

- Team leadership

Drivers for Growth - Seizing the Future

- Change Catalyst

- Developing others

- Holding people accountable

- Empowering Others

Create a Growth Vision - Passion for Growth

- Breakthrough thinking

- Organisational Awareness

Figure 11, Unilever’s Leadership for Growth Profile (LGP), Unilever, 1999

3.3 Additional and critical notes on methodology

As there is much misunderstanding when approaching a different culture in normal life, there

are many pitfalls when trying to comprehend what is done when attempting to characterise or

to measure a culture and trying to understand which behaviour is effective in it and which is

not. Next to this qualitative research the use of interviews also has many pitfalls, such as

reliability, interviewer influence or the ability to generalise the outcomes. Paragraph 3.2.3

already mentioned this. In this paragraph I want to make some additional critical notes on

this research.

This research focuses on 4 countries. It may be asked whether a country is a meaningful unit

of analysis. In most research countries are seen as carriers of cultures (Hofstede, 1980;

Dunette, 1976). Some countries, such as Belgium, Germany or Switzerland, are sometimes

split on the basis of historical, language or ethnic arguments (House et al., 1999). As

mentioned earlier, practical reasons were of influence for using countries as carriers of

cultures.

Hofstede (1980) limited his research to managers within one company, IBM. This research

also concentrates on a single company: Unilever. The reason for this is that these managers

form a representative population for the various countries, similar in several respects

(organisational culture, pay scale, organisational level, industry), except for their culture and

country of birth and work. Next to culture and country there might be differences between

functions or industries. However, these are beyond the scope of this research.


43

Statistical conclusions – as this research explores – of culture and leadership cannot exist

having a physical reality of their own, because meaning cannot be quantified. “Cultures can

be distinguished from each other by the differences in shared meanings they expect to

attribute to their environment. Culture is not a ‘ thing’ – a substance with a physical reality of

its own. Rather it is made by people interacting, at the same time determining further

interaction.”(Trompenaars and Hampden-Turner, 1995, p.25). In other words, culture will

always stay subjective and cannot be made tangible as it will be experienced in different

ways by different people. Hofstede (1980) tried to make it more tangible by breaking it down

into layers (the Onion, p. 24 of this thesis), but he also acknowledges that culture cannot be

broken down into figures and hard data. Similarly, House et al. acknowledge that leadership

and culture cannot be measured other than in the form of relative data. In other words it can

be said that Japanese people are more long term oriented than British people, but it cannot

be said that Japanese people are long term oriented (Hofstede, 1991). Or it can be said that

Dutch managers place more emphasis on assertiveness than Japanese managers, but it

cannot be said that Dutch managers are assertive or that Japanese managers are not

assertive (House, et al., 1999).

For this research I used the Hay-McBer (1999) competency dictionary, covering 24

competencies. Hay-McBer found that all these competencies have been proven to be linked

with business success. Of course, other consultancy firms use (slightly) different sets of

competencies. I chose Hay-McBer because they have a long-time relationship with Unilever

and they were one of the few companies who were willing to share their competency

dictionary with me (subject to restrictions). The total of 35 competencies cover a wide range

of behaviours, but I have to acknowledge that it is always possible that some behaviours

which lead to business success were not used in this research, as they were not covered in

the list of 35 competencies.

Business success in this research was defined purely on a commercial basis linked with

business targets and growth (volume and profit). This is short-term oriented. A more

sustainable definition of business success covering well-being of employees, long term vision

and achievement, etc. would probably have led to other results and other competencies

which lead to business success. This focus on results and growth as business success does

not mean that the competencies that are critical for this are not relevant for long term

achievement of business success. They might be, and I expect some of them to be as well.

However, this research does not give answers to these questions. Previous research

(Hofstede, 1980) shows that people in Japan for instance have a more long term focus on

business than Western people in European countries. This might affect cases brought up

and behaviour shown in the interviews. Meta-analysis of a wider range of research and of


44

how business success is defined in relation to leadership competencies or effective

leadership styles might provide a greater insight into this.

All interviews were conducted in English. This was done to rule out any variation in the

surveys as a result of translation. Most of the respondents were sufficiently fluent in English.

In Japan there were two interviewees who were not fluent in English and in Russia there was

one. The data from these interviews were excluded from the results of the research (see

Chapter 4). However, social answers and misunderstanding might have occurred during the

interviews as the interviewees might have given socially acceptable answers. Although the

interviews were conducted carefully, social answers and misunderstanding may always

come up during interviews.

I expect that some cases of business success were linked with socially acceptable answers,

especially in Russia and Japan. First the interviewer (myself) came from Unilever’s corporate

head office, and most managers want to make a good impression. Second, the majority of

the interviewees selected by the Human Resources Directors were high potential young

managers, who loved to talk about their successes. I believe the BEI is a good and objective

interview method. However, it might have occurred that in some cases/examples the role of

the interviewee or the behaviour might be presented a little more positively.

The BEI (Hay, 1999, 2000) is a well-defined methodology and Unilever’s Leadership for

Growth Profile (Unilever, 1999) and Hay’s competency dictionary (Hay, 2000) are well-

defined and based on solid research. However, research that focuses on competencies,

culture and leadership will always be subjective. Both the competencies and the behaviour

underneath can be explained in more than one way. Even business success is difficult to

describe objectively. What is a great success today can be a disaster tomorrow and what

looks like a mistake today can be a great innovation 10 years from now. This research tried

to define all variables as accurately as possible, backed up by extensive references, but I am

well aware of the subjectiveness of some of the concepts used.


45

Consequently, given an understanding and interpretative approach, cultural pictures are by

necessity a product of the researcher’s (my) interpretative efforts more than true pictures in

the sense of being ‘average’ or ‘typical’. However, this does not mean that this research is

completely subjective and up to me alone. The inter-observer reliability already showed that

the research can be repeated by another observer who will arrive at the same findings. The

outcomes of which competencies are related with business success are compared with

earlier studies (Hofstede, 1980; House et al., 1999), and commonalties and differences are

described. This comparison shows that this research does not lead to major differences

compared with earlier research (see: Chapter 4).


46

Chapter 4 Research results and outcomes

This chapter gives the outcomes of this research, focusing on the data from the interviews

conducted. In total 208 cases from 77 interviews were used (81 conducted) for this research

(Japan: 18 interviews (51 cases), Russia 19 interviews (51 cases), the Netherlands 21

interviews (54 cases) and the UK 19 interviews (52 cases). The additional data which were

used in further analysis have already been described in chapter 2, as they are derived from

previous research.

Paragraph 4.1 gives the background information about the interviewees (Table 5) and the

data gathered from the cases (the competencies that lead to business success, Table 6).

Paragraph 4.2 describes the data in Table 6 in detail for each country and gives five general

conclusions derived from the data and finally Paragraph 4.3 describes whether the

conjectures set out in chapter 1 can be proven right or wrong. Chapter 5 discusses these

outcomes in more detail.

4.1 Research outcomes

This paragraph gives the outcomes of this research. Table 5 gives the background

information about the interviewees. This section deals with the background variables of the

interviewees (N=81). These background variables were examined on the basis of the

answers given to several questions in the background analysis of the interviewees.

The average age of the respondents was about 36 (SD: 1.65). The majority of the

respondents are female (N= 37: 62%). These figures are not surprising for middle managers

and are representative of the Fast Moving Consumer Goods – FMCG – industry

(SMRP/SHRM, 2003). Interviewees from all major job categories were interviewed, as can

be seen in Table 5 (p. 44). The majority of the interviewees have a career in marketing and

sales and supply chain management. This is quite normal for a fast moving consumer

company with its own production facilities.

