Business Management Blog

It’s hard to manage any organization so that its long-term interests aren’t sacrificed to short-term expedience. But there is an added wrinkle for organizations whose operations are globally dispersed: Cultural orientation toward the future varies widely the world over.

Mansour Javidan and his colleagues discovered that looks at how cultures vary in relation to a set of factors important to organizational management and leadership.

They found that societies vary greatly in how oriented they actually are to the long term, but in most cultures people’s personal values and aspirations are similar and quite future oriented. What’s more, most people feel their cultures aren’t as forward thinking as they should be.

In their study, Singapore emerged as the most future oriented of cultures, followed by Switzerland, the Netherlands, and Malaysia. The least future oriented were Russia, Argentina, Poland, and Hungary. Squarely in the middle were Germany, Taiwan, Korea, and Ireland.

Even more important, the greater a society’s future orientation, the higher its average GDP per capita and its levels of innovativeness, happiness, confidence, and competitiveness.

What does this mean for an executive attempting to manage or work with teams in cultures that are less future oriented than their own?

First, team members will have different perceptions of the feasibility of forward thinking. Even if the indigenous workers personally value long-term planning, they may see it as futile, given prevailing practices and conditions.

But second, because of those shared values, it is possible to inspire people to become more future oriented. The key is to start modestly by setting team goals and then ensuring they are met.

By gradually increasing time horizons, a manager can endow a team with a sense of control over outcomes that formerly may have seemed hopelessly provisional and remote.

Knowing how future orientation varies from culture to culture can help leaders shift their attitude from judgmental to understanding and focus their collaborative efforts.

A true global leader doesn’t blame local teams for failing to immediately live up to their aspirations but rather helps them achieve long-term goals one step at a time.

Source: Business Strategy Review Autumn 2005