International Leadership and Organizational Behavior

In the first module we outline the basics of leadership and leadership development with an international mindset, exploring common traps & challenges, and opportunities of intercultural leadership.

In this second module we talk about the impact of culture and cultural differences on organizations, different perspectives on analyzing and decoding culture, and how to develop intercultural intelligence.

Almost everything international leaders do, they do through communication. In an international context, they often encounter communication barriers when they interact with followers, peers, and partners from other cultures. We talk about how to encourage open, respectful, and productive conversations for improving collaboration and collective decision-making.

International leaders need to spur and channel the energy, talents, and commitment of their followers. To foster motivation leaders need to recognize people's diverse needs and motives, cultural foundations of motivation, and social mechanisms that determine motivation in teams.

Throughout the course we emphasize leaders' interdependent relationships with followers, and the importance of managing those relationships. Here we broaden our view to consider the network of relationships. We work towards a solid understanding of how social networks evolve, how they constrain and enable cognition and behavior, and which relational norms international leaders want to consider as they actively network across cultural boundaries.

Conflicts are a normal occurrence in any organization, and can be productive and beneficial when managed effectively. In this last module we talk about conflicts styles, and focus on distributive and procedural justice concerns across a variety of cultural settings. Bocconi alumni share their approaches to identifying and working through important conflicts in a multicultural context. We also discuss how to handle ethical dilemmas – often the most challenging conflicts international leaders have to handle.