Chapter 1 showed that the company investigated has two industries. The interviewees come

from Foods (N=20, including Ice Cream and Frozen Foods (ICFF)), Home and Personal Care

(HPC) (N=22) and both (N=36). Most respondents work in both Foods and HPC. The group

of interviewees that work for both industries is big, as Russia and Japan do not have

separate Foods and HPC businesses. In addition, functions such as HR, finance and R&D

can work for both.


47

All interviewees are middle managers (worklevel 2 or 3), as explained in the methodology

chapter. The information in table 5 about the background variables contains no surprises.

Background interviewees (N=81)

Russia NL UK Japan

Worklevel Worklevel 2 15 14 15 12

Worklevel 3 4 7 5 5

Sex Male 6 12 11 12

Female 14 9 9 5

Professional

function

Marketing 6 5 6 7

Sales 4 5 4 1

Finance/Comm 4 3 3 1

R & D - 2 1 3

SC 1 4 5 3

HR 5 2 1 2

HPC/Foods Foods/ICFF 4 8 5 3

HPC 3 5 7 7

Both 13 8 8 7

Average age 36 34 34 39

Total interviewees 20 21 20 19

Interviews used for analysis 19 21 19 18

Cases used for analysis 51 54 52 51

Table 5, Background information about the interviewees (N=81)

Table 6 gives the main outcomes of this research. The table presents the competencies that

lead to business success in Japan, Russia, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom. The

numbers behind the competencies indicate how often these competencies were mentioned

during the interviews and how critical they were for the achievement of business successes.

Again, only the critical competency for the achieved business success was noted for each

case.

In total 81 interviews were conducted, of which 77 were used for analysing the total of 208

cases (Japan: 18 interviews (51 cases), Russia 19 interviews (51 cases), the Netherlands 21

interviews (54 cases) and the UK 19 interviews (52 cases). Per case/example the critical

competency which leads to the business success is derived on the basis of the critical

behaviours written down during the interview (see: methodology; chapter 3).

The data from four interviews (two interviews in Japan, one in Russia and one in the UK)

were not used for further analyses. For Japan and Russia language was the main reason;


48

the interviewees did not understand the questions well enough to give useful cases. One

interviewee in the UK was not able to come up with examples of business success as

defined for this research. His PDP did not give any information which helped us further. We

decided to cancel the interview.

Competencies which have higher figures are more important to achieve business success

than competencies which have no or lower figures. These figures sum up how often the

particular competency was derived from the critical behaviour out of the case/example.

Some competencies have no scores at all. In that case I found that that competency was not

critical in all 208 cases which I analysed. For example: Developing Others – one of the LGP

competencies – is related to business success in the Netherlands and the United Kingdom,

but not in Russia and Japan. In the cases in the Netherlands and the United Kingdom

‘Developing Others’ was written down as a critical competency for success based on the

behavioural evidence which was seen during the interviews. For Japan and Russia this was

not the case, there were no behaviour indicators that ‘Developing Others’ was crucial for any

of the business successes analysed. Another example: a 6 in Passion for Growth for Russia

means that, of the 51 cases in Russia, the competency Passion for Growth was critical six

times for achieving business success.


49

Found competencies which lead to business success per country (total cases N=208)

Competencies Russia

(N=51)

NL

(N=54)

UK

(N=52)

Japan

(N=51)

Total

Unilever Leadership for Growth Profile Competencies (see appendix 4 for definitions)

Strategic influencing 1 1 3 2 7

Team commitment - - - - -

Team leadership 1 3 5 9

Seizing the future 5 3 - - 8

Change catalyst 1 5 7 1 14

Developing Self and others - 4 4 - 8

Holding people accountable 9 7 4 2 22

Empowering others - - - - -

Passion for growth 6 3 5 5 19

Breakthrough thinking 3 5 7 5 20

Organisational awareness - - - - -

Hay-McBer competencies (see appendix 4 for definitions)

Building Confidence / trust 7 - - 4 11

Building sustainable relations 8 4 4 4 20

Create a clear and shared vision - 2 9 11

Human care 5 8 5 7 25

Teamwork (common, different from team commitment or

team leadership which is more individualistic)

- 6 - 4 10

Action Oriented/risk taking 1 7 8 - 16

Out of the box thinking 1 - - - 1

Build Commitment / ownership 4 - - 3 7

Totals 51 54 52 51 208

Table 6, Research outcomes: the competencies which lead to business success. The scores

represent how often the competencies were derived from observed behaviour as distinctive

factor for business success (see: Chapter 3, Methodology)

4.2. General descriptive results and general conclusions

This paragraph gives the results based on table 6. These data and the data per country in

4.2.1 will be discussed and explained in more detail in chapter 5.

Ranking the competencies in their relation with business success we get the following order:

Human Care (N=25), Holding People Accountable (N=22), Passion for Growth (N=19),

Breakthrough thinking (N=20), Building Sustainable relations (N=20), Action Oriented/Risk

taking (N=16), Change Catalyst (N=14), Building Confidence/Trust (N=11), Create a clear

and shared vision (N=11), Teamworking (N=10), Team Leadership (N=9), Seizing the Future


50

(N=8), Developing Self and Others (N=8), Build Commitment/Ownership (N=7), Strategic

Influencing (N=7), Out of the Box thinking (N=1). Team Commitment, Empowering Others

and Organisational Awareness were not found as one of the key competencies for business

success.

Five main conclusions based on the research outcomes

Based on the data summarised in table 6, five general outcomes can be concluded. In this

paragraph I limit myself to describing them. They are discussed in greater depth in the next

chapter.

1. Half of all competencies which lead to business success are LGP competencies

In 103 cases I found behaviour indicators/patterns which were critical for the success

achieved and which matched LGP competencies. In 101 cases I found no critical

behaviour indicators which were linked with the LGP competencies. In percentages this

is: 51% LGP and 49% non-LGP.

2. LGP competencies scored more often in Western countries

Behavioural patterns which matched the LGP competencies were seen more often in the

Western Countries of this research. The Netherlands and the UK both have 29 scores of

LGP competencies which lead to business success, Japan and Russia have 25 and 20

respectively.

3. Most competencies which lead to business success differ per country

Figure 6 shows that competencies which lead to business success differ per country: for

example:

Action oriented/risk taking only is associated with business success in the Netherlands

and the UK and Confidence/trust only in Japan and Russia. Or, for Seizing the Future

critical behavioural support was only found in Russia and the Netherlands. For only five

LGP competencies out of eleven, behavioural support for business success is found in

each country. And only for one of the eight non-LGP competencies I found behavioural

indicators which led to business success.

4. Human care, Building sustainable relations, Holding people accountable,

Breakthrough thinking, Passion for Growth, Strategic influencing and Change

Catalyst lead to business success in each country


51

Seven competencies are associated with business success in each country. 5 LGP

competencies are linked with business success in all countries of research, 2 are not part

of the LGP.

5. Six competencies are scored highest

In all the cases analysed 6 behavioural patters which are translated into 6 competencies

occurred most. Six competencies are scored relatively higher (20 and above) than the

others: Human Care (N=25), Holding People Accountable (N=22), Breakthrough Thinking

(N=20), Building Sustainable Relations (N=20) and Passion for Growth (N=19). All of

them are scored in all 4 countries of research.

This research focused on that particular competency which is found to be critical for business

success. During the interviews the second most critical competencies were also scored.

Although these were not used in further analysis two competencies were scored most often:

Team Leadership (N=32) as part of the LGP and Discipline and focus (N=47) as an

additional competency. I mention these here because of their exceptionally high scores. Both

team leadership and discipline and focus are discussed further in the next chapter and are

defined in the appendix. Although interesting analysis could be made of these data, I have

not explored them further. In paragraph 5.3 I will mention that analysing these data might be

interesting for further research.

