Session Information
26 SES 13 A, Results Resourses and Multicultural Societies
Paper Session
Contribution
Improvements in information, communication and transportation technologies have influenced cross-cultural relations positively. With these improvements, cross-cultural interactions have begun to be seen in various organizations like business, education or military. For this reason, a need for cross-cultural leadership has increased dramatically. Cross-cultural leadership is a complementary concept. It combines leadership with different cultures. Leadership means making a large number of people pursue him/her (a leader) by impressing them (Owen, Hodgson & Gazzard, 2004, p. 18). On the other hand, culture is a comprehensive concept and it generally consists of thought, patterns of behaviour, values, beliefs, customs of a particular society and affects a way of thinking, behaving, or working of that society (Jandt, 2012). It is possible to say that culture has an important impact on leadership pattern. However cross-cultural leadership may depend on organizing people from not particular culture but different cultures in order to attain organizational goals. Thus, Akiga & Lowe (2004) have defined cross-cultural leadership as “the ability of a leader to intentionally and discretely affect and motivate members of a culturally different group toward the achievement of objectives by appealing to the shared knowledge and meaning systems of that culturally different group.” All told, it can be said that cross-cultural leaders are expected to address the shared cultural values, symbols to the members of organization in order to make members follow them (leaders).
School communities consist of various teaching/non-teaching staff, students from different cultures. In this diversity, cross-cultural school leaders should see their role as being bridge builders among people from various cultures. Yet, Walker & Dimmock (2005) have stated that cultural effects on teaching and learning are mostly forgotten, so school leaders must find ways to raise staff’s awareness of cultural diversity. In addition to this, Banks (2010) has emphasized that educational organizations have multicultural features and “multicultural education includes the notion that all students, regardless of their gender, social class, ethnic, racial and cultural characteristics, should have an equal oppotunity to learn in school.” For these reasons, there are some competencies, cross-cultural school leaders should have. Various cross cultural leadership studies have been carried out to identify competencies for leaders in business organizations (Kanter, 1995; Rosen & Dick, 2001; Connerly & Pedderson, 2005; Bird, Mendenhall, Stevens & Oddou, 2010). According to these studies, cross-cultural leaders should have technical knowledge, managerial competency, communication effectiveness and develop and keep good interpersonal relations, learn from experience, integrate multiple perspectives. Additionally, they become globally literate, curious, life-long learner, mature, flexible, tolerant for ambiguity.
As a result, in many countries, school communities have become more multicultural and diverse because of migrations, student mobility for studies, and wars (Dimmock & Walker, 2005). One of those countries is Turkey, where many refugees have come from The Middle East because of wars. For these reasons, cross-cultural competencies for school leaders gain more importance. Although there is a study related to students’ cross-cultural competencies (Mendenhall, Arnordottır, Oddou & Burke, 2013), in the literature, studies on competencies of cross-cultural school leadership have not been encountered. Yet school leaders have important roles to lead staff and students coming from different cultures for well educated generations. In this context the purpose of this study is to identify cross-cultural school leadership competencies and find out the challenges faced by school leaders while leading school communities from different cultures. In accordance with this purpose, the following questions were answered:1. What are the views of principals about cross-cultural school leadership? 2. According to principals’ views, what competencies do the cross-cultural school leaders have? 3. According to principals’ views, what challenges are faced during the process leading multicultural school communities?
Method
Expected Outcomes
References
Akiga, & Lowe, K. B. (2004). Cross-cultural leadership (p. 301-307). Encyclopedia of Leadership, California: SAGE Publications. Banks, J. A. (2010).Multicultural education issues and perspectives (Seventh Edition). In J: A. Banks & C. E. Mcgee Banks (Eds.). Multicultural education: Charactersitics and goals (p. 3-26). USA: Wiley. Bird, A., Mendenhall, M. E., Stevens, M. J., & Oddou, G. (2010). Defining the content domain of intercultural competence for global leaders. Journal of Managerial Psychology, 25, 810-828. Connerly, M. L. & Pedderson, P. B. (2005). Leadership in a diverse and multicultural environment: Developing awareness, knowledge, and skills. London: SAGE Publications. Derr, C. B., Roussillon, S. & Bournois, F. (Eds). (2002). Cross cultural approaches to leadership development. London: Quorum Books. Dimmock, C. & Walker A. (2005). Educational leadership: culture and diversity. London: SAGE Publications. Ersoy, A. (2013, November 1-2). Nitel araştırma desenleri [Qualitative research designs]. Qualitative Research methods training held by Anı Publishing, Ankara. Glesne, C. (2012). Nitel araştırmaya giriş [Becoming qualitative researchers: An introduction](2nd Edition) (A. Ersoy & P. Yalçınoğlu, Trans.). Ankara: Anı Yayıncılık. [Original work published 2011]. Jandt, F. E. (2012). An introduction to intercultural communication-identities in a global community (Seventh Edition). USA: Sage Publications. Kanter, R. M. (1995). Thriving locally in the global economy. Harvard Business Review, 73(5), 151–161. Mendenhall, M. E., Arnordottır, A. A., Oddou, G. R. & Burke, L. A. (2013). Developing cross-cultural competencies in management education via cognitive-behavior therapy. Academy of Management Learning & Education, 12(3), 436-451. Owen, H., Hodgson, V. & Gazzard, N. (2004). Liderlik elkitabı [Leadership manual] (Third Edition). (M. Çelik, Trans.). İstanbul: Optimist Kitap [Original work published 2004]. Rosen, R., & Digh, P. (2001). Developing globally literate leaders. Training and Development, 55(5), 70-81. Walker A. & Dimmock, C. (2005). Leading the multiethnic school: research evidence on successful practice. The Educational Forum, 69(2), 291-304. Yıldırım, A., & Şimşek, H. (2006). Sosyal bilimlerde nitel araştırma yöntemleri[Qualitative research methods in social sciences] (5. Baskı). Ankara: Seçkin Yayıncılık.
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