Sustainable Leadership in Multi Cultural Teams

Abstract

The current shift towards digital transformation that guides the building blocks of the digital economy, has made it imperative to review some of the current theories, frameworks and paradigms. This applies to the different contexts of business management, where effective leadership is crucail, including project management and more so, sustainable project management. The authors’ current work, which is directed at both academics and practitioners, calls for a new paradigm in approaching Sustainable Leadership Effectiveness, that brings aspects from three knowledge domains (Anthropology, Sociology and Psychology) which are important for understanding human behaviors (in response to Murdock, 1971). The new paradigm and approach take leadership effectiveness practice, training and development into new dimensions, and embed them within an intelligent process with the Douglasian Cultural Framework (DCF)-based Cultural Intelligence at the center. Leaders focus should harness past and present experience to make a better future (Senge, 2008 cited in Tideman et al., 2013). This implies that for leadership to be considered sustainable, it must be formed around two important factors: adaptability and intelligence (Tideman, 2013). Accordingly, the journey that readers will be guided through in this chapter, is about novelty in thinking and practicing leadership which is different from the mainstream of leadership and Cultural Intelligence discourse and practice. The aim is to have managers and leaders not only understanding how to be effective, but how to behave intelligently in a challenging global context. In the introduction, the chapter presents the debate about leadership from the globalization lens, illustrating the obstacles that leadership research is facing. The chapter then provides the reader with a general review about Cultural Intelligence showing the dilemmas that the construct is facing, leading to the main theme of this chapter where the leadership adaptability framework is presented.