The cultural data shown in the figures in the appendices help to provide an understanding of

some of the results shown in figure 5. This will be briefly described in 4.2 and Chapter 5.

4.2.1 Descriptive results per country of research

Based on the data from table 6 the following results can be summarised for each country of

research. This summary has been kept short, as the table itself gives a good overview.

Another aim of this paragraph is to link some previous research (House et al., 1999;

Hofstede, 1980, and Trompenaars and Hampden-Turner, 1994) to this research. This

research was presented earlier in this thesis. Comparison shows that the findings do not

differ much.

Russia

The outcomes in table 6 show that half of the competencies which lead to business success

(26) are not part of the LGP (25 are part of the LGP). “Building Sustainable Relations” and

“Building Confidence/Trust”, “Passion for Growth”, and ”Holding People Accountable” have

the highest scores and are most important for achieving business success, followed by


52

“Seizing the Future”, “Human Care” and “Building Commitment/Ownership”. Of these

competencies only “Passion for Growth” and “Human Care” scored high in the other

countries of research; the other competencies showed different scores.

Looking at earlier research (House et al., 1999; Gratchev, 2000) ‘Holding People

Accountable’, ‘Building Confidence/Trust’ and ‘Building Sustainable Relations’ are associated

with preferable and effective leadership styles in Russia and are linked with a rapidly

changing (developing) economy. In House et al. (1999) Russia scored lowest of these four

countries on the leadership factor ‘Human’.

Japan

The outcomes in table 6 show that most of the competencies which lead to business success

(21) are not part of the LGP (20 are part of the LGP). “Create a clear and shared vision” and

“Human Care” have the highest scores, followed by: “Breakthrough Thinking”, “Team

Leadership”, and “Passion for Growth”. Only “Passion for Growth” is scored high in the other

countries of research; the other competencies show different scores.

Looking at earlier research (House et al., 1999; Hofstede, 1980) ‘Human Care’, ‘Teamwork’

and ‘Collectively’ are associated with preferable and effective leadership styles in Japan. An

interesting fact is that in this research no behavioural indicators were found for the

competency ‘Seizing the Future’. Earlier research (Hofstede, 1980; Trompenaars and

Hampden-Turner, 1994) argued that Japan had a relatively high score on ‘Long term’

orientation. The definition of ‘Seizing the Future’ shows that this competency focuses on a 2-

4 year period. Long term in Japan is understand as 25-50 years. In House et al. (1999)

Japan has a medium score on ‘Future Orientation’.

Netherlands


(29) are part of the LGP. “Holding People Accountable” “Seizing the Future” and

“Breakthrough Thinking” have the highest scores, followed by: “Change catalyst” and

“Developing Self and Others”.

Looking at earlier research (Hofstede, 1980; House et al., 1999; Chemers, 2000) ‘Human

Care’, ‘Future Orientedness” and ‘Risk Taking’ are associated with preferable and effective

leadership styles in the Netherlands.


53

UK


(N=29) are part of the LGP (19 are not part of the LGP). “Action Oriented/Risk Taking”,

“Passion for Growth”, “Breakthrough thinking” and “Change Catalyst” have the highest

scores, followed by: “Holding people accountable”, “Developing Self and Others” and

“Human care”. Only “Passion for Growth” and Human Care” are scored high in each country.

Looking at earlier research (House et al., 1999; Chemers, 2000) ‘Human Care’ and ‘Risk

Taking’ are associated with preferable and effective leadership styles in the UK.

4.3 Examining Relationships and the Conjectures

In Chapter 1 I defined the research question as follows: “Which leadership competencies for

Unilever middle managers lead to business success?”. This research question had two sub-

questions: “Are the competencies which lead to business success part of Unilever’s

Leadership for Growth Profile (LGP)? and “Do the competencies which lead to business

success differ per country?” Based on these questions two conjectures are formulated which

explore these questions:

Conjectures:


Growth Profile for middle managers.

Competencies which lead to business success for middle managers differ per

country.

Based on the analysis of the data gathered for this research the first conjecture can be

proven wrong. Half of the scored competencies which lead to business success form part of

the LGP (51%), and half do not. Although there will be no strong relationship between the

LGP and achieving business success, there is a relation. The second conjecture can be

proven correct. Table 6 shows that most the competencies which lead to business success

differ per country. Only 7 competencies (5 LPG, 2 non-LGP) are positively related with

business success in each country.


54

Chapter 5 Discussion and Recommendations

This chapter discusses the outcomes of Chapter 4. Paragraph 5.1 will focus on the research

question and the conjectures based on the data and outcomes of the previous chapter.

Paragraph 5.2 will give a series of recommendations for the company of research on how to

use the company’s leadership competencies (LGP) more effectively in different

cultures/countries.

Too often the debate between a global or local approach takes place on the basis of beliefs,

not on the basis of facts and research. Similarly, arguments are too often given which plead

for or against taking cultural differences into account. First, this research aims to contribute to

the field of cultural leadership studies and presents findings based on an extensive data

collection. Second, this research aims to help Unilever to use its Leadership for Growth

Profile more effectively in different cultures. In paragraph 5.1 I will focus on the first, in

paragraph 5.2 on the second.

5.1 The Research Question and Outcomes discussed

As stated in the first chapter of this research, one of the challenges – and dilemmas – that a

multinational like Unilever faces in the field of Human Resources is whether its approach

should be locally or globally driven. On the one hand Unilever has a competency model, the

‘Leadership for Growth Profile’ (LGP), that is implemented world-wide; on the other hand

Unilever emphasises that it wants to operate most effectively in local markets – as a multi-

local multinational.

This research aims to contribute to the discussion between local and global dilemmas

focusing on leadership development. It aims to provide evidence based on 77 interviews

which were conducted and analysed. These interviews provide data which enables me to

answer the research question ‘Which leadership competencies for Unilever middle managers

lead to business success?’ and the sub-questions “ Are the competencies which lead to

business success part of Unilever’s Leadership for Growth Profile (LGP)? and ‘Do the

competencies which lead to business success differ per country?”

To examine the research questions two conjectures have been formulated and answered in

Chapter 4. Chapter 5 will focus on the outcomes in Chapter 4 and discuss them in a broader

context.

The question of which leadership competencies lead to business success for middle

managers is now easy to answer: all those in table 6. Although this is the best and simplest

way to answer the research question, this answer might not be satisfying. This research


55

shows that leadership competencies which lead to business success differ per country. In

that perspective answering the research question will only lead to a generic answer, as

stated above. Much more useful is to answer the sub-questions by exploring the conjectures.

Unilever Leadership for Growth Profile (LGP) is critical for business success.

The first conjecture is proven wrong. There is a relation between Unilever’s Leadership for

Growth Profile and business success. Around half of the cases of business success which

were examined in this research were achieved because the critical competency was part of

the LGP. This is not completely surprising. In Chapters 1 and 4, where the LGP is discussed

in detail, it was already stated that the 11 LGP competencies where found and formulated

after a range of BEI interviews conducted by consultants of Hay-McBer. So both the method

used to develop the LGP in the first place and the method in this research were the same.

However, if this is the case you could expect to come out with exactly the same 11

competencies. This is not the case, as the focus of this research and the focus of Hay-McBer

while developing Unilever’s Leadership for Growth Profile are different. I will explain this

below.

