Leaders and their importance in global assignments

The key to successfully competing in the global marketplace might be staffing key expatriate positions with accomplished and skilled leaders. Previous research has focused on preparing managers to expatriate successfully to foreign assignments and to repatriate back to the United States. The high failure rate and general lack of effectiveness of many expatriate managers might be attributed to a cultural mismatch between the assignment and the leadership style of the expatriate. This paper explains the complex issues associated with multicultural leadership and proposes a diagnostic leadership matrix using internal and external cultural constraints.