CROSS-CULTURAL LEADERSHIP

11 ASSIGNMENT

Your assignment this week is to:

• Find 2 concrete examples of leaders from international companies: Analyze their leadership styles
at the universal level, at the collective level and at the individual level. (300 words for each example)

How do you construct the assignment:

• Always start with a concept or headline taken from the chapter and underline it before your analysis.
• Your examples/cases need be supported with references such as links to the original sources and
pictures.
• In the peer-review process, please make sure you get feedback from your team and/or the tutor.
Please make sure your cases/ examples do not overlap with ones from others.

Sundar Pichai – Google

Sundar Pichai is the current CEO of Google, one of the largest and most profitable IT businesses in the
world. Even though the company was founded in the US, from the very beginning the company had a much
more multicultural outlook than other Silicon Valley companies at the time – Sergey Brin, one of the
company’s two founders, was born and grew up in the former U.S.S.R. before emigrating to the United
States. This diversity spirit empowers Google today, as since of 2015, the company’s CEO Sundar Pichai
is an Indian-born American (Britannica, 2022).

Cultivate the multicultural mind: Having a different national background means that his leadership style is
unique, blending cultural elements from his native country with the experience and corporate culture of the
US. This means that he had to take extra steps in order to align the corporate culture in a way that allows
the company to level out as much as possible the cultural differences on a collective level, as well as
educating people on an individual level (Tran, 2017).

Universal level: According to various reports from inside the company, Sundar Pichai is self-deprecating,
empathetic, supportive and graceful at navigating political minefields because of his desire to achieve
stability inside the company. His leadership style might indicate that he prefers that the company is lead
based on integrity and co-existence of ideas and creativity (GOOGLE CEO AND EXECUTIVES, 2022).

Collective level: Various sources indicate that Pichai is a strong communicator who makes sure everyone
on his team understands the mission. This allows him to be as inclusive as possible when new ideas are
being considered.
Individual level: Having an Indian background, Pichai strives to create a work environment based on respect
and cooperation, rather than office wars and individual achievements. By addressing the issue with each
and every member of his board, he tries to shift the usual American corporate approach from “my team, my
resources, my idea” to “our team, our resources, our ideas”, therefore increasing cooperation (al., 2013).

Tim Cook – Apple

Another American tech giant is Apple, the electronics manufacturer based in Cupertino, California. Leading
one of the biggest tech companies in the world - with a market capitalization of over one trillion dollars –
that has offices and stores in more than 25 countries is a difficult task that requires an impressive amount
of business skills. Moreover, it requires the acknowledgment of the multicultural dimension of the company;
the fact that, even if it is an American-based, functioning on an American-tailored corporate culture, it
requires the flexibility to adapt to local cultures in order to conquer new markets (and the hearts of
employees) on the globe.

Promoting positive change: After Steve Jobs passed away in 2011, many analysts feared that the vision that
built the Apple brand will simply disappear, vanishing the company’s top position on the market. However,
Tim Cook – Job’s successor as CEO – built on his predecessor foundation, taking some very good steps.
One of his greatest achievements in terms of HR was to consistently encourage the increase of diversity
among Apple’s work force. During his time as a CEO, female representation grew up by 70%, black
employees by 50%, Hispanic by 80%, with many changes in all departments. For example, in the tech and
R&D departments, Tim Cook advocated and used his leadership skills to encourage promising Asian
engineers to join the company, accepting that the new (fresh!) input that they brought to Apple might spur
innovation. At this time, 40% of all Apple’s researchers, engineers and developers are Asian or of Asian
descent (Apple, 2022).

Universal level: Tim Cook’s leadership is based on the fundamental idea of peace. Contrary to other CEOs
that prefer a more aggressive stance (such as Jeff Bezos, for example), Cook has a very democratic, open-
to-debate leadership style. By doing so, he made sure that peace and cooperation are the cornerstone of
Apple’s corporate culture, allowing the organization to thrive (Financhill, 2020).

Collective level: Cook encourages his employees to speak up and approach him when they have an idea
that might push the company forward. On a collective level, this creates the idea among his employees that
the CEO is not a distant authority, but a man of the people that they can approach. Compared to other very
famous CEOs (Jobs, Belfort, Bezos) that shaped the American corporate culture, Cook focused more on
developing a sense of community at the collective level (Henderson, 2021).

Individual level: One of the values that Tim Cook values the most in terms of leadership is the ability to
not micromanage situations and allow his team to plan, develop and execute without much interference
from his side. He relentlessly promotes communication, transparency and idea-sharing across the company,
knowing that those values were easily adopted by the corporation.
References
al., M. M. (2013). Distributed leadership at Google: Lessons from the billion-dollar brand. Ivey Business
Journal.
Apple. (2022). Diversity. https://www.apple.com/diversity/.
Britannica. (2022). Sundar Pichai. Retrieved from Britannica :
https://www.britannica.com/biography/Sundar-Pichai
Financhill. (2020). Tim Cook leadership style. https://financhill.com/blog/investing/tim-cook-leadership-
style#:~:text=Tim%20Cook%20has%20a%20democratic,people%20to%20follow%20his%20lead
.
GOOGLE CEO AND EXECUTIVES. (2022). Retrieved from Zippia: https://www.zippia.com/google-
careers-24972/executives/
Henderson, C. (2021). It's been a decade since Tim Cook became the CEO of Apple. Here's how his
leadership has changed the world. Retrieved from Business Insider:
https://www.businessinsider.com/10-years-tim-cook-apple-ceo-his-leadership-changed-tech-2021-
8?international=true&r=US&IR=T
Tran, S. K. (2017). GOOGLE: a reflection of culture, leader, and management. International Journal of
Corporate Social Responsibility, 2.