There are a several reasons why this is not the case. First the research and interviews that

Hay-McBer conducted focused on senior leaders (in Unilever terms Worklevel 5 and 6

leaders) such as country chairmen, business group presidents, etc. This research shows that

the competencies which prove successful for these senior leaders are different from those for

the middle managers I interviewed. This research further shows that the competencies which

lead to business success differ per country of research. Hay-McBer argues that

competencies which lead to business success for these senior manager do not differ in

cultural terms. No research to corroborate this is available, but arguments for this statement

can be given. Hay-McBer concluded that these 11 competencies were global competencies

to achieve Growth. No cultural differences were found, nor reported. As the working area of

these senior managers is global, this makes sense. Building further on this, the working area

for middle managers is (often) local and achieving business success locally might require

other competencies than the LGP and might differ per country, as we have seen by proving

conjecture 2 right.

Effective Leadership Behaviour and Leadership competencies which lead to business

success differ per country.

That the second conjecture is proven right might seem obvious, or not? In chapter 2 several

studies were presented which described differences in leadership styles and characteristics

between countries and cultures (House et al., 1999; Hofstede, 1980; Trompenaars and

Hampden-Turner, 1997). On the other hand most research does not focus on these


56

differences, but tries to find general characteristics for effective leadership or business

success (House et al., 1999). In addition, most multinational companies such as Shell,

General Electric, City Group, Philips, Novartis, Boeing, etc. have corporate competency

models. In the literature search which was conducted for this research only 3M clearly stated

that it did not believe in a corporate leadership competency model, but leaves this to local

companies (Gratchev, 2000).

I strongly advocate that organisations should focus on the differences in leadership styles

and effective competencies and should use these differences to accelerate their business

and/or achieve their organisational goals. This research points out which competencies lead

to success in Russia, Japan, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom and also shows that

they differ between these countries. In my view the management of these countries should

develop those competencies which prove to be successful in their country and not those

which form part of a corporate leadership profile like the LGP.

General conclusions derived from the research outcomes

Chapter 4 defines five general conclusions based on the research outcomes. I will discuss

these below. One of them (the 3rd) has already been answered by answering the conjectures;

the others will be explored below.

Half of all competencies which lead to business success are LGP competencies

By proving the first conjecture wrong, I do not underline that there is no relation between the

LGP and business success in the countries of research. In little more than half the cases I

analysed that a LGP competency was critical for the achieved business success. This is

quite a high result, taking into account that the Unilever competency profile has only 11

competencies, and there are dozens more, as Hay mentions (2001).

On the other hand, it looks quite frightening. Unilever has decided to put al its HR efforts and

Development efforts in developing these 11 competencies. Based on this research this could

mean that only half of these efforts will lead to business results. Investing in people on the

basis of these premises does not seem to be effective. In the second part of this discussion I

will relate to this by proposing a different model of using the LGP to increase efficiency.

LGP competencies scored more often in Western countries

Behavioural patterns which matched the LGP competencies were seen more often in the

Western Countries of this research. Although this is not surprising as the company of

research is an Anglo-Dutch company, it does raise some questions. In my earlier Master

thesis (2000) at Leiden University I made the statement that because most of the


57

management literature is written by Western (educated) scholars, most best practices,

theories, tools, etc. are biased by Western thinking. I do not believe this is wrong in principle,

but I argue strongly that this is not effective. Learning and using (cultural) differences might

be one of the few advantages we have when looking at our human resources and talent

pools. What Pfeffer (1994) calls ‘Competitive advantage through people” is in my belief only

possible by focusing on and using people’s differences – some call them talents – and not by

looking for similarities as most companies, scholars and writers do. The recommendations I

give in the next paragraph go in that direction, maybe just a little step. But a first step, and a

big one for a corporation like Unilever which only started rolling out global HR policies a

couple of years ago.

Focus on the competencies which have a empathical or ‘soft’ association.

Seven competencies are associated with business success in each country. Six of these

seven competencies are scored relatively higher (20 and above) than the others: Human

Care, Holding People Accountable, Passion for Growth, Breakthrough Thinking and Building

Sustainable Relations.

Five LGP competencies are linked with ‘business success’ in all countries of research, two

are not part of the LGP. What strikes me most is not that seven competencies seem to lead

to business success in all countries of research. My belief is that if the countries of research

would have been chosen differently, these seven might have been different as well. My

argument here will not come as a surprise, as it is in line with my earlier statements. What I

really find surprising is that the two non-LGP competencies are based on empathy, values

and beliefs. A lot has been published (Pfeffer, 1999; Goleman, 2000; Goleman, McKee,

Boyatzis, 2002) about leadership and what is called the soft side. I paid a little attention to it

in Chapter 2 when talking about New Approaches to Leadership, but it comes up again. Not

only the two non-LGP competencies are part of that ‘soft side’. Some of the others are as

well. Further research should prove whether those competencies which lead to business

success are soft ones, as some scholars (Goleman, 2000) argue.

Additional critical notes

I would like to devote some attention to business success in this discussion chapter. In the

paragraph which explores additional notes on Methodology I already mentioned that this

research focused on cases which described the achievement of business success, as

Unilever’s LGP is focused on ‘ Business Growth’. Business growth is defined here as both

bottom line (volume) and top line (profit) growth. Middle managers – the interviewees on

whom this research is based – work in day to day delivery jobs. Some examples are given

earlier. Business growth is relevant, but achieving daily, weekly and monthly targets are even


58

more so. By the nature of their daily work, their behaviour to be successful is different. And

this is what this research is all about. Different people need to focus on different

competencies to be successful. Sometimes this is cultural, sometimes it is social-economic,

maybe this is sometimes functional or has to do with your place in the organisation. Good

leadership development systems and policies give space for this. Good leadership

development systems and policies look at which competencies are necessary to be effective

in a job (the BEI is an excellent tool for this) and have ways of developing these tools. This

research shows that competencies which drive business success differ. Companies which

acknowledge this do not put an effort into defining corporate competency models. Although

these ideas are not realistic now, Paragraph 5.2 gives recommendations to Unilever on how

to use its corporate competency model more effectively.

5.2 Recommendations: a framework of intercultural leadership development

Looking at the results above (Table 6, and Paragraph 4.1) it is clear that competencies which

lead to business success differ per country. Furthermore, almost half of the competencies

which lead to business success are non-LGP competencies. A few changes should be made

to the LGP to make it more effective in each country and business environment. I argue that

the LGP should focus on those competencies which lead to business success (see Figure 2).

In line with this all HRD systems, processes and tools such as recruitment, management

development and training should also focus on the competencies that have been proven to

drive business success. Otherwise half of these investments are not effective!

It can be questioned whether the LGP should be rolled out in the same way at the level

below senior management. WL 2 and 3 managers (middle managers) operate in a more

operational environment (see: Unilever, 1998) in which the local culture and local business

environment are more important. Evidence shows that more than half of the competencies

which lead to business success in Russia are not part of the LGP. A focus on those

competencies which lead to business success (both LGP and non-LGP) is recommended

and is necessary in order to achieve future business successes.

An explanation of why the competencies for business success differ for middle managers

compared with the findings of Hay is that Hay focussed on (international senior WL 5 and WL

6) Growth Leaders and this research is based on business success for (operational) middle

managers, e.g. Brand manager, Category manager, Business Controller or HRD manager.

These managers operate in another context, for which competencies other than the LGP

may be necessary for achieving success and being effective.


59

A framework which takes both business environment and culture into consideration is

recommended for organisational middle managers. Key principles for the framework below

are:

Possibility to focus on those competencies which lead to business success in a

particular country (unit, etc.). This focus may change per country (unit, etc.)

Possibility to differentiate and add competencies depending on business, functional

or cultural needs. Focus on those competencies which are related by business

success, even if they are not part of the Leadership for Growth Profile.

Balance between Competencies that build international growth leaders for the future

(LGP) and competencies that are necessary to achieve (daily) business success in

operational roles.

