Cultural Integration Responsive Leadership

Introduction

Rao-Nicholson, Khan, Akhtar, & Merchant, (2016) article acknowledged over the last few decades acquisitions by emerging market multinationals have seen a rapid increase. It is important to understand the influence that leaders have when leading in a culturally diverse organization. There are several elements that must be taken into consideration. Leading successfully requires understanding cultural integration, having the right mindset and effective communication skills. Leaders are also responsible for incorporating negotiation strategies when needed. Nishii and Mayer (2009) article acknowledged that due to the fluctuating workforce and managing diversity effectively inclusive leaders are critical for successfully leveraging

Cultural integration is crucial to the success of cross-border merger and acquisition integration. When addressing integration perspectives there are two elements to address. First, there are direct impacts and then there are indirect impacts. In integrating varied perspectives in a dynamic environment, a leader must first look at the direct impact on the culture itself. Leaders must take into consideration all employees involved and assess how cultural differences will affect the environment. The indirect impacts that leaders must take into consideration are the employees' comments and behaviors because these are influenced by culture. Dong, Lua and Wang (2017) advised that indirect impacts can be influenced by various things, such as culture language barrier, senior management change, poor communication skills, leadership style differences, employee behaviors in the acquired company and intention to maintain culture. In understanding the direct and indirect impacts that influence culture integration is important to understand cultural difference has the strongest impact on cultural integration outcomes than any other factor. The leader is responsible for engaging ways to utilize cultural differences to create environments that foster cultural integration and to promote successful cross-border cultural integration in mergers an acquisition. When integrating perspectives in a dynamic

Leaders first need to be knowledgeable in the cultural differences in the organization and second engage in effective communication practices. Semerad (2015) defined cross-cultural negotiation as a process involving two parties from different backgrounds and they do not share the same way of thinking feeling and behaving. Cross-cultural negotiation poses many challenges because of the difference in beliefs and values. International negotiations can last longer and are built on trust and honest communication. Negotiation strategies can be difficult because of the different cultures and languages that play a part in the negotiation. When applying negotiation strategies ethics is also an important concern. Yang, De Creamer, and Wang (2017) stated that incorporating ethically questionable tactics would be most successful when leading in a culturally diverse organization. Negotiation strategies the inclusive leader could apply to craft a common cultural mindset is, to be honest, be knowledgeable in the cultural difference that may surface and to communicate effectively with all