Based on the findings in Chapter 4, Unilever should – in my opinion – pay more attention to

cultural differences within its human resources policies and tools. Unilever’s statement in its

Corporate Purpose “Our deep roots in local and cultural markets around the world are our

unparalleled inheritance and the foundation of our future growth” should be embraced by its

approach in human resources management as seriously as it is done for marketing and

sales.

Using these principles, the set of competencies of a research manager, an HPC brand

manager and a Foods category manager will differ on the one hand, as their work

environment, market and functional needs differ. On the other hand they will all develop

themselves as future growth leaders, as all develop themselves on one or more LGP

competencies. In the approach I suggest, some competencies are still LGP and are used for

development of a world-class leadership pool, and others are purely used to develop

capabilities for daily business growth.


60

This framework might look as follows:

Implementation overview per Worklevel

WL 5

(senior

managers)

Implementation according to LGP implementation for WL 5 in 1999. Using external

benchmark of Hay. (see chapter 3). No changes as this goes beyond the scope of

this research.

WL 4

(senior

managers)

Implementation according to LGP implementation for WL 5 in 1999. Using external

benchmark Hay. (see chapter 3). No changes as this goes beyond the scope of this

research.

WL 3

(middle

managers)

LGP is a competency dictionary. On the basis of its annual or strategic plan, each

business chooses up to a maximum of 2 competencies, on which the manager

should focus and develop himself. One additional non-LGP competency may be

added depending on business or functional needs. No external benchmark. No

scores.

WL 2

(middle managers)

LGP is competency dictionary. On the basis of its annual or strategic plan, each

business chooses up to a maximum of 2 competencies, on which the manager

should focus and develop himself. One additional non-LGP competency may be

added depending on business or functional needs. No external benchmark. No

scores.

WL 1

(No managers)

Operating Companies can opt to use the LGP as a competency dictionary to develop

their employees. However, the use of annually specific competencies which meet the

business needs is preferred. No scores.

Table 7, A Framework for implementing the LGP in a more local context

Annual competency setting

Competencies for middle managers will be set annually per Operating Company (as markets

differ). The following procedure will lead to an annual setting of competencies, which drives

personal and business growth.

Define the business needs in terms of capabilities for the upcoming year and the future,

based on the annual plan and strategic agenda.


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Define a set of LGP competencies (max. 2) which will be needed to achieve the business

targets set. Optionally a maximum of one competency can be added, based on specific

business or functional needs. These competencies are part of the annual plan.

These competencies can be annually set after an analysis of which competencies need

to be developed to achieve the business targets.

Define per person which (LGP) competency needs to be developed based on previous

behaviour and achievement. This should be done by means of BEI interviews, as is done

now.

Write a short action-driven development plan according to the chosen (max. 4)

competencies (Unilever, 1998).

End of year assessment against the chosen competencies. The progress will be

discussed, without scoring the competencies.

LGP competency setting for middle managers

Annual PDP

based on max. 3-4

competencies.

Business Needs

Maximum of 2 LGP

competencies which

drive the business over

the long and short term.

(optional)

Maximum of 1

competency based on

specific business or

functional needs

Personal Development

Maximum of 1 (LGP)

competency for

personal development.

Table 8, Summary of annual competency setting for middle managers within Unilever.


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During my research I already came across some Unilever companies which were putting

parts of the recommendations into practice purely because this helped them focus on what

they had to achieve that year:

Unilever South Africa: added Diversity as a key competency to the LGP. Besides

combating Aids, Unilever South Africa’s most important challenge is to increase

diversity in its business.

GIO (Global IT Organisation): added Service Orientedness as a key competency to

the LGP, as delivering service was new to the employees and the need for it big.

Soup Factory in Holland: added Flexible Mindset/Flexibility as a key competency

to the LGP as their factory faces challenging times, and changes of products and

production lines happened every day.

5.3 Further research

In Chapter 2 of this thesis the most important research into leadership and intercultural

leadership is summarised. Research into intercultural leadership started in the sixties with

Hofstede’s Cultural Consequences (1960). This work still sets the standard for research in

different cultures. GLOBE will publish its first volume in June 2004 and hopes to set the new

standard, after 10 years of research. A lot has been written about leadership and cultures but

evident research is rare. With this thesis I hope to make little contribution to this.

As mentioned above, little research into intercultural leadership has been conducted as yet.

Based on the outcomes of this research and the lack of research in the preparation to this

thesis I want to make some recommendations on how to take the research into intercultural

leadership further. These are summarised below.

This research focuses on one company, Unilever. Comparisons with more organisations are

necessary. The Global Leadership Organisational Behaviour Effectiveness Research (House

et al., 1999) aims to make a difference in this perspective, but most research is still done

within one or a few companies or industries. Comparing the outcomes will give useful data

on differences and similarities between industries, functions or governmental and profit

organisations.

Japan, the Netherlands, Russia and the United Kingdom are all different countries (Ronen

and Shenkar, 1985) not only in terms of culture, language, history or religion, but also in

terms of their socio-economic circumstances. Both the socio-economic circumstances and


63

the cultural aspects call for specific leadership styles. Research into the relation between the

two and the effects on leadership will give more clarity about the differences in effective

leadership styles and whether a relationship exists between culture and socio-economic

circumstances. This research shows that different leadership behaviour (and competencies)

are linked with business success cases. It also shows that this leadership behaviour differs

per country. House et al. (1999) and others argue that different leadership styles can be

effective, in different cultures and different situations. I believe that socio-economic

circumstances also play an important role as regards which leadership style is effective.

However, what this role is, and how it is related to other variables may be a subject for

further research.

As I already mentioned in Chapter 3, the Leadership for Growth Profile was developed for

senior managers within Unilever (in 2000). Now it has been cascaded down to all employees

of Unilever (265,000). As I wrote in my recommendations, I believe that HR tools as

competency frameworks should not focus on such broad groups. Future research should be

done into the effectiveness of competencies by looking at the different organisational layers.

Can a competency model be an effective HR tool for junior, middle and senior managers?

Can one competency model be effective by applying it to all professional disciplines in a

company? In line with this, future research should focus on the field of leadership

development and the effectiveness of competency models on leadership. This research

places critical notes by using one corporate competency model without taking cultural

differences into account. Research into the effectiveness of competency based leadership

development will add value to businesses and these fields of research. It will prove its

effectiveness or ineffectiveness.

One of the outcomes of this research is that Unilever’s LGP was found to have more impact

on business success in the Netherlands and the United Kingdom. This raises the question of

the impact of western ideas and policies within multinationals. Multinationals aim to be global

companies, but often share a Anglo-American or Western mindset and business sense

(Trompenaars and Hampden-Turner, 1994) As might be clear from the past two paragraphs,

I believe that our challenge is to focus on (cultural) differences and on how gain a greater

insight into how to use them more effectively. Research into the added value of diversity,

multi-national teams and cultural differences will be of great value in this context.

Not only in the field of leadership and cultures is more research necessary and

recommended. This research used the BEI methodology (Flannagan, in: Dunnette, 1967)

and therefore focused on one critical competency per case/example. It can be argued that

more competencies lead to business success or that one competency is critical and others


64

support that critical one. Research into how competencies which lead to business success

relate to each other can provide an insight into this. Leadership research focuses on the

belief that there is one critical competency or style (Yukl, 1998; Hartog et al., 1999). I did not

find proof of this. In line with the situational approach to leadership (Vroon, in: Dunnette,

1967; Yukl, 1998) it can be argued that a different set of behaviours, competencies or styles

is necessary. Further research could give an answer to the question of whether effective

leadership which leads to business success depends on a single competency or style or on

more?

During this work I more and more came to believe that using fixed competency models – as

Unilever does – does not recognise talent and does not create space for developing it. Two

questions came up again and again: “Do we have to focus on the gaps in leadership

development or should we build further on a leader’s strengths?” and ‘Does a global

competency framework recognise individual talents?”. Scholars like Collins (2001), Kotter

(1995) and Coleman (2000) answer these questions only partly, and plead for a individual

approach. Research in multinational companies – taking the cultural aspects as this research

does into account – might be very interesting to build further on this and try to find answers to

these questions.


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66

Some Final Words

In this last chapter I would like to argue again that embracing differences instead of focusing

on commonalties will lead to personal and business growth. I am more and more inspired

and convinced by this idea. It is linked with one of the criteria which Collins pointed out in

‘Good to Great’ (2001) and which can be summarised as: giving space. Giving space is

much more than empowering your people. It is a way of leading which also encourages

people to set their own learning and leadership challenges. In other words it does not put

people in the development framework, but builds awareness and capabilities to let people

develop themselves.

Another point which inspires me is that some of the highest scoring competencies as Human

Care and Building Sustainable Relations but also Passion for Growth, Strategic Influencing

and Change Catalyst can be categorised as more ‘soft’ competencies. In the last few years

more and more research has been done (Goleman, 2000; Goleman, Boyatzis, McKee, 2002)

looking at these more ‘soft’ sides of leadership. The fact that ‘Human Care’ came up most is

of great interest in my opinion. For me it shows that leading and being human go hand in

hand. A belief which is not widespread in my opinion.

My MSc HRD at Twente University and my work on this research, learning from the

interviews (81), analysing the cases (208), reading the references and building my

arguments, have increased my interest in doing research into leadership. Building further on

this, I have decided to concentrate further on two themes ‘Human Care’ and ‘Focusing on

Differences’ in writing my PhD proposal at the Erasmus University in Rotterdam, with

Professor Deanne den Hartog from the GLOBE team as promotor.


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68

Acknowledgements

In 2001 I started my MSc in Human Resources Development at the University of Twente just

after finalising my first Master’s degree in Social and Organisational Psychology at Leiden

University.

Although this thesis was finished a little later than planned, I loved working on it every

minute. The richness of its data obtained from 208 cases is great. The subject of intercultural

leadership inspires me time after time. When I write about it, when I give lectures at the

Erasmus University of simply when I think about it whilst drinking a good glass of wine.

That I wanted develop myself further in the field of Human Resources and Leadership

Development was clear, but there were two people who really simulated me to start it, and

finish it: Professor Joseph Kessels and Arjan Overwater. I want to thank them both and Reg

Bull (SVP HR Unilever Bestfoods Europe) for inspiration, criticism and good conversation.

I owe many thanks to Unilever for making it possible for me to travel to the countries of

research to collect my data, and for enabling me to attend two International Leadership

Association (ILA) conferences. At the ILA 2003 conference in Mexico I presented the initial

outcomes of this research.

I want to thank the Human Resource Directors of the countries of research: Takehisa Seto

(Japan), Frank Keepers (Russia), Guy de Herde (Netherlands) and Geoff Williams (United

Kingdom) who made it possible to conduct a series of interviews in Japan, Russia, the

Netherlands and the United Kingdom.

I want to thank Professor Mikhail Gratchev from Western Illinois University and Professor

Deanne den Hartog from Erasmus University Rotterdam for their feedback, input and

inspiration on leadership and cultural research. Great and inspiring scholars.

Finally and most of all, I would like to thank my parents, Henk and Bertie, and my girlfriend

Hally who continuously encouraged me to finish this second Master’s degree. I love you.

"Whatever you can do, or dream of doing, go about it boldly. Boldness brings ingenuity, strength and magic."

Goethe

Rotterdam, June 2004

Maarten van Beek, MA


69

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73

Appendices

Appendix 1. LGP averages on GPS (Global People Survey)

LGP averages WL 2 on GPS

Competency Russia

Japan

Netherlands

UK

Passion for growth 76 76 71 68

Breakthrough thinking 64 65 67 63

org. awareness 60 66 75 66

Seizing the future 61 51 61 55

Change catalyst 48 38 46 42

dev. self and others 60 61 67 63

Holding people

accountable

77 75 81 70

Empowering others 66 57 78 68

Strategic influencing

Team commitment 71 72 80 79

Team leadership 67 64 70 61

Source: Unilever Global HR Data management system ®

LGP averages WL 3 on GPS

Competency Russia

Japan

Netherlands

UK

Passion for growth 80 75 75 68


74

Breakthrough thinking 67 68 68 65

org. awareness 73 61 80 72

Seizing the future 70 55 63 60

Change catalyst 68 50 53 51

dev. Self and others 61 65 68 64

Holding people

accountable

79 81 82 79

Empowering others 74 66 78 72

Strategic influencing

team commitment 78 81 84 80

team leadership 77 61 74 67


Appendix 2. Line manager scores on LGP averages per country (derived from

Personal Development Plans)

LGP averages WL 3

Competency Russia

(n= 19)

Japan

(n= 42)

Netherlands

(n= 316)

UK

(n=530)

Passion for growth 3.5 2.4 4 4

Breakthrough thinking 2.9 2.3 3 4

org. awareness 3.5 2.5 4 3

Seizing the future 3.4 2.3 3,5 (3/4) 3

Change catalyst 3.9 2.4 3,5 (3/4) 3

dev. Self and others 3.8 2.4 3,5 (3/4) 4

Holding people

accountable

2.9 2.4 4 3

Empowering others 4.3 2.5 4 3

Strategic influencing 3.0 2.3 3 3

team commitment 4.2 2.4 3 3

team leadership 3.6 2.4 4 4

Average 3.5 2.4 3.6 3.6



75

LGP averages WL 2

Competency Russia

(n=107)

Japan

(n=143)

Netherlands

(n=1001*

UK

(n=1938)

Passion for growth 2.91 (not

implemented)

3 3

Breakthrough thinking 2.63 - 4 4

org. awareness 2.56 - 3 3

Seizing the future 2.50 - 3 3

Change catalyst 2.48 - 3 3

dev. Self and others 2.98 - 3 2

Holding people

accountable

2.57 - 2 2

Empowering others 2.70 - 3 2

Strategic influencing 2.39 - 3 3

team commitment 2.94 - 4 3

team leadership 2.67 - 3 4

Average 2.7 - 3.1 2.9


Appendix 3. The flow of the BEI interview

Hay (2003) sequence of BEI interview. Blocks 3 to 4 are repeated 3 times per interview focusing

on different events/examples.

Introduction 1a Optional:

Career History 2. Duties and

Responsibilities

3.First Case

4. Additional

Cases

4a. Optional: Performer Characteristics

5.Close 6. analysing


76

Appendix 4. Definitions of Competencies used in this research (summary

version):

Competencies Definition / Positive indicators Negative indicators

Passion for Growth

(Unilever)

Outstanding individuals radiate a Passion

for Growth, the personal drive that enables

individuals to go the extra mile in delivering

excellent performance. They recognise that

everyone has a contribution to make to

ensure that Unilever achieves its growth

objectives. Outstanding individuals

constantly push the boundaries of excellent

business, ask big questions about what is

possible and then take significant

entrepreneurial action over time to expand

the horizons of the business. Success is

the delivery of sustainable profitable

growth.

You constantly ask what is possible. You

take significant entrepreneurial action over

time, demonstrating drive beyond

expectation to deliver outstanding results

Too busy dealing with immediate,

urgent issues to look for new growth

opportunities

Settle for the status quo – take no

action to improve mediocre

performance

Easily side-tracked from important

growth goals

Unconcerned about missing deadlines

or failing to meet business objectives

Do not take responsibility for

contributing to growth objectives

Breakthrough

thinking

(Unilever)

Outstanding individuals generate

Breakthrough Thinking by using their

insight into complex situations to break

existing patterns of working and to create

growth opportunities. They think

strategically and radically about new ways

of responding to consumer change and of

enabling and delivering business growth.

These individuals think creatively and ask

‘why not’, innovating for today and re-

thinking the business for tomorrow.

You think strategically and radically to

break existing patterns of working. You ask

“why not” and come up with new ideas to

create business improvement and growth

opportunities

Loses sight of the bigger picture, gets

too involved in the detail

Look at components individually rather

than as part of a system

Cannot stand back from recurring

problems to see the underlying,

longer- term trends

Are fixed in their ways of thinking and

looking at challenges in the business.

They cannot change approach or style

when the situation asks for it.


77

Organisational

awareness

(Unilever)

Outstanding individuals demonstrate

Organisational Awareness by knowing who

to approach and how to get things done.

They do this through their understanding of

the influences (formal structures and

decision-making processes, informal power

structures, climate, culture, organisational

politics) which shape how the organisation

works. They trace the implications of these

influences and use this understanding as a

basis for Strategic Influencing to drive

business growth and achieve growth goals.

You understand the influences which shape

the organisation and business environment

in which you are working. You use this

understanding to decide who to approach

and how to get things done

Stubbornly stick to the ‘proper’ way of

doing things, even when it is clear

these are not working

Do not recognise the key players in a

given situation, unless they are part of

the formal hierarchy

Highly political, but simply for politics’

sake rather than for the ultimate

benefit of the business

Organisationally ‘naïve’ - are seen as

people who put their foot in it without

realising

Seizing the Future

(Unilever)

Outstanding individuals are constantly

focused on taking action to get to the future

first. They monitor closely what is

happening both internally and externally,

and take decisive action today to create

new growth opportunities for tomorrow. In

a world where being first into a market is

key, they act with speed and decisiveness

to stay ahead of the game, maximising

growth opportunities for the business.

You are proactive. You take decisive

action now to create major growth

opportunities in the future and to achieve

your long-term (2-4 yrs) business goals

Cannot step back from current issues,

fail to identify potential

growth/improvement opportunities

Do not take action; may be

overwhelmed by alternatives or

content just to think/talk about it

Concentrate on short-term, immediate

results to the detriment of long-term

success

Overlook problems and opportunities

which may affect the business


78

Change catalyst

(Unilever)

Outstanding individuals act as a Change

Catalyst, energising themselves and others

towards new, better ways of operating and

of generating growth. They ensure that

Unilever growth strategy is heard and

understood by everyone in the business

and that internal obstacles to achieving the

organisation’s goals are removed.

You energise yourself and others,

challenging the status quo and working

towards new and better ways of operating

to generate growth

Have a victim mentality - see change

as being something that is ‘done’ to

people

Fail to get on board with change

initiatives on the assumption that they

are ‘bound to blow over’

Communicate change messages

without considering the potential

impact on others

See change initiatives as simply being

the ‘latest fad’ - ignore the purpose of

the change

Developing self

and others

(Unilever)

Outstanding individuals invest time, money

and energy in self-development and in

developing others, thereby building

Unilever’s capability for the future. They

take personal responsibility for coaching

and mentoring future leaders and are

enthusiastic about seeing others grow.

You build capability by investing time,

money and energy in self-development and

developing others. You coach and mentor

future leaders and are enthusiastic about

seeing others grow

Criticise others in personal terms and

without giving suggestions for

improvement

Rely solely on training courses without

follow-through to meet development

needs

Focus only on the immediate task;

never make time to consider longer-

term development needs

Hold on to good people for the sake of

their area or team in spite of the

needs of the business or individual

Holding People

accountable

(Unilever)

Outstanding individuals are committed to

holding themselves and others accountable

for delivering agreed growth objectives.

They ensure that goals and expectations

are clear and that individuals are

consistently measured and rewarded for

achieving them. Success lies not only in

achieving results, but in building the desire

to attain and maintain high levels of

performance.

Fail to give or request clarity about

expected performance

Do not monitor and review progress

against growth goals and standards

regularly

Ignore poor performance and allow it

to continue

Sponsor a poor performer to move


79

You hold yourself and others clearly

accountable for delivering growth

objectives. You ensure targets are clear

and measure and reward individuals for

achieving them

elsewhere in the business in order to

remove a problem

Get the job done but create a negative

climate while doing so

Empowering others

(Unilever)

Outstanding individuals delegate

responsibility so that others are free to

innovate and to take the lead to achieve

business goals. They demonstrate trust and

confidence in those working for them.

These individuals streamline decision and

approval processes to allow others to make

decisions. They take action themselves

and provide support and coaching when

required.

You delegate responsibility so others are

free to innovate and take the lead to

achieve business goals. You allow others

to take decisions and provide support and

coaching when required

Dump work on others - fail to provide

back-up support and assistance

Abdicate ownership and responsibility

- leave others to fail

Too quick to jump in and take over if

things don’t go well

Take credit for the ideas of others

Strategic

influencing

(Unilever)

Outstanding individuals use Strategic

Influencing to build commitment to their

growth agenda and to influence others

without using hierarchical power to adopt a

specific course of action. They use

influence strategies positively to orchestrate

organisations.

You use Strategic Influencing to build

commitment to your growth agenda and to

influence others without using hierarchical

power

Rely on positional power or status to

influence others

Use the same approach and style to

persuade, regardless of the audience

Keep repeating the same facts even

when an impasse is reached

Over-reliant on current image or track

record of Unilever in the market place

- do not see the need actively to lobby

and build additional support

Team commitment

(Unilever)

Outstanding high-performance individuals

show a high degree of Team Commitment,

working co-operatively with others across

the organisation to achieve shared goals.

They place a high value on being part of a

team and act to further the interests of the

team – or the organisation - above their

own

Do what they want to do, irrespective

of the decisions of the team

Seek to make progress at the

expense of other team members

Do not recognise the ideas of others

or claim them as their own


80

You demonstrate and promote co-operative

working with other team members to

achieve shared growth goals. You act to

further the interests of the team, proactively

offering support to others to develop

solutions

Undermine team process by

withholding key information - e.g. don’t

share own view

Fail to share/release resources for the

good of Unilever

Team leadership

(Unilever)

Outstanding individuals demonstrate highly

effective Team Leadership by flexing their

leadership styles according to the situation.

They inspire others to higher standards of

performance through communicating an

energising and compelling growth vision

and take action with a view to making the

team as a whole more effective

You inspire others to high standards of

performance through communicating an

energising and compelling growth vision.

You take action with a view to making the

team as a whole more effective

Leave individuals uncertain about

what is happening

Fail to deploy the best resources to

meet objectives

Demonstrate behaviour that is

inconsistent with the vision

Do not obtain buy-in or support; fail to

bring others along with them

Give the team total freedom but no

guidance

Other observed competencies (Hay-McBer competency dictionary)

Build Confidence /

trust

(Hay-McBer)

Outstanding performers create an

environment which gives space to people

and in which they achieve outstandingly.

They lead by positive examples, learning

from mistakes and giving space instead of

taking it.

You create an environment in which people

get space, feel comfortable and can trust

you, each other and the organisation to

perform outstandingly

Give people tasks without the

possibilities to do them.

Lead by underlining mistakes and

judge. Break promises.

Think about themselves, not their

team and people who depend on

them.

Building

sustainable

relations

(Hay-McBer)

High achievers are capable of building

relations with all layers in the organisation

and externally which last a long time.

You put effort into getting to know the

people you know and invest in them by

focusing on long and short term targets and

tasks.

Focusing on short term wins, by

asking unrealistic prices or setting

unrealistic prices.

Chit-chatting without real and honest

interest in the other party


81

Create a clear and

shared vision

(Hay-McBer)

Outstanding performers are clear about

what they want, based on values and

beliefs. They live these values and beliefs

and are in continuous dialogue with their

team about these.

You are clear where you’re going, and

spread this word all the time. You seek

dialogue with the people around you around

your values and beliefs

Create a vision based on facts and

figures

Create their vision from their desk and

present it to their team

Human care

(Hay-McBer)

Honest and open interest in people. High

achievers take time to spend real time with

people and share thoughts. High achievers

listen.

You spend a lot of time and energy in

listening to people. Really listening. You

help people around them, because it feels

good, not for business reasons.

Intend to listen, but just think about

your own interests.

Networking….Chit-chatting. Not

paying real honest attention to

people.

Advising and telling people to do it

differently

Teamwork

(common, different

from team

commitment or

team leadership

which is more

individualistic)

(Hay-McBer)

High potentials try to work in a team, by

which their own efforts and those of the

other team members are accelerated. They

set group targets and group goals.

You believe working in groups accelerates

all individual inputs. You won’t take

individual actions, but make sure all efforts,

decisions, etc. are part of the group.

Achieving results not through the

group, but by individuals in the group.

Cascade work to a team.

Put individuals first, and then the

group

Action

Oriented/risk

taking

(Hay-McBer)

Outstanding behaviour shows when people

dare to follow their path and take actions

accordingly. Even when this may cause

(calculated) risks.

You know where to go, have strong beliefs

and are well-informed. You don’t wait but

take action and will deliver by doing so.

You do now wait for permission of your

direct bosses, but see an opportunity and

go for it. You take full responsibility for your

actions, successes and mistakes.

Don’t think, do. Take uncalculated

actions.

Wait until decisions haven been made

by bosses or others.

Analyse in detail what actions have to

be taken.


82

Out of the box

thinking

(Hay-McBer)

High potentials can step out of their normal

framework, look at a challenge from new

insights. Put paradigms aside and come

with new ways of solving the problem.

You like challenges. And approach them

unstructured, by trying out new things or

methods.

You need structure.

You like to follow your colleagues,

procedures, and the common path.

The framework set will guide you in

your daily work.

Build Commitment

and ownership

(Hay-McBer)

Putting your ideas in the open, build

dialogue with your team to achieve targets

and goals set.

You involve your team in your vision and

actions. You give people freedom of

delivering targets and hold them

accountable on output.

Share ideas early in the process and ask

others for their opinion.

Don’t involve your people in your

ideas and strategies.

Work individualistically on targets.

Avoid personal discussions with your

colleagues.

Hay, 1999; Unilever, 1999, 1999/2000, Summary of Competency definitions used in this

research. (Hay does not allow the full texts, definitions, or behavioural indicators to be printed.)

Appendix 5.

Examples of business success from the cases used for this research.

Some examples of business success derived from the interviews

In time launch of a product or product range according to targets, such as the launch of Dove in Japan

In time and within integration of e-SAP IT within the UK

Increase Lipton margins with distributors in Russia

In time use of new distribution channel in Russia

In time launch of new products within margarine brand in the Netherlands

In time launch of Employer Brand in the UK

In time recruit new sales force for Ukraine

In time finalising of a 2-year contract with key distributors in Russia


83

Appendix 6 Cultural Lessons on Leadership Development

Information paper for Interviewees

How to use cultural differences to develop more effective leaders? Thank you for participating in this research!

Background

This research aims to give Unilever an insight into the effectiveness of Unilever’s ‘Leadership for Growth Profile’ and leadership development in different countries. The main research questions are: which competencies lead to success for WL 2 and 3 managers and do they differ per country. The framework – the result of this research – should be a tool that can be practically used within Unilever to apply the Leadership for Growth Profile more effectively in the different cultures. This research has three building blocks: 1. Unilever’s competency model (LGP), 2. The cultural characteristics of the countries of research and 3. The local market’s Critical Success Factors for the countries of research. As a start the research will be conducted in four countries: the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, Japan and Russia. In each country we plan to conduct 20 interviews. These interviews will focus mainly on the second and

third building block. The research will be conducted by Maarten van Beek, MA who has already worked for Unilever for 2.5 years. Maarten started as HR trainee at the CHRG, after that he became HR manager for the Knorr and Conimex factories in the Netherlands and he just started working in the Global HR Centres of Expertise. The research is sponsored by Unilever’s Corporate Human Resources Group and conducted together with the University of Twente, the Netherlands. Arjan Overwater (SVP HR Unilever), Professor Mikhail Gratchev (Western Illinois University) and Professor Joseph Kessels (Twente University) supervise this research. Interview Each interview will take around 1 to 1,5 hrs. After a brief introduction about the research and some background questions, the interview will focus on (business) examples that have led to successes in the market you operate in. During the interview you will be asked to give 2-3 examples of business success in your country which you were part of achieving. I will focus on your actions and your contribution, and look for behaviour examples. Please bring your PDP so we can verify if these examples are part of your achievements. All interviews will be recorded. The information gathered through the interviews will be used on an anonymous basis. No names, jobs or companies will be mentioned. The results will be generalised and conclusions will be drawn per country.

Questions If you have any questions please contact: Maarten van Beek ([email protected]; for logistics and changing appointments please contact Marcella Zoeteman ([email protected])

mailto:[email protected];

mailto:[email protected]


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Appendix 7

Cultural Lessons on Leadership Development Interview Protocol

Introduction

- Introducing myself - Introducing my research (MSc, Unilever Global HR) - confidentiality and taping the interview; Permission. - around 1.5 hrs - BEI format / explanation / focus on cases/examples - Added value for Unilever

Background

- name - function and responsibilities / Worklevel - years within Unilever / years abroad - age - industry/business group/function - man/woman - Special features - PDP for background information

CASE / Example 1 - BEI

CASE / Example 2 - BEI

(optional) CASE 3 - BEI

Closing

- Thanks - keeping informed - questions - Do you want to receive the outcomes of this research? - Confidentiality, data will be destroyed after analysis (within

4 weeks after the interview) in conformity with privacy guidelines.


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Appendix 9

Performance Development Plan (PDP) Summary

Name: Personal numer Country

Function: Company: Location

Years at:

Age: Service: YPP: Sal Grade: Time on List: HP List: High Flyer SHP

Profession Employee Experience:

International placements:

Produce Category Experience:

Languages:

Summary of Performance - Include a Summary of Target Review, commenting on the Delivery of Results, how the results were achieved, the extent to which LGP behaviours were demonstrated, feedback from Ranking (where relevant) and key future Development needs:

Performance and Business achievements, summary of performance, goals, achievements, delivery

Development Plan – highlight 2 key areas: LGP Summary

Summary of progress against last year’s Development plan:

Current Areas for Development:

Level = Foundation (1-2), Developing (3-4), Growth (5-6) or World Class (7-8)

Year of assessment: Level

See full Competency Profile for behavioural examples.

Prev year

Curr year

Passion for Growth

BreakthroughThinking

Org Awareness

Seizing the Future

Change Catalyst

Dev Self & Others

Holding People Acc

Empowering Others

Strategic Influencing

Team Commitment

Team Leadership

Career Planning – Own Wishes

Career Planning – Company View Earliest Date for next move:

Name Appraisee: Signature Appraisee:

Date:

Name Appraisor: Signature Appraisor: Date:

Name Appraisors manager: Signature Appraisors manager: Date:


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2004 dare to embrace differences complete version vanbeek english

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